Supersizers go....

One of my current favourite television shows is "Supersizers go..."

It is a satirical food/history show in the vein of Supersize Me. Sound confused? Don't be - it's awesome.

Giles, a food critic, and Sue, a comedienne, spend a week eating, dressing and living the lifestyle of different time periods and then have medical tests, pre and post said week, to assess the impact said historical diets have on their health. 

It's both fascinating and hysterical.

Here's the link to Youtube where you can find all the exciting adventures of eating your way through Wartime, 20s, 50s, 70s, 80s, Restoration, Regency, Victorian, Medieval, Elizabethan, Edwardian Britain, Revolutionary France and Ancient Rome.

Supersizers go...!

Artists reflect the course of obesity with expanding portions in the Last Supper

From The Times
March 24, 2010

Chris Smyth


Jesus Christ and Ronald McDonald may seem to have little in common. But both are presiding over the supersizing of their followers’ eating habits, according to researchers who found that the portion sizes in paintings of the Last Supper have piled up over the past 1,000 years.

American academics analysed 52 of the most famous depictions of the Last Supper and found that the appetites of the Apostles have become increasingly prodigious. The size of the main dish grew 69.2 per cent and bread portions by 23.1 per cent over the millennium, while the plates grew by 65.6 per cent, they found.

The findings suggest that today’s obesity crisis may have deep historical roots, according to the researchers. “I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or ‘portion distortion’, is a recent phenomenon,” said Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, New York, who led the study. “But this research indicates that it’s a general trend for at least the last millennium.”

From the austere repast laid on by the early 14th-century Tuscan artist Duccio, through Leonardo’s lively party of 1495, the supper became a feast in Titian’s depiction of 1544. When Tintoretto painted the Last Supper in 1592-94 the table was groaning with dishes.

Professor Wansink, with his brother Craig, a Presbyterian minister and Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, examined dozens of artworks including modern depictions by Stanley Spencer and Salvador Dalí.

Using computer design software, they scanned the meals and calculated the portion size relative to the head size of the average apostle. They found a big upwards trend, in research published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The Bible, being more concerned with its religious import, does not dwell on the amount of food consumed at the Last Supper, and it was a “tertiary matter” for most artists, Professor Wansink said. “The ampleness of the food is coming from the mind of the artist, showing what he thought was reasonable and appropriate in the time and place he was living,” he told The Times.

Professor Wansink, whose book Mindless Eating studies how social and environmental forces affect how much we eat, argues that the increasingly meaty Christianity on display is an indication of improvements in agriculture.

“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” he said. “We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.”

The New Testament mentions only bread and wine, but Professor Wansink discovered that fish was the most commonly depicted main course, featuring in 18 per cent of canvases. Considering the symbolism of the fish and Jesus’s injunction to his disciples to become “fishers of men”, this is perhaps unsurprising. Lamb was the main course in 14 per cent of the pictures and, more puzzling for a gathering of Jews on the eve of Passover, 7 per cent of the paintings featured pork.

Jeff Brunstrom, Reader in Behavioural Nutrition at the University of Bristol, described the research as “very interesting”. But he said: “The obesity epidemic is a relatively modern phenomenon and it’s really only in the past 40 to 50 years that you’ve seen big changes in body mass index (BMI).”

The researchers needed to show whether the larger portions had been making people fatter, he said. “If people were really eating 70 per cent more calories than they used to we would be rolling around,” said Dr Brunstrom. “Whether we have seen an increase in BMI historically is unclear.”

That will have to remain among the divine mysteries: the Wansink brothers did not assess whether Christ and his disciples themselves were getting bigger.

“It is easy to halve the potato where there is love.”

Or in this case, fluff them.

Potatoes are a wonderful super food. They are an excellent source of carbohydrates and the 4th largest food crop in the world. I love potatoes. Potatoes are a food for everyone.

"A diet that consists predominantly of rice leads to the use of opium, just as a diet that consists predominantly of potatoes leads to the use of liquor." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche clearly not a fan then. But have you ever seen potatoes like this?

It's a freakin' potato soufflé. Well, technically it's called POTATO OMELET, but whatever...



