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The North Staffordshire Oatcake

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Some of the best regional foods come from traditional workplaces. In Cumberland, homesick German miners were treated to a local remake of something they were familiar with from back home. This coiled sausage is instantly recognized as what it is but it’s not a Cumberwors, it’s our own interpretation and by all accounts, the Germans were very pleased with what we came up with.

The Cornish pasty was designed for the miners too, this time those from Cornwall. A pasty is a complete meal along with a carrying handle. This was eaten holding the pastry ridge which was thrown away to prevent poisoning from the miners own fingers. Norwegian sailors brought lapskaus into the UK. In Liverpool it got the name Scouse, in North Wales it is called Lobscouse and in Stoke on Trent, Lobby. Basically this stew is made with whatever spare ingredients were available but traditionally lamb or mutton was used. If meat couldn’t be found in Liverpool, then it was Blind Scouse.

Our very own homegrown delicacy has to be the North Staffordshire Oatcake. Also known as the Tunstall Tortilla or the Potteries Poppadom, the oatcake has been a firm favourite in Stoke on Trent since the late 18th century. Given that they are made using yeast and sturdier flours they are ideal for wrapping. This is the traditional way of serving them, as a case for breakfasts and for potters and miners to take to work. Expatriate Stokies can get them delivered by mail order, but they are still little known outside of the Potteries let alone anywhere but Staffordshire. These are a unique foodstuff and are very versatile for grilling, layering, baking and even microwaving. For the original consumer, this was an easy lunch to unpack at break and eat with just your hands.

If we go back to the Cumberland sausage and the Cornish pasty, what do they have in common, but not with the North Staffordshire oatcake? For the first two, their names and method of manufacture are protected by European law. The oatcake does not have this protection and is such a local delicacy. “The Staffordshire” cheese has protected designation of origin and it goes remarkably well with oatcakes. Given the history and the unique local-ness, when does the campaign begin to protect the oatcake?

Tags: north, oatcake, staffordshire
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The Brussel Sprout

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

Love them or hate them, they are here. The Brussel bit comes from records showing that they were grown in Belgium from around 15 something. In the 18th century they migrated to France, Britain and in the 19th century to the States via French settlers. They have a peak season of late November till early January, so that’s probably the reason they ended up on the Christmas table.

Sprouts get maligned as soggy, nasty tasting vegetables with a bad smell. These are all tied together due to a chemical that leaches out when they are overcooked. Ideally, they should be steamed, roasted or boiled, but ideally steamed for 6-7 minutes. This preserves the gentle peppery flavour and also all the good chemicals. The humble Brussel has potent levels of a chemical that has anti-cancer properties, in particular colon cancer. As well as this, they are also rich in vitamin A and C, fibre and iron. Overcooking not only loses them flavour but also beneficial nutrients.

Cooking is as much a family tradition as it anything else. Once the sprouts have been trimmed and any off-coloured leaves are removed, many folks go onto putting a cross on the base. There is no proof either way that this benefits cooking, but it is a great way of getting the family together to prepare the dinner.

Leftover sprouts are fantastic chopped up with bacon as part of bubble and squeak or in potato rissoles for Boxing Day. A sprout is not just for Christmas then?

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The Cumberland sausage

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

I was born in Westmorland, which is the southern county of the merged Cumbria. To the north, just over Dunmail Raise lies the other county of Cumberland. Then there are bits of inherited Lancashire across the bay from Morecambe, but today is about Cumberland. A lot of traditional food comes with some proper history behind it. The Cornish pasty has the rim on it so that it can be handled but gets thrown away without poisoning the diner with mine deposits. Scouse (or Lobby in the Potteries) comes from lobscouse a dish cooked by the Norwegian canalmen who journeyed inland from Liverpool and past Stoke on Trent.

