Beetroot

Posted on December 4, 2016 3 Comments

Beetroot is one of those vegetables that really seem to divide opinions, you either love it or you hate it. In our house we eat a lot of different soups but a bright purple beetroot soup is the only one we all love, so it gets made a lot. Beetroot is an incredibly versatile vegetable that works both as a savoury and as a sweet, it works raw in salads, roasted whole, fried to crisps, juiced and pickled in kimchi. However you use it, beetroot always adds a massive dose of colour to any plate. It’s available year round and we get through a lot of beetroot. So this month we have spent some time researching the health benefits, environmental issues and best way of using this amazingly colourful root.

The Food Of Love

Beetroot is part of the chard, spinach and samphire family. It was first cultivated over 2,000 years ago but people only ate the leafy tops. The ancient Greeks began using the roots for medicinal purposes and the ancient Romans considered the beetroot an aphrodisiac. This has recently been proven by modern science as beetroot contains large amounts of the mineral boron, which is thought to play a key role in the production of human sex hormones. It wasn’t until the 16^th century that beetroot was bred to be the sweet bulbous root we now know. Beetroots come in different colours from white, golden, stripy to the most common deep purple. In the 18^th Century during the Napoleonic war, the British enforced a trade embargo on to the French so they could no longer buy sugar canes from the Caribbean colonies. In response the French bred beetroot to maximise sugar content and developed a method of turning the ‘sugar beet’ into sugar granules. Today sugar beets account for 30% of all sugar production.

The Nutrition

A typical beetroot is 9% sucrose, the highest sugar content of all vegetables. However the sugars release slowly into the bloodstream so beetroot has a high glycemic index but a very low glycemic load. Eating sweet vegetables like beetroot lower sugar cravings without the negative effects of refined sugars so it’s a good idea to add them to desserts and your diet in general.

Beetroot is high in fibre, vitamin C and minerals, particularly manganese. Manganese is an essential trace mineral which helps in blood sugar control, energy metabolism, and thyroid hormone function. The pigment that gives beetroot its rich deep colour is called Betalain, it is a powerful anti oxidant and anti-inflammatory. Beetroot also contains high levels of the essential macronutrient Choline that is part of the B complex vitamin. Choline helps with liver and brain functions, muscle movement and supporting energy levels.

Recent studies show that the high levels of nitrate in beetroot lower blood pressure and may also help to fight heart disease. The nitrates have also been shown to increase blood circulation to the brain, limiting the risks of dementia in old age. The nitrates also improve muscle oxygenation during exercise, which helps with muscle soreness and recovery. So treat yourself to a fresh beetroot juice after cardio exercise.

The Greenest of Vegetables

Beetroot is one of the most tolerant vegetables that requires very little fertilisers and pesticides making it one of the most environmentally friendly vegetables you can buy. It is planted from seeds from March onwards and can be harvested from June to November. If stored well in the ground, beetroot will keep until spring. Once it is out of the ground it keeps for 2 to 3 weeks before turning soft. It’s best to store in the cold dark place or in the fridge. In season, fresh beetroot tops are delicious and can be used exactly like chard and spinach, however if you are not going to eat the green tops it is best to cut them off from the roots as they absorb the moisture from the root and make them go soft.

The beetroot plants thrive in a wide variety of climates and soils, making it particularly popular in the cold climates of Eastern Europe, Russia and Scandinavia. Badj has just been on a music tour of Eastern Europe and Russia and everywhere he went they had the beetroot soup called ‘borscht’. There are as many variations on the borscht recipe as there are families in Eastern Europe. Our favourite and the one we make most often is based on a traditional recipe from our Romanian friend Nicoleta. The acidity of the fresh tomatoes counters the sweetness and the lemon zest elevates the earthy flavours of the beetroot. A dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche to serve is a must and in Russia and the Ukraine it would always get a sprinkle of dill.

