You Could Start From Here...

30 Must-have food items for your pantry

Somebody asked me once for advice on stocking their larder.  “What are the basic foodstuffs that any kitchen should have?”  I did what anyone would do and looked on Google.  To my frustration, the first four sites I looked at all contained perfectly reasonable lists of common ingredients that a decent cook might use in the course of a year.  There was nothing I didn’t agree with except that these lists ran to dozens, even hundreds of items, which was not I thought the point of the question.  A basic list should be just that, the basics.

After a little thought I came up with the following list.  It includes mainly things which any busy bachelor is likely to have at home already: bread, milk, eggs etc. plus a shortlist of dried or canned ingredients which can sit in your larder for months without doing any harm.

Thirty seemed like a nice round number, though I have cheated slightly by the inclusion of the general terms ‘herbs’ and ‘stock (bouillon) cubes’.  Ideally you would have different bouillon cubes or powder to make chicken, beef and vegetable stocks.  As for herbs, I listed the top ten most useful culinary herbs on this blog some time ago.  It really is worth growing your own and can be done in pots or a small window box and they require only minimal attention.

Don’t get too hung up on different types of pasta, rice or sugar.  Obviously it’s fun to experiment with different ingredients and sometimes authenticity demands a particular variety, but in an emergency they are more or less interchangeable.

Clearly there is a big cultural influence here.  I wonder what the list would look like in Italy or Russia or Brazil.  Perhaps someone will write and tell me.  There is also a large slice of personal preference involved. I seriously considered lemons, capsicums and chilies, all of which I use extensively.  I rejected them because they don't keep and are better bought fresh.

I list ‘cheese’ as a single ingredient.  In reality my fridge is almost never without several different cheeses including: cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella.  Similarly I list ‘butter’.  You need something in this space and frankly I think nothing compares with good old fashioned butter. But I myself have flip-flopped several times in my life depending on whether I was more worried by saturated fats in butter, or trans fats and the long list of E numbers found in most emulsified vegetable spreads.

Plain Flour	Eggs	Black Pepper
Corn Flour (Starch)	Bacon	Salt
Sugar	Cream	Paprika
Ground Almonds	Milk	Vanilla
Baking Powder	Cheese	Stock (bouillon) cubes
Dried Yeast	Butter	Mustard
Rice	Olive Oil	White Wine Vinegar
Pasta	Bread	Jam (raspberry)
Tinned Tomatoes	Onions	Potatoes
Frozen Peas	Garlic	Herbs

With only a few moments of pondering I have come up with a fairly long list of snacks, meals and desserts which could be created with nothing more than my list of basics.  Although visitors are often impressed by an apparent ability to conjure up something from what appears to be an empty kitchen, my main point is to demonstrate that these genuinely are the basics.

  

Fried eggs	Cheese and Potato Pie	Cookies
Scrambled eggs	Bacon, Cheese, Potato Bake	Scones
Poached eggs	Cheese Soufflé	Tattie Scones
Boiled eggs	Cheese Pudding	Shortbread
Egg Mayonnaise	Quiche Lorraine	Victoria Sponge
Omelettes	Savory Pancakes	Scotch Pancakes (Drop Scones)
Toast	Pizza Margarita	Meringues
French Toast	Pasta Sauces	Blancmange
Garlic Bread	-          Tomato	Rice Pudding
Sandwiches (egg, cheese, bacon)	-          Carbonara	Crepes
Chips (French fries)	-          Cheese	Bread and Butter Pudding
Crisps (potato chips)	-          Baked (al forno)	Queen of Puddings
Baked Potatoes with various fillings	Fried Rice	Crème Brulee
Hollandaise Sauce		Crème Caramel
Mayonnaise		Bakewell Tart
Custard		Steamed Jam Sponge

Realistically, in order to turn out an interesting, varied and healthy range of recipes, most people would want to add fish, meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, and any number of those hundred other items which I have rejected as not being basic enough.  And by that stage you are cooking!

