Golden, crunchy chicken nuggets. Nutrition and sedition in the nanny-less state

Some children will eat anything. The Pintos (my two nephews) will eat chicken, in nugget, ‘tuckey’ (that is, Kentucky Fried Chicken) and grilled form. That’s about it. And frozen vegetable mix with rehydrated mash potato. And ice berg lettuce. And ice-cream, chocolate, cake, ice-cream, cheese, chips (crisps and fries), pancakes with honey and bananas. Ok, so there are probably fussier children.

Home made chicken nuggets, crumbed with the crumbs of stale bread, baked and not deep fried, served with salad and vegetables manages to satisfy their limited appetites without destroying my principles.

Although I swear they can tell the difference. And to them, homemade is simply not as good. It lacks the salt and oil of pre-prepared chicken nuggets. The bread from which I make crumbs is multigrain, sourdough, denser and not as sweet or salty as a commercial crumb mix or batter. The vegetables are not as soft. The mash potatoes never as weirdly smooth as rehydrated powder (which I have never tasted and therefore cannot know how on earth I would emulate it).

And it’s hard work. Crumbing chicken (dip in milk, dip in flour, dip in egg, dip in crumbs ...), boiling potatoes then mashing them, dicing and blanching vegetables. I do this once in a blue moon. I get why countless parents don’t. It’s because they have something else to do with those several hours. Every day.

But what I don’t get is how chicken nuggets, of all things, became the food that children eat (also frozen fish fingers, a culinary abomination I cannot fathom). There are lots of things we could serve to children that take no time and do not come highly processed and swimming is sugar, salt and fat. And yet we, as a general culture, collectively facilitate frozen nuggets and frozen vegetables (which are actually not significantly processed, being snap frozen with little added to them) and pizza and packets of chips and muesli bars and cookies.

I’ll admit I don’t know the first thing about raising children. But the “food” we, as a society, now feed and make available to children, is also the food that we are collectively consuming as adults. Pre-prepared and packaged and frozen and take away foods. Foods low in nutrients and high in calories. Foods which don’t feature adequate vegetables and fruits. Foods with added fats and sugars and salts, well beyond what we need.

Our children may well recover from the food we feed them (although the stats are not encouraging. More children are more overweight than ever before recorded. Similarly, more adults. We will die fat but not alone). But we adults (on the whole) have not really demonstrated that we know any better. That we are able or willing to eat any differently.

Governments do little to intervene. Heaven forbid ‘they’ tell ‘us’ what to eat. But when say we don’t believe in the nanny state we are effectively saying ‘let us choose to make ourselves and our children sick’. When we compound this idiocy by further criticising ‘big taxes’ – which pay for schools and education programs and public health campaigns and hospitals – we are saying ‘please also make it impossible for us to treat the consequent illnesses’. No one is to blame, we are all to blame.

We buy convenient food because it is convenient. The price we pay – in dollars and in time – is simply not commensurate to the sugar-fat payload. Of course, there are healthy, cheap, quick alternatives. Salads. Lentils. Steamed vegetables. Brown rice. Fresh fruit. Porridge. Chickpeas. But they don’t taste nearly so sweet-salty-tasty (just like heroin is so much more effective than paracetamol).

Make it from scratch. Not every time, but once or twice. Know the effort that goes into making good food. Understand the ingredients. Read the labels. Read the nutritional information. If governments and business refuse to take responsibility for our health and wellbeing, and we refuse to let them, then let’s grow up and take responsibility for ourselves.

Crunchy baked chicken nuggets with sourdough crumbs

Serves 6

1 kg chicken meat, trimmed of skin, sinew and fat. Cut into bite sized peices
½ loaf stale sourdough bread
3 cloves garlic
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 ½ cups cornmeal (ie, semolina or polenta)

Preheat oven to 190ºc. Line two baking trays with baking paper and lightly brush with olive oil.

Cut the bread into chunks and blitz in a food processor with the garlic until finely crumbed. Season with salt and pepper and a little paprika (optional). Emply into a large bowl or plate.

