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How to Make Sense of Your Ingredients

January 22, 2013 by Tess Giles Marshall in The cookery column

A guest post by Mel Barrett

Mel Barrett writes a regular cookery column for the Wholesome Food Association. Mel is a former management consultant who, since leaving the corporate world, has worked with butchers, bakers and canapé-makers (and many others too!) who share her passion for food produced with integrity. She has written/co-written publications for Sustain (the alliance for better food and farming) on bread and London’s food economy, and is currently developing a new kind of cookery course. She has two young daughters. To see Mel’s growing collection of cookery columns, click here.

Photo credit Heather

Cooks we admire are those who can effortlessly throw together ingredients – they just know which ones will work together. In Column 9, How to Combine Flavours, I tried to understand how they do this, coming to the conclusion that certain combinations work primarily because, in the mind of the eater, those ingredients are linked by a meaningful (and positive) association. Filed away in our minds are all sorts of memories and cultural references which help make sense of the food presented to us, for example, a dish involving goose, dried fruits and saffron might work for anyone with a vague awareness of medieval history; prawns accompanied by leaves of some kind and a ketchup-spiked dressing may well delight those who know of the iconic prawn cocktail of 1970’s Britain. Create a meaningful link between ingredients, and you are halfway to delivering a successful dish.

One source of inspiration from which cooks can draw is the globe, with its rich pool of nations, regions and peoples, many of which have their own distinctive cuisines. These have developed over time, perhaps starting with native crops, then added to with ingredients introduced as a result of trade, conquest and immigration, and influenced by factors such as religion. Rice from the Far East came along the ancient silk route to Iran, whence it spread throughout the Middle East and beyond, as medieval Arabs took it, along with spices like cumin and coriander, to their conquered lands. The Portuguese and Spanish took New World bounty – for example the chilli pepper and the peanut – to Africa and Asia. German settlers introduced the frankfurter to the US. With every ebb and flow of civilisation the food map of the world changed, until finally, with the last major waves of industrialisation, unification and migration which transformed Europe and the US in the latter half of the 19^th century, the different cuisines of the world – although constantly subject to new influences – became consolidated into those we know today.

Savvy cooks have worked out that drawing from this map of cuisines is a good way of uniting ingredients. Many of the recipes in Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals, for example, are based around a particular cuisine. Whilst Oliver and his team no doubt systematically plundered the globe, for many of us the process is less conscious. For example, we may have a feeling that lamb and dried apricots would pair well in a stew – having almost certainly taken in some information which places these two ingredients squarely together – without perhaps knowing that lamb and stone fruits are cornerstone foods of the Middle East, and have been used together in fruited meat stews in ancient Persia and subsequent Middle Eastern empires for thousands of years. Were we to make that explicit Middle East connection, we might feel inspired to flavour our stew with cumin, coriander and cinnamon – key aromas of the region – and serve it with rice – a staple starch of the region. So how exactly does the cook go about replicating a cuisine?

How to replicate a cuisine

Photo credit: Frederick

First of all, I’ll define a cuisine quite broadly as food particular to a community of people which features a shared set of ingredients and techniques. Cuisine boundaries are often more relevant when drawn along regional or ethnic lines, rather than national ones, particularly where a nation enjoys great diversity of climate (for example India, which stretches from the Himalayas in the north to the tropics in the south), geography (for example the US, with both coastline and great plains) or socio-economic factors (such as religion, for example). Thus it might be more meaningful to consider the cuisines of Kerala and Goa (as opposed to ‘Indian cuisine’); the cuisines of Szechuan and Canton (rather than ‘Chinese cuisine’) and the Creole cuisine of Louisiana (instead of ‘American cuisine’), although sometimes blurring boundaries can work well in the kitchen (there are countless recipes out there for ‘Asian style’ dishes which are no less delicious for being non-authentic, for example). The key is to identify the common elements which make a cuisine distinctive. To my mind,there are eight elements which mark out one particular cuisine from another:

A staple starch. Quinoa is eaten throughout the Andes, the tuber cassava feeds much of Sub-Saharan Africa and South America, drought-resistant sorghum (a cereal) sustains in the tropics, potatoes and rye thrive in colder regions such as northern Europe, but it’s rice, wheat and maize on which two thirds of the population depend. Rice is Asia’s staple food, but is also commonly eaten in southern Iraq, as well as places which at one time were under the rule of the medieval Muslim Empire (Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Turkey, North and West Africa), colonised by the Spanish and Portuguese (Mexico and Brazil) or influenced by the enslaved peoples of West Africa (e.g. Louisiana in the US). Wheat is a staple throughout the Middle East, and appears on the table at every meal in the form of a huge range of breads and paper-thin pastry, couscous and bulghar. It’s also commonly eaten in breads, noodles, dumplings, pies and pastries throughout Asia and Europe. Maize is the staple in Mexico and many African countries, and eaten as a form of porridge in a number of other regions (for example, polenta in Italy, hominy grits in the American South).

A characteristic protein. Temperate regions with vast plains, as well as lands which
Photo credit: arbyreed

offer up rich summer pasture in mountain or field, will have a history and association with beef or cow dairy – think Argentinian and American steak; British roast beef; Swiss cheese. In dry, arid regions there will be a reliance on dairy from sheep and goats and pulses (for example the Levant, where beans, lentils, chickpeas and yoghurt feature heavily). Lamb is eaten throughout the Middle East, and is also a major feature in the cuisines of Greece, UK and Ireland, France, NW Africa, India and the Caribbean. The pig is important throughout China, SE Asia, Europe, and places with a Spanish or Portuguese influence (such as the Southern US, South America and Goa, in India), but avoided in regions where there are large Muslim and Jewish populations (for example most of the Middle East). Coastal societies are often known for their fish dishes.

Vegetables/ fruits which flourish in the region. Regions tend to be associated with their native species (for example sweetcorn, squashes, chilli peppers and potatoes in the Americas; spinach, dates, pomegranates, olives and figs in the Middle East) or varieties which grow well (for example, frost-tolerating roots, berries and apples in the temperate climes of northern Europe; sunshine-loving varieties such as cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and courgettes in hotter climes; exotic varieties such as coconuts and mangoes in the tropics).

Signature aromas. Most cuisines return to the same key aromas time and time again (see How to Create Flavour Part 2 for more information on aroma). For example, signature aromatics in Persian food are saffron for rice; cinnamon, cloves, cumin and coriander for stews; parsley and mint in salads; dried thyme or sumac with oil and bread or sprinkled over grilled meat. The aromas of fermented bean, sesame oil, five-spice and star-anise pervade China; in Indonesia it’s fermented soy and toasted peanuts; in Thailand Kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and coriander. Various alcohols are used throughout the world to impart aroma (for example cider in Normandy, France; Shaoxing rice wine in China; Vermouth in the South of France), except in places where it is forbidden by religious dietary laws (for example, the Middle East, where fruit plays a large aromatic role).

Signature taste ingredients. When it comes to arguably the most important taste ingredient – umami – the world seems to be split between those who use some kind of fermented sauce or paste, and those who use cooked alliums. Fermented fish and soybean products are ubiquitous throughout Asia. In Europe it’s the softened onion which is king, imparting its glutamate to a whole range of soups, stews, pies and sauces, typically in conjunction with an umami-rich meat stock. Too much umami dulls the palate; acid and pungency come to the rescue (see How to Combine Flavours). Much of Europe relies on alcohol vinegars to impart sour notes, whereas in the Middle East it’s often lemons and yoghurt; in the tropics tamarinds and limes. For pungency many cuisines use raw alliums (e.g. chives in France; spring onions in China; garlic in Italy) or a range of roots and seeds (e.g. wasabi in Japan; ginger in China; horseradish and mustard in the UK). Some cuisines manifest a fondness for sweetness in their pots (often a legacy of having ready access to sugar, for example Southern American Cajun cuisine, and the Arab-influenced cuisine of Sicily in Italy) or piquancy (various types of chilli pepper appear throughout the cuisines of China, SE Asia and Mexico, for example). (See How to Create Flavour Part 1 for more information on taste ingredients).