So is the same with the Cumberland sausage. Before we commence, this is not the linked sausages found in supermarket fridges but the traditional coiled sausage made in Cumberland. The story goes that in the 16th century, parts of Cumberland were home to many German migrant miners. These homesick Germans wanted a sausage that was closer to their own taste. So a thicker sausage, made in a single coil, from coarse ground meat and quite often good quantities of pepper was created.

This has gone full circle as “traditional Cumberland sausage” is seeking protected name status from the EU. The standard states that the sausage must be made from at least 80% pork, no gristle, no skin, no offal and be prepared as a coil and not linked.

One real treat is seeing a full Cumberland sausage in a pan on an Aga in a friend’s guest house in Ambleside. If the sausage can be made to this premium level of quality, it is an amazing product.

Tags: cumberland, sausage
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Kill and cure | Chemistry and Salt Beef

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Love them or hate them, E-numbers are a fact of life. Their range of activity can be from the totally benign to the borderline banned. This time, we are going to look at one of the safer E numbers that is very close to my heart E251 or sodium nitrate. This chemical is used in a variety of industrial applications from solar panels to gun powder. It is often used as a substitute for potassium nitrate, saltpetre, in the making of blackpowder for fireworks and flintlocks. Our interest in it today, is in the preservation of food, especially meat products like salt beef, pastrami and salami.

How can a piece of meat survive for so long without being cooked and no food borne pathogens to speak of? In this case, by very small quanitities of a chemical that appeals to the very bugs that can be fatal in quantity. Pathogens such as botulism, the most deadly bacteria you can come across in food hygiene, loves nitrates. They are quite happy to make a diet of them. However, there is a side effect. When the critter passes them out, they are converted to nitrites. If the nitrite is ingested, this is fatal to the bacteria.

So when you see that pink hue in the salami, take reassurance that the same chemical is also responsible for keeping your food safe. At this time of year, the pigs would be ready for slaughter and any way of extending the food value of each animal was not only beneficial to the family but respectful to the animal. Making use of this type of preservation is true nose to tail eating and also something that has been in human history for centuries.

Tags: charcuterie, pastrami, preserving, salami, salt beef, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite
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The Perfect Breakfast …

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

This all started with another article in The Times food supplement, good content, sadly widely unavailable online. Now here is something that people will always have an opinion over, breakfast. Whether the subject is health or the best greasy spoon in town, the breakfast is almost infinite in it’s choices. There is a decision making tool called morphological analysis which allows you to combine difference columns of ideas to get new ideas. This can be easily attached to the Great British breakfast, for example:

Base: White toast, brown toast, muffin, pancake, fried bread, bread roll, seaweed
Meat: Bacon, sausage, haggis, blackpudding, cockles,
Eggs: Fried, scrambled, poached
Extras: Beans, tomato, mushrooms

This list is not exhaustive and certainly each of these can also have further multiple choices. Then there is all the healthy stuff with fruit, grains and acidic milk which should not be talked about in these circles I remember once trying a beast of a breakfast in a town just outside of Glasgow; Lorne sausage (the square sliced stuff), bacon and scrambled egg all wrapped in a giant Scotch pancake. This was a fantastic treat once a week thing, but it amazes me how breakfast is taken so lightly. It can be one of the best times of the day to catch up with family and enjoy simple fair first thing in the morning when everyone is fresh and ready for the day.

When you start your day with just a small coffee, how long does the morning feel ?

Tags: analysis, breakfast, british, morphological
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The Apprentice – How to REALLY make sausages

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

After watching popular BBC show on 7th October 2010, two teams competing to learn, make and sell their own sausages, we had to put the story straight. As some of you know we make our own sausages, charcuterie and smoked meats, so this was now personal. One team went for the pile it high, sell it cheap model. They went for cheap meat, maximum non-meat and, well you can guess the rest. One classic moment was when they chucked all the ingredients into the mixer and then hoped they had a working recipe. Try that with a cake recipe and Jane Asher will be round your house with a cricket bat So the rusk clumped, the moisture went everywhere and they produced cheap errrm slurry in a skin. The other team went for a premium sausage with a quality take, I won’t knock anyone going down that route as they still had a steep learning curve ahead.

