Category Archives: Food

10 tasty salads for cold winter nights, from roasted cauliflower to grilled sardines

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Who said salads had to be eaten in the summer? From Ottolenghi’s classic roast carrot concoction to Fare Sage’s warm fruit variety, there’s something for everyone

This is a tricky time of year for food. The cold weather and dark evenings cry out for the comforting hit of stodge, and yet a part of you realises that it’s sensible to keep your powder dry for the non-stop gorgefest offered by Christmas. Luckily, there is a middle ground. Although nobody in their right mind would choose to eat a traditional salad in this weather, winter salads are another thing entirely. Light and simple, but substantial enough to get you served at a tier 2 pub, these recipes should do the job nicely.

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Scotch eggs: 10-fold surge in demand for ‘substantial meal’

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The snacks were deemed by ministers last week to be sufficient to order alongside alcohol in tier 2-area pubs

Suppliers of scotch eggs have reported a surge in demand after ministers said they classed as a “substantial meal”, thereby allowing people to order alcohol alongside them in pubs.

The food wholesaler Brakes, which works with 50,000 pubs across the UK, has seen a 10-fold increase in demand for the pork and breadcrumb-covered eggs since the lockdown in England ended last week.

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Lab-grown chicken tastes like chicken – but the feeling when eating it is more complicated

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Naima Brown’s encounter with a lab-grown chicken nugget reminded her of a Happy Meal – but she’s less certain about what it means for the future of food

“Clean”, “cultured”, “no-kill” – these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to San Francisco-based food start up Just Inc’s lab-grown chicken nuggets.

The product has just been approved for sale to consumers in Singapore – a world first. But the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick would prefer it if everyone dropped the additional descriptors and just called his company’s product “meat”.

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I tried the world’s first no-kill, lab-grown chicken burger

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Exclusive: At a ‘test restaurant’ in Israel, the meat is grown in vats behind a glass screen. Could it be a taste of the future?

A PhD in genetics might seem like an unusual requirement for the role of head chef. It makes more sense when the man running the kitchen is not just in charge of frying your chicken burger – he created the meat himself.

“This burger takes something between two to three days to grow,” says Tomer Halevy as he chops red onions, iceberg lettuce and avocado. He proceeds to batter what appears to be a strip of raw chicken before dipping it in breadcrumbs.

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No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time

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Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry

Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.

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Bake me happy: 10 deliciously different mince pie recipes

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From the perfect traditional version, to brownie hybrids, deep-fried delights and a throwback from 1591, homemade never looked so good

Nothing should make the heart sink quite as much as the phrase “homemade mince pies”. The chance of failure is simply far too high. Pick a bad recipe and you run the risk of serving up a tray of inedible pastry bin lids gummed together with a miserly Marmite smear of mincemeat.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. An endless array of mince-pie variations are now available to the home cook, ranging from the traditional to the exotic. Depending on your skill level and personal preference, you should find some level of success with the recipes below.

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‘Grain to glass’ distiller hopes to put Wales on world’s whisky map

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In The Welsh Wind distillery already taking orders for 30-litre casks of ultra-local spirit

The barley has been grown in fields with spectacular views over Cardigan Bay and malted on a local farm. The all-important water comes from springs deep beneath the Welsh countryside.

A small distillery in west Wales is at the centre of what it hopes may turn out to be a quiet whisky revolution.

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Taiwan politicians throw pig guts at each other in row over US meat imports

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Opposition party’s ‘disgusting’ offal protest prompts scuffle in Taipei legislative yuan

Parliamentarians in Taiwan have thrown pig guts at each other before coming to blows over plans to allow US meat imports.

Members of the opposition Chinese nationalist party (KMT) brought the offal to the legislative yuan on Friday in the latest of daily protests during parliamentary sittings.

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The only thing most of us will be wearing this party season is slightly smarter pyjamas | Grace Dent

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‘I’ve given up trying to control anything now,’ I announced last Tuesday while breakfasting on a packet of jelly babies

Food has lost much of its meaning for me. Well, its meanings, to be more accurate. A typical late autumn of eating has its rhythms: shortly after decorative gourd season and past toffee apple weekend (both cancelled due to lurgy), many of us move seamlessly into pre-Christmas hoarding and restraint mode. The hoarding begins with a casually snaffled box of stollen slices or a little bag of Lindt chocolate Christmas tree decorations, chucked into the shopping basket “just to get things started”. Then a shufti around Marks & Spencer’s food hall, where the displays of shortbread in commemorative tin boxes (those nice ones your mother used for her sewing kit) always bring a sense of minor panic that holidays are comin’ and I am unprepared. Begin the lists, open the iCal, commence the slightly terse intra-family emails. Panic!

