Tomato soup - the route to a bikini body

This week I decided to knock up a batch of tomato soup.

It’s been a while since I fell off the new-year-eating-what’s-good-for-you-wagon.  My typical lunch now consists of mass produced sandwiches, a packet of salt & vinegar crisps and chocolate that bears no resemblance to anything that ever came from a cocoa pod.  But as the evenings get lighter and summer is on the way I’ve realised that it’s time for urgent action to get back into bikini shape.

The first lifestyle change I've decided to make is to improve what I eat when I get home late at night.  According to my not-so-scientific brain, this is the meal that's most likely to get converted to an extra inch on the hips - afterall, all you do is lie down for eight hours afterwards.  Based on this I concluded that more soup is the answer. It’s easy to make, you can control what’s in it and even the human body can’t convert almost-liquid foods into solid fat (see previous comment about lack of scientific logic).

For inspiration, I googled “best tomato soup recipes” and was surprised to find two popping up repeatedly in reviews from like-minded bloggers. The Nordstrom Café recipe, which controversially uses tinned rather than fresh tomatoes, and Marcus Wareing’s effort using Worcestershire sauce and balsamic vinegar to add some zing.

I have to say that my experience of fresh tomatoes in the UK is variable and so I begrudgingly admit that the tinned approach gives more consistently flavourful results (although I take this a step further by adding passata and a spoonful or two of tomato puree).  I also find Marcus Wareing’s offering a little overpowering, more “balsamic vinegar with tomato” soup than the other way round, so decide to tone this down and add a little sugar to counteract the sharpness.

My version went down well with the ultra harsh food critics at home, but the new-new-years-resolution was watered down slightly by the fact that it was served with two slices of cheese on toast made with a particularly mature cheddar I found in the back of the fridge. Mmmmm…

Click here for my roasted garlic, basil and tomato soup recipe.

The answer to a harmonious family life - make your own cereal!

​I am not sure if it's just Jay, or if all "other halves" use spurious statistics to hand out thinly veiled health plans to their unwitting spouses, but I think now is the time to say enough is enough.  This week I was casually informed that "80% of all fat people skip breakfast" and that my recent tendency to take an extra 10 minutes in bed rather than gulp down a bowl of tasteless gruel makes me "80% likely to get fat".  

Whilst I accept that in matters of argument Jay is always right, I pointed out that in this case she was on shaky ground for at least two reasons:

• Statistically, this is a classic example of a false causal link

• Empirically speaking, 80% of the regular customers at my local cafe ​eat a full English breakfast every day and 100% of them are fat.

In hindsight, however, I can confirm that my good wife was correct that missing breakfast is bad for your health - although in this case mainly because she gave me a broken nose for being cheeky. 

So, after recovering from my slightly pathetic nose bleed, I decided to have a go at making my own breakfast cereal.  Afterall, if Mr Kellog can turn out so many varieties how difficult can it be?  The answer as it turns out, is not very.  If you can mix some nuts, seeds and oats, a little oil, maple syrup, honey and some dried fruits, you too can make your own.  

I have to admit that I am slightly biased when it comes to my own food, but my nine month old daughter Sophia - too young to eat the finished product - licks my lips every time I eat some. So, if you want to put a smile on the face of your children, and avoid a punch in the face from your wife, homemade granola seems to be the answer!  

Click here for my homemade granola recipe.

Horse burgers - taking back the reigns

The news that horse meat has found its way into value “beef burgers”, and pork into halal prison pies, is a reminder of the importance of food provenance.  But if Tesco, Findus and Burger King aren't sure what’s going into their products, what hope is there for the rest of us?  Here are a few practical actions we can all take to improve our understanding of the food we eat.

Build local relationships

We all shop in Supermarkets, and there are huge benefits in terms of cost and convenience, but there are some real advantages to getting friendly with your local suppliers and food retailers.  For example, if you really want the perfect steak, before you even think about how to cook it, there are some questions you should probably consider:

• What’s the breed of the animal?  Is it a heritage breed developed for flavour or a more modern breed developed for yield?
• Was it grass or grain fed? This has a huge impact on the final flavour of the meat.
• Did it roam free or was it intensively reared?  
• How old was the animal when it was slaughtered?    
• How long has the meat been hung? It is the ageing process that determines the tenderness of the steak.  
• Was it dry or wet aged? Dry ageing leads to more shrinkage, but better flavour, and so is likely to cost more.
• What cut of meat is most appropriate for the way you like it cooked?  If you like your steak blue, you need to choose a more lean cut or there would not be enough cooking time to melt any fat.

Try having that conversation at the average supermarket meat counter and you are likely to get some pretty blank looks (or at least a few expletives!). However, ask your local butcher and his eyes will light up at the realisation that he has someone who cares as much as he does about the meat he prepares.