Feeling Thirsty?

Today is World Water Day and 2013 is the UN’s International Year of Water Cooperation.

World Water Day was established as an annual event 10 years ago to highlight the plight of millions of people who live without secure access to clean fresh water.  According to UN figures 780 million people – 1 in every 9 – don’t have access to clean water.  Dirty water kills 3.4 million people every year.  A child dies every 21 seconds from a water related disease.

This has greater significance than usual for me this year as I am currently staying in India, in Bangalore in the southern state of Karnataka.  The climate here for eight months of the year is hot and dry.  The region depends entirely on the annual Monsoon rains that fall between June and September to refill rivers and aquifers. In the residential compound where I am staying, householders have recently received a communication from the management company saying that collectively we are using too much water and imploring residents to be more efficient in their usage.

It’s a big deal.  In 2009 the Monsoon ‘failed’ in India.  This is to say the rains came late and when they did come they brought about 43% less water than an average year.  Thousands died in the drought and neighbours turned upon each other in vicious squabbles over water.  India was forced to increase food imports and world sugar prices reached a 30 year high. Of course water is essential not just for drinking but for agriculture, industry, power generation and for the country’s wildlife.

Last year, a long running dispute over the use of water in the Cauvery (Kaveri) River which runs between Karnataka and the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu burst back in to life.  An agreement forged in 1892 between the princely state of Mysore and the Madras Presidency, part of the British Raj, attempted to divide the river water fairly for all people living along its course, but population growth has put that agreement under continuous stress ever since. It has been a constant problem for the successor states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.  Last year the state of Karnataka restricted water flowing across the border and in the ensuing arguments the Supreme Court of India had to order Karnataka to release more water.  The decision led to strikes and demonstrations across the state.

Worryingly, a report published last November by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warned that changes to global weather patterns could cause Monsoon failures to happen more frequently, with severe water shortages occurring one year in every five..

The one good thing about the Cauvery dispute is that is entirely contained within India and the national government and its agencies can enforce relatively peaceful resolutions.  The UN is currently monitoring several regions of the world where international water disputes have the potential to develop in to more serious conflicts.  These include water from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers which are shared between Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the Jordan River which involves Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories; The Nile which borders Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan; The Mekong River which links China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Cambodia; and the Central Asian basin around the Aral Sea, connecting Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Many analysts predict that water will be the main cause of wars in the coming century.  In fact some people point to the recent conflict in Darfur and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as examples of ‘water conflicts’, hence the emphasis on Water Cooperation which is the theme of this year’s activities.

Here in Karnataka, in the village down the road the bore holes are drying up and the Monsoon is still three months away. Meanwhile, at the exclusive golf course where I have been spending much of my time here in Bangalore, members complain about the state of the fairways which are hard and dry, and the owners are buying tanker loads of water to fill the ornamental lakes.  What was that about water cooperation?

It's Called Democracy Mr Paterson

MP Owen Paterson bombarded by 80,000 bee e-mails

North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said today he felt as if he had been under cyber attack after receiving more than 80,000 e-mails over the weekend.

Shropshire Star,  Wed March 20th, 2013

BTW his email address is  defra.helpline@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Plight of the Humble Bee

Right around the world there we are currently experiencing a collapse in the numbers of bees.  The decline of bee populations has been noticed in Europe and North America since the 1960s, but has really accelerated in the last twenty years.  Of course most pollinator species are wild and frankly we do not have data on their populations, but for managed bee colonies, figures across Europe show an approximate 50% drop in honey bee numbers since about 1990. 

Other studies provide corroborating evidence.  For instance in the UK there has been a 70% drop in the numbers of wild flowers requiring animal pollination over the same period, and butterfly numbers are similarly affected.  These statistics are sad in themselves but it’s bees that really matter.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) warns that on current trends, bees could be extinct in Britain within a decade.  This is not only bad news for honey enthusiasts, but it poses a serious potential threat to us all.  Many people today like to promote the idea that humans have escaped from nature, that we have the technological nouse to control our environment.  The truth is we are completely dependent on nature and the humble bee is a case in point.

