Green (Living) Review: cooking

Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

How eco-friendly are barbecues?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Not very unless you use charcoal from local sources.

As the season is upon us, once again, it is time to talk about it.

Gas barbecues are certainly cleaner than charcoal but whether they are better, and especially greener and more eco-friendly, is another question. Presently the gas we use for those, be it propane or butane, is fossil fuel and thus non-renewable, charcoal on the other hand, if from sustainable sources, is. But for those determined to stick with old-school pit mastery, the central message is: check your fuel and especially check the origin of it. Far too much charcoal that is being used comes from far away and often from tropical rainforests.

This edict is inspired by a recent report from forestry NGO Fern.org “Playing with Fire: Human Misery, Environmental Destruction and Summer BBQs”. It is definitely not the cheeriest of summer reading but it certainly is eye-opening. Small-scale charcoal production has the potential to be a lifeline in rural economies all over the world. Sadly that is not happening.

The allegations against charcoal go much further than pollution. Somalian charcoal is linked to funding for Al-Shabaab. The trade in Brazil and Nigeria is linked to human rights abuses, including, in some cases, not just child labor but child slavery, much like with the mining of cobalt, illegal logging and increased emissions.

Thus it is best to buy homegrown charcoal with a good supply chain and suppliers of guaranteed homegrown and home-produced charcoal do exist. But in the UK we run a charcoal deficit. We only make 5,000 tons versus the 60,000 we go through every summer.

If you are shopping on price, and there are some who will, no doubt have to, alas, that charcoal will arrive typically via Felixstowe on a giant container ship from Namibia, 5,000 miles away, of from other, far away places.

Charcoal producers, in Namibia, and elsewhere, are paid by the tonne, and it is easy to chop down a large, protected tree, so charcoal is fueling deforestation. A 2010 investigation, “Namibia's Black Gold?”, found charcoal producers and their families living under plastic sheeting without access to running water or sanitation. And this kind of conditions prevail everywhere in those places.

Not that you would guess all this when you pick up a bag of charcoal from a supermarket. You are unlikely to see any country of origin on the bag. You should always look for an FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) symbol if possible. But that symbol and certification often is also not worth the paper that it is printed on.

Charcoal is excluded from EU timber regulation which requires all timber and many timber products to be legally sourced. So were it included, it would make it a criminal offense to import illegal charcoal from Namibia (and elsewhere).

Seasonal products, apparently, can get away with dodgy supply chains because they hold our attention for such a short time. Not just for us, as consumers, but also, it would appear, for any regulators. Too the detriment of ethically and locally produced product, and, obviously the Planet and the workers.

Thus, as with beanpoles and pea-stick, buy charcoal wherever possible from local producers, from coppice workers. Also local lumpwood charcoal is better in many other ways, and that includes the lighting of it. It should not require any BBQ-lighter fluid or blocks of any kind and should start just by using paper or other tinder.

Considering that the lighter fluid or bricks are petroleum product do you really want gasoline or kerosene with your food?

We can't give up on home cooking!

Cooking is the closest thing we've got to a silver bullet solution to countless health problems. Shrugging it off as "elitist" is foolish, since home-prepped meals are only as complicated as you want to make them.

A few weeks back, I wrote about a new study that assessed the state of home cooking in America. The researchers pointed out that there are a lot of assumptions surrounding what a home-cooked meal should look like, and that many families fall short of those expectations for a variety of reasons – lack of money, lack of transportation to and from grocery stores, picky eaters, insufficient utensils and/or furniture, busy schedules, etc.

While I don’t deny that the researchers reveal an important side to the home-cooking debate that is raging in North America right now, fueled by passionately idealistic food writers and locavores on one side and pushed back by low-income families, Big Ag, and the processed food industry on the other side, the basic argument that “home cooking isn’t for everyone” just doesn’t sit well with me.