Yes, that is a potato. 

POTATO OMELET.

INGREDIENTS. - 1 large potato
2 or 3 eggs
1 oz. of white vegetable butter
leomn-juice
nutmeg
salt and pepper

METHOD. - Bake the potato in its skin, pass the mealy part through a fine sieve, and mix with it the yolks of the eggs, a few drops of lemon-juice, a pinch of nutmeg, and a little salt and pepper.
Whisk the egg whites stiffly, stir them lightly in, and fry the omelet in the hot butter. If preferrred, the omelet may be baked in the oven.

TIME. - To fry, about 4 or 5 minutes. SUFFICIENT for 2 persons.

Needs something else added to it. Parmesan cheese works well. Or maybe mustard. Otherwise is quite bland.

So sue-t me!

There are all different types of fats involved in cooking. Lard, tallow, suet, duck fat, ghee, butter, oil, olive oil... the list goes on.

However, essential in a Christmas pudding is suet... which makes finding suet an exciting adventure. Apparently, there can be a big difference between Suet mix and actual suet... but actual suet is a bit thin on the ground here and I haven't located a butcher who will do me up some suet of my own. (Wow, I wonder how many times I can say suet in a sentence? Suet, suet, suet... anyone else think the word suet looks really weird?)

Anyhoo, I've given the old Tandaco Suet mix a burl in my christmas pud. Hopefully it will taste great and not weird. In addition, there are rasins, currants, sultanas, candied peel and lemon rind... and not actually a whole lot more. There's also on interesting recipe for fruitarian pudding (which is without suet) so I may try that one in the future as well.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It's unbelievably important. You should eat breakfast at least three times a day.

BREAKFASTS.

Breakfast Dishes. - The moral and physical welfare of mankind depends largely on its breakfast, yet many of those upon whom the responsibility of providing it rests do not realize how far-reaching may be the effects of a good or bad meal. A being well fed and warmed is naturally on better terms with himself and his surroundings than one whose minds and body are being taxed by the discomfort and annoyance of badly cooked or insufficient food. In small households there is a constant complaint of lack of variety, and the too frequent appearance of bacon and eggs, which, it must be confessed, is the sheet-anchor of the English cook.

But, notwithstanding this plea for "something new", there are over two hundred ways of dressing eggs, to say nothing of grilled chops, steaks, cutlets, kidneys, fish and mushrooms, anchovy and sardine toast, sausage rolls, sausages grilled, boiled or fried, meat patties, rissoles, croquettes and croûtes, fish omelet, fish-cakes, fish soused and kedgeree, pressed beef, galantine of beef, potato chips, potatoes fried in a variety of ways, and a host of other inexpensive and easily-prepared dishes. Many housewives cannot, of course, afford to provide some of the dishes enumerates above, but the present work includes an almost endless variety of preparations of a simple characters, which might be advantageously used to relieve the monotony of breakfast.

Which all makes perfect sense. Breakfast is very important, and if you end up eating the same cereal over and over again, it can quickly grow dull and unappealing.

The Service of Breakfast varies very little, no matter how simple or elaborate the meal. On the cottage table, the breakfast-ware, teapot, bread, butter, and dish of bacon, or whatever constitutes the homely fare, all have their allotted places, although the arrangement of the respective articles may not agree with everybody's sense of fitness. When the table is a small one, the centre of it may be occupied by a single vase of flowers, or bowls of flowers placed equidistant from each other may form the decoration of a larger table. Other appointments depends on the number of persons to be seated and the dishes to be served. When the meal consists of one dish, a knife and fore, either large or small, according to choice, and a small knife for bread and butter, should be laid for each person. When fish is included in the breakfast menu the knife and fork provided for the service must be places to the right and left outside the ordinary knife and fork. When the breakfast comprises several dishes, usually three knives and two forks are laid instead of one, but there is at the present time a steadily growing tendency to avoid unnecessary display of silver and cutlery. A small late for bread and butter is places outside the forks, and the napkin is laid in the space between the knives and forks. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down for the disposal of the cruets, butter, toast, eggs, marmalade, etc., but they all appear on a properly-appointed table, arranged according to the space available and , of course, some symmetrical order must be maintained. As a rule, once end of the tale is occupied by the breakfast ware, sugar, hot and cold milk, tea and coffee pots, and when only one hot dish is provided, it is nearly always places at the opposite end of the table. Porridge, bread and butter and other cereal foods may be very daintily and easily be served in fireproof glassware; the same applies to stewed fruit.

