food, reviews and of course coffee
Beer will be last longer on shelves if brewers take advantage of new technologies to increase shelf life.
A material that could lead to beer with significantly longer shelf life has been designed by researchers.
The approach works by removing riboflavin, or vitamin B2, which causes changes to beer’s flavour when exposed to light passing through the bottle.
Read more.
Does this mean fresher beer? No just means less stale beer!
You don’t always have to use expensive cuts of meat to make a wonderful meal, sometimes the cheapest cuts cooked really slowly can have fantastic flavour and texture.
I do have a passion for pork belly, and remembering a dish I had my local pub, when I saw a slab of pork belly on sale at Marks and Spencer decided to create my own version.
Turn on your oven to its highest temperature.
I chopped some root vegetable, onion and carrot, added some mushrooms and potatoes and placed it in a roasting pan.
I placed the belly pork on the root vegetables and seasoned it. I then placed this in the really hot oven, turning the temperature right down to 160. I then left the pork to roast for about two hours. This may not seem long, but it wasn’t a huge piece of pork like a leg joint.
As it cooked I did add some wine and water now and again to the bottom of the roasting pan, so it didn’t dry out.
The result was a fantastic moist, tender wonderfully flavoured piece of pork. Which I sliced and served with vegetables.
The pan contained the cooked root veg and the juices and made a wonderfully rich sauce.
Overall very tasty and a well received on the table.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian has a really nice squid recipe.
Few things are more delicious on a summer’s day than squid hot from the barbecue.
You know why they call it Pizza Hut… because they sell pizza.
Just don’t order the pasta!
For the first time in ages (actually maybe the first time ever) on a family visit to Pizza Hut I made the mistake of ordering a pasta dish.
Before we get to the pasta course, it might be worthwhile trying to explain what I was doing in Pizza Hut. Well though my first choice of place to eat pizza is in the Veneto region of Italy, it’s not that convenient! In the UK I will go out of my way to choose Pizza Express, I have enjoyed the pizza there. I have also enjoyed pizza at Bella Italia and I have had nice pasta dishes there too. However locally there is very little choice and sometimes for a bit of fun (and well lowered expectations) we as a family visit Pizza Hut. Knowing what is available and what to expect, means that I am sometimes disappointed, but at the end of the day more often then not I get what I expect and that’s that!
In recent memory, most times I have been to Pizza Hut I have eaten pizza, I had one of their new Tuscani pizzas, which to be honest was one of the better pizzas I have had at there. I had the Pollo Portobello which had chicken, mushrooms and a light pesto and cream base sauce.
So what about the pasta?
Well I didn’t fancy pizza so went for a pasta dish, ordered the Arrabiata dish. Which comprised according to the menu ‘large pasta spirals in a deliciously spicy chilli, garlic and tomato sauce with prawns & crayfish tails’.
So what did I get?
Well I did get that, however it wasn’t quite what I expected.
Firstly though the pasta itself was cooked, it was cold. The sauce was warm, but not hot throughout. Scattered through the dish were the prawns and crayfish. If looked and tasted like they took some spicy tomato sauce, heated it up in the microwave and poured over cold cooked pasta and threw in a handful of prawns and crayfish tails.
I did complain it was cold, they took it back to the kitchen and (I guess) must have sent it through their pizza conveyor belt oven. When it came back it was hot, however the prawns were now double cooked, so were shrunk and tough.
Overall a disappointing pasta dish and I won’t make the mistake of eating pasta at pizza hut again, I will stick to pizza!
My usual coffee is an espresso, or an americano. In the past I may have had a mocha or a frappucino, but these days I generally go for the coffee and if it is an americano I may add some skimmed milk.
It would appear though that the iced coffees with all that cream are quite calorific. The BBC reports:
Some iced coffees being sold on the high street contain as many calories as a hot dinner, a cancer charity warns.
It is the combination of sugar, full-fat milk and cream which appear to push some of the cool coffees into the upper echelons of the calorie scale.
Starbucks’ Dark Berry Mocha Frappuchino for example contains 561 calories.
Ouch!
That’s one unhealthy coffee!
In July last year I mentioned how much I disliked the KitKat Crunchy.
I came across this set of pictures of KitKats on Flickr.
I don’t know about you, but lemon and chilli pepper flavoured KitKat is plain wrong.
I am not one to buy cookery books on impulse, but this book caught my eye in my local book shop and I decided to buy it. Like the ideas inside the book and nice pictures too.
In the BBC2 programme, “Caribbean Food Made Easy”, Levi Roots travels around the UK and the Caribbean and reveals how delicious Caribbean food can be prepared at home with easy-to-prepare, mouth-watering recipes using fresh, healthy and readily-available ingredients. The show, made by BBC Scotland, will consist of four 30-minute prime-time shows from 8-8.30 pm, including 3-4 dishes per programme. The accompanying cookbook includes 100 delicious Caribbean recipes, including all of those that appear on the TV programme.
I took some chicken breasts and flattened them with my hand. I prefer thighs over the breast meat in the main as I believe the flavour is so much better and is less likely to dry out, though with this method, that is unlikely to happen.
I then took some sausage-meat (by taking the skin of some good quality sausages) and added some finely chopped parsley and some pine nuts.
I laid out four or five slices of pancetta onto a square of foil. I laid the chicken breast out on the foil. I placed some of the sausage-meat mixture on the chicken thigh and then rolled the chicken, and then ensured that the pancetta covered the chicken. I then rolled the foil up into a parcel. I ensured (by squeezing) that all the foil parcels were the same size (for even cooking).
The chicken parcels were then poached for twenty minutes, then they were removed from the water.
At this stage (in theory) you should leave them in the fridge to rest and firm up for some time. I didn’t have the time so I left them for ten minutes.
You can pan fry them (ensure that they are dry), however I roasted mine in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes with a splash of olive oil.
I served the chicken on a bed of sauted mushrooms in a red wine sauce, with steamed vegetables, roasted potatoes and yorkshire puddings.
Delicious.
Guardian finds the salt content in some foods varies from country to country.
Salt content in some of the world’s most popular burger, snack and cereal brands almost doubles in some countries, according to new research out today.
A survey of more than 260 popular food products available around the world from food giants such as KFC, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Burger King and Subway found that no single product surveyed had the same salt content around the world while some displayed huge variations from one country to another.
It can be quite amazing, well more like scary, how much salt can be found in some ready meals and fast food. Often as much (if not more) than the recommended daily amount of salt, and then some people add more salt! The fact that there is more salt added in different countries means you can’t rely on having the same eating experience as you travel around.
For me personally I try and avoid salt for health reasons, but now much prefer the natural flavours of food, herbs and spices and I don’t need the taste of salt. I certainly don’t consider salt to be a natural flavour enhancer.
Talking of steam beers yesterday I was reminded of a wonderful beer, Newquay Steam Beer.
Wondering if it was still available I did a Google search and alas found that it was no more.
Well ‘Newquay Steam Beer’ was a victim of its own success. It outsold the major beer seller in the southwest by miles. The competitor had to produce something better or lose out.
Their money men suggested that they should buy the rights to the name, the recipes and the artwork and sell it as their own. They were missing the secret ingredient and the flair to drive the brand forward and so after quite a short period of time ‘Steam Beer’ sank without a trace.
That’s a pity, if my memory serves me correctly it was a very nice beer.