Home cooking must find a way to work, because within the current broken food system that we’ve got, it’s the most sensible, economical, and easiest way to provide people, particularly children, with optimal nourishment – which should be a basic human right. Feeding our kids cheap, flimsy burgers from McDonalds on white buns that never go bad is an unacceptable solution, even if it seems faster and cheaper than making supper at home.

9 things everyone should know about cooking

“I don’t cook.”

Those words baffle me whenever I hear them – and they do crop up in a surprising number of conversations with other young people my age. Sometimes these non-cookers seem proud of their lack of skill, shrugging it off as if preparing food were not necessary at all: “We just eat out a lot.” I try not to look too stunned and leave my thoughts unsaid: “Good luck with ever saving any money and maintaining a healthy weight.”

I’m one of the lucky few in my generation whose parents made sure to teach me how to cook from a young age. To this day, it’s the most useful skill they’ve ever taught me – far more so than 15 years of violin lessons.

I’ve come to realize that cooking doesn’t have to be a big deal. We as a society have never been more obsessed with the idea of cooking. We cook vicariously through the Food network, Top Chef, and Hell’s Kitchen. The problem is that these shows present an overly glamorized version of cooking, and almost make it appear too difficult for us non-celebrity chefs. These shows do no favours for the would-be home cook, who would be much better off sitting down with a copy of Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything and starting from page 1.

If I could give my non-cooking friends any advice, this is what I would tell them:

Cheap Eats: Cookbook Shows How To Eat Well On A Food Stamp Budget

When Leanne Brown moved to New York from Canada to earn a master's in food studies at New York University, she couldn't help noticing that Americans on a tight budget were eating a lot of processed foods heavy in carbs.

"It really bothered me," she says. "The 47 million people on food stamps — and that's a big chunk of the population — don't have the same choices everyone else does."

Brown guessed that she could help people in SNAP, the federal government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, find ways to cook filling, nourishing and flavorful meals. So she set out to write a cookbook full of recipes anyone could make on a budget of just $4 a day.

The result is Good and Cheap, which is free online and has been downloaded over 200,000 times since she posted it on her website in early June. A July Kickstarter campaign also helped Brown raise $145,000 to print copies for people without computer access.

So what are Brown's secrets to eating well on $4 a day? It's about stocking the pantry with cheap basics to build meals from: things like garlic, canned vegetables, dried beans and butter.

She also emphasizes flexibility, and avoids prescribing strict meals and methods. That means lots of options for substitutions, especially when it comes to the produce aisle, where prices can fluctuate based on season and availability. Each meal is priced out by serving.

Old-Fashioned Cooking Guide

Use these six principles of old-fashioned cooking to take your family’s meals back to basics.

Unpronounceable synthetic additives, partially hydrogenated fats, pink slime—modern processed foods leave many of us yearning for real food prepared simply. We long for the old-fashioned cooking methods our grandmothers used, when we could only buy ingredients—not packaged meals.

This guide to old-fashioned cooking might inspire you to get back to basics. But this is not a cooking guide. It is a guide to the key principles that underpinned the approach to cooking and meal planning of countless households before the advent of industrial agriculture. Old-fashioned cooking isn’t about fine dining. In profound ways, it isn’t about recipes or presentation, or even about cooking at all. It is about offering food that is in harmony with life as we live it today and as we want to live it tomorrow.

Old-fashioned cooking is simple and deeply flavored. It fills the kitchen with lovely smells, and like all good, honest food, it has the power to bring families and friends together. As you plan your meals, keep in mind the six principles outlined here as a guide to keeping things simple. Embrace basic recipes made with honest ingredients. If you are looking for a cookbook to help you, I recommend the 75th Anniversary Edition of the American classic The Joy of Cooking.

For delicious homemade cinnamon rolls like those pictured above, check out this Cinnamon Rolls recipe.

1. Frugality

Old-fashioned cooking is generous, sumptuous and sensual, but it always declares its frugality. The reason pot roast, not prime rib, epitomizes old-fashioned cooking is that pot roast brings out the best in the cheapest cuts of meat. Old-fashioned cooking is produced within the limits of a strict budget, and its strength comes from those limits. You can’t cook just anything for dinner—the budget won’t allow it.

