Scotch Egg History

The United Kingdom is known for its diversity of food and has over the centuries adopted many recipes that have subsequently lost their origins and are now thought of as being quintessentially English.

Many of these dishes are then sold around the world as being traditional English Fare. One such dish is Scotch Eggs

A traditional Scotch Egg is a hardboiled chickens egg that has been wrapped in sausage meat which has been dipped in breadcrumbs and then deep fried.

The Scotch Egg is claimed to have been invented by the London food store Fortnum and Masons back in 1738. The store was founded in 1707 as a grocery store and soon gained a reputation for supplying quality foods and was renowned for supplying luxury foods and meats to members of the British Aristocracy and serving officers in the British Army all around the Empire.

It is as a result of supplying such goods that the idea of a Scotch egg is thought to have come about.

During the 18^th century the British Empire had spread into India and discovered an entirely new style of cooking and food preparation. In one of the conquered areas around Delhi the Mughali style of cooking was to be found and one of the common dishes was to use lamb or beef mixed with spices and then formed in to balls before cooking. One of the local variants was to place an egg in the meat and then served and known locally as Nargisi Kofta

It is most probable that someone wrote back to Fortnum and Mason asking that they prepare such a dish for their return to the UK or when they were posted to another part of the Empire and were not able to obtain it.

The first recorded recipe of a Scotch Egg is in Mrs Rundell’s “ A New System of Domestic Cookery” which was published in 1809 and quickly became a firm favorite on both sides of the Atlantic. The recipe showed how to prepare the Scotch Eggs and then recommended they be served in a gravy or sauce further giving credence to their origins in India.

Today Scotch eggs are invariably eaten cold and a popular favorite at picnics for their ease of eating and combination of flavors. They can be made quite easily but there are so many places selling them over the counter or prepackaged that few people bother to make them and as a result some of the regional variations are now seldom found.

Bite sized, chopped eggs. Quails eggs, pickled eggs and Worcester sauce are all varieties that can still be found and in today’s fast food world the Scotch Egg is likely to have a long and prosperous future

The 50 most delicious foods in the world - really?

Ask 100 people what their favorite food is and you will more than likely get 80 different answers. Ask 1,000 people and the number grows but not in the same proportions and so it continues. What makes the compilation of lists very hard is getting a good cross section of respondents  and so whenever we read a list of the top whatever you can be sure to find people who disagree with it and some who could quite possibly never heard of it.

Online website CNNgo, part of the CNN group of companies recently decided to compile a list of the top 50 foods in the world with some very interesting results. The criteria for how they achieved their results is hidden in mystery, as are nearly all such surveys, so the results should be taken with a pinch of salt (quite appropriate for a food survey don’t you think?). All that we know is that the survey was as a result of asking readers of CNNgo.

A number of the usual suspects can be found – fajitas, tortillas, hamburgers, fried chicken, tacos, chocolate to name but a few and there are some exotic listings as well but missing from the list are some very noticeable regions. There is no mention of French cooking, the place where reputedly the best food comes from.

In 50^th place was buttered pop corn from the US (really??!!) with potato chips (crisps for the English) in 48^th place which is understandable if the selection was favorite foods but the selection request was for the 50 most delicious foods in the world – just how chips gets in to this category beats me.

In fact when you look down the list you start to wonder as to the quality and intelligence of the respondents to the survey as many of the foods on the list are snack foods or fast foods or at best convenience foods. Could it be that the world’s appreciation of “delicious foods” is being dumbed down by mass processed foods and the addition of salts and sugars as a preservative?

I have eaten all around the world and had some simply sensational food that has left you gagging for more and at other times have spent months looking forward to a special meal.

There is no mention of steak in any format on the list (Hamburgers do not count) nor is there any individual fish. Fish and chips is on the list and Sushi makes it in to the top 5. I have no problem with sushi being there as some of it can be simply stunning but I would have rated sashimi above it and to be frank I think a number of those that voted for sushi really meant sashimi as they do not know the difference.

Peking duck at number 5 deserves a place but not so high and I could never countenance pizza, let alone Neapolitan pizza as number 2 or even in the top 50.

