My Worst Nightmare

Airport food. Yuk. Everytime I go to the airport, I seem to have the same conversation with myself.. why oh why does it appear to be impossible for the retailers to provide good quality, healthy food? Its a nutritionist’s nightmare. I mean, its not as if they are in the middle of nowhere far from any glimmer of civilisation is it? OK, so there is a Pret in some of them, and I found a Yo Sushi in one of Heathrow’s Terminal in December 2007, but why is it that the majority of other places (dare I call them restaurants) serve up food that is so diabolical its crazy.

This time, flummoxed with choice, I ordered a tuna nicoise salad, and got a dish of soaking wet salad leaves (with nice brown bits), lumps of nasty tinned tuna, olives that were so tasteless I wondered whether they were olives at all and a grey boiled egg whose origin I really didn’t want to think about. All for the bargain price of £9. Daylight robbery.

Tuna Nicoise - How it should look!

Coming back was worse. The ‘restaurant area’/canteen was devoid of any custom and all the food was so congealed it was food poisoning in waiting, so I decided to go to the coffee shop/pub/sandwich bar option, and had a ham, cheese and tomato panini, which was only just edible – amazing how toasting something can make it passable, when you’re desperate to eat. Luckily they stocked Innocent’s juicy water so at least I got some vitamins out of that meal.

Looks marginally better than my one!

It just upsets me that in this day and age when there is so much coverage from the government on healthy eating and its not that difficult to cater with better ingredients, that there are still companies who obviously don’t care about anything except the bottom line. We are sitting ducks in airports, there is so little choice and when hungry, you are forced to eat the least worst thing in order to quell that hunger. The thing is in preparation for going on a trip I’m usually in a rush and forget to eat substantially, and all the waiting around makes me peckish… and that’s if the flight isn’t at a strange time. And to top it off they always charge ridiculous prices for this non-food. Grrr.

The food you get is generally sandwich or starch-based, often high saturated fat & high sugar; so it will make blood sugar levels go out of kilter. Because you’re off on holiday, or excited you may not drink enough fluid; and if you have have kids then tempers are more likely to be frayed and the trip gets started off on the wrong foot. Or you become lethargic, tired and generally grumpy until you reach your destination and can relax – or if you’re away with work as I can be, its hard to get your brain focused because of the poor nutrition that you are subjected to in the airports.

I don’t know the answer, its a tough one. Would lobbying the companies make the food more healthy? I don’t know, as there are such massive economics at play. But I’m not asking them to change the wheel, only to provide their customers with food that is worthy of the highly inflated costs that they charge. I would like to see the larger restaurants and brands to use quality ingredients, and consider the level of saturated fats, sugar and starch that they have in their food offerings at the very least. Surely its not too much to ask?!

If Jamie Oliver can challenge the catering system with regards to schools, why should other areas not be challenged too? Airports, motorway service stations, train stations are all culprits… its only fair that when we are paying through the nose for food we have to buy because we have no other choice, that we actually get something which will provide a little something towards our health rather than paying for food that is detrimental to it.

Pancake Day!

If you’re like me, and luuurve pancakes, then today is the day to throw all good intentions out of the window and re-live your childhood for one night only. I really don’t know why pancakes are so special for me, but there is just something about that rolled up moist disc of flour, eggs and water/milk that just makes me go weak at the knees. Its probably as they hold really strong childhood memories for me; my mum allowing me to help her make them, the way each side cooks differently, and the sharpness of the lemon being cut through with oodles of sugar and not to mention the softness of the middle constrasted with the crispy edges…

Pancakes are part of many cultures, I assume it’s because they are so easy to make and so versatile with regards to fillings/toppings. There are a multitude of ways to cook them, even within the UK there are differences between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The US prefer theirs thicker and more dense, the French like them larger and thinner, some countries use yeast, others just basic batter.

My pancakes are truly traditional English ones – they are similar to the french crepe – but they aren’t lacey in appearance like a crepe and do not rise, there are bubbles that appear during cooking which gives these dark brown spots across the surface. We use the same batter as you would for a Yorkshire Pudding, but its just cooked in a different way. The batter is very thin and is a pale creamy colour, we pour a thin layer of batter over the base of a frying pan sizzling with butter, on a moderately high heat.  and it is left to cook on the first side before flipping over to finish off.

Top Tip:

Always discard the first pancake… the frying pan isn’t often warm enough and the pancake might look slightly strange, alternatively (as I used to) give away the first pancake to your brother or sister so you get to eat a good one (when you’ve fed everyone else, of course). Also always use butter, not oil – to be honest, if you’ve got a good non-stick pan, you might even get away with not using any fat. And I wouldn’t recommend using anything more than a small knob of butter as there is nothing worse in my book then a greasy pancake. You’re only using the oil to ensure the pancake doesn’t stick, nothing else.