Frugality is the discipline that structures the old-fashioned meal, requiring planning, thoughtful spending and minimizing waste. It can be a means to free up money to put into savings for personal and family dreams.

The old-fashioned cook consciously makes food choices based on a budget that is stringent enough to affect the menu. Saving $5 a day adds up to $1,800 a year; $10 a day to $3,600 a year. Every meal becomes a moment in which the present and the future are mediated through what is on the plate. This brings fundamental balance into life. Start by cutting the food budget by 10 percent, and each month put that money toward achieving a goal.

2. Real Ingredients

Cutting money from the food budget does not mean turning to cheap, processed foods; these weren’t available to the old-fashioned cook. Instead, working from a strict budget means relying on inexpensive whole foods. It naturally directs the cook toward choosing seasonal produce, growing her own herbs, and raising chickens for eggs, for example. It reduces the quantity of expensive ingredients we can eat, but encourages us to savor them more. It requires the use of fattier, more sinewy (and more flavorful) cuts of meat, and using every bit of an animal’s protein. Thus, letting price be the guide has the virtuous consequence of ensuring flavor in meals.

Cooking with a Steamer: The Healthiest Option

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Cooking with a steamer (no, silly, not by using a ship), that is to say by means of steam, is considered to probably be the best and healthiest way to cook food, from vegetables to meat and fish.

Bamboo steamers for use with rice, and other foods, have been in use in China (and other Far Eastern countries) since nigh time immemorial and while you can get and use bamboo steamers others may be much better suited to our Western ways.

Steaming seals in nutrients and flavors that are, to a great degree, lost in boiling, and makes, as far as I am concerned, vegetables the tastiest things on the Planet.

Once you have tried vegetables done in a good steamer you'll never want to boil them again, ever.

Steamers come in many shapes and forms, so to speak, from the already mentioned bamboo steamers, over dedicated stove top ones, via those that go on top of ordinary saucepans, to dedicated electric ones.

Many years ago now I purchased an electric steamer and though I have used it from time to time the fact that, one, the tiers are polycarbonate an d probably full of BPA (I did not know about that then and nor did most people) and, two, that it needs counter space, near an electrical outlet, makes using it a bit of a rigmarole.

Also, needing about 50 minutes or so to get the food to my taste and that around 1.5KW was, in my view, a little costly.

I then came across microwave steamers and at about 10-12 minutes is a different kettle of fish but I was still not completely happy as, when done a little too long, even if still water in the reservoir, vegetables turned out once or twice a little shriveled.

In early January 2012, in Sainsbury's January Sale, I came across a copper bottom stainless steel 3-tier steamer and this is, so far, the very best steamer I have used and the food turns out absolutely succulent and has the greatest taste full of flavors.

As far as I am concerned this is the best buy as regards to steamers that I have made even though it cost me £25 (about US$45) at a half-price sale.

It is my opinion that stove top steamers are superior to the electric worktop units with their plastic tiers as, in my experience, the results are better and it takes a little less time.

Obviously the full price, which would be £50, is a lot of money for a stove top steamer assembly as the Sainsbury's Cook's Collection Copper Bottom 3-tier Steamer which I bought in the sale at half price. But, then again, with care (it has a glass lid and I am clumsy), it should last for a long time.

Similar stainless steel steamers can be had, without the copper bottom, though the latter give a much better heat conductivity and distribution, for less, at stores and outlets, including at Sainsbury's, and at Lakeland. As far as Lakeland ones go they can be found in the Spring 2012 “KITCHEN” catalog.

At Lakeland one can also obtain, and Lakeland seem to be, as far as I have seen so far the only place, a single tier steamer that fits on top of an ordinary saucepan. This type is ideal for those that cook only for one or two people or if you want a separate steamer for, for instance, cooking fish.

Cooking with a steamer really is the way to go, methinks...