Beat the eggs together in a dessert bowl, add about 2 tsbp water or milk. Set aside.

Pour the milk into a separate dessert bowl, set aside.

Place the cornmeal into a large bowl or plate.

From left to right, arrange the milk, cornmeal, egg and breadcrumbs.

Dip a chicken piece into the milk, then coat in cornmeal, then dip into the egg and then press into the bread crumbs. Place on the baking tray, and repeat.

Cook in the oven for approximately twelve minutes, turn each nugget over and cook for a further three to five minutes. They should be golden and crunchy (to test if cooked, cut one in half. It’s not rocket science).

Serve with blanched vegetables and homemade tomato sauce.

Eats roots and leaves: nose-to-tail celery and celeriac soup*

Wastefulness. At one end of the input-output spectrum we throw away millions of tonnes of perfectly edible food every year.

At the other end of the spectrum, we limit, and therefore waste, the options available as food. Our environmental impact is such that species are become extinct at an alarmingly exponential rate (they ate dodos people. And don’t even get me started on the implications of bee extinction**). In terms of food production and consumption we are also voluntarily limiting the variety of species that we chose to eat***. And even more so, we are choosing only to consume a very small part of those species that we do choose to eat.

Homo sapiens, the smart men, need to eat smarter. Nose-to-tail eating is a brilliant slogan for us carnivores. ‘Eats roots and leaves’ captures this for the herbivores among us. It’s true that not every part of every plant is edible. Some are in fact harmful. But beetroot leaves, broccoli stalks, grape vine leaves, and pumpkin seeds – all edible. Orange rind and pineapple skins make beautiful marmalade. Watermelon rind can be turned into pickles.

And pretty much every part of celery can be devoured.

Most of us are familiar with the stalks – the crunchy light green part, great with hummus or peanut butter (that may be my particular fetish ...). Wash, cut, throw away the leaves, right?

Alternatively – eat it all. Young celery leaves are lovely in salad. Older leaves can be blanched like English spinach or oven dried as crunchy snacks or even powdered for a concentrated celery flavoured dust. Even the tiny seeds are edible. As is the root.

Celeriac is a knobbly, bulbous root of a variety of celery. It has a subtle celery flavour and can be eaten raw (for example, julienned in French remoulade, a kind of mustard mayonnaise salad), roasted or fried (a little like potato, but less starchy) or steamed and pureed (try: half potato, half celeriac, significant amounts of butter, delicious).

Which all leads to soup: with a light creamy texture and a fresh celery taste, it is all the comfort of winter with all the promise of spring. Using every part of the celery plant.

* For those with a one track mind, the incorrect insertion of a comma can make all the difference. See Lyn Truss’ excellent work on gramma, Eat, Roots and Leaves

** In a nutshell, bees fertilise flowers. Fertilised flowers grown into seed producing fruit. See producing fruit are a) edible, and b) the basis upon which other flower-producing plants grow. Fewer bees means reduced fertilisation, which impacts on crops. Bees are a big deal for the farming sector. And bees are very sensitive to environmental change.

*** This is more complicated, because on one level this is being limited for us by the agricultural and retail sectors, but en masse, we-the-human-race are limiting our choices.


Thick celery and celeriac soup

1 bunch celery
1 brown onion
1 garlic clove
100 gms finely chopped bacon (optional)
1 celeriac (about 500g), skin removed and roughly chopped
1 lt vegetable or chicken stock
2 small potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ cm dice
Salt and pepper to taste
Sour cream to serve

Celery powder (in advance)*

Preheat oven to 50ºc.

Remove celery leaves. Spread out on an oven tray, bake in oven for around 45 minutes, or until dehydrated. When completely dry, blend in a food processor until finely powdered. Remove any spiky bits of stalk. Store in an airtight container (as with other dried herbs and spices, usually good for about 6 months).