If you are wheat intolerant, luckily, for you there are some fantastic gluten-free flours out there – my favourite is from Dove’s Farm (available at all good supermarkets) and then of course, if you like your pancakes more like the American ones then you can use Buckwheat flour, which is also gluten-free but has a slightly nutty taste and the mixture will have a slight speckled look due to the fibrous nature. And remember, Buckwheat is NOT related to wheat. It is a psuedo-cereal that is a plant rather than a grass (cereal).

Toppings:

What to put inside a pancake is always a great debate. I was having this discussion with friends at the weekend as I’m a pure lemon and sugar girl and savoury pancakes, for me, are an absolute waste of batter. I love the simplicity of the tastes and the texture. And yes, I know its about as nutritious as a cardboard box, but for one night only, I’ll make an exception! The only deviation I have from that is when I visit the Italian Pizzeria Bel Sit near my parents house.  I have been going there since I was 5 or 6 and when I was about 10, chef devised a pancake based dessert just for me… pancake with vanilla icecream and grand marnier. To my joy, twenty years later, they are still serving it as a special dessert!

If you are watching what you eat, and want to avoid the sweet stuff, then the great thing about pancakes is that you can fill them with anything. In an ideal world you would always add some protein to them to ensure that the glucose from the flour doesn’t send your blood sugar into a tail-spin, and if you wanted to be ultra healthy, you could wrap a pancake around some steamed asparagus or make a steamed or stir-fried veggie wrap. Fresh fruit with nuts or seeds and a little drizzle of plain natural yoghurt with cinnamon would also be really tasty. Pancakes don’t have to be unhealthy, full of sweet stuff like chocolate, syrup, cream and ice cream. If you use wholegrain flour/or buckwheat flour and have fillings that aren’t riddled with sugar (and bad stuff) then you are unlikely to go wrong… I just love to use this as an excuse to have a bad day!

Oh and of course, make your own batter – its so easy, worst case scenario and you don’t have any kitchen equipment, all you really need is a jug, bowl and a fork. Food mixers are not essential here. A sieve might be though??!!

Here’s a fail-safe recipe for batter, that doesn’t even need scales:

Take a mug for your measure and measure out the ingredients in equal amounts, starting with the eggs:

1 mug eggs

1 mug plain flour

1 mug (organic) milk

• Put the flour into a bowl and make a well.
• Whisk the eggs up with a fork and slowly add them to the flour until all the liquid has soaked in.
• Slowly pour the milk into the mixture working it into the batter before you pour more in (this avoids the proliferation of lumps)
• Once all the milk is in the mixture, heat a knob of butter in a frying pan.
• When it starts to brown, pour the first pancake in – I will usually pour enough to just about cover the base of the pan and move the remaining liquid into the corners by tilting the pan.
• When you see the base of the pancake start to bubble and lift, check the underside of the pancake, if you can see a slight browning then flip it over and cook for another 30secs/1 min. You will know when it is done as it wil become harder and will move around the pan easily.
• When its done, pop onto a plate for the ravenous recipient to devour in their own way and start with the next batch.

Turning tradition on its head

Yesterday I had a last minute change of plan, rather than go outside into the treacherous rain to dinner as planned, I decided to entertain indoors. My dinner guest isn’t a particularly fussy eater except when it comes to fish and shellfish – and of course I wanted to cook a fish dish. I’d bought some fantastic fish from one of my regular fishmongers, a lovely lady who has a stall in Broadway Market (Hackney) on a Saturday and Islington Farmer’s Market on Sunday. She lands all the fish in Brighton and brings them up to sell that day (mainly to restaurants but the public get a look in at the weekends)… they are so fresh they could jump off the ice. Anyway, back to the story… what ever I cooked was ring fenced by the following parameters:
a)    No bones, heads or whole fish (so that was the lemon sole out then)
b)    No shells or legs (goodbye mussels & clams)
So all that was left was the (ethically caught) cod, oh and I’m allowed to include prawns too, so I zipped off to Tesco’s and found some reasonable frozen prawns that were caught in the Atlantic (rather than farmed in S.E.Asia) and the fish pie adaptation idea was spawned.