A customary liquid to make sauces. Certain liquids regularly show up in particular cuisines to form the base of a range of sauces, whether on the side, as a salsa or dressing, for example, or as an integral part of a cooked dish. Examples include olive oil (e.g. southern Europe); yoghurt (e.g. Central Asia and the Middle East); milk and cream (e.g. northern Europe and North America); meat and fish stocks (e.g. Europe and Asia) coconut milk (e.g. tropical regions) and tomato pulp (e.g. Latin America and Mediterranean Europe).

A widely-available cooking fat. Historically, the choice of cooking medium will have been influenced by affordability and availability, thus butter is traditional in dairy-farming northern Europe, rendered sheep fat in Central Asia, ghee (clarified butter) throughout India, and olive oil all around the Mediterranean, for example. Nowadays, more and more populations are turning to plant-based fats, perceived to be healthier.

A traditional cooking technique (i.e. the equipment, fuel and vessel used to cook food, as well as its mode of preparation). Identical ingredients can be completely transformed by varying the cooking technique: a wheat and water dough with a filling, when fried, becomes the Turkish borek, the Russian pirozhki and the empanada of Latin America. Baked in a tandir, it becomes the Indian samosa, the Uzbek samsa or the Tajik sambusa; in an oven the Cornish pasty or Jamaican patty. Steamed or boiled, and served with a sauce, it takes on the guise of ravioli or tortellini (Italy), pelmeni (Russia)orkreplach (in Jewish cuisine). Cooking techniquehas been influenced by such factors as a society’s ability to afford fuel (stir-frying being a very fuel-efficient method, for example) and the availability of labour (spit-roasting, popular in the slave-filled households of the American South, is a very labour-intensive one).

Being able to link ingredients in a way which makes sense is one of the greatest skills a cook can have. Cooking pork? Look out the flavours and accompanying foods of the places where it is savoured: use soy sauce, Shaoxing wine and five-spice powder in a marinade then roast and serve with pak choi and rice for a Chinese vibe, or for a taste of the American South slow cook and serve shredded in buns with a side of coleslaw and a sauce which includes molasses, tomatoes, mustard and white wine vinegar. If lamb is your star, use the robust herbs of the Mediterranean or the spices of the Middle East, and partner with a yogurt-based sauce and a flatbread. Learn to recognise the signature starches, proteins, vegetables, aromas, taste ingredients, liquids, fats and cooking techniques which make one cuisine stand out from another, and you will soon be rustling up your own 30 minute meals, without any need for a cookbook.

References

Brittin, H. (2011). The Food and Culture Around the World Handbook. Prentice Hall.

Civitello, L. Cuisine and Culture. (2011). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Davidson, A. (2007). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.

Mack, G. R. and Surina, A. (2005). Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia. Greenwood Press.

Notaker, H. (2009). Food Culture in Scandinavia. Greenwood Press.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation website. Dimensions of Need – An Atlas of Food and Agriculture. Staple foods: what do people eat? http://www.fao.org/docrep/u8480e/u8480e07.htm

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What to buy (and why it matters)

November 4, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in Sustainability, The cookery column

A guest post by Mel Barrett

I start this column with a confession: I have always felt a little intimidated buying meat or fish away from the safe confines of the supermarket.

Photo by Mark Hillary

This from someone who has actually worked in a local firm of family butchers: I have stood shoulder to shoulder with fat-fingered men making pies; bantered over the mopping pail with surly youths in blood-stained aprons; even entered into the confidences of the lovelorn boss.

But, when it comes to choosing what’s for dinner, I would much rather just point at something familiar and run, than enter into a conversation about what the animal was fed on, or the merits of blade versus brisket. Whatever the reason – lack of knowledge, ‘habit bias’ (industry jargon for habits which are hard to change), or, in my case, a very British type of politeness, which triggers panic at the thought of taking up too much of someone’s time – I am not alone. In a (very unscientific) survey of mums at the school gate, 100% said that, unless specifically directed by a recipe, they buy what they know (roasting joints, chops, sausages) and avoid anything obscure (such as ‘neck or shoulder’).

Similarly, the Marine Conservation Society lists over thirty different types of fish which can be fished freely during certain months of the year from UK waters, yet just five types account for 80% of the fish bought in the UK, much of it imported (salmon, tuna, cod, haddock and prawns). Notwithstanding the occasional surges in demand for less popular foods championed by a few celebrity chefs, we are a generation that sticks to what it knows, which is not very much, and when it comes to meat, definitely not its arse from its elbow. But does it matter?

The consequences of passive consumption

Passive consuming – unthinkingly buying the same thing week in week out – does have consequences. Once upon a time, the pattern of supply of and demand for food was dictated by the rhythms of nature. Produce that thrived in our climate was eaten all the year round (or supplemented in times of scarcity with preserved gluts and shipments from overseas). Produce with infrequent harvests or high labour costs, for example beef, were enjoyed as special treats, and every part of the crop or animal put to good use.

Yes, it was monotonous at times, requiring harder work (but the parties sure were good, with communities coming together much more – think of all that wassailing and cider drinking).

Photo by David Slack

Nowadays, however, nature can be manipulated – growing seasons can be extended (for example tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, asparagus, mushrooms and strawberries are commonly grown under heat for many months of the year); yields can be increased (e.g. by high-protein feeds and antibiotics used to stimulate growth) – or circumvented, by importing from countries with cheap labour costs. In short, the produce we want – seasonal treats and prime cuts – can be supplied all year round, at relatively low prices. And if we keep buying it, retailers – largely unfettered by regulation (give or take a few quotas here or there), and hugely enabled by advances in science and technology – will keep supplying it.

This is a marvellous model for those living in a world with unlimited resources; for those of us on planet earth, however, where resources are finite, but the number of consumers is expanding (the population is set to reach nine billion by the year 2050), it is somewhat problematic. There are all sorts of consequences to the scramble to supply us with the produce we want at the low prices we expect: serious issues of animal welfare (sentient beasts fed unnatural diets, confined in spaces which restrict natural behaviour and encourage disease); loss of livelihoods (as communities are forced off their land or fisheries collapse); the disappearance of diversity (over two thousand different varieties of apple have been grown in Britain over the years, yet since 1950 nearly two thirds of England’s orchard area has disappeared ). Many of these, taking place in far-away places, bear little relevance to our every-day lives. There are three big issues, however, which touch us all:

1. Overexploitation of resources

The world’s resources are being consumed at unsustainable rates, that is to say, at some point in the future they will be in very short supply, with price hikes for all. The vast quantities of synthetic fertiliser used in intensive farming systems (for example to grow corn and soy for livestock feed) are hastening the march towards the day when oil production goes into irreversible decline. But it is the issue of land which really stirs up campaigners. Nowadays, most of the world’s livestock is fed on grain, requiring huge amounts of crops: in the US, for example, more than 70 percent of the grain produced is fed to livestock.

Norman B Leventhal Map Center

In 1700, just seven percent of the world’s land was used for farming. Nowadays, food production takes up almost half of the planet’s land surface, with an area roughly the size of South America being used for crop production, while even more land—3.2 to 3.6 billion hectares—being used to raise livestock. The World Bank estimates that cereal production needs to increase by 50% and meat production by 85% between 2000 and 2030 to meet demand. But most of the world’s best agricultural land is already used, much of it to feed the industrialised west, which means that increased agricultural production is likely to be at the cost of increased tropical deforestation.