OK, let us look at the difference between a good sausage and the wretched insult to the poor piggy that team “bloke” produced.

Meat content:
Pork sausage needs to contain 42% meat by EU regulation. By the time you take in allowable fat and connective tissue, the recognisable lean meat content is 19% of the sausage. A good sausage has a higher meat content, at least greater than 80% of which most is lean meat with some fat. Fat is flavour, adds moisture and helps to bind and hold the sausage. Not too much fat though, too much of a good thing and all that.

Rusk:
This is the part where the boys really buggered up. Rusk, dried breadcrumbs, biscuit or cous cous can be used to help with moisture retention in the meat, but need to be soaked first to plump them up. If not, you have hard lump bits in the sausage that are useless at balancing moisture once they are in the casing. Rusk also helps to cling to the fat and the meat, binding. Presoaked rusk holds the sausage texture together, regulates fluid and gives an extra anchor or other flavours. If you get a build up of leaking fluids in a cooking sausage, it boils, turns to steam and then the casing explodes. These little eruptions are what give the sausage the nickname, banger.

The rusk and added fluids should not be much more than 10% of the sausage. To complete the 100%, there are a couple of legit natural chemicals, extra ingredients and the casing. Herbs, cheese, fruit and spices are the private recipes that few sausage makers will impart. The casing is a matter of preference but something edible after cooking is very desirable.

Bangers is a Great, British term that has history and meaning, much like going for a Burton. More on that one another day…

Tags: apprentice, making, sausage
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Bitter Sweet addiction …

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Kids get hooked on this from an early age
Strangers in dark clothes break in and leave parcels behind
It’s produced in tropical countries in secret locations
Tons get smuggled through airports every year
People in clinical outfits refine it

Some call it Black Magic, some call it Eastern Promise, we call it …

CHOCOLATE

You have to love an ingredient that can be itself and many other things as well. Dirty, dark bitter high cocoa chocolate in little bars that compete with class A drugs and truffles from Alba for price. Chicken and chocolate? Yep, ask the Mexicans, mole poblano is a highly skilled dish that takes much practise. Nothing is simple about chocolate, it comes in many different grades and the true craft of the chocolatier can take years to master. I once spent time with such a master in Edinburgh. There was a group of us learning the basics of homemade truffles, it really brought out the inner child. Watching an consultant orthopedic surgeon trying not to lick his fingers after dipping the gorgeous creations into cocoa powder was a true test of endurance. This on the back of a mild hangover from a faculty dinner was probably a true show of the healing power of chocolate.

The Times had a whole food supplement dedicated to chocolate last week, but due to their website PayWall, we can only tell you about it, hence no photo. With this in mind,we have dug out a video of Chef Dan (Daniel if his mum is watching though) from his demo at the Staffordshire Show this year. How to make Chocolate Truffles on You Tube

Tags: chocolate
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Bang, Banger … You’re dead

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

Sausages, how they should be.

In the food section of The Times today was a main feature on sausages and their health properties. Apparently a large cancer research foundation and Harvard found increased risks to health caused by the eating of the humble sausage. In one study it was concluded that the increase of 20% in instances of bowel cancer could be attributed to eating one sausage per day. They blamed this on the chemicals, the fats and additional preservatives and salts used in the manufacture of sausage. Sadly due to The Times adopting their subscription only online version, I can’t provide you a link.

In previous articles we have looked at the manufacture of sausages and how a proper home-made, hand crafted sausage should be put together. In defence of this great British tradition, it must be said like any other tasty treat, we should not overindulge. If sausage made from decent cuts of the animal, with natural fellows and minimum preservatives and chemicals bound in a natural casing or even a synthetic casing will hold few perils for the occasional feast.