Use your butcher & fishmonger

Even a trained chef would struggle to tell you how old a pre-prepared fillet of fish was.  But give them a whole fish and they could have a pretty good guess from the brightness of the eyes, the colour of the gills and the firmness of the flesh. For this reason a good chef would never buy pre-prepared fish and, if you can avoid it, neither should you.  If you’re worried about how to then prepare that fish to eat, use your fish monger. Don’t be embarrassed to ask them to scale, gut, or fillet your fish.  That's exactly why they are there.

Look for the labels

Red tractor: the red tractor logo is a guarantee of quality and origin.  Every critical step of the food supply chain is independently inspected to ensure food is produced to quality standards by assured farmers, growers and producers in the UK.

Organic: any food labelled 'organic' must meet strict EU legal standards covering all aspects of food production, from animal welfare and wildlife conservation to food processing and packaging.

Free range: Free-range does not necessarily mean organic and is not actually a certification. Free-range refers to food from animals, for example meat or eggs, that are produced from animals that have access to outdoor spaces.

Certifications of origin (AOC - France; DOC - Italy; DO - Spain; PDO - Europe): these guarantee that only products genuinely originating from a particular region, made in an agreed way, can be sold under certain names. The laws protect products such as cheddar cheese, and Champagne, but also give you confidence in the provenance of what you are buying. 

Ditch the ready meals

If you didn’t make it, you don’t know what’s in it. If you really want to know what is in your food, get your cookery books out.

If you want to take more control over what’s in yours, ask your local butcher to mince some chuck steak and try this delicious Guinness burger & pickled cucumber recipe.

​An edited version of this blog was first published in the Ashburton Cookery School newsletter.

Alright treacle...

I recently received a plea for help from a friend who had managed to smuggle a tin of contraband golden syrup over the Atlantic and was looking to recreate the “scrummy treacle tarts” she remembered from her English childhood.

​A rustic treacle tart - dedicated to Wendy's memories of home...

The problem is I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth - and treacle tart is as sweet as it gets - but I couldn’t leave a girl in distress and so started looking through some old cookbooks.

Classic treacle tart recipes use a simple mixture of golden syrup (interestingly not treacle), stale bread crumbs and lemon juice.  Some chefs lighten the mix with cream and egg and Oliver Peyton goes further by using cake crumbs as a less dense alternative to bread.  Heston Blumenthal adds vanilla infused sea salt, which is a nice touch, but the 100 hour low oven syrup “ageing” he recommends is a bit beyond the limits of my short attention span.

In the end I opted for the decidedly non-traditional addition of ginger, which I think gives the tart a more interesting flavour, and served it with candied ginger ice cream to really upset the calorie counters and dental hygienists.

Try my recipe for ginger and treacle tart.

Did it meet the brief? I’ll let you know when I hear back.  Wendy, over to you!

English cookery classics: Peggy's world famous trifle

As seventies kids in the backwaters of Devon, we weren't exactly brought up at a time of gastronomic excellence. Avocados were the height of exotica and prawn cocktails glowed like the luminous socks we wore. Chicken Kiev hid boiling garlic butter guaranteed to napalm your palate and Sara Lee black forest gateau appeared on every "adventurous" dinner party menu. They were happy days...

Even during this period of gastronomic austerity, mum's cooking stood out as something special. I even remember one guest pretending to faint just to avoid second helpings. She did, however, have one party piece, which was wheeled out at every major festivity: Peggy's "world famous" English Trifle (her words, not mine).

Now, I know it's bad etiquette to share other people's recipes without permission, but in this case I offer her pride-and-joy as a health warning rather than any attempt to claim credit. I also think that 12 sponge fingers, 2 packets of jelly, one can of mandarin segments and some squirty cream could only loosely be described as a recipe, so I think I'm covered.

For those of you who think this sounds similar to tiramisu, the classic mainstay of Italian cuisine - it wasn't. If you have fond memories of each of those ingredients and think together the dish must have been a gastronomic triumph - it wasn't. It was huge, it was ugly - but to my childish palate it was also delicious.

My most vivid memory of this culinary masterpiece was using it to custard pie Dad at a dinner he was hosting for his new boss. I could barely lift the huge glass bowl off the table, but I knew I had to try. With one mighty effort I launched the custard dessert towards his bearded face, only to succeed in hitting his crotch. I was only four, but it was enough for him to lose both his cool and any hope he was harbouring of an early promotion, and my moment of "comedy gold" ended with a well-deserved week of hard labour.

Amazingly, even with 35 years to dull the memory, Dad still holds a grudge. "I can't believe you managed to get away without having to eat that c!@p".

So, as a tribute to mum's "world famous" trifles, and in an effort to erase dad's memories of them, here is my take. Enjoy.