So the result of the survey and the world’s most delicious food is……… Massaman Curry

For those who are unfamiliar with this dish it is a mild curry that is slightly sweet in flavour and was thought to be Muslim in origins hence  it is not often served with pork although can be. The 2 most common variants of the dish are chicken or beef and is normally served with rice which when you take in to account the potatoes that make up part of the dish make it quite high in carbohydrates.

The sweetness of the curry comes from the coconut  milk that makes up part of the sauce along with the roasted peanuts or cashew nuts  which are added to cardamom, cinnamon, star anise, chili and tamarind.

It is definitely a popular dish across Asia with slight regional variations so you would expect to find it up there in a list of 50 top Asian dishes but to head the 50 most delicious dishes in the world highlights a fault in the selection process.

Being ones to double check their facts (how I wish the news channel would do the same) CNNgo did a survey on Facebook and asked people to vote for their top 50 dishes from the list provided and the result was…….

……Massaman curry did not top the poll and only just squeaked in the top 10 in 9^th place with 801 votes 

out of a total number of voted cast of 35,000.

Top place went to Rendang, drive from Indonesia which only made it to 11^th place on the original list but with over 7,400 votes it was clearly the favourite with over 2,000 votes more than the 2^nd place dish of Nasi Goreng, also from Indonesia – do I sense a pattern emerging?

All of the top 5 dishes were from Asia which makes you wonder just who has had an influence on the result or whether Asians are just more likely to participate in Facebook surveys.

The next thing to do is to go down the list and see just how many of the dishes you have already tried – I scored 38 which leaves 12 more to go

You can see the full list at http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/eat/worlds-50-most-delicious-foods-067535?page=0,0

The Benefits of Detoxing

Well it appears that I survived the recent detox session as all of my limbs are still functioning and for some weird reason I seem to have more energy but that could be as a result of better sleep which i am told can also be a side benefit to detoxing as the toxins in your body cause it a level of stress and this is reflected in more REM sleep which is apparently not good for you.

It is surprising how quickly you can get used to a vegetable and fruit only diet but it is also disquieting and perhaps an indication of the excess I was putting my body through previously that the cravings start - some just 48 hours after starting the detox.

After nothing but carrots and apples for 4 days I decided that it was time to take advantage of living in Thailand and to make my evening meal a little more exciting but still restricting it vegetables - enter the Thai delicacy of Som Tam. This spicy papaya salad is a great favorite of the Issan region of Thailand and can be very hot if the right numbers of chilies are added - I find 7 or 8 perfect but most people stick with 2 or 3. As well as being quite healthy the chilies have a remarkable cleaning effect on you and speed up your heart a little this increasing blood flow.

After 7 days of this and then 7 days of nothing but water and the occasional fruit juice, several games of golf and numerous lengths of the swimming pool I was 12 kilos lighter and considerably browner.

A detox is not just how you prepare and go through the course but also how you break it and the consultant was there to give a lot of advice.

Having told me that my body shape was predisposed towards carbs and sugars (now I have a legitimate medical reason justifying my shape) she asked me what my plans were. The intention was to ease back in to eating with another week of just having raw and then cooked vegetables with the occasion fruit and introduce proteins a further week down the path and then the occasional carbs another week later.

This all sounded grand but I was warned that this might not be possible as my body had undergone quite a drastic reduction in all the things that it craved ( a kind of cold turkey in essence) and that it might tell me quite quickly that I needed proteins and maybe even carbs.

Listening to all of this but not really taking it on board I then made my way with a staff member to Singapore where we were to do some filming for our new TV show whose next episode was to be on Superyachts.

Wanting some background flavor we made our way to Singapore's Little India where it was Deepavali and all the lights were out and hundreds of small stalls selling local delicacies.

It was here that I discovered another side effect of a detox - your sense of smell is greatly enhanced and at times I could distinguish the individual spices that were going in to the dishes.

I also learnt another lesson that self will is only so strong but the body is eventually stronger and when I nearly passed out with giddiness I realized it was my body’s way of saying it needed real sustenance.