Celery and celeriac soup

Finely dice the onion and 3 celery stalks (eat remaining stalks as a snack with peanut butter or hummus or tzadziki) and mince the garlic.

Combine with bacon in a large heavy based saucepan, and cook over a low heat until the onion is starting to soften. The low heat will melt the bacon fat – if not using bacon, add a teaspoon of olive oil.

Meanwhile, in a separate pot, blanch the potato dice in boiling water until cooked through (about 5-10 minutes).

When the onion is soft, add the celeriac and half the stock. Bring to the boil. Once boiling, add half the remaining stock and continue to cook until the celeriac is soft enough to smash with the back of a spoon. This takes about 25 minutes.

Blend the soup in a food processor or with a bar mix until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Return to saucepan and add remaining stock. If the soup is too thick, add a little water. Stir in the cooked potato and heat through.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a generous sprinkling of celery powder.

* I started making celery salt and got side-tracked - and voila, celery powder.

Lumpfish caviar. An ugly truth.

According to the United States Custom Service, ‘Caviar is the eggs or roe of sturgeon preserved with salt. It is prepared by removing the egg masses from freshly caught fish and passing them carefully through a fine-mesh screen to separate the eggs and remove extraneous bits of tissue and fat’.

Caviar is a textbook example of the way food exposes the gap between, and the intersection of, ethics and aesthetics. This can be summarised by the phrase: ‘it’s wrong, but it tastes so right’.

It’s not just that it comes from an endangered species* or that is has been periodically banned from importation (and hence illegal) in several countries or even that the roe is extracted by a process which can be described as involuntary-fish-abortion**. It is that caviar costs about £6000 / $US 10,000 per kilo***, which, to pick a country at random, is roughly equivalent to the average annual income of someone living in South Africa, home of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, or ten times the average annual income of someone in say, Nepal****.

Caviar is a nutritionally pointless food, used mainly as a garnish and status symbol. Pretty, shimmery, salty, food-bling.

The lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus), by most accounts, is not a pretty fish. “Benthic species dine upon sessile invertebrates and mollusks. Pelagic species target prey they are capable of overtaking, namely slow-moving jellyfish and ctenophores.”***** That is, they don’t really swim that well so they kind of just hang around sucking on the bottom of the ocean. They also don’t really have scales. Think of them as the marine equivalent of being directionless, balding and middle aged.

In their favour is where they fall in terms of sustainability. Whilst the statistics on biomass are sketchy, these are fish that eat low-ish on the food chain, and are caught in coastal waters, mostly by small fishing boats.

Enter the strange world of caviar substitution. Of course, fish other than sturgeon have salty, pop-in-the-mouth, shiny eggs. Affordable, visually stimulating and an easy addition to canapés.

By every measure, caviar is ethically questionable. But lumpfish caviar? Not so much - very clever and a little bit fancy – tiny little piles of coloured lumpfish caviar on fried potato rosti with sour-cream. I was going to buy smoked salmon, but the little jars of roe were the same price and would have the same sea-saltiness that matches so well with potatoes.

Once you get over the deep unattractiveness of the fish, the fact that their ovaries are essentially surgically removed (after death), the double processing (involving a doubling in production related transportation), the addition of artificial preservatives, additives, colourants, the high salt content and the fact that this, like caviar is an imported, nutritionally-valueless, flavourful garnish, lumpfish caviar is brilliant.

More honestly: the more I have explored the whole ‘caviar substitute’ concept the more dissatisfied I have become. Reading the label, I discovered emulsifiers and thickeners and preservatives, and of course, artificial black and red colouring. I don’t buy jam, for goodness sake, because of the added gelatin (what, pectin not good enough now?) or corn chips because of ‘anti-caking agents’ – what on earth was I buying the fish-egg equivalent for? And the food miles? It’s from the Atlantic, ie, the other side of the globe. The whole enterprise was clearly idiotic.