We hope you have enjoyed the article and try the recipe, please leave a comment we really appreciate your feedback.

Borscht Soup

Borscht recipe

Ingredients

4 x Beetroots (approx 600g)
2 x Carrots (approx 300g)
3 x Fresh Tomatoes
1 x Medium White Onion
2 x Celery Sticks
1 x tsp Lemon Zest
Salt
Creme Fraiche
Fresh dill to garnish

Method

Peel and chop all the vegetables and place them all in a pan with the lemon zest. Cover with homemade vegetable stock and season well. Cover the pan and simmer for 45 min or until all the vegetables are cooked. Blend and check for seasoning. Serve hot with a dollop of creme fraiche and the Russians and Ukrainians would definitely put a healthy sprinkle of fresh dill..

Enjoy!

Butter

Posted on May 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

Ah butter, the most delicious of all fats. We eat a lot of butter; spread onto fresh crumpets and toast, worked into paper-thin layers for puff pastry or sautéed with garlic, butter finds it’s way into a huge amount of our meals. Very often when someone asks how we make a dish taste so good the answer is butter, and lots of it.
It is now pretty much unanimously agreed that saturated fat is not the devil it was made out to be and in fact butter replacements like margarine are potentially much worse for you than the real deal. So in this post we explore this controversial fat.

The earliest hard evidence of humans milking animals was found in Northern Europe around 5,000 BC. The discovery that humans could live from the milk of another animal was a major breakthrough for early civilisations. Dairying is the most efficient means of obtaining nourishment from uncultivated land. It can produce the equivalent to a slaughtered animal each year for several years and in manageable daily amounts. Hence dairying spread throughout Africa, Europe and Asia, using goats, sheep, cows, buffalo, yaks and camel milk. The one area of Asia that didn’t embrace dairy until around 1300AD was China. The Americas also had no history of dairying until Christopher Columbus introduced sheep, goats and the cattle that would spread throughout Mexico and Texas.
The development of butter is an easy step from milk, as it only takes leaving the milk to stand until the cream separates, then stirring the cream fats. Butter became immensely popular from Scandinavia to India, where 50% of all milk is turned to butter. For most of history, dairy was food for peasants who could not afford the luxury of meat and it was not until the 16^th Century that it began to be introduced to cooking to create the rich dishes and pastries we enjoy today.
Traditional pre industrial butter was made from raw cream that had been left to sour slightly overnight. Raw butter is virtually impossible to find and has a very short shelf life of around 10 days. These days the vast majority of butter made in the UK and the US is called sweet cream butter and is made from pasteurised fresh cream with at least 80% fat. In Europe the standard butter is called cultured cream butter, it is still made from pasteurised cream but a lactic acid culture is added to the cream which gives the butter a richer flavour.
The consistency of butter is determined not only by the way the milk is handled but also by what the cows have eaten. Pasture fed cows produce a soft butter, that is good for spreading and sauces, while hay and grain fed cows produce a firm butter which is good for pastries. ‘Spreadable’ butter is made by whipping the butter while injecting it with nitrogen gas. The nitrogen breaks down the fat molecules making the butter softer.

Humans have been eating butter for around 6,000 years and then at the start of the 1980s the food industry and nutritionists decided that it was incredibly bad for you. For the last 30 years health authorities have continuously vilified butter as the cause of many health problems such as obesity and heart disease. The food industry has played a key role in supporting this stance, allowing them to sell their highly processed, low fat alternatives. However in recent years it has become clear that the entire campaign against saturated fats and butter was based on bad science.
We now know that saturated fats are not linked to heart related diseases and have actually many qualities that will improve overall health. The ‘bad’ fats are not saturated fats but highly processed trans-fats such as margarine and low fat dairy products, which will increase the risk of heart diseases. However after telling the public to avoid saturated fats for so long, it is proving very hard for health authorities to eat their own words and admit that butter is not the monster they made it out to be.