The astounding part of this article was that anything up to 5% of sausage could be derived from chemical, a minimum meat content, dependent on the meat, can be as low as 42 percent, with meat being a very subjective term.

As many of you know how we like our sausages, we make our own sausages, we sometimes even smoke sausages and recently we have started experimenting with our own range of salami and other charcuterie. Like much of British food, there has been a revival and we hope to see the Great, British sausage brought out as a true hero of our nation’s culinary heritage. When you pass by those sordid pink slurry filled plastic fingers in the fridges and freezers of this nations mass sellers, compare those to the often excellent sausages produced by smaller caring producers. Some supermarkets stock such things and they are worth hunting down.

Think … Bangers or Trash ?

Tags: british, home, made, sausages
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All smoke and mirrors?

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Some would say that this ancient method of food preservation is more of an art than a science we would prefer to comment on this as a craft. Smoking adds not only the ability to store food for longer, which was the traditional use of this method, but also in modern times to increase the flavour of the produce. Smoking has two basic steps. First is in the curing of the produce. Second is in the smoking of the cured item.

Curing can either be there to draw out the initial moisture from the surface of the ingredients or to act as a preservation in its own way. It can be argued that smoking does little more than fumigate produce and it is the cure which provides the longer term storage. The basic cure can be little more than salt to draw moisture and a flavourant which would then absorb partially into the outside of the produce before the smoking. Other cures involve such as saltpetre. These provide a long-term protection from bacteria for the meat and also her in helping to maintain the flavour. Use of salt is also there to prevent the fats (rancid. As a result of the surface cure, the produce is now able to absorb the flavour from the smoke more readily. Curing can take anything from one hour for a simple curing upto two weeks for a full salt beef and further for air drying of hams.

To smoke produce, the decision comes about three components; hot or cold, the flavour, and intensity of the smoke. Hot smoking effectively cook the product, cold smoke provides purely the smoke as would be seen with most forms of smoked salmon. The flavour of the smoke is derived from the wood and any other additions that gives the unique taste. Additionally you will need to control the volume of smoke within the unit you are producing your ingredients. A highly concentrated smoke may lead an acrid aftertaste whereas too little smoke could mainly just make produce that stinks of fag smoke.

One of our favourite ingredients is made using venison. This is cured in a coarse salt and sugar cure for about an hour. It is washed off and then dried. We then apply a rub of secret herbs and spices. Then it is hot smoked in maple wood until a specific core temperature is reached. This provides tender thin slices of venison which we then serves as part of a starter dish.

Smoking is something which can be undertaken at home but be careful as it can form an addiction. It may start with a basic unit from under £100 which could work on your kitchen worksurface, and end up to spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on extremely accurate smoking apparatus.

Tags: food preservation, smoked food, smoking, venison
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Salami | A Slice of Science

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Why would you make your own salami? It’s the same as climbing the mountain, because you can. A couple of months ago we got the necessary components from our charcuterie supplier and a pile of minced Packington pork from our butcher. The aim was to try and gain some understanding of how this great ingredient is made and whether it can be adapted with a British flavour. A late Saturday was spent getting the measuring of very small quantities of various powders right in proportion to the volume of pork we had on hand. Next came the patient preparation of the ox-middle casing, which is a reasonably unpleasant task. Finally, the stuffing and tying. So by about midnight, the first trial batch of salami was ready. This then needs an initial drying out before it can be hung to dry and age.

Preserved meat was born out of the necessity to extend the life of scarce produce. Traditionally pigs were slaughtered in the autumn and the pork was given extra storage from making pies, hams, sausages and bacon. The practice of salami making takes this even further by combining a number of different preservation methods in one product. First there is the creation of an environment too acidic for most harmful organisms. Then preserving salts that are toxic to pretty much the rest. Finally the air drying reduces the moisture content, which inhibits the growing of bugs and prevents the fats becoming rancid.

So science can be tasty

Tags: british, experiment, homemade, Packington, pork, salami
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