Okay, not sure what Mrs B would think about toast scoffed in front of the morning telly shows...

Breakfast being, in many homes, such a moveable feast, an electric hotplate is invaluable for keeping the various dishes warm, and hot toast made with one's own hands in an electric toaster, on the table, tastes delicious indeed. An electric egg boiler or poacher on the breakfast table will save many an egg from being cooked in the kitchen and from being "not wanted" in the breakfast-room.

Such courtesy towards unwanted eggs. *sniff*

When cold dishes are served, such as ham, tongue, potted meats, sardines, etc., they may be placed down the sides of the table.

Tie me kangaroo down, sport.

Mrs Beeton touches on the subject of Australian Cookery. Which for a British woman in 1861 is rather progressive...and unusual.

I'm not convinced that she actually knew anything about Australian food, but let's see what she says.

AUSTRALIAN COOKERY.

Cookery in Australia is of course English in character, while in the hotels the French cuisine plays a prominent part just as it does in England. The various dishes which are peculiar to the country are those obtained from animals and fruits indigenous to the soil.

FISH
is plentiful and good, and includes nearly all the varieties exsteemed in England except the sole, which is not found in any Australian waters' but there are many other varieties unknown in England, such as trumpeter, schnapper, flat-heard, barracouta, etc.

VEGETABLES
grow abundantly in most parts of Australia. Sour sop, a fruit which in its ripe condition resembles the custard apple, may in its green state be cooked and served as a vegetable. Paw paw also serves the doule purpose of fruit and vegetable, for it is equally excellend boiled while in a green, unripe condition, and served with white sauce, or eaten when ripe with wine and sugar. The choko is a vegetable little known, although it grows freely in many parts of Australia. It is excellent plainly boiled and served with white sauce. Pumpkins, trombone, vegetable and custard marrows are very plentiful.

FRUIT
is so plentiful in many parts of Australia that many varieties may there be had for the picking.

POULTRY.
Birds are not plentiful, but the wild ones congregate around the water-holes, and though it is sometimes difficult to procure them in town, the sportsman on the farm will often bring in pigeons, plover, bush turkey, quail, parrots, etc. These birds are almost invariably best when stewed.

Here's a brief list of "Typical Australian Dishes" - some are not so typical, methinks.

Apricot Jam
Apricots and rice
Australian cakes
Bandicoot stewed in milk ?!? I believe Bandicoots are currently endangered so we may be waiting a very long time to try this one
Barracouta, Baked
Barramunda
Black Duck (Wood Goose)
Blackfish in Batter
Black Swan, Roasted or baked Being the state emblem of Western Australia, probably no longer on the menu too.
Cape Gooseberries
Chelgi
Choko, to Boil
Cod Steaks
Coma What the? And I can't even google it properly
Fish Klosh
Flatfish
Flathead
Gill Birds, Jugged
Gramma Pie or Tart
Grandilla CreamGrandilla Jelly
Green Fig Jam
Groper, Head and Soulders, boiled
Guava Jelly
Island Blue Geese, Roast
Kaka, or Parrot
Kangaroo Is actually pretty darn tasty... I'm surprised she doesn't have emu on the list. I think Australia is the only country in the world that eats both its' national animals.
Kangaroo tail, curried
Kangaroo Tail Fricassee
Kangaroo Tail Soup
Kawai, Baked And not the Japanese for cute, it's some kind of fish
King Fish, Baked, with tomatoes
Kumaras
Loquat Jelly
Loquat Pie or Tart
Mallee Hen, Baked
Melbourne Pancakes
Murray Cod, Boiled
Parrot Pie
Paw paw, Baked
Prickley Pear or Cactus Fruit Jelly
Pukaki, Jugged
Pumpkin Pie
Rosella Jelly I believe she means the flowers and not the birds
Schanpper, Baked
Scrub Turkey, Roast
Sour sop, to boil
Taro
Terrapin, to boil
Travalli
Trumpeter, Baked, with tomatoes
Trumpeter, Boiled
Waikato Scones
Wallaby, Roast
Water-Melon, preserved
Yellowtail

I'm not sure what half of these are, but some will definitely be on the menu. Stay tuned.