2. Irreversible damage to ecosystems

Human life depends on the optimal functioning of ecosystems. For example, forests store billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere; the sea-bed is rich in marine life, essential to the food chain. In 2005 the UN reported that 60 per cent of 24 ecosystems examined were being degraded or exploited beyond ecological limits, with symptoms including the irreversible decline of fish stocks, the spread of disease, soil erosion, the loss of water quality and shifts in regional climate:

85% of global fish stocks and over 75% of Europe’s fish stocks are over-fished. Many once common species such as skate, European eel and blue-fin tuna are now assessed by IUCN (World Conservation Union) as Critically Endangered.
Global forest area has shrunk by about 40 per cent over the past 300 years. Twenty-five countries have completely lost their forests and 29 countries have less than 10 per cent of their forest cover.
The world has lost 35 per cent of its mangrove area – vital habitats for juvenile fish – since 1980.

Practices to blame include:

Deforestation for livestock and crop production (e.g. soy, for animal feed; palm oil plantations).
Use of coastal habitats for aquaculture (for example tropical mangroves for prawn farming).
Intensive farming and aquaculture practices (linked to the erosion of soil fertility; pollution from animal/fish waste and chemical discharges; the spread of disease).
Aggressive fishing methods, whereby enormous nets, such as mile-long purse-seine nets, catch vulnerable species (‘bycatch’, for example dolphins and sharks), immature fish and low-value fish (with low-market value, but of great importance to the food chain), or are dragged along the sea-bed, reducing it to barren wasteland (for example, for every kilo of north sea sole caught by beam trawl, up to 14 kilos of other seabed animals are caught; the quantity of bycatch resulting from tuna fishing is enough to fill the equivalent of one out of every tenth tin of tuna).

3. Global warming

Most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years has been caused by the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG); the food supply chain belches out millions of tonnes of these annually. The two main culprits cited are livestock production, in particular beef and dairy (accountable for almost a fifth of all GHG according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), from the burning of forest; nitrous oxide released from manure and fertilizer; and methane discharged by livestock) and the transportation of our food. The FAO claims transportation contributes 11% of all GHG (15% in the UK according to the Cabinet Office); others believe the figure to be significantly higher.

What to buy

Surely, though, it’s the job of government to worry about the environment, and see to it that the food industry edits out any problems before the product reaches the shelf? Evidence shows this is what consumers expect: in one survey, 60% of consumers thought that retailers should make it easier for them to make sustainable choices by introducing higher standards in some product areas. The four supermarkets from which 75% of us buy our groceries arguably ought to shoulder some of the responsibility, and indeed, some are doing brilliant work in a number of areas.

Photo by Sweet On Veg

However, the last government’s food strategy spells it out clearly: “The environmental impacts of the food system are all, ultimately, a consequence of consumption decisions… The decisions of consumers and the values and preferences of society at large, are critical in any change to the food sector”. In the words of Carlos Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement: “Anyone who thinks of themselves as a food lover but does not have any environmental awareness is naïve”.

So what can consumers do? Feeding the world is a complex problem. But a simple philosophy, coined by the team working on the Sustainable Fish City project at Sustain, may offer a workable guideline when it comes to buying food: Avoid the worst; create demand for the best. What might that look like in practice?

Meat

Evaluating in detail the conflicting arguments on meat production is beyond the scope of this column. Needless to say, the debate is heavily polarised. In one corner are those who claim a case can no longer be made for eating meat, which, with its high feed conversion ratio (i.e. it takes much more land to produce food from livestock – in particular beef and dairy – than from crops) is taking food away from the starving millions (it is estimated that the grain fed to animals a year, two thirds of which is used in the industrialised countries, would be enough to feed about 1.3 billion people, at least 300 million more than the number of people estimated to be malnourished).

In the other corner are the huge suppliers of feed and fertiliser and the GM lobby, equally convinced that intensive farming is the only way to meet the increased production – 50% more cereal and 85% more meat – which the World Bank predicts will be needed by 2030 . Skirting round the edge of the ring are those, armed with powerful research and the practical experience to back it up, who believe in a third way: eat less; farm better . Will these voices be heard above the din of big business? Already the EU has relaxed its ban on cattle imported from the US raised intensively in enormous feedlots. Where does this leave the consumer?

The analysis does seem to add up to eating less red meat and dairy. Advocates of having one meat free day a week claim it would have the same impact on GHG emissions as purchasing all household produce locally . When you do buy meat, arguably the best option is livestock which hasn’t been fed on fertiliser-gobbling, rainforest-depleting grain and soy. Perhaps one day it will be possible for British pigs and chickens to once more be fed on food waste, such as the tonnes of bread, fruit and veg disposed of daily by retailers and caterers (Defra is currently working on a project to this end with some of the supermarkets). In the meantime, good options are poultry (which has a comparatively low grain to yield ratio) and animals which eat a diet high in foraged food, such as wild game animals and birds, free-range mutton and lamb and cattle which has been fattened on grass or pasture (and labelled as such).

Food supply constraints vary by country, but in the UK a good case can be made for pasture-based livestock farming systems: two-thirds of UK farmland is grass, with little alternative agricultural use. Furthermore, in a recent report study by the National Trust, well-managed grass pasture was found to actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, thus reducing net farm emissions (including methane) by 94% . And it’s better for you, with pasture-fed beef containing more antioxidants, lineolic acid, and omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef . Buying less popular cuts, or stretching out the meat with pulses and vegetables in dishes such as stews and curries, are ways of getting better value for money.

Fish

When it comes to fish, the list of species to avoid, according to the Marine Conservation Society, is, sadly, rather long. Don’t buy fish during months when they are breeding (e.g. haddock from February to June; plaice from January to March), fish whose stocks are low (e.g. Atlantic salmon; Atlantic halibut; Mediterranean mackerel; cod from anywhere except the NE Arctic, Eastern Baltic and Iceland) and fish caught before they have grown to maturity (e.g. whitebait). Avoid species caught by aggressive methods (such as Fish Aggregation Devices; purse-seine nets; demersal/ beam trawling; dredging) and those farmed intensively.

That leaves fish caught by traditional or less aggressive methods (e.g. drift nets; pole and line; handlines; pots) whose stocks are plentiful (e.g. Cornish Pollack; coley; Alaskan salmon; NE Arctic or North Sea haddock; N or NE Atlantic mackerel; otter trawled plaice from North/ Irish Sea) or fish with a low market value which is often discarded, for example red gurnard (a meaty white-fleshed fish, delicious with garlic butter), dabs, flounder and whiting. Shellfish (e.g. crabs, mussels, langoustines (scampi) and scallops), and small oily fish (e.g. sardines, herrings and mackerel), which haven’t been dredged, beam-trawled or farmed intensively, are great options, as they breed and grow quickly. For a seasonal chart of what’s good to buy, look on the Marine Conservation Society’s website, or if that gives you too much of a headache, let someone else do the work for you by buying Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified fish. All fish with the MSC label is from well-managed, sustainable stocks, and widely available in some of the supermarkets (all of whom are working closely with the MSC to increase the amount of MSC certified fish they stock).

Fish caught by traditional methods will never meet all our requirements; sustainable aquaculture looks like it has the answer. Look for farms certified by the ASC Aquaculture Stewardship Council or with organic accreditation. It takes 1.7kg of wild fish to feed every 1kg of farmed salmon , so the new species of farmed fish which are being introduced – herbivores such as tilapia, and fast growing species such as megrim sole and stone bass – are good options.