Butter contains various fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A, E and K2. Vitamin K2 is one of the least known vitamins and is found only in animal products. It is essential for healthy skin, forming strong bones and a recent study by the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) revealed that increased intake of vitamin K2 may reduce the risk of prostate cancer by as much as 35 percent. K2 also prevents calcium getting into the arteries and blocking them up. So not only is there no evidence that butter is bad for your heart but this evidence shows that butter is actually good for your heart and reduces the risk of heart related diseases.
Furthermore 3 to 4 % of butter consists of a short chain fatty acid called Butyric acid. This acid is used by the colon to prevent inflammation. It lines the wall of the colon and is a primary source of energy for the colonic cells. It also has a unique property where it has been shown to not only reduce cancer cells in the colon but also return cancerous cells to their normal state. It has also been shown in tests to actually reduce inflammation and obesity.

One of the downside of butter is that it burns at a relatively low temperature, so it’s not ideal for frying, unless you clarify it. Clarified butter (Ghee) is made by heating the butter up to 90ºC so that the water evaporates. It is then simmered so the milk solids separate, leaving pure butter fat. Clarified butter will lasts for up to 6 weeks before going rancid and has an incredibly high smoke point of 250ºC making it one of the best fats for frying. For traditional Indian ghee, the temperature is increased to 120ºC to brown the milk solids, which flavours the ghee and generates anti oxidant compounds. In India, ghee is the one of the most revered foods, not just for cooking but also as an emblem of purity and an essential part of the Ayurvedic diet.

When it comes to butter, what the cows eat determines the health properties of your butter. Green vegetables and grass are high in omega 3 fatty acids, which it is universally agreed we need more of in the western diet to balance the high quantities of omega 6 fatty acids. Animals fed on grass will have a higher proportion of omega 3s than animals fed on grains like corn and soya. However there is the problem of bioaccumulation. Basically all the horrible chemicals in the ground and on the grass that the cows eat are stored in the fat of the animal. Dairy items highest in fat, including cheese, ice cream, cream and butter are the most likely to contain concentrations of those chemical pollutants, and whenever we eat these, the toxins go right into us. So eating grass fed butter gives you extra omega 3s but also extra chemicals from pesticides. Furthermore, just because a butter is certified organic does not mean the cows are grass fed, it just means the feed has only been sprayed with organic certified pesticides. So it’s quite possible that the organic butter is coming from corn and soya fed cows, which will have very little or none of those all important macro nutrients like omega 3 and K2. So you must always look for dairy products that are both organic and grass fed.

There is a lot of controversy around dairy farming and without a doubt there are some serious ethical and environmental issues currently surrounding the industry. In our personal experience there are extremes of dairy farms from large scale to small scale. As a consumer it can be very difficult to distinguish where your butter is really coming from and what conditions the cows are living in. By buying organic you can be certain that the cows have access to a field, have plenty of space to move around, are fed on a diet as natural as possible, free from GMOs and are not given hormones or antibiotics. However some practices used in organic farms may resemble practices used in large-scale industrial farming. The only way you can be certain of the conditions of the animals and the quality of your butter is to go and visit the farm, talk to the farmer and really get to understand how the animals are cared for. It may cost you more, but by buying a high quality organic grass fed butter, you are supporting the welfare of the animals, the environment and your health.
Here is a short video of us making our own butter for the first time. It’s really so easy and is a great way to use up any cream that might be about to turn. You also get the added bonus of fresh buttermilk which is perfect for baking.

Chocolate

Posted on December 20, 2015 Leave a Comment

As the festive season is fast approaching, we are all planning and preparing to cook, eat and share the most wonderful foods. So what could be a more appropriate time to talk about one of the most eaten delicacies, the food everybody loves, the ‘food of gods’ : chocolate. We English are the biggest consumers of chocolate per capita, eating an average of 11.5kg a year each.
From the fine dark chocolates to the mass produced confectionaries, chocolate is very much taken for granted in the western world and there is little appreciation for the lengthy process and complexities involved in creating a bar of chocolate.

