Non Milk Cheeses

I was in the pub the other night when the discussion got to cheeses and the different types you could make. 

As with many conversations that involve alcohol we quickly got into the naming of cheeses and after several minutes were running short of names

Someone brought up the subject of non milk vegetarian cheeses but no one could remember any of the names or if they had ever tried them.

I then put forward the name of bullace cheese and was met by a sea of blank faces, “No such thing” was the claim by all around the table and they were not having it even after i tod them what it was.

Not strictly cheeses in the Cheddar or Camembert sense but instead a form of jam much in the same way as marmalade is. This is a historic for of making a fruit preserve that has been lost to many people but still remains in the small villages in historic counties such as Suffolk or Somerset.

I remember by Grandmother making these 40 years ago and as a special treat we would have these spread on freshly baked bread and butter made that day in the local farm – such things are banned nowadays due to the strictures of EU directives and a part of our history has been lost again.

The cheese was easy to make and consisted of just fruit and sugar, preferably unrefined sugar. The fruit was gently sweated in a pan until it was soft and then passed through a fine sieve, or muslin cloth to leave just the pureed fruit. The sugar was then added and reheated gently for about an hour until the mixture stiffened.

As equal measures of fruit pulp and sugar are used this is an excellent way to use up excess amounts of fruit that become available if there is a glut. Bullace, Damson, and Cranberry are 3 of the more popular fruits to use.

Because there are no preservatives other than sugar used in the process the cheeses do not keep longer than 4 months, although they do improve after a couple of months. This could be the reason why fruit cheeses have become unpopular as commercially made jams and preserves last for months.

Cheeses such as these can be used as a spread or bread or crumpets as with commercial jams but can also be used as an accompaniment to cold meats or milk cheeses. They are particularly good with poultry especially chicken and pheasant.

It has been a long time since I saw such preserves available in mainline shops but there are more places now offering them in their catering establishments especially those historical sites such as castles and National trust homes in the UK.

The home of the fruit cheese is and probably always will be with Women’s Institute or WI as it is often called which has its base in the UK. Every year hundreds of women make these preserves both for completion and for use in their homes so next time you visit a fair or market keep your eyes open for this little bit of history and culinary enjoyment.

Strange wine making regions

I have had some great wines, some indifferent wines and some down right terrible wines - Mangosteen wine being top of the list. Some of these wines have come from unusual locations but this weeks was up there with the best.

If I asked you to name a county in North Africa that made wine those of you in the know would immediately say Egypt and you would be correct but how many of you would name Tunisia?

Apparently they have been making wine here for over 100 years starting whilst it was still a French Colony.

Matched against 2 French rose from Pays d'Oc and a Hardy's rose from Australia the Tunisian rose, made from vineyards growing in the Atlas Mountains stood its ground and amongst many of the tasters was voted as the best of the rose. Light in colour and subtle in flavor it is sure to go well with seafood.

These were entry level wines so now I am looking forward to tasting some of the better quality wines from the region.

We also had a French Merlot that tasted like a Cabernet Sauvignon and a South African Cabernet Sauvignon that tasted like a French Merlot. All in all a very confusing evening.

The wine of the evening? Definitely the Famille Castel Chardonnay 2008 from Pays d'Oc. Clean, crisp with great balance of flavours or a different taste from a Peruvian wine from Peru.

Where does meat come from?

I was watching one of those terrible TV programs where has-been celebrities, or in many cases never-were celebrities participate in a cooking program that sees them make fools of themselves gradual being sacked either by the chef in charge of the kitchen or at a later date by the watching audience.

In one scene the chef, who was very particular about the freshness of the food he served showed the remaining contestants how to kill and prepare an eel for cooking. He then instructed them to go out side and capture their own eel and prepare it for that evening’s meal.

From the reaction of several of the so called celebrities you would have thought he had asked them to commit first degree murder – one girl was even heard to call it inhuman....

After several minutes of watching them try to capture, kill and then prepare the eels we went to the interviews that were with the individual celebrities.

Now I have heard some rubbish in my time on the TV but what came next was unbelievable

One celebrity in all seriousness said that she had never considered where meat came from – she thought it just came from the supermarkets where it was neatly packaged on plastic trays and was now considering going vegetarian if it meant something had to die so she could have meat.

Do these people come from the real world or are we just being suckered in to some neat TV crap....?

Unfortunately having mentioned this to a few people down the local pub one person was also amazed to discover that meat did not always come on neat plastic trays with plastic covering.

I remember as a child going to the local butcher and watch him cut off exactly the amount of meat we wanted from a larger joint. A few years later aged 8 I learnt how to pluck and gut pheasants and pigeon and the following year to prepare rabbits including skinning and quartering them.