I do not have a yuletide shopping delivery slot. That dodgy shelf in my chiller will not survive a fortnight of festive season fridge Jenga, and a better woman than me would have made her own figgy pudding by now. But, as I say, the hoarding won’t happen this year. The big Dent jamboree is cancelled. And the restraint – which runs in parallel from about now to late December – is off, too. About now, I generally have in the diary at least two festive gatherings where I envision myself slinking in wearing some frock that will require me to be a bit hungry for at least 22 days and say things like, “No, I love running five miles pre-dawn dodging flashers – it centres me”, and, “Toast is too filling and carby. I’m so happy with this bircher muesli.” The only thing most of us will be wearing this party season is slightly smarter pyjamas.

Life is quite bizarre now that the usual run-up to New Year has been steam-rollered. How empty does late November feel without a low, bubbling, passive-aggressive email chain between siblings about how much room a nut roast takes up in an oven? I feel oddly bereft without any invites to a mock-Bavarian Christmas market where I can drink £8 glasses of glühwein and eat a reheated wurst on the waltzer while listening to David Guetta. This week I noticed the first of the “What to do with Christmas day leftovers” tips and tricks in the papers. The notion of having so many visitors that you might be caught with a glut of food already seems oddly archaic.

Buying, planning and hoping for things to run like clockwork is a mug’s game. The rules are that there are no rules. “I’ve given up trying to control anything now,” I announced last Tuesday while breakfasting on a packet of jelly babies. I think it was Tuesday. It may have been Thursday. The Gregorian calendar feels so meaningless these days. Anyway, each baby was so chunkily delicious, and their pudgy little lightly frosted bellies slid so soothingly down my throat, that they felt momentarily like love and order. This one lemon, yum yum. This one raspberry, schlurp. I rarely ate sweets before the pandemic, but now, in the blur of news about possible vaccines, permanent restaurant closures and the millions of wonderful hospitality workers who will no doubt need to retrain in cyber, they’re the only thing that piques my attention some days.

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Revealed: UK supermarket and fast food chicken linked to deforestation in Brazil

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Tesco, Lidl, Asda, McDonald’s and Nando’s all source chicken fed on soya from Cerrado tropical biome region

Supermarkets and fast food outlets are selling chicken fed on imported soya linked to thousands of forest fires and at least 300 sq miles (800 sq km) of tree clearance in the Brazilian Cerrado, a joint cross-border investigation has revealed.

Tesco, Lidl, Asda, McDonald’s, Nando’s and other high street retailers all source chicken fed on soya supplied by trading behemoth Cargill, the US’s second largest private company. The combination of minimal protection for the Cerrado – a globally important carbon sink and wildlife habitat – with an opaque supply chain and confusing labelling systems, means that shoppers may be inadvertently contributing to its destruction.

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Go floret: 17 delicious ways with cauliflower

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Roasted, fried or raw, this versatile vegetable is great for salads, curries, steaks and tapas. And don’t forget the always comforting cauliflower cheese

In culinary terms, cauliflower is often described as a blank canvas, partly because it does not taste of much on its own, but also because it is so very, very white. These days, cauliflower also comes in coloured versions: yellow, orange, purple or the pale green of the fractal-patterned romanesco variety.

But if you are buying the white stuff, it should be snow white, with no grey or brown patches or dark flecks. The florets should be dense and firm, and should not smell in the least cabbagey – past-it cauliflower will only become more sulphurous with cooking. Remember, a blank canvas is what you are after.

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Hold the 18-course dinners: Noma’s chef opens up a burger joint

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The team behind the feted restaurant found Danes queued around the block for their pandemic pop-up

It is one of the best restaurants in the world, known for its 18-course tasting menus costing north of £300 per person and for spawning a culinary movement based on foraging for ingredients.

Now the two Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma, run by feted chef René Redzepi, is preparing to open the doors of a new venture: a burger-and-chips joint.

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That moule do nicely! 17 ways with mussels

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It’s an ingredient forgiving of an empty cupboard, can be treated in myriad ways, is relatively easy to cook and is utterly sustainable. Perfect!

Before mussels can be cooked, they must first be chosen. The process is a bit like selecting jurors for trial: you start with a random pool assembled by someone else, and eliminate any that are obviously disqualified – the broken, the dead. Some you can interrogate a little: tap any open mussels sharply against the side of the sink, and if they close up in response, they’re OK. One or two may be subject to peremptory challenge – you’re allowed to get rid of them without giving reasons, just because you don’t like the look of them. It’s not hard, but there’s a level of responsibility involved.

You also need to tug off their beards – generally a bit of whatever it is they were clinging on to when they were harvested, in most cases the rope they were grown on. Sometimes, they need a bit of scrubbing, but the mussels sold in nets on the supermarket fish counter are pretty clean – they’ve already been subjected to a level of abrading on your behalf. You can scrape off any remaining barnacles with the blunt edge of a butter knife, but honestly, unless you’re planning to photograph your dinner, I wouldn’t bother.

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Unilever sets target of €1bn in annual sales of plant-based foods

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Multinational plans to cash in on consumer trend towards reducing meat and dairy intake

Unilever is setting a target of €1bn (£900m) in annual sales of its plant-based foods through some of its best-known brands, as it seeks to cash in on the growing number of consumers reducing their meat and dairy intake.