The cacao beans come from the cacao trees ‘Theobroma cacao’ which is Greek for ‘food of the gods’. The cacao trees originate from South America where they were first cultivated by the Mayans around 600 BC. They then traded them with the Aztecs who roasted and ground the beans to make it into a drink used for religious ceremonies. The Aztecs valued the cacao beans enough to use them as a form of currency.
Nowadays most cacao is grown by the 2.5 million cacao farmers on smallholdings in West Africa (Ivory Coast being the largest producer).
The cacao trees need to be planted in hot and damp climates next to tall trees in order to protect them from direct sunlight often amongst papaya and mango trees. It takes 3 to 5 years before the cacao tree bears fruits and once mature each tree produces around 1,000 beans a year, which may seem like a lot but it is only enough to make 1kg of chocolate.
The trees bear large fruit pods from its trunk each containing 20 to 40 seeds or cacao beans which are embedded in a white pulp. When the fruits are ripe the farmers break open the pods and put the pulp and the beans in a large pile to ferment in the tropical heat for anything between 2 to 8 days. During this period the sugars in the pulp ferment and the bacteria penetrates into the beans breaking down the astringent particles and creating a wide variety of desirable flavours and flavour precursors that will be developed in roasting. This is one of the least controlled parts of the chocolate making process but it has a massive impact on the taste of the final product. Poorly fermented beans will give the final chocolate unpleasant aromas. Sometimes if the beans are left too long they will go mouldy and sometimes the fermentation process is skipped entirely. It is up to the buyer to determine which beans have been well fermented and select them for their flavour potential.
Once the beans have fermented they will be dried to preserve them. The main method of drying is still to lay out the beans in the sunshine for several days, although sometimes they are dried over stoves or heaters to speed up the process. At this stage the beans are still very far from being anything like the chocolate we know and love, they are bitter, dry and astringent. The transformation from these beans into a chocolate bar is complex and very rarely happens in the same place as the beans are grown, instead they are shipped to Europe and America where the beans are made into chocolate in large factories. To get an idea of how far removed the growers are from the end product watch this video showing cacao growers in the Ivory Coast trying chocolate for the first time.

On arrival at the chocolate manufacturer the cacao beans will be gently roasted to develop their flavours further. The beans are then cracked open and the ‘nibs’ are extracted and the husks are discarded. To transform the nibs into a solid bar of chocolate which is glossy, smooth and with a good ‘snap’, they have to be put through various stages of milling, refining and tempering. The reason chocolate is so appealing to us is that it is one of the few food products that melts at body temperature so it literally melts in your mouth. Also after the roasting and refining it has an extraordinary 550 flavonoids (a carrot typically has 96), it is literally a flavour explosion. The industrial processing of cacao was first developed by a Dutchman called Conrad van Houten in 1828. The chocolate manufacturers Fry and Sons in Bristol then made the very first chocolate bar in 1848. By the end of the 19th Century the Swiss company Nestle had developed methods for creating ultra smooth chocolate and incorporating powdered milk. The milk chocolate bar as we know it was born.

A fine quality dark chocolate will contain around 70% cocoa solids the remaining 30% is sugar. Mass produced chocolate is made with a minimum amount of cocoa solids and the maximum amount of sugar and milk, in fact most ‘chocolate’ in the UK contains less than 1% cocoa solids. The reason chocolate gets such a bad reputation for health is simply because of the large amounts of added sugars. In fact cocoa itself is really exceptionally good for you. Although it is high in saturated fats it is a specific fat that does not raise your cholesterol. It is high in potassium and is number one for magnesium after seaweed. It also contains phosphorus and calcium, which build bones, tissues and nerves in the body. If you eat cocoa in it’s raw form (ie not roasted) the nutritional benefits are massively increased. Like all seeds cacao beans contain all the nutrients and fatty acids for the seed to germinate and grow into a tree. Cocoa has an incredibly high amount of antioxidants it has been linked with anti ageing and it has at least seven phenathalamines, which are the ‘love chemicals’ or aphrodisiacs. However these get destroyed in the roasting process and then if you add milk in, it binds itself to the antioxidants and prevents us from absorbing them. It is getting easier to buy raw chocolate from health food stores, Mu has recently been on a workshop learning how to make our very own raw chocolate with The Raw Health Bar in Brighton.