But more than this: I’m left with the feeling that I’m in buying into the whole tiny-sea-water-popping-spheres-is-cool-and-luxurious lie, and this becomes, I think, a validation of the inherent class distinctions involved in caviar consumption. Acceptance and desire for the obtainable emulation of caviar somehow reinforces and justifies the fuss – the legend – around caviar caviar.

And that is an ethical choice that no amount of culinary-glitter should obscure.

Next time I’ll buy half a dozen local fresh un-shucked oysters for about ten bucks.

* ie http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=17916.
** Note that I am pro-choice, but I am not sure that fish are able to exercise choice, and at any rate, I believe that the production of caviar occurs without sturgeon consultation. Weirdly, most sturgeon caviar production does not involve killing fish as the roe producing fish are far too valuable to kill. They do perform this kind of fish abortion – mostly surgical, but increasingly less invasive methods of roe-sack extraction are being used.
*** This is for beluga caviar, according to Wikipedia
**** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
***** http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Lumpsucker

Resources:

The book by Jon Johannesson Lumpfish Caviar – From Vessel to Consumer (FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Rome, 2006) is an excellent resource on lumpfish. Possibly the only such resource on lumpfish.

For information on sustainable seafood http://blueocean.org/seafood/seafood-guide is great (if you’re in North America at least), and they also outline their ranking methodology, which can help you make decisions about species not on their list.

Prosciutto wrapped roasted lapin: bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies*

This week has been marked by a restlessness: a desire to push my comfort zone and tackle the odd and the unknown.

The foray into rabbit, whilst not exactly a disaster, revealed for me the personal operation of a cultural taboo around food consumption. In short: I found this confronting. And I was surprised to be confronted. After all, I have autopsied calamari and daintily eaten a tichy-tiny whole quail and cooked live mussels and plucked a chicken and eaten raw horse. I have been offended when guests refuse to eat veal. I am not squeamish nor fussy.

Except: the consumption of the hoppity back legs of a little bunny: a bridge too far. It should have been delicious: wrapped in prosciutto, pan-seared in foaming butter and roasted in thyme and sage, served with pumpkin and parsnip puree and a reduced jus of wine and rabbit stock.

But there were tendons and unfamiliar bones and above all the little voice in the back of my head which kept saying ‘BUNNY’ over and over. The strength of my reaction was utterly unexpected.

I was reminded, both of Anya in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her dreadful fear of rabbits*, and the introduction to the Orders of Things*, because I found myself face to face with the laughter that shatters and the stark impossibility of eating that.

The question underneath this for me is: what other assumptions and cultural preferences am I blind to? Is irrational food avoidance (ie, not consciously chosen and without foundation) any different to other kinds of prejudice? And am I already too comfortable (and well fed) to even notice?

* For example: Episode 7, Series 6, Once more with Feeling: “Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes, they’ve got those hoppy legs and those twitchy little noses. And what’s with all the carrots, what do they need such good eyesight for anyway?”. (Directed by Josh Whedon).

** “This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.” Michel Foucault The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences Pantheon Books 1970

Salt cod

It’s all about preservation.

Salting has always been a way of extending the life of many food stuffs: olives, capers, ham, cheeses – in days before refrigeration, the introduction of salt allowed for the extended storage of food, particularly throughout winter.

The preservation of cod by drying is known to have occurred as early as the tenth century. This method of preservation, as practiced by the Vikings, was a combination of open air drying, where cod were hung to dry freeze in the arctic conditions, taking on salt in the atmosphere, and releasing moisture as they dried. Basques improved on the Vikings’ efforts: they introduced salting before drying, creating a product with an even longer shelf life. Records indicate that in the fourteenth significant amounts of salted cod were imported from famine struck Norway into Mediterranean countries, particularly Spain, in exchange for base commodities such as flour, salt and malt.