Fruit and vegetables

The transportation of food generates the equivalent of 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year, and accounts for a third of the 20.6 million tonnes of oil used in the UK food chain each year. With 40% of our food coming from overseas, isn’t ‘buy local’ the best advice when it comes to shopping for fruit and veg? Unfortunately it’s slightly more complicated than that.

Firstly, low food miles can mask other issues. The natural season for British tomatoes is a few weeks in August and September; outside of these months most of the tomatoes sold in the UK are grown in heated polytunnels, which use ten times as much energy, and emit nearly four times as much CO2, as producing the same quantity of tomatoes in unheated polytunnels in Spain and transporting them by road to the UK.

Secondly, zipping around in your car to buy your local produce may undo all your good intentions: driving six and a half miles to a shop to buy food emits more carbon than flying a pack of green beans from Kenya to the UK . Furthermore there is an ethical case for some imports: UK demand for fresh produce grown in Africa supports over 700,000 workers and their dependants, and Fairtrade products (for example, 20% of the bananas sold in the UK ) provide a sustainable living for many disadvantaged producers and workers in developing countries.

Photo by Elena Gaillard

The fact of the matter is, the average human simply does not have enough information to weigh-up all the trade-offs. That said, buying British produce in season – grown in fields rather than heated spaces – is definitely the least GHG-intensive option. It comes with other benefits too, often being cheaper, more delicious and better for us. Take apples, for example. Imported varieties, such as Pink Lady and Fuji, are typically bred for their keeping qualities and appearance, rather than flavour or nutrition; compare with Ashmead’s Kernel (which allegedly tastes of fruit drops), Worcester Pearmain (strawberries), Ellison’s Orange (aniseed) and Ribston Pippin, just one of which contains more vitamin C than a pound of Golden Delicious. Guy Watson, owner of Riverford Organic, puts it thus:

It is a nutritional and culinary tragedy that our traditional greens have been maligned in a national capitulation to the bland, seasonless, overpriced, overtravelled broccoli, peppers and mange tout that have replaced them. Never mind the latest exotic or wonder food. You are being taken for a mug. A Savoy or January King cabbage will help you live longer at a fraction of the price

For those living in the real world…

The danger with all of this is that it turns food from being a pleasure, which is what it should be, into a source of angst and guilt. Seeking out seasonal veg cultivated without heated polytunnels, grass-fed livestock and MSC certified fish is all well and good, but in the real world, where there are many competing demands on time and money, it’s not always possible. Don’t tie yourself up in knots. Avoid the worst, when you can; create demand for the best, when you can, and when that’s not an option, consider this: 6.7 million tonnes of food, much of which could still be eaten, is thrown away each year in our homes. Eliminating household waste (most of which gets burned) would save the equivalent in GHG as taking one in five cars off UK roads, not to mention reduce the burden on the earth’s resources. When you’re faced with little choice, why not focus on making sure that what you do buy doesn’t end up in the bin?

References

Cabinet Office Strategy Unit (2008). Food Matters: Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century.

Clifford, S. and King, A. (2007). The Apple Source Book. Hodder & Stoughton.

Defra (2012). Progress towards a sustainable future for livestock farming.

Fairlie, S. (2010). Meat: A Benign Extravagance. Permanent Publications.

The Fairtrade Foundation website.

Howgate, Emily (The Good Catch project) and Walker, Jon. Sustainable Fish City project) speaking at the Sustainable Fish Workshop, Sustain, September 2012.

Howgate, et al. (2012). Good Catch…the essentials. Good Catch.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007). Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.

Marine Conservation Society (MCS) website. Good Fish Guide: The consumer guide to sustainable fish.

Owen, J. National Geographic News (2010). Farming Claims Almost Half Earth’s Land, New Maps Show.
National Trust (2012). What’s Your Beef.

Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA) website.

Rifkin, J. (2002). There’s A Bone to Pick with Meat Eaters. Los Angeles Times.

Spratt, S., Simms, A., Neitzert, E., and Ryan-Collins, J. (2009). The Great Transition. The New Economics Foundation.

Riverford Farm website.

Watson, G. and Baxter, J. (2008) Riverford Farm Cook Book. Fourth Estate.

World Watch Magazine (2004). Is Meat Sustainable? (2004). On the Worldwatch Institute website.

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The Power of We

October 15, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in General, Sustainability

This post is written for Blog Action Day 2012

How hard we humans work at the miracle of planting seed in the ground and watching it grow into food.

Because of course it doesn’t just “grow”, it has to be in fruitful soil, receive the right nutrients, the right amount of water, the right care.

It’s easier for big agribusinesses. They have the money to pour into artificial fertilisers, monster machines, massive advertising campaigns. But they’re essentially shallow because they’re not planted in the right soil and cannot put down deep roots. (OK, I’m sorry, enough with the laboured growth analogies!)

The green movement?

I’m never quite sure what we mean by the green movement. And perhaps that’s both its strength and its weakness. Dispersed, loosely defined, unclear leadership, political and apolitical. And yet difficult to grasp, to join.

But what I do know is that the different strands making up this “movement” are countless.

And like seeds growing underground they are putting down roots which are strong and which intertwine (So I lied about not using any more growth analogies).

Wholesome Food Association growers and customers are a small but important part of this movement. Together we are stronger. And slowly, with a lot of hard work, we are beginning to make a dent in agribusiness by offering alternatives.

Perhaps it’s time to pause and look back at how far we’ve come – together we do make a difference.

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How to Combine Flavours

July 15, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in The cookery column

A guest post by Mel Barrett

When I embarked upon the research for this column, I was hoping to come up with a resource that would help the home cook make a quick assessment, night after night, about which combination of ingredients might be thrown together for dinner. The well-read amongst you might remark at this point that I am entering into territory which has already been somewhat charted: books such as Page and Dornenburg’s The Flavour Bible, and Niki Segnit’s The Flavour Thesaurus, with their lists of ingredients and compatible pairings, claim to do just that. But, whilst undoubtedly inspiring, these books are limited in their use. Firstly, there are, by Segnit’s own admission, missing foods. Secondly, ingredients are like instruments in an orchestra: all must have a purpose, and all must be in harmony. I wanted something to make sense of all the components on a plate, not just two.

Food pairing

Photo by Vegan Feast Catering

Aficionados of food pairing think they have the answer. Food pairing is a theory inspired by a collaboration between chef Heston Blumenthal and chemist Francois Benzi, based on the idea that foods work together when they share key aroma compounds. The flavour in our food is provided by a combination of molecules which only the tongue can detect (the five tastes, although scientists believe there are receptors for other substances, including fats); molecules which stimulate the ‘trigeminal’ receptors (e.g. pungent or astringent foods) and aroma compounds, for example, diacetyls (which smell buttery, found in popcorn and lobster) and pyrazines (which smell ‘roasted’, found in cocoa, peanuts and browned foods).

It is the various combinations of these 350 or so aroma compounds which make up an object’s distinctive smell, and its smell which makes up most of what we perceive as flavour (see my columns How to Create Flavour Part 1 and Part 2). Up until fairly recently, the make-up of smells was precious information, guarded jealously by food and perfume companies in secret notebooks and heavy vaults. But now, thanks to technology such as gas chromatography, ordinary people – for a fee – can get an insight into the composition of ingredients (via Leffingwell’s Volatile Compound Database for example, or websites such as Foodpairing). Some unusual combinations have been the result (pork liver and jasmine flower, anyone?).