Almost one third of total farm output depends on animal pollination, mainly by bees.  The list of plants affected includes:  nuts; nearly all fruit; brassicas such as cabbage, broccoli and sprouts; tomatoes; peppers, chilies and other spices; cucumbers; melons; marrows; courgettes;  aubergines; avocados; coconuts; tea and coffee.  Collectively these crops account for roughly 35% of all calories consumed globally.

Bee keepers have long suspected that agricultural (and horticultural) pesticides were to blame for the mysterious disappearance of bees from hives in a phenomenon labeled Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  However the chemical companies which produce the pesticides naturally refuted this and preferred to look for evidence of viruses or parasites, which would presumably need yet more pharmacological solutions.

Bees do have a variety of problems to contend with.  Disease does play its part, and man made problems such as industrial pollution and habitat loss are significant factors too.  But for some years now there has been clear evidence indicating that the use of systemic pesticides, known collectively as neonicotinoids could be having a devastating impact on bee populations.

Development of these products only began in the late eighties.  Today many seeds are pretreated with neonicotinoids.  They are designed to travel through the plant’s sap and protect the leaves, stems and shoots against harmful insects that munch upon them.  However, they also find their way in to the flowers, pollen and nectar.

Manufacturers of products such as Gaucho, Cruiser, Poncho, Merit and Flagship have conducted laboratory trials which demonstrate that the doses absorbed by bees through nectar are sub-lethal, but several other recent studies have shown that these chemicals affect the pollinators in unsuspected ways.  They specifically target the insects’ central nervous systems causing their internal navigation systems and memories to malfunction.  French beekeepers describe this as ’mad bee disease’.  The bees simply go out to forage and forget how to get back to the hive, which eventually dies of starvation.  These chemicals also weaken the animals’ immune system leaving them vulnerable to lethal fungal infections.  In both cases it is difficult to prove such deaths are caused by pesticides, but they are.

Last year, the European Commission asked The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to look at the impact of three such neonicotinoids: Imidacloprid, Clothianidin and Thiamethoxam, on bees, and on 16^th January this year EFSA published their findings.  The report found unacceptably high risks to honey bees from pollen, nectar and dust particles and where bees were exposed to sap through guttation (many plants naturally express sap through their leaves), the effect was ’acute ’.

Accordingly the EU Commissioner for Health & Consumer Policy, Tonio Borg, asked for a two year ban on the use of these three neonicotinoids across all member states.  A YouGov poll conducted for the online campaigning organization Avaaz found that over 70% of the UK public supported such a ban and Avaaz amassed over 2.5 million signatures from across Europe.

Despite a wealth of scientific data supporting the ban, the proposal was defeated on March 15^th in The Standing Committee on Food Chain and Animal Health made up of representatives from Member States within the European Union.   Thirteen countries supported the ban including: France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Poland.  Nine opposed, led by Romania and Bulgaria, and five, including the UK and Germany abstained.

The UK Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson ,says there was insufficient evidence.  His own department, DEFRA, has commissioned separate research in to the issue and will now wait for the results.  Privately it is widely believed that the big pharma manufacturers, especially Bayer and Syngenta, who dominate this market,  lobbied hard to avoid the ban.

So far so bad, but there is a glimmer of hope for the bees.  Since there was no overall majority in the European vote, it falls to the Commission itself to decide what to do next.  If the nations do not agree a compromise in the coming weeks, the Commissioner can implement the policy for them.  Mr Borg is currently considering what his next steps should be.

This would be a good time to make your opinion heard either by writing to the Commissioner directly, or by lobbying your MEP.  Alternatively, if you live in the UK you can sign the attached ePetition requiring the government to allow a Parliamentary debate on the subject.  The bees need all the help they can get!