A friend of ours recently moved to Ecuador and has been working directly with the cacao farmers there and he has kindly shared some of his knowledge and experience of the industry with us.

Growing cacao does not require huge amounts of space and most of it is done on small scale farms but the farmers are not paid enough for their beans so more often than not they use logging of the rainforest to subsidise their income. Unless it is a protected reserve, if you own the land you can log as much as you like on the property. The logging companies know that cacao producers earn very little and they put pressure on them to sell the trees and the land.
The second main problem is that the buyers and intermediaries will not discern between good and poor quality beans and they will offer the same price for them. This has a knock on affect where there is no incentive for farmers to grow a high quality product. For organic producers in particular, the certification is often tedious and long with many trainings and a lot of paperwork. To then have to sell the beans at the same price as non organic means it is often simply not worthwhile for the farmers. But times are changing with the US and some parts of Europe (mainly in the UK) consuming more organic chocolate. Hopefully if the market for organic chocolate keeps growing, it will then encourage the producers to turn to organic certification.
Fair Trade chocolate also faces similar issues. Even though small producers have benefited from Fairtrade International’s support: gender equality, training on the organic certification, knowledge on climate change, better livelihoods, offering educational opportunities to children in the communities, access to health, etc, the impact is still too little and the Fairtade minimum price is often not much higher than the market price. As of 2014, less than 1 % of the chocolate market was Fair trade.
It is us as consumers that can change this, by buying organic and Fairtrade, it will boost the market and encourage a more sustainable industry where farmers can provide for themselves and their families.
Our friend Martin is working on a new project in Ecuador in the Choco rainforest where the cacao producers are making a very high quality cacao and asking for a high price. The extra money is then re invested in conservation and research and also saving one of the most endangered species on our planet, the brown headed spider monkeys. Here’s a little video that Badj helped to create that explains the project and a link to the fundraiser, please support it.

By spending a little extra on your chocolate you will not only get a much better tasting chocolate but you will be helping the farmers that grow the cacao to make a sustainable living, so they don’t have to destroy the environment and hopefully they too can enjoy the delights of the ‘food of the gods’.

Raw chocolates

Ingredients (makes around 16 chocolates):

40g of organic raw cocoa butter20g of organic raw cacao butter
20g of carob powder
20g of lucuma powder
1 to 2 tbsp of organic coconut oil melted
1 to 1.5 tsp of maple syrup or raw honey or coconut sugar
Toppings: goji berries, almonds, seeds, vanilla powder, orange oil, cayenne pepper or anything you fancy

Method:

Melt the cacao butter over a bain-marie. The water needs to be no higher that 50C.
Once melted add the cacao powder and stir. Then add the carob and lucuma still stirring over the bain-marie.
The chocolate mixture should reach a temperature of no more than 31C. If it gets too cold and stiff, discard some of the cold water in the bain-marie and replace with hot.
Add some of the coconut oil to the mixture so you have a silky and shiny chocolate. Keep stirring. When the chocolate looses its shine you will know that the chocolate has gone out of temper. You could then add more hot water to the
bain-marie.
When you have reached a shiny and runny consistency, you are then ready to pour the chocolate into the silicone molds.
You can then add your favourite ingredients either in the chocolate or directly in the molds.
Place in the fridge until the chocolate have set.
When ready take out of the molds and store in the fridge.