When prepping for my most recent  healthy eating workshop weekend I found a fantastic recipe from Jamie Oliver which doesn’t include the béchamel sauce, milk or cheese that can make this traditional favourite so, well, heavy; high in saturated fat, starch, dairy and devoid of much veg; personally, I’ve never been a fan of white sauces and am not too great with dairy products, so for people like me or anyone who is lactose intolerant, this is a perfect alternative. Plus it can be quite tricky and time consuming to make. Jamie’s method is brilliant for people who may be worried about their lack of knife skills, apart from skinning the fish (optional) the knife hardly gets a look-in. However, I challenged myself to adapt it even further to make it as healthy as possible (added to the fact that I can’t follow a recipe without tampering with it) and as a nutritionist, I want to include ingredients that are different from the norm, but not so strange as to wreck the taste.

So, how do you ‘health-up’ a fish pie? First, throw out the rulebook. Who said that something has to stay exactly the same as it has always been? Are the food police going to kick down your door and cart you off to hell where you are force-fed imitation meat products for life? No!!!  You can do whatever you want to a recipe – if it gives you inspiration to move it on, then I’m all for it – progress is it not?

How did I make these changes? More by intuition than intention, to be honest. I started making the dish and realised that I was missing the key ingredients… potatoes, carrots, celery, fresh chilli, and spinach. Ooops. I checked out my vegetable box and found a turnip, beetroot and some Jerusalem artichokes. I thought the turnip would have a similar tang that celery did, the beetroot the sweetness that carrot provides and then Jerusalem artichoke because I could (its taste is pretty undetectable unless it is cooked alone), its fantastic for gut health (provides inulin the feed the good bacteria) and it needed to be used up. I rarely eat white potatoes, therefore sweet potatoes are the only choice (when I’m in control), and when I tried to find the required spinach, I could only find organic versions of spinach, watercress & rocket combined… so I picked out the spinach and some watercress and then used up the remainder for a salad accompaniment. I had some cabbage & fennel lurking on the sidelines, but I thought that they might just push it over the edge so held off.

As long as you can get over the initial hurdle of not having a white sauce, then the world is your lobster, the dish looked unorthodox for sure. That was the first comment that came out of my guest’s mouth – ‘Erm…. It doesn’t look how I expected it to’ and guess what the next question was… ‘What’s in it???’ I declined to comment until he had eaten at least two mouthfuls – it is really interesting how people form opinions before they taste something – I’m sure you’ve come across someone saying that they don’t like something; but if you asked them if they had tried the food, I bet that 7/10 times the answer would be ‘No’. I come across this all the time and yes the ingredients were unorthodox, there were no spices or seasonings in this dish – it was just pure food and combination of ingredients, albeit is a little sprinkle of pepper (after tasting).

So… what was the verdict?? ‘Amazing’ ‘Yum’ ‘Wow’; as you can see from the picture below it went down a treat!! Unfortunately I had meant to give you before and after pictures, but I was somewhat distracted from the job in hand once my friend had arrived, but its so easy to make, I don’t think you need them.

My version of the recipe is featured below – just click on the ‘more‘ button below – its really easy – if you have a grater, a saucepan and a oven proof dish, you’ve got no excuse. It took me about half an hour to prepare and then only 45mins to cook. Perfect no fuss cooking that is healthy to boot which went well with a nice Rose rioja that was donated by my dinner guest.

Enjoy!

Non-traditional Fish Pie Recipe

click the ‘more’ button below

When only a stew can do…

I love Nigel Slater (the Observer Food Editor and renowned cookery writer), otherwise known as ‘Sir Nigel’ in my household. Well, let me expand on this one, when it comes to cookery writers he hits the spot. His love for food, quality ingredients and cooking are infectious; his recipes aren’t over-fiddly, pompous or difficult and whenever I’m looking for a recipe to wow friends with it is often that he comes up trumps.

Last week I had couple of friends over to dinner, as I had been incredibly busy I hadn’t really given much thought to the fact that I had to actually cook them something! I had a few thoughts as to what I might do, but no research had been done. I don’t really use recipes when cooking for myself; as I eat seasonally, its rare that I will actually plan what I’m eating over the week. I usually use my choice of protein as a base, look at the veggies I have bought that weekend (or previous week if I haven’t eaten them up), and concoct something using a mixture of knowledge, gut instinct and luck (and of course fantastic ingredients). So having friends around pushes me to investigate new things and of course with other peoples likes and dislikes it makes me think out of the box a little.

My initial idea was to do a roast pumpkin curry; I’d been treated to an amazing homemade lamb curry last weekend, and have been craving it after my time in Sri Lanka. I was certain that I had one in my reserve recipe piles, but as is the way, I wasn’t able to find it at the crucial moment. Nigel had one on his website, but the ingredient list was as long as my arm, and whilst I’ve got a really well stocked cupboard, I didn’t really have the time or inclination to source the missing ingredients. So back to the drawing board I went. The key thing was that it needed to be pretty simple in creation but effective in its delivery. Its been mightily cold so I wanted something warming and then I found the chorizo & chickpea stew. It was perfect, not only was it a ‘one pot’ recipe, the only ingredient I has missing was the chorizo, which is pretty easy to find in London supermarkets, deli’s or butchers, albeit sometimes a little expensive (but I thought if push came to shove I could always substitute with good sausages).

