Recipes And Cooking Tips.

Recipes and cooking tips.

 

Learning to cook.

I have had such an incredible response to the blog i wrote about my journey with MSG, so this really is the journey after my diagnosis.

 

Once i had realised that i could no longer use instant food products i had to re-educate myself with how to cook even the most basic of foods. Here I will show show some of the basic techniques that I had to learn so as to not use chemical food enhancers.

I didn't want to give up my most favorite foods.

 

Gravy!

Here in the UK, one of the most iconic meals that is readily associated with us Brits, is the humble roast dinner. Featuring a meat roast, like chicken, lamb, or beef, served with roast potatoes and vegetables, all covered with a rich silky gravy. Like many other thousands and thousands of people every day in the UK, and all over the world, we used a stock cube, or some form of instant gravy mix.

They all contain high doses of MSG. My wife used to crumble a stock cube into spaghetti bolognese, and I could never work out what effected me!

 

Let me make it quite clear! You don't need stock cubes! Or instant gravy mixes!

They don't add any extra flavour except chemicals. Flavour is achieved by reducing down the gravy.

 

How to make it.

I used a combination of a recipes from Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver. ( Complete Cookery Course and Ministry of Food) Thank you Jamie, Delia!

 

The only way to make authentic gravy is to roast the joint on a bed of stock vegetables.

Onions are effectively what makes the gravy brown! Always buy these vegetables from the supermarket as a matter of routine. You will find that you use them all the time.

 

Ingredients:

3 onions sliced

2 carrots sliced and quartered.

2 sticks of celery chopped.

2 cloves of garlic

Dried or fresh herbs.(Thyme, Rosemary)

Extra virgin olive oil. ( First cold press of olives- Remember this has been used for thousands of years!)

Plain four

Salt and pepper.

 

 

1. Cut up all the ingredients as above and lay in a baking tray. Sprinkle with the herbs, oil, salt and pepper.

2. Place the roast joint on top of the vegetables.

3. Cook the joint in the normal way

4. After cooking, remove the joint from the roasting tray and allow to rest. Next, take a masher and really go to town on the now cooked vegetables in the roasting tray, reducing to a pulp.

5. Add approx 1 desert spoon of plain flour per person into the roasting tray. The flour will begin to absorb all the fat from the meat juices. If you have cooked chicken or another really fatty meat you may not need all the fat so drain some off before adding the flour.

6.The mix will look a bit odd at this point, then on a low heat still in the baking tray, add some optional red or white wine, or any other tipple you might have in the house!

7. Add stock, i normally use the water from the vegetables that are by now cooked.Or pre made stock if you have it.

8. Using a whisk, begin to break up the floury mix , use a spatula to loosen all the stuck on onions and vegetables around the bottom of the pan. The gravy will begin to go brown and thicken.

Continue using the whisk to break up any lumps, but don't worry to much as the whole lot gets sieved.

9. Add a little salt and pepper to season. 

10.Once thickened, allow the gravy to reduce down for about 10 mins on a low heat, taste to adjust the seasoning, then pour the whole lot through a sieve into a saucepan, gently bring back to boil and simmer until ready.

 

Depending on what joint of meat you have used, the gravy will take on a slightly different colour, this is normal.

We normally make more than we need and freeze it, so when we don't have a roast joint, we have some gravy made for other meals.

I hope to add pictures the next time i cook this.


Look at this quote from Delia Smith's cook book First published 1978.
" When this book was first published I wrote that, if i was making a soup containing the delicious juices and flavour of, say, carrots or leeks, I would not really wish to add ingredients like hydrolised protein, ribonucleotides and monosodium glutamate, which are constituents of the average stock cube. Ten years later I find the same ingredients are present, alongside the declaration that there are no artificial colours or preservatives. That statement may well be true, but there are still some odd things lurking in the average stock cube. The problem for me with these 'flavour enhancers' is that they cannot avoid introducing their own chemical flavours to compete with the natural flavour of other ingredients." ( Ref, Delia Smith's complete cookery course 1992 edition Page 62.)

She was right wasn't she! I was shocked to see this statement when i was learning to cook gravy. Like everybody else I just assumed that there was no other way to make gravy without the familiar red little stock cube!