 Lord Deben, better known perhaps as John Selwyn Gummer, was the Conservative farms minister in the nineties who famously fed beef burgers to his daughter to calm public nerves over BSE.  He is clearly not a man averse to taking the odd risk.  Yet he believes "If ever there were an issue where the precautionary principle ought to guide our actions, it is in the use of neonicotinoids. Bees are too important to our crops to continue to take this risk.”  I couldn’t put it better myself

.

Are we saddled with the meat we deserve?

The current food scare in the UK concerning the presence of horse meat in the human food chain is a perfect scandal for our time. Here in Britain there is no tradition of eating horse, and the average person regards it as something akin to cannibalism to tuck in to dear old Neddy.  In this country, after all, charities find it easier to raise money for donkeys than for starving children.  Of course horse meat per se is perfectly safe for human consumption and it is widely sold and eaten elsewhere in Europe.   That’s why the government has been keen to paint this as a ‘food labeling’ issue rather than a concern over ‘food safety’.  The trouble with that argument is that if you don’t know what’s going in to your food you really can’t claim that it’s perfectly safe to eat can you?

But what makes this story perfect is the cast of potential villains. They chime perfectly with current social and political prejudices.

Owen Patterson, Secretary of State
for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

To start with, the Eurosceptic Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, initially tried to put the blame on our European partners and therefore somehow obliquely on the EU itself.

First he pointed the finger of blame at France, a well-known nation  of horse munchers. Then the search for a culprit spread to Romania, already in the spotlight as we brace ourselves for a new wave, or is a tsunami, of East European immigration.  First we get Romanian horse meat, he seemed to be implying, and then next year we get Romanian benefit scroungers!  He talked darkly of ‘an international criminal conspiracy’.  Europe’s a dangerous place. See what happens when we lose control of our borders?  This line of argument ended abruptly when horse meat was subsequently found entering the food chain at two British abattoirs.

Next up for blame was the dreaded quango.  Paterson has been quick to use the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as a shield.  The Tories have a long standing and non-specific antipathy to quangos, which undoubtedly includes the FSA.  Despite the fact that the number of FSA food inspectors has been halved since this government came to power, the minister has been quick to put primary responsibility for tackling the problem at their door.  In effect he has tried to use the agency to deflect attention from himself and the ministry.  Of course if the FSA fails to provide a solution, then it is just another indictment of quangos.

For the opposition, his Labour shadow Mary Creagh, has seen her profile boosted by the story.  She can rightly point out that this issue affects poor and low paid people disproportionately.  Mr Paterson might claim he would be prepared to eat a Findus lasagne, but nobody really believes that he ever has.  Government ministers earning £134,565 do not normally shop in the value range.  Somehow this story plays perfectly in to the Labour narrative of a government of toffs, out of touch with the needs of common people and primarily interested in helping their millionaire chums.  For some people no doubt, it’s a kind of sequel to ‘pastygate’.

Away from Westminster the argument has mainly been about the role of supermarkets and big food processors, already reviled for destroying high streets and small businesses, squeezing farmers, encouraging factory farming and raising food miles and CO2 emissions.  If you want to avoid horse meat in your burgers, goes one strand of the debate, go back to your local family butcher.  He might even know the name of the cow he’s chopping up for your dinner.

That argument is silly and insulting to many people who might be time poor as well as cash poor.  Actually there is some evidence that consumers have been turning to prime cuts in the wake of the continuing horse meat saga, but for many that is not an option and it’s not a solution.  This blog is a big supporter of the concept of buying fresh, local produce from local farms through small scale shops and distributors, but there is no way we are going to turn back the clock to some bucolic vision of Britain taken from a Thomas Hardy novel.  Food is a global industry and factory processed food, supermarkets and the like are here to stay.  Even poor people have a right to expect that the food they buy is safe and corresponds to the description on the packaging.