Deciding to take things easy we order some vegetable samosas, a chicken tikka massala and Naan breads. The assault on my taste buds was amazing and never had food tasted so good but the following morning was sheer hell as the richness of the foods was too much for my pore system - now I know what they suggest you ease yourself back to eating proteins with a little steamed fish or chicken. Suffice to say it was a very disturbing time the following day and I am sure the Superyacht agents we were interviewing must have thought I had a serious affliction.

I am now back to eating solids and am as proud as a mother with her new born baby when he also makes the move but everything in moderation. This far chocolate and beer are off the menu as is bread. A very few glass of alcohol have been consumed and I am waking up in the morning feeling so much better.

What is really amazing, in addition to the amount of weight I have lost around my face is how white my eyes have become and how clean my skin is. Even some friend shave commented on it making me all the more determined to carry on at least in part towards my goal of loosing a total of 30kg by the end of the year. I'm once hoping to take a true meditation or a traditional spa while visiting a beautiful place in Turkey.

It is going to be hard as I really miss my cakes and chocolates - fortunately there is a beer shortage at the moment so the temptation there is reduced

Vegetarianism

I have never been a fan of vegetarianism whether it be the basic level, the stricter vegan or what for me is the completely ludicrous fruitarian that gained popularity after the 1999 film Notting Hill brought it to light when a dinner guest pointed out that all the vegetables on the table had been murdered.

Don't get me wrong as I love vegetables but as a part of a whole meal and not the entire meal. There are certain meat meals that are incomplete with vegetables - Sausage and mashed potatoes with onion gravy, an English Sunday Roast dinner, Thanksgiving supper and of course Christmas dinner.

I can recall sitting down some 13 years ago to a family Christmas dinner with 17 different vegetables on the table to choose from and choose I did to the extent that it took a good 5 minutes of eating  before I could locate any of the meat that I had mange to completely cover. Organically reared black breast turkey I may add which made the finding of it all the more enjoyable.

I used to claim that no meal was complete unless it had a meat element to it - even cauliflower cheese was not permitted. It had to be served with a side order of back bacon and whole grain bread.

Saturday evenings were often corn on the cob night which as a child I hated with a vengeance causing my parents to have to cook something separate for me and of course it had to have meat. Now I am perfectly happy to eat corn on the cob and try to do so at least once a week if I can. I normally eat it off the cob accompanied with a nice rare cooked steak or possibly with BBQ roast chicken.

So what has all this got to do with vegetarianism?

A few years ago I was introduced to the benefits of detoxification through fasting and colonic irrigation and was given a whole mass of books and articles to read that had for a few seconds convinced that meat, cheese and milk were the devil's own creation and would be the death of me. Some further reading gave me balance to this and I now see the benefits of eating vegetables exclusively but also eating meat when I want to, which is most days.

I am sure that in a few more years time there will be a report that states a little red meat each week is good for you. We were born with incisors, canine and molar teeth so the medical profession is catching up on what our bodies have been telling us for millenia.

I have another detox session coming up - just 10 days this time but with a 7 day pre-detox plan that involves eating lots of raw vegetables and drinking copious qualities of water. Sugars, salt, fizzy drinks, meat, cheese. cooked foods, processed foods are all excluded so it is going to be an interesting time.

Fortunately due to some careful planning, I wish, the run up to my detox is during the annual Vegetarian festival here in Phuket or some places around China where many people abstain from meat, alcohol and other toxic influences for 9 days. This means that I shall not be alone in my suffering but also that there will be plenty of places where I can get vegetarian foods. I shall just have to ignore the fact that they are all cooked but that does no real harm.

On the subject of harm one thing I shall not be doing this Vegetarian Festival is joining in with the piercings that go on as part of a cleansing ritual with young men and women forcing all kinds of weird objects through their cheeks as an offering to the gods. It is said that the gods protect them from pain but I am not so sure about this.

I will be in enough pain abstaining from meat, alcohol, sugars, cakes, breads, carbs and a drastic increase in my exercise regime without forcing foreign matter through my cheeks.

Last time I carried out a detox I lost 14 kilos and the aim is to do the same again.