Sardine-ically speaking...

Sardines are nutritious and considered a "brain food." These fish are rich in omega 3 fatty acids, which can help maintain a healthy heart. Recent studies suggest that omega-3 fatty acids slow the progression of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, thereby undoing all the bad effect of using the Mrs Beeton approved aluminium cookware.

Not only this, but sardines are also a good source of vitamin D, calcium, B12 and protein. Sardines are extremely low in contaminants such as mercury.

They are also delicious.

But not, as it turns out, in Mrs Beeton's SARDINE AND TOMATO SANDWICHES. And here's why...

Mrs Beeton is keen on sieving things. A lot of ingredients get passed through a sieve, hence why she suggests you purchase 2 hair sieves and one brass wire sieve when setting up your kitchen.

However, tomato and egg should never be passed through a sieve and mixed together, otherwise you end up with a mixture that resembles something you wouldn't want to feed to your dog. I can see what she's driving at, but I wouldn't want to serve these to my lady friends at a dainty afternoon tea.

But I digress. Here is the recipe so you can examine it for yourself. It does not come recommended.

SARDINE AND TOMATO SANDWICHES

INGREDIENTS - 1 tin of sardines

2 hard-boiled yolks of eggs

2 or 3 firm tomatoes

lemon-juice or vinegar

salt and pepper

white or brown bread,

butter

METHOD - Skin and bone the sardines, and split them in halves. Pass the tomatoes and yolks of eggs through a fine sieve, mix them with a little butter, add the lemon-juice or vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

Prepare some fingers of bread, spread them with the tomato preparation; on the top place half a sardine, and cover with fingers of bread and butter. Press well together, and dish tastefully on a folded napkin, garnished with parsley.

To improve this, I think maybe just adding slices of tomato and egg to the sardine fingers... or perhaps toasting the bread.

Que sago, sago, whatever will be will be...

Well, according to Wikipedia, sago and tapioca are two completely different things.

"Sago is a starch extracted from the pith of sago palm stems. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of Papua New Guinea and the Moluccas. It is traditionally cooked and eaten in the form of a pancake and served with fish.
Sago looks like many other starches, and both sago and tapioca are produced commercially in the form of "pearls". Sago pearls are similar in appearance to tapioca pearls, and the two may be used interchangeably in some dishes. This similarity causes some confusion in the names of dishes made with the pearls."

And yet I bought "Seed Tapioca (Sago)", so clearly McKenzie's thinks they are the same thing... go figure.

Either way it all sounds fairly exotic for for something my brain thinks of as boarding school food...

I haven't made anything with my tapioca yet, as every time I read the packet the first instructions is to 'soak the Tapioca for 24 before use', which really doesn't lend itself to a spur of the moment thing.

However, Mrs Beeton doesn't have that as an instruction so I may just give it a burl...

Stand by for some tapioca pudding real soon.

High up, high on a mountain

we'll eat eggs for breakfast.

Yesterday's cooking adventure was interesting to say the least. With some very interesting consequences... but we'll get to that a bit later...

First, eggs. "Although the qualities of those belonging to different birds vary somewhat, their nutritive constituents of fats and salts are identical, varying only in degree. Eggs are valuable on account of their concentrated nourishment, and their ready digestibility when raw or slightly cooked. The quality of eggs depends much upon the breed of hens, and upon the character of the food given to them. New-laid eggs are more easily digested than eggs a day or two old, but the milkiness of an egg cooked almost as soon as it is laid is generally dislikes. Poaching is undoubtedly the lightest way of dressing eggs. Another light, digestible way is to place it into a saucepan of boiling water, and let it remain by the side of the fire for about 10 minutes. Immersion for this period will cook the white of the egg to the consistence of jelly, but the water must not be allowed even to simmer."