According to Kurlansky, Basque sailors made a fortune selling salt cod in the fifteenth century.* The edicts of the Catholic church forbade the consumption of meat on certain holy days (ironically known as ‘feast days’) – which accounted for over a third of the year. However, fish (along with frogs and snails) were not considered ‘flesh’ and therefore were able to be consumed. Basque sailors recognised their opportunity and capitalised by making increasing quantities of salt cod (bacalao in Spanish and bacallà in the Catalan language) available for sale. According to Kurlansky, some of these wily Basques travelled as far as the as yet undiscovered America to source their cod, which was ever-diminishing in the Atlantic and Mediterranean waters. In order to protect their secret supply, the Basques kept the new land a secret (only to have it discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, who insisting on letting the whole world know).

In modern times, refrigeration and deep-freeze have all but eradicated the need to preserve by salting. The feast days proscribing meat have drastically shrunk: or at least, observance of the prohibition is less and less stringent. And modern production has slowly but surely embraced modern technology. Where cod was traditionally hung in open air to absorb salt and dry out, curing is now most likely to take place indoors, aided by electric heaters.

Cod, like ham and bacon, is now produced for preference rather than preservation. In the absence of traditional production methods, the consumption of salt cod is a tenuous link to the practices of the past: a truncated preservation of culture and practice. Good Friday represents perhaps the last widely observed day of salt cod, a ritual standing in for Religious observance in an increasing secularised post-industrial world.

And there is a third preservation at stake: that of the cod itself. Kurlansky quotes Alexander Dumas in 1873: "It has been calculated that if no accident prevented the hatching of the eggs and each egg reached maturity, it would take only three years to fill the sea so that you could walk across the Atlantic dryshod on the backs of cod." And yet: cod biomass is declining. This is fancy way of saying there is less and less cod.* A combination of ongoing overfishing and climate change has resulted reduced numbers. American, Canadian and British fisheries authorities have all expressed concerns regarding shrinking stocks. Various environmentalists have placed Atlantic cod on ‘best to avoid’ list.**

Which leaves me torn: preservation of the cultural tradition of salt cod may be at odds with preservation of the fish itself. There is no getting around diminishing numbers (climate change believer or sceptic, the data is as follows: the sea is warmer and the cod are fewer. Make of it what you will). The good news is: cod is indeed, as Dumas observed, prolific. Sustainable fishing practices and cod-farming are being pursued. The people of the world demand cod. We demand eternal cod, cod to last the ages. Cod for the now, and cod for the future. Cod must be preserved if we are to continue to preserve cod.



* The aptly named Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, Kurlansky, Walker and Company 1997
** Fishing, climate change and north-east Atlantic cod stock by Nova Mieszkowska, David Sims and Steve Hawkins May 2007; and Marine Biological Association of the UK, Plymouth; and US National Maritime Fisheries Service http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/species/atlantic_cod.htm
*** For example: http://www.eartheasy.com/eat_sustainable_seafoods.htm

Bacallà fritters

Serves six

750 gms salt cod
500 ml milk
2 red onions, finely chopped
4 cloved garlic, crushed
1 kg waxy potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed
½ cup chopped spring onions
3 eggs, separated, whites whisked to stiff peaks
250 ml vegetable oil

Soak, soak, soak the cod. For up to 48 hours, but definitely no fewer than 24 hours. Change the water every four or five hours.

Mix the potatoes and spring onions in a large bowl.

In a medium sized saucepan sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Add to the potato mixture.

In the same saucepan, add the cod, milk and enough water to cover the water. If the cod doesn’t fit, just cut into two or three pieces. Bring to a simmer, and cook for about ½ hour or until soft.

Remove the cod and rinse. When cool enough to touch, remove the skin and bones and shred coarsely into the potato mixture. Stir through the egg yokes until combined. Gentle fold through half the whisked egg whites, and then fold through the remaining eggs whites. The cod is very salty. Do not add more salt. Seriously.

Heat vegetable oil to medium hot (it should sizzle gently when a piece of bread is added). Add heaped dessert spoons of the mixture to the oil, carefully spacing the fritters out (do not add too many to the pan at once, as the heat will reduce and they won’t cook evenly). Turn gently and cook on the other side. Remove and drain while the rest of the fritters cook. Repeat with remaining mixture.