Why you ask? As I told the owner of the last detox center I visited by purging the toxins form my body I make room for a whole new bunch of them which if I did not do I would overdose eventually. They were not impressed but had to acknowledge the accuracy of my sentiment.

So what is Brandy

One of the most most popular after dinner drinks around the world is Brandy and is consumed by thousands of people without knowing what they are drinking and probably do not care.

They could not also tell you why different brandies have different flavors and ages or even how they are made.

It will come as a surprise to a lot of people to learn that the drink they are having at the end of the meal could quite possibly have been made from the same product as they had with the meal - wine. Many a Chateau in France has turned an inferior year's wine into a more profitable brandy.

The first brandies are believed to have been made in the 12th century although they really became popular in the 14th century as it became a popular way of preserving things and because of the reduced volumes cheaper for the merchants to transport. The original idea was to add the water that had been lost during the distillation process but it was soon discovered that the brandy improved considerably in terms of taste after it had been stored in wooden barrels, even for a short time. What really changed the concept of brandy was when it was discovered that this process continued indefinitely as long as the brandy stayed in the barrels.

It then came down to simple economics - how long could a vineyard or brandy maker afford to keep the brandy for increased profits whilst balancing this against cash flow.

Most brandies are made by distillation of wine that is between 8% and 12% and acidic (hence the use of cheap wine in the past) with the first distillate being 30% of alcohol by volume and sometimes known as "low wine". The process is repeated until there is an average of 70% of volume when it is put into wooden barrels and allowed to mature. Cheap brandies add caramel at this point to give an impression of greater age bit can easily be spotted by experienced brandy drinkers.

You can tell the age of a brandy as there is a recognized terminology used around the world to describe it:

A.C. has been aged in wood for 2 years
V.S. (Very Special or 3 star) has been aged in wood for 3 years
V.S.O.P. (Very Superior Old Pale of 5 star) has been aged in wood for 3 years
X.O. Extra Old or Napoleon aged  for at least 6 years
Vintage - aged in barrels to the date or number of years on the bottle

What is known by very few is that many good brandies are a blend of years with the age of the youngest brandy being the age shown on the bottle. It is quite common for good brandies to have 20, 30 or even 50 year old brandy within the blend although obviously at very small quantities.

Once you get to taste brandies that are older than 20 years of age you will appreciate the massive difference that being kept in barrels for extended time makes

Some confusion arises when it comes to Cognac and Armagnac who some believe are a superior type of brandy but are in fact just regional variants with Cognac coming from the Cognac region of France and Armagnac from Gascony

Another brandy that is well known is Calvados which is brandy made from apples, cider to exact, and is one of a number of fruit brandies that are very popular

Well known in Europe and liked by Gastronaughts around the world is Grappa which is distilled from the skins and left overs from the grapes after they have been pressed.

Insect Delights

Take a walk down any Asian street and you will find stalls offering a range of foodstuffs that you do not recognize and on closer viewing possibly do not want to as these are all insects of various shapes and sizes. Looks like you are in a minimized African safari.

For westerners the prospect of eating insects is so far from their psyche that it just does not even compute for 99% of the population. Only those that have been on exotic holidays to Asia or have participated in one of the current raft of reality TV programs would consider doing so but are the rest missing out on something.

Insects are horrible dirty things that crawl on the floor or fly through the air making a nuisance and from an early age we are told they must be ignored but our basic instinct as a young child of 3 or 4 is to eat them.

From a rational view point they are a combination of proteins and sugars along with carbohydrates the same as many of the other food stuffs that we consume, and frequently are "healthier" for us.

Personally I think it has a lot to do with the modern day view to eating - meat comes on tray from the supermarket or mall and not from animals. Because insects are generally small - I would not want to meet a cockroach or grasshopper the size of a cow, they are served intact and it is this aspect of "food" that really puts people off.

Asians have long had a more practical aspect to their food and eat parts of animals that westerners find disgusting but are for many a delicacy so their acceptance of insects as a nutritional part of their diet should not be that surprising.

