Annual Cleanse Revisited!

I've been lucky enough to have been given a Magimix to replace my old mixer and I've been thinking of ways to use it more when I was scrabbling around in the freezer and found a bag of marmalade oranges. Could I? I wondered, use the Magimix to chop them up to make a batch of marmalade?

I halved the oranges and squeezed them as usual collecting the seeds and membranes, then I quartered the skins and then used the 2mm slicing disk to slice them into the bowl.

I then replaced the slicing disk with the blade and pulsed the blade until the peels had the consistency I was looking for. As I transferred them to the preserving pan I ran the pieces through my fingers to find any large pieces, which I chopped by hand, there were remarkably few of these. I soaked the peels and pips overnight and made the marmalade the next day.

Not only have retired my mixer I can now retire my hand cranked mincer

By using frozen oranges I find I don't need to boil the peel as long to soften it, consequently the amount of water needed is less.

Sausage supper and some thoughts on photographing food

       There are some days when food just needs to be easy and quick and grilled sausages with fried onions and a salad are the perfect.

       The sausages are from a deli called Iago on Princes street, they use to have a stall in the English market, but the new shop is bigger and brighter. The sausages are specially made for them and the thick meaty, fennel and garlic ones are our favourites.

       We are still eating onions we grew in the garden last year, sliced thickly and cooked slowly in some olive oil with a seasoning of salt and pepper, they make a soft bed to put the sausages on. 

The salad of fennel and orange is one of our regular winter salads I blogged about last February, its sweetness complements the onions and to stop it being over sweet we add a good squeeze of lemon juice. It is particularly nice when made with blood oranges. The fennel gives a crunch amongst all the softness.

       I tweeted about this supper the night we ate it, but I didn’t post a photograph. Someone questioned if it had happened, in a joking way, and I said I’d been too hungry to take a photo and that I thought people would be sick of food photos after Christmas. Anyway I like to take a good photo of the food, to do it justice. I did take the photo below the next day of the leftovers.

Leftover sausage supper.

       So is it important to take a photo or just enjoy the moment of sharing the food?

For me cooking and sharing the food is more important. Sharing food is what makes us friends and friendship keeps us connected to other people. In reality very few dishes are photographed and posted on social media considering the number of meals consumed around the world each day.

We are lucky to have food and more than enough.

       When I do photograph my food it is usually for a blog post here or as an aide-mémoire when eating out. I do my best to make the images interesting, informative and in focus for here, but when we are eating out they tend to be a quick snap so I can recall each of the elements on the plate and quite often they are not perfectly in focus or they will have a shadow of the camera/phone in them. As in the one below.

Octopus and black chickpea stew.

       The eating out photos are useful to help me create new dishes at home by maybe bringing in an element that was particularly tasty or for seeing whether a flavour or texture go well together or not, all these add to our everyday meals. Very few of which are ever photographed.

       Do I need to share more of these, I don’t think so. I write this blog to keep my hand in at writing and as a way of recording what’s around me here. 

Thank you for reading this.

To Chew or Not to Chew?

Bite and Chew!

        I suspect that at some stage in our lives we have all been told “Don’t wolf your food! Chew!”. Or an elderly childless relative has reminded an impatient gobbler at the table to “Chew each mouthful 32 times!” or risk indigestion. 

        With the increase in people making protein shakes, smoothies and ‘juicing’ and the availability of the ready made versions I wonder if we are forgetting how to chew? 

        Would you actually eat a banana, an orange, 2tbs milled linseeds, a scoop of protein powder and a tub of yoghurt if it was laid out in front of you? 

But when it is all whizzed up into a smoothie it is all too easy to glug down. 

        This could become a problem, as the machine has done the chewing for you, there is very little saliva mixed into the smoothie which will affect how it is digested in the stomach. Or if you make it earlier in the day for a quick boost later on, the enzymes in the fruit will start to break down the nutrients in the smoothie.

        Then again if this is the only way some people will eat fruit and vegetables, a shot of juice or a smoothie might be the way to go, but they are missing out on the satisfaction of a well deserved break and nourishment while chewing their way through their snack or meal. Having foods in smoothie form may also lead to eating more, due to lack of satiety.

        Chewing is good for us, by chewing we start the digestion process mixing the food with silva which contains enzymes that break down the food and makes it soft and wet. 

Chewing exercises our jaws and strengthens the bones that hold our teeth in place.

Chewing slowly, brings out the flavours of the food, hopefully adding to our enjoyment of the it. The more slowly we eat the sooner we start to feel full, as the brain takes 20 minutes to register what is in our stomachs.

        The Edwardian Chew-Chew diet was based on the philosophy of Horace Fletcher 1849-1919. It can be summed up in his catchy phrase “Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate!”

He was quite keen on people chewing 100 times a minute, but was happy enough to encourage an average of 32 chews per mouthful of food.

He also felt that meals should be enjoyed and mealtimes sociable, encouraging his followers to only eat when hungry, eat what they enjoyed, chew well and stop eating when “the appetite begins to slack up a bit,”

All this takes concentration, being “mindful” even, while eating. 

        The recent trend for chefs to create purées and foams to add to their dishes that include cuts of meat cooked sous vide or long and slow. This food requires little or no chewing to reduce it to a paste before swallowing. While these beautiful plates of food are delicious, each element is carefully chosen to enhance the others on the plate, I fear we may be turning them into flavourful pap for the toothless. While I don't want tough meat I am prepared to chew to break down my food.

        In our fast moving world where time is money and not a minute should be wasted on something as mundane as refuelling the body, perhaps it is no bad thing to take some timeout to chew. 

Maybe while you were reading this you were eating something? Any left? Take a small mouthful and chew 32 times………………………….. 

Well, any difference? 

It’s worth trying even for one mouthful and then maybe another?

        Eating is necessary, so why not take pleasure in it too, sit down, relax and chew!