Serve with steamed cabbage and fennel or salad, and garlic aioli or crème fraiche.

A good egg

I think there is pretty much nothing that can’t be improved by a poached egg. Mushroom risotto? Spaghetti carbonara? Creamy polenta? A bowl of steamed vegetables? Top with a soft poached egg, and break the yolk, letting the golden centre ooze through everything. Perfection.

Eggs for brunch is one of my all time favourite things – with pan fried prosciutto and served with rocquette and avocado or with sautéed chorizo and roma tomatoes or on potato rosti with smoked salmon.

Plus, more and more eggs are considered amazingly good for you.* Studies from the ‘80s suggested strong links between problematic high cholesterol and egg consumption (as cholesterol does occur naturally in eggs, each egg has about 200mg). However, the link between egg consumption and ‘bad’ cholesterol which causes, amongst other things, heart disease, may not be as strong as once thought**. I have a general theory (completely unfounded in any experience, training or professional qualification in medical science) that most whole foods are pretty much ok if eaten in moderation. Ie, a couple of eggs now and again won’t hurt***

Basically, I think we can just eat the damn eggs and enjoy them without feeling guilty.

Except, eat ethical eggs. If for no other reason than they just taste better, eat free range eggs. Organic if you can be bothered/can afford them. Cage eggs come from caged chickens. Caged chickens are essentially egg making factories that never see sunlight and look like old mangy dogs. Chickens should not be treated like this. No animal should be treated like this. Caged chickens are most emphatically not happy chickens, and as a result do not produce happy tasting eggs. Do not eat them. Eat delicious, golden-yolked eggs. Beg them off friends who raise chickens in their backyard. Pick them up at markets in the country. Visit a free range farm and collect them yourself, warm and nestled in straw under a brown hen.

On the weekend, during the rain, I made fava bean puree, filling the house the aroma of the warm oniony broth.

Later that night we snacked on the bean paste as a dip, with crunchy heirloom cucumber and radishes I had picked up at the farmers’ market.

But earlier in the day, as soon as the paste was smooth, I smeared it across thick wood-fired sourdough and topped it with poached eggs.

* “Eggs ‘should be considered a superfood’, say scientists” 9 March 2010 (Although note that this particular study was funded by the British Egg Council. Also note that there is a British Egg Council, which is very, very cool)
** “Bad cholesterol: it’s not what you think” 14 February 2010
*** For goodness sake, consult your own health care professional if you have any concerns.

 

Perfect Poached Eggs

2 very fresh free range eggs. The fresher the eggs, the better the egg white holds together, making a firmer poached egg (the opposite is true for boiled eggs – eggs that are a little older have a little bubble of air between the white and the shell, making them easier to peel)

1 small saucepan, filled with about 3 inches of water (enough to cover the eggs)

1 teaspoon white vinegar. Vinegar helps the egg white to congeal - I sometimes like to use white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar for taste.

Heat the water and vinegar until simmering (not boiling water – just simmering).

Crack the eggs into a saucer or ramekin, taking care not to break the yolks.

Using a slotted spoon, create a gentle whirlpool in the simmering water (this creates a centrifugal force, which I think helps keep the eggs round shape a little better).

Slide the two eggs from the saucer into the water. If the water starts to boil or froth, turn down the heat.

Nudge the water gently to continue the whirlpool effect.

Cook for 2-2 ½ minutes for runny yolks.

Remove with a slotted spoon.

Chewing Thoughtfully

Despite my eclectic and occasionally odd up-bring there is no escaping that I am firmly middle class. I work an office job, have a university education, live in a lovely inner city apartment, drink caffe lattes and travel to exotic locations. I have the luxury of dining out, choosing between Asian-European fusion or traditional French or molecular gastronomy or Italian bistro or high-end hawker food or the local Vietnamese noodle dive. I am, by any measure, a privileged person.