Now I may admit that I might not have had the same childhood as many people having learnt these skills but what is the world coming to when grown adults do not know where their foodstuff is coming from? How do they know which the best cuts are, whether the meat looks fresh, how to prepare it and how to serve them?

I have come to the conclusion that people living in the west are slowly but surely being indoctrinated in to what is acceptable to eat but where will it all end?

There are sci-fi books that depict a future where there is not enough food for the number of humans alive so mankind is re-graded by a controlling faction and lesser humans are bred as cattle and eaten in the same way. The “meat” is butchered on secret farms and then presented in shops in easy to cook portions.

Now we are a long way from that at the moment but now is the time to take back the knowledge of where our meat comes from and how it is prepared.

Visit your local butcher and ask for exactly what you want and learn more about the different regional varieties of beef, lamb, pork and chicken and then experiment with more exotic meats from your home country or overseas.

Who knows by discovering something new that you like you may be encouraged to visit the country or region that it comes from.

Happy eating

 

Haggis, an undiscovered delicacy

Every country has a national dish and Scotland is no exception but what does make it unique is that for many people it is only served once a year at a special dinner called a Burns Supper after Scotland’s most famous poet Robert “Robbie” Burns and held on the 25^th January..

For other people that love and enjoy haggis it is a dish that is eaten as regularly as possible

Many people when they learn what haggis is made from flatly refuse to even try it but what they fail to understand is that there is no one recipe with each glen or valley in Scotland having its own unique and often secret recipe.

In its most basic format haggis is a blend of the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep combined with onion, suet and oatmeal then boiled in the stomach of the sheep. Traditional haggis is still made this way but the more commercial manufacturing uses artificial casings.

Tradition has it that it should be eaten with Neaps and tatties –swede and potatoes and accompanied by a glass of whiskey. If you are doing the whole thing properly then it should be accompanied by a whisky from the same glen as the haggis comes from.

There is no historical data as to where haggis came from or even when it was first served. The earliest mention of it in the UK is in 1430 in a recipe cookbook published in Lancashire, not what you would expect from a Scottish dish…. Other records show mentions of a similar recipe in Homer’s Odyssey some 2,200 years earlier.

Whenever it was first thought of it Haggis has certainly been a staple of the Scottish diet for many centuries and its cooking process in the sheep’s stomach made it easy to carry and therefore popular.

It is not just for eating that haggis is known for – there is also haggis hurling where the world record has stood for 26 years when a 1.5 lb haggis was thrown for 180 feet, nearly 60 meters.

Haggis is also popular in the United States but unfortunately they cannot have the traditional style of cooking as the government banned the import of products containing sheep’s lung so they are left to make do with the artificial casings – but that just leaves more of the good stuff for us.

Contrary to popular folk lore haggis is not a small creature that lives in Scotland running around mountains with 2 legs longer than the other to ensure it does not fall down the steep slopes. That said 30% of Americans when asked thought that it was – if only we could capture some of them and put them on display.

So raise a glass of whiskey and toast to the “Chieftain of the Pudding Race” – the haggis.

Champagne is an English Drink – really

There has always been animosity between the French and the English going back for centuries. No one truly knows why, it could have something to do with the fact that much of France was once owned by England all the way down to Burgundy or that we have been at war with each other for much of the last 500 years.

One thing to really upset the French is to inform them that Champagne is actually an English drink that the French now make and claim exclusivity on the name.

There is a popular misconception that Champagne was invented by Dom Perignon back in the late 17^th century after being instructed by his abbot to get rid of the bubbles that kept forming in the bottles and making them explode.

It was in 1662 that an English scientist Christopher Merret described the process whereby sugar left in the bottles created second fermentation and therefore bubbles. This was normally as a result of the cold winters in Epernay where much of the original champagne wine was made stopping the fermentation process early.

This paper when it was presented to the merchants of London was some 20 years before Dom Perignon’s attempts to remove the bubbles from the wine that at the time was being called Devil’s wine

Because London at that time was the center of the world for commerce all of the best wines were being shipped to London for consumption or onwards trade around the world.

The adding of sugar to the wines to create bubbles was soon a roaring success but it did not overcome the problem of the exploding bottles.

As is often the case it was a second invention, again English, that overcame this problem and allowed the world to enjoy a drink that is associated with every special event and with success.

In the late 17^th century the English were experimenting with glass making and discovered that using coal in the firing process generated much higher temperatures and therefore much stronger glass. Coupled with the rediscovery of the use of corks as stoppers, something the Romans had known 1700 years earlier the English were able to allow the fermentation process to continue in the bottle with out the risk of having them explode.

