The Other Benefit of Good Food

My English reticence fights against what I want to say here, but the topic is one worth mentioning, so apologies and onwards.

Good food isn't just about the minerals and vitamins that it puts into our bodies, but the way it helps take out the unwanted stuff.

On the Michelin-starred restaurant trip last week we ate some very creative and superbly cooked food, drank excellent Gaillac wines, and lived well. Except that my innards felt left out of the fun, and though they didn't strike they certainly worked to rule. No wonder, as though I was eating perhaps 15 different fruits and vegetables a day, one leaf or a paper-thin shaving of asparagus doesn't hack it on the fibre front.

Yesterday I calculated our evening meal alone - Salade Nicoise of a sort, and fish baked in a crumb and Parmesan crust - had seven full portions of good f&v. French beans, lettuce, peas, sweetcorn (ok it's a grain, but...) tomatoes, peppers, cucumber and a few other salad leaves into the bargain. The plates did not resemble late period Monets, but they did satisfy stomach, soul and my digestion.

It isn't just the posh plates that lack fibre. On a long airport bus trip in Florida in 2007 we were horrified by an early morning phone-in programme. A 'nutritional expert' was promoting his expensive wonder-tablets for American women who only troubled the sewage-system once a week.

This chap's pitch was the miracle drug would solve all their problems. Having watched such women eating nothing but meat, starch and sugary stuff during our stay in the sunshine state it was clear they actually needed an occasional piece of fruit, or a salad worthy of the name. If they'd only opened their minds it would have opened their bowels. And it's all in the best possible taste, as Kenny E used to say.

Hot Under the Covers - Sandwiches as Art (And One Flame Opportunity)

San Francisco 1979

It wasn't as if I had never eaten a hot sandwich before going for the first time to the USA, but then again it was. Our sausage sandwich (Danny Baker's Saturday morning programme on Radio 5-Live reviving its fortunes), or bacon butty are all very good, but the Americans do the thing so much better. Which also means bigger.

The hot sandwich is of course a one flame cooking opportunity par excellence, and something that surely fits the austerity bill.

Travelling on Greyhound buses with an old school-friend, though by that time we were university students, covering vast distances with diners and bus-stations the only options at times to grab a quick bite, burgers quickly lost their attraction. An alternative on one menu was a chicken sandwich, duly ordered. I expected two slices of white bread with some dry chicken. I got a stack of moist chicken, salad, pickles, a serving of fries, some onion rings and some nicely toasted bread, if memory serves. A meal in itself, and it even had vitamins and fibre!

A Now Sad Reminder of a First Visit to New York

Further discoveries on that trip and others were the Philly cheese steak and the hot corned beef sandwich (is that the Reuben if it comes with sauerkraut?). Whether on a round roll, a sub roll, toast or bread the hot sandwich can be a wonder - and a rather blokey wonder too.

Last night with my wife returning late Sternest Critic and I had a simple steak sandwich, Topside from Waitrose a bit tough but very toothsome, with a couple of slices of bacon left in the pack from the weekend on top, mayo on mine, a thin onion slice or two, wholemeal bread, and a side salad (authentically with Iceburg lettuce, the least-worst looking in the supermarket) the meal was on the table in minutes, and very satisfying. The steaklets were I think £3.50 for 3, the third in the fridge to be part of a Chinese dish tonight), so it was not too expensive.

Ian and I up the empire State Building

 Man v Food has highlighted the joys of such simple feasts, though tending to gluttony too often. Some of the sandwiches Adam Richman gets to eat look magnificent, and the culinary tip (subject of a recent post) you pick up from the top places making such things is use the pan juices, don't waste that flavour. Some dip the entire sandwich in a pan of stock/cooking liquid.

I'll buy the steaks again, but next time slice them thinly post-cooking to build up some structure, make it easier to attack, and create some spaces for mayo to fill and to hold the pan-juices better.