In fact this whole episode is a symptom of the inexorable rise of world food prices.   I have blogged previously on how the global supply of farm land is largely static and how a world population of over 7 billion is responsible for a long term and continuous upward trend in food prices.  Meat is particularly expensive to produce, and with world fish stocks in decline protein is becoming especially expensive with increasing demand from a new aspirational middle classes emerging in countries such as China, India and the Gulf states.  The high price of beef present s opportunities for unscrupulous operators to make money.  It’s a perfect capitalist crime. Exactly what we should expect from the lightly regulated free-market.

The truth is, on this occasion, may be awkward and uncomfortable for Mr. Paterson and his political friends, but we’ve got all the wrong characters in the dock.

We stand a much better chance of controlling this nefarious trade with the help of our EU partners and Europe wide regulations and controls.  It’s actually a strong argument in favour of the EU.  Remember the whole thing came to light thanks to the Irish Food Safety Authority alerting their British counterparts to their findings.

Within Britain we need a robust, confident and well-resourced FSA to tackle the small but ever-present threat in our domestic industry.  Nobody but the secretary of state is convinced by the government’s preference for voluntary schemes, self-regulation and nudge theory.  proper regulation is not the dead hand of the state interfering with wealth creation, it is the foundation of a safe and well-respected industry.  Far from being a break on growth it can facilitate it.

And yes we need supermarkets to wield their enormous power in the interest of consumers.  Only the big retailers have the resources and the motivation to drive criminals out of the industry and provide the safeguards that the public demands.

Stop this pointless cull

On 14^th December last year the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, announced to the House of Commons that the government would run two pilot schemes to cull badgers in England.  The pilots will assess the viability of addressing the problem of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in beef and dairy cattle by shooting wild badgers, which are known to be carriers of the disease.

Two areas have been chosen, one in West Gloucestershire and one in West Somerset, both hot spots for bTB.  The pilots are expected to last six weeks beginning in August or September this year.

The cull is naturally controversial. It’s opposed by the RSPCA, The Wildlife Trust, The Badger Trust and by roughly 60,000 members of the public who responded to the government’s own consultation exercise.  A poll conducted by GfK NOP for the BBC last summer indicated that 63% of the public opposed it too.

Caroline Spelman
Minister for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs

But in the words of Ms Spelman, ‘Doing nothing is not an option’.

bTB is rife throughout South West England and Wales and is spreading steadily to other parts of the country.  Badgers are known to spread the disease through saliva and urine.  The government’s response is to enforce compulsory skin tests for all cattle every 60 days and to slaughter infected beasts.  In 2010, 25,000 cattle were slaughtered in England alone, costing the taxpayer £91m in compensation for farmers.  Farms under TB restrictions are not allowed to export live animals.

These policies hit dairy farms particularly.  Although the government pays a market rate for slaughtered cattle, the farmer receives nothing for lost milk production and they have no option but to shoot male calves which might otherwise be sold for rearing elsewhere.

Although badgers are protected in the UK, many farmers have already taken the law in to their own hands and many badgers have been gassed in their sets, yet still the disease spreads.

The trouble is that culling does not work.

DEFRA says that the culls will be ‘science led’, but as Natural England, the government’s own wildlife advisors, have pointed out, it has been tried before, in the 70s and the 90s, and it proved ineffective at holding back the spread of the disease.

Moreover, an official £50m, ten-year study conducted for the government by a specially formed Independent Scientific Group (ISG), found that culling was ineffective at controlling the disease, and in fact caused it to spread more rapidly as surviving badgers scattered throughout the countryside, an effect known as ‘perturbation’.

Prof Lord John Krebs of Oxford University, who instigated the study, concluded in July 2011 that a four-year intensive cull which eradicated around 70% of the badger population might reduce incidence of the disease in cattle by 12 to 16%.