Not everyone is a fan of food pairing. Harry J. Klee, professor of horticultural science at the University of Florida, whose experiments on tomatoes demonstrate that the link between taste, aroma and the way the brain perceives flavour is extremely complex, puts it thus:

That whole flavor-pairing c**p is just a gimmick by a chef who is practicing biology without a licence. (Drahl, C)

It seems others agree. Wender L.P. Bredie, a professor of sensory science at the University of Copenhagen, believes he has data that proves that the success of food pairing is down to the novelty factor, rather than pleasure inherent in the combinations themselves.

What is the alchemy?

So what, then, is responsible for that alchemy between ingredients, if not matching aroma compounds? To find out I would have to delve into the nature of pleasure itself, and answer two key questions:

Why do we find some flavours more pleasurable than others?
What is the magical effect one ingredient can have on another, which might increase or decrease this sense of pleasure?

Which flavours do we find pleasurable?

Photo by Sterling Noyes

With up to 10,000 smells discernible by the human nose, flavour can be tricky to pin down. To help, almost any industry which trades in smell has its own lexicon. There is the Aroma Wheel ™ for wine, which helps wine buffs articulate, amongst others, various earthy, woody, floral, spicy and nutty notes; as well as wheels for coffee, maple syrup and even Comte cheese. Could it be that some aromas and some aroma combinations around these wheels are innately more pleasurable than others? Some argue no: that – with the exception of certain strongly pungent aromas – all responses to smells are learned.

According to Rachel Herz, cognitive neuroscientist and expert on the psychology of smell, the perception of pleasure is linked to emotions experienced when the smell is first encountered, familiarity, or meaning provided by cultural learning. One example cited to back this up is the attempt by the US military to develop a stink bomb, abandoned due to the impossibility of finding an odour that was considered universally unpleasant across different ethnic groups.

Photo by BazzaDaRambler

Others argue that humans have an innate preference for certain smells, such as those connected with essential nutrients, for example spices and herbs (many of which have antibacterial or digestive benefits), or those which have been key to our survival and development, in particular the aromas of smoked, roasted or fermented foods. Who hasn’t been seduced by the smell of frying bacon? Similarly, when it comes to tastes, we prefer substances which promise fast refueling in times of scarcity (sweetness and fat), or which indicate the presence of our essential amino acids (umami), to those which signal harm (sour and bitter) or cause pain (although the accompanying release of endorphins means the heat from piquant foods such as chilli peppers can become addictive!).

Conversely, pleasure decreases when the senses are not sufficiently stimulated. This may happen when:

Insufficient taste and aroma is detected, either because not enough umami, saltiness, acid, sweetness and fat are present (food will lack tastiness or ‘body’), or because the food is low in volatile aroma compounds (e.g. protein or grains).
Perception declines due to desensitisation (known as ‘adaptation’), which can occur in 1-5 minutes of continuous exposure to a strong taste or aroma. This is perhaps why roast meats with a stock-based sauce, or aged hams and cheeses – all rich in umami – work so well with a balancing taste, for example pungent sauces (horseradish; mint sauce; salsa verde) or sweet accompaniments (think roast pork and apple; lamb and apricot; aged ham and peach).
There are too many aromas in one mouthful. Australian psychologist David Laing demonstrated that the brain can only recognise a limited number of smells at the same time. That’s not to say that a mix is not pleasant (think of spice blends such as garam masala); rather that the profile of individual aromas will not be discernible.

The power of other ingredients

Understanding the nature of pleasure provides the basis from which we can start to understand the power of different ingredients together. However, a warning should be provided at this point: flavour is complex. And, although happy to wade through details of experiments involving boiling celery and electronic noses, I would hate to be accused of extrapolating without a licence. Nevertheless, there are some fairly objective things we can say. Certain ingredients can enhance or decrease pleasure in the following ways:

1. Modify the perception of aroma

Things should taste of what they are, said Curnonsky, France’s first ever food writer. The following bring out the aromas of special ingredients:

Sweet substances: Recent experiments have proven that sugars accentuate the mango aroma of mangoes, but good cooks have known for years that sweetness brings out the flavour of sweet foods (think of the historic pairing of mace with potted shrimps, or the more recently adopted vanilla with crab or lobster).
Photo by SingChan

Sialagogues: Acid, salt and piquant substances (black pepper, cayenne pepper, ginger) are sialagogues (meaning they increase saliva), which enhances the perception of aroma.
Aroma enhancing vegetables. It’s not entirely clear how these magic vegetables work, but experiments testing the effects of certain aroma compounds in tomatoes and celery have confirmed that they do indeed intensify the aroma of other foods. According to Witherly, the white and light green alliums do the job too.

Some substances can have negative effects:

Tannin in red wines makes fish taste metallic
Sensations which linger (pungent and piquant foods such as pepper, onions and ginger) make aromas which dissipate quickly appear weaker.

2. Modify the perception of tastes

The aroma compounds of some ‘magic vegetables’ can enhance taste, for example celery intensifies umami, and tomatoes sweetness (see above)
Using several types of umami greatly magnifies the sense of umami-richness (for example, meat plus mushrooms plus parmesan cheese)
Sweetness decreases the perception of bitterness or sourness
Proteins reduce the astringency of tannins in red wine (why tannic red wine is used in sauces accompanying meat, but never for vegetables)
Piquancy can decrease the perception of sweetness.

Rules for combining flavours

Some concluding thoughts: what I found was that there is no such thing as an inherently bad combination of aromas, and that a match made in heaven is as much due to the associations which lie behind the ingredients as any alchemy between them. You could boil it down to a few rules:

Ensure there is lots of discernible aroma, including the top five for extra pleasure (roasted, fermented, smoked, herby or spicy)
- Keep special aromas separate
- Use aroma enhancers
Ensure umami, salt, sweetness and acid and fat are present in every mouthful, without there being an overall impression of sweetness, saltiness or sourness.
Provide richness by using fat and different types of umami, but make sure the richness is offset (by sweetness, pungency or heat in the case of umami, and acid, pungency or bitterness in the case of fat).
Link ingredients by cultural association or resonance to the eater.

Photo by Howard O Young

We don’t need science to prove what many already know: some ingredients do special things to our foods. One day, science may be able to tell us exactly why (perhaps a special eighth taste on the tongue will be found, linking to an undiscovered neural pathway in the brain).

But nothing will change in millions of kitchens across the world. If a culture is making heavy use of a few key ingredients, you can bet they have magic in them (for example, parsley and garlic in classical French cuisine; garlic, ginger, chilli and spring onion in Chinese). The best advice is this: copy them. And to enhance your pleasure, learn a little about the food culture. What are the stories behind the ingredients? What are their customs and traditions? You really will enjoy your meal more.

Bibliography

Baldwin, E.A., Goodner, K. and Plotto, A. (2008). Interaction of Volatiles, Sugars, and Acids on Perception of Tomato Aroma and Flavor Descriptors. Journal of Food Science, 73: S294–S307. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2008.00825.x

Drahl, C. Molecular Gastronomy Cooks Up Strange Plate-Fellows. Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 90, Issue 25, pp. 37-40. June 18, 2012.

Herz, R.S. (2005). Odor-associative learning and emotion: effects on perception and behaviour. Chem. senses (2005) 30 (suppl 1): i250-i251. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjh209

Kurobayashi, Y., Katsumi, Y., Fujita, A., Morimitsu, Y. and Kubota, K. Flavour Enhancement of Chicken broth from Boiled Celery Constituents. (2008). J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (2), pp 512–516. doi: 10.1021/jf072242p

Malundo, T.M.M., Shewfelt, R.L., Ware, G.O. and Baldwin E.A. (2001). Sugars and Acids Influence Flavor Properties of Mango (Mangifera indica), J. AMER. SOC. HORT. SCI. 126(1):115–121. 2001.