"Eggs, to choose - A fresh egg has a transparent appearance and the shell possesses a soft bloom."

All of which doesn't say very much for the kind of eggs we buy at the supermarket.

But for breakfast I thought I'd try the very first recipe specifically for eggs in the book.

ALPINE EGGS

INGREDIENTS - 4 eggs

6 oz of cheese

1 oz. of butter

a little finely chopped parsley

pepper and salt

METHOD -

Grease a fireproof baking-dish thickly, line it with the greater part of the cheese cut in thin slices, and break the eggs over this, keeping the yolks whole. Grate the remainder of the cheese or chop it finely, and mix with the parsley. Season the eggs liberally with salt and pepper, sprinkle over them the grated cheese, and add the butter broken into small pieces. Bake in a quick oven for about 10 minutes and serve hot,

TIME - About 10 minutes to bake. SUFFICIENT for 4 persons

This was very yummy, despite one of my yolks breaking, although not recommended if you are at all worried about your waistline, or cholesterol, or your health in general. It's basically cheesy whites surrounding the yolk.

However, it was so filling that I didn't eat lunch, and then I went to my work Christmas party where they were serving cocktails, but very little food. That was definitely a recipe for disaster. However, I won the prize for the best dressed, the most "GLAMOUROUS" (as that was the theme) so I'm feeling pretty chuffed...and hungover.

How many ways do you cook?

Apparently, there are 9 different methods of cooking; Baking, Boiling, Braising, Frying, Grilling, Roasting, Sautéing, Steaming, Stewing.

Boiling is "generally thought to be the easiest method of cooking", braising "the most delicious", roasting "the favourite British method", whilst steaming is "the most economical".

Grilling is not recommended, because it is not very economical, uses a great deal of fuel and the meat loses weight more than in most ways of cooking.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever considered boiling meat as a pleasing way to cook it. Mrs Beeton comments "Certainly nothing could be less troublesome than the simple process of boiling or stewing meat and yet beef tough and flavourless, or a leg of mutton boiled to rags, it the rule rather than the exception." This suggests that many people struggled with boiling meats (and probably still would apart from it's decline in prevalence). I think I'll just stick to boiling my potatoes then.

I don't think I've ever braised etiher... or at least not like Mrs B suggests in a proper braising pan with hot cinders on the top. From a quick scan on Google there don't seem to be too many pans out there suitable for this, nor too many people braising, like they did in the 'Good Ol' Days'.

Definitely calls for some more investigation, methinks.

Please explain, Mrs Beeton

Mrs Beeton (or one of the writers from whom she allegedly plagiarised) suggests that the daily ration of food for a man, doing moderate work, should be:-

1. Water - 22 Oz. Avoirdupois (sold by weight)
2. Albuminoids - 3 oz
3. Fats, starch, sugar, etc. - 14 oz
4. Salts - 1 oz

Totalling 40 oz.
For a woman, the same proportions, but 6 oz less.

Now here comes the confusing part.
Water is not only fluids consumed, but also the amounts contained in other foods, lettuce, onions, lean meat, wheat, etc.
Albuminoids are eggs, lean meat, fish, poultry, game, milk curd or cheese, gluten in flour, fibrine in oats, in beans peas and lentils.
Fat, starch and sugar refer to fats like butter, dripping, starches being mostly things high in carbs, bread, potatoes, rice, barley, cornflour, sage, tapioca. And sugars, obviously being sugar, treacle, etc. Which Mrs Beeton says "children can and do eat large quantities without convenience."
Salts are not only table salt, but other salt like potash salt in fruit and vegetables. Lime and iron are also sought after, as well as vitamins.

Now, the only thing I really understood from that section is the last line. "Moral - eat plenty of fresh vegetables."

Where's the food pyramid when you need it? No wonder it required a cook, kitchen maid and housewife to run a household, when they had to calculate all of that jargon to determine whether their husbands or masters were getting adequate nutriments.

After reading all that, I have a headache. I think I need a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.