This is the reason that the previous Labour government rejected the proposals for a cull and also why similar plans were shelved last year by the Welsh government.

So what is the answer?

Well in the first instance let’s get this problem back in perspective.  The reasons that the government insists on slaughtering animals are:

·         To protect public health

·         Animal welfare

·         To protect Britain’s export market

But let’s take a closer look at these arguments.

Work by two senior zoologists, Prof David Torgerson of York University and Prof Paul Torgerson of Zurich University, has shown that there is little or no danger to public health posed by bTB provided milk is pasteurized.  In fact meat from infected cattle slaughtered under the government policy is currently sold for human consumption, so obviously the government agrees.

They also point out that most cattle exposed to the bacterium will not fully develop the disease within the time of their normal commercial life, and many won’t develop it at all.  In other words, the government’s policy which has been in place for 60 years is probably excessive and largely unnecessary.

The claims on animal welfare are clearly absurd.  Slaughtering animals because they might develop a disease to which a vaccine is available cannot be represented as concern for their welfare.

Trade with EU countries is often cited as a factor.  Well EU laws in this area only concern live animals.  In the last 20 years Britain’s exports of live cattle have never exceeded £3.3 million in annual value which hardly justifies annual control costs of almost £100m.

So should we do nothing and simply accept a level of TB in our cattle herd?

Well no.  What is rarely mentioned is that there is a viable vaccine for bTB.

Vaccinating cattle is currently seen as a non-starter because it is outlawed by EU law.  The current skin tests do not differentiate between an immunised cow and an infected one.  Further, DEFRA argues that “Not all vaccinated animals would be protected from TB and therefore vaccination alone will not be sufficient to demonstrate disease free status… and allow trade in those animals”. This is a disingenuous argument, as use of the skin test is also imperfect.  Currently it is estimated that one in five animals slaughtered under government guidelines is actually a false positive.  Similarly the test misses around 20% of infected cattle which may then be transported quite legally.

Would we reject vaccination of children against polio on the grounds that it’s not 100% effective?  Of course not.

Vaccinating badgers is also ruled out because of assumptions about cost and difficulty.  But another of DEFRA’s own agencies, The Food and Environment Research Agency, FERA, recently completed a badger vaccination project over a 100km² area near Stroud in Gloucestershire.  In a report published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society they concluded,

“In a clinical field study, BCG vaccination of free-living badgers reduced the incidence of positive serological test results by 73.8 per cent. …BCG vaccination of badgers could comprise an important component of a comprehensive programme of measures to control bovine TB in cattle.”

In fact, the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, which has conducted its own trials, estimates that badger vaccination is a viable alternative to culling without the drawbacks, and could be carried out for only £51 per hectare.

Only two diseases have ever been eradicated in the world; smallpox and rinderpest, the latter being a cattle disease. Both were eradicated using vaccination.

What DEFRA should do is as follows:

• stop slaughtering infected cattle immediately
• allow farmers to vaccinate their cattle at their own discretion
• initiate a programme of vaccinating wild badgers

It will still take years but this is the only approach that will ever eradicate bTB from our shores.

Government ministers of all hues often feel obliged to be seen to do something, even when it makes no sense.  The Conservative party moreover has always been the traditional party of the countryside and the farming lobby, so the pressure to do something dramatic is commensurately greater.  But killing badgers will do nothing to eliminate bovine TB, it may even exacerbate the problem and it will do immense damage to our wildlife.  Far from being science led, the decision to cull badgers looks like a purely political one.

Under these circumstances the proposed cull is pointless, barbaric and just plain wrong. Our wildlife should not be treated as a political prop.

I will leave the last word to the Badger Trust which has raised a legal challenge to the cull and which summed up the situation concisely.

“Badger culling, if it comes to pass, will represent a triumph of prejudice over science, a triumph of the feel-good factor over commonsense and a triumph of political expediency at the expense of a gullible industry.”