Page, K. and Dornenburg, A. The Flavor Bible. Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Prescott, J. Sensation and The Senses, in The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Gale Group, Inc. (via www.Answers.com).

Robinson, Jancis. The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Segnit, N. The Flavour Thesaurus. Bloomsbury, 2010.

Tortora, G.J. and Derrickson, BH. Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. Wiley, 2009.

Witherly, S. Why Humans Like Junk Food. iUniverse, 2007.

Text of this column © Mel Barrett, 2012

Photographs from Flickr used by Creative Commons License as attributed above

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Does size really matter?

May 12, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in The cookery column

A guest post by Mel Barrett

For those wondering where this rather meandering and verbose series is going to end up, let me remind you of our starting point: we are in search of some kind of system to help the domestic cook get dinner on the table night after night, without reaching for the recipe book.

finely shredded raw kohlrabi, cucumber, spring onion and red chilli, dressed with Maldon sea salt, black pepper and lime juice

finely shredded vegetables

In Column Two, I suggest that a system is eminently possible because, although the scope of possible cooking outcomes is vast in number and complexity (there are millions of potential dishes), there are actually comparatively few inputs (ingredients), to which we perform the same standard processes each time: we cut; we heat; we combine. Recipes tell us exactly what to do, specifying cutting techniques, heating methods and ingredients. In order to dispense with the ‘what to do’, we need to understand the ‘why’. We have started down the path of explaining why we might select one ingredient over another in previous columns on flavour and colour (though there is more still to come on this subject). Column Six tackles heat. This column is all about the blade – not how to wield it (there are courses and cookbooks aplenty on ‘knife skills’), but why.

Escoffier, legendary French chef who presided over the kitchens of some of London’s grandest hotels at the turn of the last century, wrote of a “frantic love of novelty” amongst the wealthy dining classes, which saw him labouring away at night, “completely broken with the fatigue of a heavy day”, in an attempt to discover original combinations which would “produce a vogue”. Thankfully, no such pressure exists in the home. But we do need inspiration. One technique we might borrow, used by professional innovators such as product developers, is to create new from old, whereby an existing idea or product is reconfigured using different combinations of existing variables. The task is “not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees”. (Arthur Schopenhauer.) In the kitchen, size and shape are two such variables.

What, then, can we see when it comes to size and shape? Thanks to a panoply of gadgets and implements, the only limits are our imagination. All foods can be left whole, cut to a size so small that the individual pieces are no longer discernible, or reduced to a range of dimensions in between. Food can be formed into geometric shapes (e.g. squares, rectangles, circles and ovals), organic shapes (irregular shapes commonly found in nature, e.g. rough stones and leaves) or symbolic shapes (precise man-made shapes with meaning, e.g. hearts and crosses). However, altering shape and size can affect flavour, texture and the ease with which the food can be prepared, so before substituting willy–nilly, here are a few considerations:

Shape

1. Geometric versus organic

Which shape to select is principally a matter of aesthetics, always subjective. Regular geometric shapes can suggest formality, particularly if they are arranged on the plate in a structured way. Oval shapes are considered more elegant by some than round. Ordered repetitive arrangements can be visually pleasing, for example layered rounds of potato in a gratin. Regular geometric shapes can be achieved in the following ways:

Round foods (e.g. beetroot, radishes, certain types of squash, balls of mozarella), cylindrical foods (e.g. courgettes, carrots, cucumber; spring onions, baguettes) or oval shaped foods (e.g. potatoes, aubergines) can be sliced widthways into rounds (using knife, slicing attachment on blender or mandolin), or into wedges. Rounds can be cut in half to create semi-circles.
Hollow or layered round foods (e.g. onions or foods which need seeds removing such as pumpkins) can be cut into rings and then crescents, or into wedges
Cylindrical foods can be sliced on the diagonal into ovals.
Firm foods can be cut into cubes (dice) or rectangular sticks (batons); vegetables can be shaped into oval barrels (‘turned’) with a turning knife.
Soft foods can shaped into balls using scoops or ballers, or ovals (‘quenelles’), using two spoons.
Minced or pureed foods can be formed by hand, mould or syringe into a variety of shapes.

implements for grating and pureeing

More naturally shaped shavings, slivers and chunks suit informal dishes, for example, rustic salads and stews. Irregular shaped foods, for example Jerusalem artichokes, peppers or small heads of cauliflower, can be sliced widthways or lengthways into interestingly shaped slices. Cylindrical foods can be sliced lengthways into long curvy oblongs (using knife, slicing attachment on blender, vegetable peeler or cheese slicer), or ‘roll cut’ (sliced on the diagonal then turned 90 degrees before each additional diagonal cut) to form pleasing shapes common in Chinese cooking. Soft foods (for example roasted peppers; bread; cheese) can be torn by hand. Leafy vegetables (e.g. cabbages and herbs) can be rolled into cylinders then cut with scissors or knife into undulating ribbons.

2. Solid versus hollow

Hollow shapes are perfect vehicles for trapping flavour. Consider whether there is a natural cavity which can be used, as in whole birds or vegetables such as peppers. If not, pockets for flavour can be created by scooping out soft centres before or after cooking (e.g. stuffed courgettes); by slicing horizontal cuts in flat, firm pieces of food (e.g. stuffed chicken breasts); by shaping malleable foods (for example, ridged tubes – rigatoni – and ‘little ears’ – orrechiette – made from pasta dough) or by rolling food, such as pastry, boned meat and cabbage leaves, around the flavouring.

Size

1. Large versus small

Foods presented whole can make a striking visual impression. Good candidates are those which convey an impression of bounty or extravagance, and can be easily shared at the table (e.g. a whole salmon; a truckle of cheese; a rib of beef), unusual or beautiful varieties (e.g. globe artichokes) or small foods, for example, scallops, quail and young vegetables such as new potatoes or young carrots (which should be no thicker than your little finger, according to Jane Grigson). There are practical reasons too for avoiding the knife: delicate food will disintegrate when cooked if cut too small (for example flakes of fish in a pie); large pieces provide good surface area coverage in a layered dish.

Small pieces can look dainty or elegant. Practically, they make for faster cooking and easier nibbling (important if food is to be eaten with fingers or chopsticks), but longer preparation times (if there is no food processor to hand). Very tiny pieces are more smoothly blended with other ingredients (e.g. in rosti, patty or stuffing), and easier to chew (why tough or fatty or cuts of meat are often minced). When it comes to ingredients used for flavour or texture, very small pieces can be dispersed throughout a dish, imparting magic to every bite (for example, a dish of purple sprouting broccoli sprinkled with garlic-and-olive-oil coated breadcrumbs is a very different dish to the same vegetable served plainly with garlic bread on the side). And of course, serving large chunks of pungent ingredients (e.g. raw garlic, chilli, ginger) will not endear you to the faint-hearted. .

2. Thick versus thin

Thick pieces – chunky wedges, fat chips – are suited to informal, everyday dining. Thin pieces, requiring greater skill and effort to produce, are associated with finesse and refinement. Thinner pieces have a greater surface area to volume than their thicker counterparts, which means more of the food is exposed to whatever substance they are surrounded by. This is good news for flavour lovers, should the coating be a delicious marinade; bad news for calorie counters, when it is fat (why French fries are generally more calorific than chunky chips). Food to be oven-roasted is best cut thick: too thin and it will dry out before browning. Conversely, meat, fish and vegetables destined for the more intense heat of the grill, barbecue or frying pan are best cut thinly, to avoid the problem of the surface becoming charred whilst the centre is still underdone (see Column Six, ‘How to cook anything’). Food which is difficult to chew or digest when raw can be enjoyed when it is cut very thinly, for example, certain vegetables, such as courgettes and celeriac.