The estimated five-fold sales growth over the next five to seven years will be driven by new products from The Vegetarian Butcher meat-free label, and bolstered by expansion of dairy-free ice cream and mayonnaise ranges from Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Magnum and Wall’s.

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Rachel Roddy: a recipe for life – and for pasta | A kitchen in Rome

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When you feel stuck in life and work, start by boiling a pan of water. Then see what you have. Some greens? A handful of olives? Even just butter and cheese will do …

Rachel Roddy’s work-from-home pasta lunch recipes

One of our many neighbours spends a fair bit of his day just outside the main gate of the building, or on the nearby corner of the piazza. He is 84, although he seems younger, and is always immaculately dressed: his trouser pleats sharp, his shirt collar firm, his suede jacket brushed in the right direction.

On the corner, he is part of a group of men – most of whom were born in one of the four buildings that box the piazza – who chat in the sunshine. At the gate, he is often waiting for his wife, also in her mid-eighties (and in my opinion the best dressed signora in our neighbourhood). It is a good day if, when coming round the corner from my part of the building, I coincide with her coming down the stairs from hers, so we can walk to the gate together, and therefore meet her husband, with his performed exasperation and obvious pride. Meeting her is rare, though. Usually I see only him, waiting, and he always asks, “Vai a spasso?” (“Going for a saunter?”), and I always say yes, even when I am rushing to the optician. And because trips these days out are short and masked, I might also see him on my way back, still waiting. And if it is lunchtime, which it often is, he always says the same thing. “Vai a cucinare la pasta?” (“Going to cook pasta?”), and I always reply yes, because I probably am, again.

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‘All I want is chocolate’: Jamie Oliver and other top chefs on their Christmas wish lists

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Tinned fish, ceramic tableware and cornettos – Santa’s sack is full of unusual treats for our chefs and food writers

Bread, cheese… and gin
Jamie Oliver, celebrity chef and author

A couple of loaves of Coombeshead Farm bread. The crust is exceptional, it’s nutty, chewy and malty. Toast it up with some good butter, it heats like a dream and will last for a week. Have it with some good cheese and a glass of wine or beer, it’s just heaven and a meal in itself.

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James Blunt: ‘My body has not been a temple. I’ve put it through painful experiences’

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The singer talks about sharing rations with the Russians, after-party toasties and his mum’s signature dish

I was an army brat who lived on army patches – in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Germany and as far afield and exotic as Yorkshire. Every two years we’d move with my father’s helicopter pilot’s job and I’d knock on doors and ask, “Do you have any children of a similar age?”. If so, you’d make a best friend for two years; then never see them again. In Cyprus my best friends were Canadians. In Germany there was lots of bratwurst and chips, but in Cyprus the simple Greek food was fantastic – Mediterranean, delicious and very healthy.

My overwhelming childhood food memories are of my mother cooking liver with fried onions. She was brilliant with liver. If she could cook other things, she kept those up her sleeve.

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From pizzas to smoothies: 10 unexpected and delicious ways with brussels sprouts

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After years as pariahs, these little marvels are now the nation’s favourite green vegetable. Here are 10 imaginative ways to make the most of them – without waiting for Christmas

Proving once and for all that even the worst among us are capable of redemption, the brussels sprout has just been named the nation’s favourite green vegetable. For years, the sprout was little more than a waxy green pariah, bought out of duty once a year at Christmas and then ignored. But now, in what can only be described as an astonishing turnaround, a Waitrose survey revealed that people now prefer them even to the mighty broccoli.

This means it’s all systems go. Now that the nation is finally united by its love of sprouts, it’s time to get adventurous. Sure, they are nice with a bit of bacon, but serve any of the following recipes to friends next time you’re allowed, and they will fall to their knees and weep with gratitude.

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Nigel Slater’s recipes for mushroom soup, and edamame fritters

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Here’s how to bring cheer to soggy winter days with hot soup and fritters

The damp days of early autumn send me, spoon in hand, in search of soup. Cloudy miso broths the colour of fallen leaves, old fashioned leek and potato so hot it steams up my glasses, sweet pumpkin, and in particular a bowl of deep and earthy mushroom.

I rarely make cream soups, but a splash stirred into a chestnut mushroom soup is no bad thing on a soggy day. Made with standard brown mushrooms, it is a cheap enough recipe, but I sometimes include a handful of interesting varieties, such as porcini, king oyster or chanterelle, fried with a knob of butter, at the end.

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Add vitamin D to bread and milk to help fight Covid, urge scientists

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Widespread deficiency shows that current government guidance on supplements is failing

Scientists are calling for ministers to add vitamin D to common foods such as bread and milk to help the fight against Covid-19.

Up to half the UK population has a vitamin D deficiency, and government guidance that people should take supplements is not working, according to a group convened by Dr Gareth Davies, a medical physics researcher.

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