The English now had access to the best of everything – great quality wines from the Champagne region of France, sparkling bubbles and the means to keep them.

It was not long before avarice set in and the flow of wine from France to London reduced and the importation of stronger glass into France commenced.

So there you have it – despite all of their claims that Champagne is the best wine in the world, and that it is French it took English know how to give it to the world.

Something else that you probably don’t know about Champagne, and the French are keeping REALLY quiet about this is that the best Champagne style wines now come from England and not France. Take a look at a map of Europe and you will see that the chalky Downs of Southern England are right opposite those of Epernay. With the rise of global temperatures the optimum conditions for growing perfect champagne grapes now exist along a narrow line in England...... and the French wine making houses have brought up all the land in the area.

So raise your glass and toast “the English Drink”

Pizza Peace Please

When is a pizza not a pizza? Well if the World Pizza Council (yes they really do exist) has their way a certain pizza company in Thailand will no longer be able to serve “pizzas”.

The council, based in Naples, have complained about the way in which the company have changed from the original idea of a pizza to new concept ideas as being an insult to the memory of their ancestors.

So upset are they that they have filed a complaint in a European court to get them to stop using the word pizza and described what the company are making as being “deformed culinary abuses” Quite a statement but nowhere near as bad as their final comment describing the newest seafood creation including artificial crab stick as being “a crime against humanity”

Given the atrocities occurring around the world calling a culinary dish a crime against humanity has got to be taking things a little too far.

Having read all this it got me thinking just when the first pizzas came into being.

The exact date of the first pizza is not know exactly as these were developed from peasant food where olive oil, herbs and cheese were spread over unleavened bread by the Greeks and the Romans enjoyed honey, cheese and basil on a base.

The first official record of a pizza being served as a meal was in 1889 when Queen Margherita of Savoy whilst visiting Naples was served a dish with Mozzarella cheese, tomato and basil on a baked bread base. As a result of this dinner the dish we all know as a Margherita pizza was born.

American claims that pizza is an American dish are therefore dashed as the earliest record of a pizza being served in the USA is 75 years later..... They are however one of the largest consumer of pizza in the world including gastronomy tour who visit and stay in apartment in Italy. So contentious is the issue of what is a genuine pizza that in 2009 the European Court passed legislation describing what constituted a “traditional Italian pizza” and included what ingredients could be used.

Where ever you travel in the world you will find local variations and ingredients unique to individual countries and this really makes the complaint from the World Pizza Council a little spurious as every country is experimenting with this traditional dish especially when you look at the pizzas made in Chicago.

The acknowledged pizza capital of the world is Sao Paulo in Brazil where there are an estimated 6,000 pizza dining establishments with over 1.5 million pizzas consumed every day. Some of these are dessert pizzas with toppings such as chocolate or banana, something that is seldom found elsewhere.

New Year diet foods

So if you are like me you have finished the Christmas and New Year Season and realised that there is less of your shoes in view when you look down or it is that little bit harder when you bend over to tie your shoe laces.

No fears as the answer is at hand – eat more......

Yes I did say eat more as it has been shown that eating regularly can help with dieting – many Asians eat 6 or 7 times a day and are slim and not over weight like us westerners.

Every year a new diet fad comes onto the market encouraging us to eat more fibre, or less carbohydrates or just raw foods. However some truths have been known for many years and some of them are listed below – be warned that some of them do not fit in with current thinking as far of diets are concerned, but then someone has to find a reason for you to buy their book and read their diet plan.

Eggs – these have always been know as a great way to start the day as they are full of protein and help fill you up at the start of the day reducing what you will want to eat for the rest of the day. Try not to fry them...

Beans – always a favourite of diets as they contain cholecystokinin which is a natural appetite suppressant and are also high in fiber which helps make you feel full for longer

Grapefruit – something in a grapefruit can help reduce your natural insulin levels making your body convert calories into energy rather than fat.

Cinnamon – a great way to stave off those mid day sugar rushes cinnamon can also help lower blood sugars and cholesterol and of particular interest to those with type 2 diabetes.

Olive Oil – People from Mediterranean countries have known the benefits of olive oil for centuries and it is surprising what you can put olive oil. A great way to take olive oil in your diet is to eat it soaked into bread, especially whole grain.

And when you have done all of this tuck into a nice juicy steak and a bottle of wine to celebrate all that weight you have lost and the healthy food you have been eating.

Another good way you could try, for basic experience, is to find an enriched menus in some restaurants in Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, those were places where many people think of when dining out for the original.