Driving through East Dulwich following a client visit, I spied a butchers on Lordship Lane, claiming to be game and sausage specialist and I thought it would be rude not to have a look at their wares. Sure enough there were some small but perfectly formed chorizo sausages on display so I bought just over 400g (approx. eight small) for £4 which I thought was pretty reasonable. Upon returning home I quickly I price checked the major supermarkets and they all charged more per 100g for their chorizo sausages… and I hate to say it, but I’ve never bought any supermarket chorizo that tastes as good as these. And I’ve got a couple left for another day, I had cut 6 sausages into three, and an extra six pieces seemed down right glutinous.

The verdict was wow, wow and wow. None of us had ever tasted such an amazing stew – rich, just spicy enough and really filling, and the chorizo was melt in the mouth. A proper winter warmer. The best thing was that I also had enough leftovers to feed me for another 2 days. Yay. Thank you Sir Nigel, from the bottom of my chorizo-shaped heart.

Now I suppose I expect you’re asking yourself why is a nutritionist extolling the virtues of a sausage?  I thought they were full of saturated fats that are bad for you and have been linked to cancer and heart disease, I hear you shout. Yes, that is kinda true (ish). Moderation is the key here, I can count on one hand how many times I have had sausages in the past 12 months, so I don’t think I’m pushing the boat out too much. We have been brow-beaten by the food industry (often selling ‘low-fat’ products) into the belief that fat is bad full-stop. Fat has become the whipping boy for many modern day ailments. So much so that people who had reduced their dietary fat intake so severely are facing health issues that can be as severe as someone who eats far too much. We need fat to survive, and whilst the body can make saturated fat (being a non-essential fat), I would always prefer to have a client who ate too much than too little as we could then balance everything out and introduce the essential fats into the diet. I find that re-educating fat-phobic’s is always harder than changing the type of fat someone eats.

In my opinion, a good sausage, like a bacon sarnie, can hard to beat and they are definitely not all equal. I’m not going to name any names, but some brands quite frankly shouldn’t even be allowed to call their products sausages. I don’t want to put anyone off their dinner, however, it is common knowledge that some sausages are made from the offcuts and sometimes more unspeakable parts of animals, not to mention the inclusion of high levels of wheat, spices (to disguise the lack of taste) and chemical preservatives. If you’ve ever thought about eating one of those hotdogs that are sold in London after dark – please don’t, your life is in your hands if you do. You’re better off eating a burger from a well-known fast food outlet – and that is something you’d never hear me say in any other conversation.

Plus, if you are making the dish yourself you have the control. There are no hidden chemicals, oils or preservatives, all the ingredients are fresh and therefore have higher nutritional benefit. This recipe is pretty fool-proof and apart from the preparation which took about 20 mins all you need to do is to give it a stir every now and again. Home cooking cannot be beaten when compared to something that is made in a factory. Not only is it healthy for all the aforementioned reasons, its also going to be much, much tastier and not to mention cheaper when costed out per portion. I ran the ingredients through Sainsbury’s online shopping tool and the bill was £10.39 – £2.60 per person. Pretty darn good I believe, especially as the recipe could realistically get six portions rather than four (£1.74 each). There wasn’t a comparative ready-meal, but a beef stew was £2.99 per pack.

My guide to buying sausages:
Check out your local butchers selection: often the butcher would make the sausages onsite and you can question them on the ingredients. There is often more choice in types of meat and flavours, plus they are often cheaper than a good supermarket sausage.
Go for the top own-brand range, farmer specific brands or from the deli counter when buying from a supermarket. Make sure you check out the ingredients to ensure that you get the highest percentage of meat and least amount of added extras.
If possible buy organic to prevent the consumption of antibiotics that are injected into the animals before slaughter
Be wary of over-priced deli sausages – sometimes they aren’t as good as the price suggests. If the shop assistant doesn’t know much about the content then I’d avoid if there was another option.
N.B. If lots of water come out of the sausages when cooking, then its not a very high quality sausage

Where to buy:
Northfield Farm: Borough market, London.                         Mail order: 01664 474 271 www.northfieldfarm.com
William Rose Butchers: 126 Lordship Lane 020 8693 9191
H. Stokes Butchers: 73 High Street, Dunmow, CM6 1AE 01371 872813

For the recipe: click the more button