Deep fried grasshoppers are a particular delicacy and to be frank are a little nutty in flavor and quite nice if served with the spicy pepper or oil that is often sprayed on. The real trick is to pull off the legs and wings and then snap off the head before popping it in to your mouth. it is really embarrassing to pop the whole thing in to your mouth to discover one of the legs is sticking out of your mouth on one side.

Smaller grasshoppers and bugs can be scooped up in the fingers and eaten like you would eat rice with your fingers, a little dry at times and really surprisingly different insects have different flavors.

Numerous studies have shown that the nutritional value of insects, especially in terms of protein is very high and many of them are very low in fats and carbohydrates making them an ideal food source if you are looking for a low carb diet - I just do not understand why this has not taken off in California...

As the world becomes more populated and foodstuffs become scarcer it is almost inevitable that insects are going to have to take a bigger place in our food chain. Did you know that 100 kilos of feed produces 10 kilos of beef but if that same feed was fed to grasshoppers or similar it would produce 40 kilos of food, 4 times the quantity.

So what I suggest is that the next time someone offers you an insect to try don't dismiss them out of hand, give it a go and you might be pleasantly surprised. Just watch out for those annoying wings.....

Does a bone matter?

All around the world on a daily basis people are sitting down and eating meat as part of their daily staple, if they can afford it. As you move up the money chain so to does the quality of the meat we are eating, or so many would have us believe, especially those in the food preparation industry.

The next time that you go in to a supermarket have a look at the packets of meat, in particular chicken and look at the price differences. The cheapest of the better cuts include the bone - chicken on the breast along with the skin, the next cheapest is boneless breast with skin and the most expensive is the skinned boneless breast of chicken.

If you are making a stir fry or something similar it can be argued that this offers the best value as all you get is meat but what you are also loosing is the flavour that the skin and bone can add to the dish. This is particularly so if you are going to slow cook or casserole meat which allows the flavours to seep into the dish and add to them.

The food preparation industry is also helping is to distance ourselves from where meat comes from by removing any hint of an animal. Unfortunately they are also loosing what is often the best part of a dish by removing some of its flavor.

A particular example of this is in the Indian restaurant cuisine where everything is made from boneless chicken - it is certainly easier for them to make it this way, it is easier to eat and because we all understand that skinned boneless chicken is the more expensive they can charge more for it. I went to India a number of years ago and had the most wonderful dishes served with chicken on the bone. Yes it was harder to eat, for me who love to travel around the UK for, but the flavor really made up from it although one of our party was heard to complain and ask why we could not get proper Indian food like she had back in England..... really!!!!!

Another example where meat on the bone is hard to find but so much better for it is when eating beef. Back in the 1970's and early 1980's T bone steaks were all the rage and the highest priced dish on the menu. The BSE scare killed all of this and beef on the bone was banned across the county and so a great English dinner disappeared.

What was even worse for gourmet dinners, and those that appreciated excellent beef was the overnight disappearance of Barons of Beef. These were large joints of beef, sometimes big enough for 30 or 40 people that took 2 people to carry out at a banquet and were often carved for the guests amusement by a ceremonial sword.

The flavor that was added to the beef by cooking it on the bone was hard to miss and couple with the fact that the bones carried the heat of the cooking in to the bulk of the beef meant that you could normally get rare cooked meat that was hot from a large joint of meat. Something that now is almost impossible to find still in the UK.

Fortunately a number of countries did not suffer the BSE crisis or have allowed the regulations they introduced to lapse meaning that you can now get beef on the bone often.

Beef on the bone has a particular aroma, almost cheesy and gives the impression of being off, or just going so. If the shop staff are not aware of this it can lead to some interesting opportunities - one of which I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of recently.

The trainee on the deli meat counter was cutting the T Bone steaks for the first time and his supervisor had stupidly left him unattended. Noticing an unusual aroma coming from the steaks he had just cut he immediately marked them as discounted knocking 70% off the price.

Suffice to say that before the supervisor could notice his error I was the proud owner of 7 T bone steaks each of about 750g for the same price as I would pay for chicken breasts with skin. It is not often that I get to eat steak for 5 days in a row but in this instance I was prepared to make an exception and indulged my self accordingly.