This privilege is multiple – I have the resources and time to eat out. I can afford to be discerning about the quality of the ingredients I buy. I have easy access to speciality and hard to find tasty items. My pantry includes no fewer than seven different vinegars, handmade orecchiette, two kinds of polenta, unbleached organic flour, vino-cotto and verjuice, wakame, miso paste, 37 different jars of whole and ground spices*, three different types of salt, and my fridge has preserved lemons and Parmigiano Reggiano and fresh yoghurt.

I have time to source produce, to shop and to cook. Pork belly and fresh scallops and imported cheese and fresh, local organic vegetables are all within walking distance.

I have the experience and education – both formal and informal – to feel confident to explore different flavours, different food cultures and difference methods of cooking. I have the luxury to be passionate.

More often that not, I take all this for granted.

Eating well should not be difficult, I think, for anyone. Eating as well as I do? I am lucky.

And it is, I think, mostly a matter of luck.

According to the United Nations, 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat. This includes millions of people whose lives are disrupted by war, drought, environmental and natural disaster. Who are homeless, landless, state-less, jobless and moneyless. According to the World Health Organisation, 1 billion people are overweight, with an estimated 300 million considered obese – the other end of the spectrum of malnutrition. Increasingly it is apparent that there is a connection between obesity and socioeconomic status – unsurprisingly, the higher your socio economic status the better your access to a fresher, wider variety of food. The more likely you are to be physically active and healthy. Eating well is political.

In developed and developing countries people are under-nourished and poorly nourished - not just because of reasons of starvation, but malnourished because of poor diet, underweight or overweight, healthy eating and eating well are, statistically speaking, the domain of the privileged.

Not only the ‘rich’ deserve to eat well. Everyone deserves to eat well. To know the pleasure of a meal, and not just hunger or necessity. Food is something fundamental about our humanity – not just as fuel, but as fulfilment. Feasting and fasting are central to so much religious practice, eating and drinking are so much a part of our cultural and secular celebrations (the Thanksgiving Turkey, the Christmas Ham, the birthday and wedding cake, the celebratory toast, the Burns’ Night Haggis, mooncakes). Food as symbolism - not always accessible to so many.

Fair-trade, organic farming, slow food, artisan produce, local sourcing, farmers’ markets – the domain of the wealthy. These same luxuries – small pieces of a movement toward more equitable access to resources. Which isn’t to diminish the role that large multinationals have in supplying and supporting the billions of the world’s hungry – but to acknowledge the importance of developing a structure whereby people cease to live hand to mouth and live, as it were, land to mouth. Sustainable living.

Yes, it is a little more complicated and a little bigger than this. International relations, trade policy, national economies, world peace. Options: do nothing or do something.

I am grateful for what I have.

I want the world to be different.

* Slight exaggeration (cinnamon sticks and ground cinnamon, cloves, all-spice, coriander, cumin, cardamom, whole and ground nutmeg, mace, paprika, smoked paprika, saffron, ginger, juniper berries, star anise, nigella seeds, chilli flakes and ground chilli, pepper, turmeric, mustard seeds, caraway seeds, Chinese five spice, sumac and fennel seeds).

Chickpeas and silverbeet

Fancy food isn’t always the food that is nourishing for the soul.

1 tin or 1 cup dried organic chickpeas
6 cloves locally grown garlic, finely minced
1 brown onion, diced
1 bunch fresh silverbeet, thinly shredded
I lemon
Salt pepper
3 tbsp olive oil

If using dried chickpeas, soak overnight. Add chickpeas to a saucepan of boiling water and cook until tender. Drain.

For tinned chickpeas, drain and rub to remove the thin skin.

Heat olive oil in a large fry pan and sauté the onion and garlic until it starts to soften. Add chickpeas and cook for ten minutes, taking care not to brown the onion and garlic.

Add shredded silverbeet, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the silverbeet is soft, and starting to crisp at some edges. Squeeze over the juice of one lemon.

Serve hot or at room temperature with bread or brown rice.