3. Uniform versus irregular

If an ingredient is being cooked, it should be cut into even pieces, to avoid some being overdone whilst others are underdone. (Ingredients which cook at different rates should be cooked in stages). If ingredients are just being assembled then it is a matter of aesthetics. Precisely cut vegetables are one of the hallmarks of classical French cuisine, a sign of finesse. Anyone can hew a rough cube from a potato, but there will be no Cordon Bleu certificate for you if your petit brunoise (very small dice) are not 3mm cubed; your concasse (small dice) 6mm cubed; your fine julienne (thin sticks) 1.5 cm by 1.5cm by 5cm and your ‘turned’ vegetables 4-5cm with seven equal sides and two blunt ends. Preparing quantities of vegetables with such precision at speed takes much practice. In my opinion, the home cook has no need for such precision.

So, the next time your mind goes blank as you contemplate the question of dinner, consider using size and shape as your inspiration. Try vegetables paper-thin and raw, instead of chunky and cooked (shave ribbons of courgette and dress with lemon and olive oil for a delicious side dish; mix fine lengths of celeriac with mayonnaise like the French), or seek out young specimens of vegetables you would normally chop, and serve whole as a main feature of a salad. You never know, you may come up with a new global sensation, just like Escoffier…

References

Davidson, Alan, The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford University Press, 2006

Escoffier, A., A Guide to Modern Cookery, William Heinemann Ltd, 1952

Grigson, Jane, Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, Penguin Books, 1980

Krogerus, Mikael and Tschappeler, Roman, The Decision Book – Fifty models for strategic thinking, Profile Books, 2011

Spaull, Susan, Bruce-Gardyne, Lucinda, Leiths Techniques Bible, Bloomsbury, 2003

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Which colours would you like to eat tonight, darling?

March 13, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in The cookery column

A guest post by Mel Barrett

Mark Hix's Ruby Salad

Colour has been a consideration for many cooks over the years. It provides a major clue to the edibility of certain foods: green fruits and brown vegetables are those not at their best; blue substances have ‘poison’ written all over them. It is an indicator of the presence of different vitamins in plants, for example, orange vegetables contain beta carotene, which is turned into vitamin A. And in cultures well versed in symbolism it has often been used to load plates with meaning, for instance, the saffron-soaked foods of the middle-ages, coloured gold to ward off malevolence.

But beyond an ability to differentiate between a ripe fruit and an unripe one, and a vague intention to follow nutritionists’ advice to eat a ‘rainbow’ of colours, why should the home cook pay any attention to the consideration of colour? And, in a world where millions of people are surviving on peanut bars airlifted by the UN, is it even right to do so? This column aims to demonstrate that colour can actually be a tool to reduce the time spent contemplating food, as it provides a means of answering that perennial question: what shall we eat tonight? There are two ways to base your meal on colours:

Pick colours which make you feel good. Experiential confirmation of the link between colour and mood exists in spades, but experiments have now proven that red, orange and yellow (warm colours) have an energising effect on the body, raising blood pressure and, in the case of red, temperature too. Conversely, exposure to blue and green (cool colours) has been proven to have a calming effect. Can I say categorically that a plate of daal or a bowl of tomato soup will lift energy levels, and that a cucumber sandwich or a pile of peas will lower anxiety? No, but they are certainly worth a try over other, less benign, substances to which one might turn to alter mood.
Pick colours which look good. Colour is the main contributor to the visual appeal of food. The study of colour has occupied many great scientists and artists, some of whom dedicated whole careers to trying to formulate rules which explain why some colours work together better than others. Could we apply these to food?

Colour theory in a nutshell*

Colour theorists describe colour in three dimensions: hue, saturation and value. Hue is a colour’s basic label, e.g. red or yellow-green. Saturation refers to whether the hue is ‘pure’, or has been diluted with a neutral (black, white or grey), to create shades (hues to which black has been added, for example, brown, a shade of orange); tints, (hues to which white has been added, e.g. pink, a tint of red) or tones (hues to which grey has been added). Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a colour. Theorists talk about a ‘scale of values’, with white, yellow and orange hues at one end of the scale; blue, violet and black at the other. A whitened hue is much lighter than its pure hue, for example, lavender, a whitened version of violet, sits much nearer the light end of the scale than violet. Green, often linked with balance and equilibrium, sits in the middle.

Fig 1: click to enlarge

How to tell which of these pure hues, shades, tints, tones and values work together? Help is at hand in the form of the colour wheel, invented by Newton, and adapted over the centuries. There are various colour wheels in existence, however, a simple wheel consisting of the three primaries (the colours which cannot be obtained by mixing – red, yellow and blue), the three secondaries (the mix of a primary with its adjacent primary – orange, violet and green) and the six tertiaries (the mix of a primary with an adjacent secondary – variations of orange, violet and green) is adequate for our purposes (see Fig 1). Three useful principles can be gleaned from the colour theorists:

Colours work best when they are opposite each other on the wheel (‘complementary’), or related. Related colours include those next to each other (located between two primaries on the wheel), or spaced equidistantly around the wheel (at the points of a triangle and rectangle). Such groupings are known as colour schemes. They include the designated pure hues along with any of their shades, tones and tints, plus any of the neutrals, if desired.
Colour harmony can also be achieved through the way colour is used. Two techniques stand out: repeating one colour in multiple locations, or layering colours over one constant background colour.
The use of contrast makes compositions – be they paintings, room schemes or plates of food – more interesting. Using different colours of different intensities (i.e. shades and tints as well as the pure hue) and value (i.e. colours at different ends of the value scale) is the easiest way to add contrast. Black and white are effective at intensifying contrast.

Applying colour theory to food

There are a few differences between painter and cook. The cook must work with a much more limited palette, one containing few greys and hardly any blues, with little ability to mix pigments. Identifying where colours sit on the wheel is trickier and very subjective: many individual foods can be found in a multitude of different hues and shades, and unlike paint, do not come labelled with an internationally recognised colour code. And colour changes: vegetables containing chlorophyll will turn from bright to dull green if heated for too long; anthocyanin-laden food (e.g. certain fruits, red cabbage, aubergines) will vary shades of red through to violet depending on the acidity of the cooking liquid; white foods containing flavones (e.g.cauliflower) will discolour slightly in hard water. Despite these limitations, there are a few ideas which are worth incorporating:

Shop with a colour scheme in mind. Try classifying a few foods according to colour (the very subjective table below might help) and go shopping armed not with list, but colour scheme. There are numerous schemes; the following examples lend themselves well to the world of food:
red and green pairing

Complementary: Complementary schemes are simple – only two hues are used – but immensely pleasing. White or black can be added to intensify the effect, or add variety. The pairing of red and green occurs many times in nature (e.g. tomatoes on a vine; watermelon) and is used to striking effect in a Tricolore salad (mozzarella, tomato and basil). Red-violet and yellow-green star together in pistachio studded terrines, pea and ham soup and countless global interpretations of the dish cabbage and pork (e.g. Belgium’s endive and prosciutto; Germany’s sauerkraut and bacon; Ireland’s colcannon and boiled ham). Blue-green is the complementary of red-orange, explaining the beauty of dishes which combine dark cruciferous leaves, such as cavolo nero, with chorizo. Mussels – exquisite little parcels of the complementaries yellow-orange and blue-violet – need no other accompaniment on the plate.

A split complementary is variation of this scheme, whereby a colour plus the two colours either side of its complementary are used, for example, green with red-violet and red-orange (as demonstrated in Mark Hix’s Ruby Salad at the top of this article).

