In Praise of an Irish Breakfast

It’s St Patrick’s Day and when I think of Ireland and her culinary traditions I don’t think of Irish stew. I remember wonderful family meals at my Grandmother’s house in County Down, of course. Always fresh meat and veg and spuds dug from the garden. All traditional fare, of course.

But it’s the breakfasts that I remember most clearly: you just can’t beat a good Irish fry-up. A delicious fresh egg is a must. With lovely bacon and some small pork sausages are essential. We had grilled tomatoes often but very rarely beans.

But you also need potato bread. That’s fried in the pan too and you put your egg on it and have it with the egg yolk dripping over it. Soda farls. White fluffy soda bread is a must too. Again, you can fry that in the pan too or just toast it. It’s yummy and filling. And if it’s toasted you can have that with jam at the end with proper Irish butter.

And then there’ your brown wheaten bread. Toasted or plain. With butter again. It’s delicious and thanks to dear Paul Rankin and Irwin’s bakery we can get potato bread, soda farls and wheaten bread in England here too.

Carol Savage on Home Cooking and the Credit Crunch

Should we be eating more squirrel?

With a cull of grey squirrels underway in Scotland, Walkers punting out new ‘Cajun Squirrel’ crisps as part of their ‘Do us a Flavour‘ campaign and everyone looking to save money on food, there’s only one question on our lips at MyDish.co.uk: should we be eating more squirrel?

Often maligned as ‘rats with PR agents’, a quick look around the net has revealed plenty of great ideas. BushCraftUK has recipes for fricasse squirrel, barbeque squirrel and also invlaubale tips on skinning and gutting the blighters.

Last year, the Observer profiled Rupert Mitford, the 6th Baron Redesdale, and Paul Parker a pest controller who together form the ‘The Red Squirrel Protection Partnership’. Part of protecting the red squirrel is culling the grey one. The red squirrel is native to the British Isles and endangered, so if you fancy some squirrel stew you’d be breaking the law if you went for a red. In any case, grey squirrels are bigger, with more meat. In the article, David Ridley of Ridley’s Fish and Game in Northumberland described the flavour of squirrel: ‘They have no fat on them and they live mostly on berries and nuts so the flesh is sweet. I’ve roasted them. I’ve flash-fried them with fresh thyme.’ Ridley sells squirrel in his shop and apparently each has to be labelled: ‘May contain nuts’.

Have you got any great squirrel recipes? Should we be eating more squirrel? Would you even try it it? Let us know!

MyDish TV: Carol on Angel Funding and the Credit Crunch

When is ‘British Pork’ not British?

When it’s not actually from Britain, really is the answer. A pig can be born and raised overseas, in Holland for instance, brought to Britain and slaughtered and be declared, quite legally, British. Who knew? It hardly seems accurate and it seems misleading to we the people. But does it much matter?

It actually makes rather a lot of difference. Britain has more stringent regulations promoting pig welfare during their short lives than most of Europe. Pigs that live their life on these islands have a better time of it. Of course, this means that genuinely British pigs can be more expensive to raise. But you wouldn’t know it. ‘Foreign British’ pork costs consumers much the same and ‘British British’ pork. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The supermarkets like it because they get to pocket the difference.

But fear not. Jamie Oliver is on the case. He’ll be looking into the issue and helping us all become more clued up consumers in a documentary on Thursday night: Jamie Saves our Bacon. Oink Oink.

The True Cost of Cheap Food

As the credit crunch bites and recession looms, it won’t be a surprise to anyone that sales of supermarket ‘value’ ranges have soared. According to an article by Jay Rayner, the Observer’s restaurant critic, who has put together a documentary called ‘The True Cost of Cheap Food’ shown today, premium range sales have fallen 6% in the last year, organic produce is down nearly 15% and ‘value food sales have leapt 46%.

Bad news? It’s difficult to be certain because only the most starry-eyed purist could argue that people shouldn’t have the choice of cheap food. We can’t all be dining on local, in-season, free range, organic meat and produce all the time: it’s simply too expensive.

Rayner isn’t suggesting we could or should either. His point is that the cost of dramatically improving the quality of some ‘value’ products is miniscule. We’re talking a matter of pence. A beef pie with 18% beef and a few % of ‘beef connective tissue’ (known as ‘eyelids and arseholes’ to any plain-speaking person) can become a 25% beef pie without the gristle for a penny. A pork sausage with 40% pork and a load of pig skin chucked in to bulk it up can become a 54% pork sausage without the skin for 0.7p. Would people pay this extra for better ‘value’ food’? Probably. But they don’t have the choice.

Jay Rayner is surprisingly sanguine in his Observer article. But this needs to be another ‘turkey twizzler’ moment for the nation, doesn’t it? Surely it isn’t beyond the wit of man (or even British supermarket executives) to significantly improve the quality of ‘value’ ranges with only a tiny, tiny increase in price?

It’s also a useful reminder that if you’re worried about what’s in your food but need to be conscious about price, then cooking from scratch offers your more options and greater control. ‘Value’ veg and staples such as rice and pasta are hard to go wrong with. It’s totally possible to feed a family, stay within budget and avoid some of the more industrialized food products with a bit of cooking know-how.

Detox is Bollox

Ben Goldacre is an NHS doctor and the author of the Guardian’s ‘Bad Science’ column where myths are debunked with the appliance of science (and usually basic science at that). In an article in The Times he’s recently turned his test tube of truth to discrediting the fad for detox diets.

There’s no ambivalence. “The notion of detox is medically meaningless,” he writes. Needless to say, especially in excess, burgers and beer can be bad for you. But the idea that they somehow leave toxins in your body that can be removed by a ‘physiological mechanism is nothing more than a marketing invention’. The human body has no such system. Detox is bollocks.

Likening detox diets to fasts and cleansing rituals favoured by many ancient religions, detox is just slowing down, giving your body a rest, cutting down on excess and stocking up on stuff your body needs. It’s about giving your body a rest. Granny told us that.

Most tellingly, Goldacre laments that the passion for detox distracts from genuine, long-term lifestyle changes that could be an improvement. Once a detox is over, people go back to their old unhealthy ways. Temporary change, it seems, isn’t really change at all.

MyDish’s Carol Savage on Building an Online Community

Our latest video blog from Carol talking about building a  community and learning as you go along.

Crazy January Dieters

At MyDish we’re bewildered by the concept of a January diet. We’re all for healthy eating (whatever time of year it is!) but to go from feast to famine in a matter of daysis a surefire road to misery.

In January, a pile of ryvita and a meagre salad isn’t what the Doctor ordered. You want warming soups, nourishing stews and casseroles and hearty meals. A cold, dark January is miserable enough without adding hunger pangs voluntarily to your list of woes.

With all the nasty flus and lurgies doing the rounds, giving your body plenty of protein and vegetable goodness makes obvious sense but the sums add up too. ‘Big Pot’ cooking can be inexpensive and provide plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow. A slow cooked casserole is often the best way to cook cheaper cuts of meat like pork belly or lamb shoulder. Vegetables are still pretty cheap and you can bulk up with nutritious beans and pulses.

So, for the whole of January, mydish.co.uk is officially a ‘diet free zone’. Think cottage pie, chicken casserole, vegetable soup, bean cassoulet because, baby, it’s cold outside.

How MyDish Came about…

Check out this video of Mydish.co.uk founder Carol Savage talking about how Mydish.co.uk came around.