Tertiary: Tertiary colours are spaced equidistantly around the wheel in triangles. Red-orange is the colour of paprika, prawns and Thai red curry pastes; its equidistant tertiaries are blue-violet (dark, bluish aubergines) and yellow-green (olives, limes, coriander), used to stunning effect in plates of tapas and Thai curries. Red-violet is the colour of cured pork, radicchio, beetroot and red cabbage. Its equidistant tertiaries are yellow-orange and blue-green. This is a scheme made for cold cuts (ham, cornichons and slaws of red and white cabbages and carrots) and autumnal feasts (roasted beetroots, sweet potatoes and greens).
Colour harmony is never an issue when it comes to risottos, paella, stews and curries: the underlying colour unifies the plate and only an accent or two (in a complementary colour perhaps) is needed. Where there is no background colour, and no obvious colour scheme, scattering colour throughout, as opposed to keeping ingredients separate, may help to create unity (salads and pilaffs are good examples). Chefs employ this principle when they drizzle coloured reductions and purees in multiple locations across the plate.
Table 1: click to enlarge

Use contrast to make an impact. Too many light foods on one plate can be dull. The most striking plates contain a degree of contrast, for example, dark spinach with pale fish and béchamel; plates of mezze, where moody aubergine sits alongside milky feta and pitta; cheese boards graced with quince paste or grapes as black as the night. See Table 1 to the right, which is ordered from light to dark. Hues which are very close together on the wheel, although harmonious, can also make for a dull plate, for example, yellow ingredients such as yellow-pepper and sweetcorn on a bed of yellow-green lettuce; shaded and tinted versions of the hues, of which there are plenty in the cook’s paintbox (see Table 1), add interest.

If this all sounds a bit daunting, take encouragement from the fact that few great artists adhered slavishly to rules on colour. Chevreuil himself, one of the founding fathers of colour theory, stated that it was “artistic intuition that remained ultimately supreme in the composing of a great work of art”. And if inspiration fails, draw the curtains, turn off the lights and serve dinner by candlelight, remembering the words of Francis Bacon: “All colours will agree in the dark”.

*with apologies to artists everywhere

References

Davidson, Alan, The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford University Press, 2006

Feisner, Edith Anderson, Colour, Laurence King Publishing, 2006

Kemp, Martin, The Science of Art, Yale University Press, 1992

McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking, Simon & Schuster, 1997

Peterson, Sarah T., The Cookbook that Changed the World, Tempus Publishing, 2006

Blog: Diane Mize. http://visualcomposing.blogspot.com/2009/02/hue-scheming-element.html

Acknowledgement

Colour wheel in Fig 1 from The Color Wheel Company

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An update on updates

January 29, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in General

Now we’re well into 2012, and based on comments from readers, we want to do something a little different on the blog.

The weekly news updates will move to a monthly format, and we’ll be writing other articles here which we hope will be useful to our members, their customers and to all those interested in locally produced, wholesome food.

We also hope to publish some guest posts from members and other interested parties, so if there’s something you’d like to submit, please contact me at “tess dot marshall at gmail.com”, I’d love to hear from you.

And if there are any topics in particular you’d like us to cover here, please contact me or let us know in the comments below.

Have a great week everyone.

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Weekly round-up – 8 January 2012

January 8, 2012 by Tess Giles Marshall in Weekly round-up

Welcome to this week’s round-up of interesting snippets from around the world of wholesome food, and a Happy New Year to you all.

Smallholders’ Club

Smallholder magazine is starting up a new page for groups and associations related to smallholding. If you, or a group you know of, should be part of it, please get in touch with them. All details are here.

Improving grassland

At The Accidental Smallholder there’s an article covering the basics of maintaining and improving grassland, which may be helpful for those new to it. They also remind us that harrowing doesn’t have to be done by machine, there are still quite a few working horses and ponies on smallholdings. They have a video which covers how to prepare a highland pony for work in the field. Click here to read the article and see the video.

Animal husbandry

Not all smallholders rear animals for meat. The subject tends to bring up strong feelings and arguments. Some of this is sentimentality, some genuine belief that eating and using animal products is wrong. There’s a good discussion of this from the perspective of an American homesteader here at Tiny r(E)volution.

And finally…

Transition Networks are launching a film shortly called In Transition. It promises to be very interesting and encouraging. To see a trailer on YouTube, click here.

Have a great week, everyone.

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Weekly round-up – 18 December 2011

December 18, 2011 by Tess Giles Marshall in Weekly round-up

Welcome to this week’s round-up of interesting snippets from around the world of wholesome food, the last one of the year.

Thinking of adding sheep to your smallholding?

The Smallholder Series has added a set of DVDs to their products called Sheep on Your Smallholding. These DVDs cover everything from establishing your flock to the business side of raising sheep. They can be bought individually or as a set. This is how they describe it:

The series is fully ‘hands on’ and features demonstrations with experts in sheep health and husbandry, and case studies of real people who have made a success of small-scale sheep farming.

For more information on these DVDs and their other products, click here.

Voles and Polytunnels

Voles don’t normally cause too much damage on the smallholding, but if they get into your polytunnel, it can be a different matter. They love tender seedlings, roots, anything with a high water content. The solution is to relocate them out of the polytunnel back onto the land, and a fine wire mesh fence and gate at the entrance to the polytunnels will keep them out. To catch them, use a humane Longworth trap. You can read all about it here.

Time for reflection?

Freezing fingers and toes regardless, this can be a time for reflection, for planning, or just for enjoyment. At Bealtaine Cottage, they’re enjoying the Enchantment of Midwinter, Arigna Gardener is looking back at her Favourite Pics of 2011, The Accidental Smallholder is relieved that her sheep Dickie is recovering from a bout of rhododendron poisoning, while at Allotment Growers, they’ve been suffering from the Internet Blues.

Wholesome (but fancy!) breads

Stollen is a pretty recent Christmas tradition in this country, but this delicious sweet German treat is now firmly established. For a delicious recipe from Butcher Baker, click here. And from Italy we have the sublime Panetonne (my personal favourite). If you fancy making your own, check out this recipe from Wild Yeast. From Greece we get Christopsomo and France gives us traditional Provençal Christmas Bread. Then finally there’s a River Cottage recipe for a gorgeous-looking fruit-filled Christmas loaf – click here. Let us know if you try any of them out.

A very merry festive season to you all

We’re signing off now until 2012, so from all of us at the Wholesome Food Association, thanks to all of our members and supporters, and we wish you all the happiest of festive seasons.

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Weekly round-up – 11 December 2011

December 11, 2011 by Tess Giles Marshall in Weekly round-up

Welcome to this week’s round-up of interesting snippets from around the world of wholesome food.

A wild and windy week!

Scotland has had a rough time of it this week with hurricane force winds, freezing temperatures and snow. So far as we know, all our members have come through OK, but the big clear up continues.

For the householder

As the weather freezes over, there’s still an opportunity to grow nourishing food indoors. One of the easiest ways to do this for ordinary householders is windowsill herbs. For a useful summary of which are the best ones to grow, click here.

Another way of producing your own food in small spaces is via hydroponics. Windowfarms is a good site with full instructions for building your own window growing spaces using mostly recycled materials. As well as instructions, you’ll find a community of people using this method, swapping ideas and advice.

And I just discovered a great site devoted to both the practical and community elements of bread-making. London-based Virtuous Bread run courses in break-making and in how to start your own baking business. You can also find out more about what they’re all about at their YouTube channel, including the introductory video below. It seems to me that their values are very similar to those of us here at Wholesome Food.

And finally… free seeds

Farm In My Pocket are being very generous at the moment – they are providing free seeds in return for a stamped addressed envelope. Read more about it here.

That’s if for now, have a great week, everyone.

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