Somewhere in this blog there's a post about grey/gray food, and how that colour is thoroughly unappetising. Last weekend I cooked a curry that was the epitome of beige, and it had the same result in terms of appeal to the eyes.
Once beige gets control, like corrupt politicians, it's extremely hard to dislodge. This was, oxymoronically, a beige black hole, the taupe singularity at its heart drawing in and destroying all other colours. I added jade frozen peas to try to brighten the thing, and seconds later they'd lost their sheen and were more brown than green. Basil and coriander went in at the last second, but they too succumbed.
Strangely the root cause of the beige was bright yellow turmeric root, that dazzling hue combining with coconut milk to end in the B word. It didn't help that the curry was bulked out with cubes of peeled aubergine, and a lot of cashews, neither of which added to the non-existent rainbow on my plate. My turmeric-dyed fingers, briefly as yellow as a lifelong smoker's, mocked the dullness of the dish.
The flavour was fine, excellent even, enlivened with a big nub of ginger (more beige) grated in, and spices various. Without a red or yellow pepper to hand, however, and tomato being wrong for it, beige the thing was. Served on beige wholegrain basmati rice. Accompanied by a pleasant hock that matched it nicely, but made me wish I'd opted for a red just to brighten our evening.
No restaurant chef would have served such a dish. At the very least it would have been garnished with something green on the side, and sweet peppers added to the ingredients list. You (and they) can take the look of dishes too far. The pointless foam. The ubiquitous single physalis, or three redcurrants, with puds. A thin squiggly line of sauce too meagre to bring flavour. Curly parsley atop steak and fish. But annoying though they be, they're better than beige.
Showing posts with label colour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colour. Show all posts
Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Friday, 23 May 2014
White Supremacy - Except for the Other Colours Being Great Too
Back to the question of colour in food. Not food colouring, something almost always to be avoided, but the colours on our plates. And the wonders of raw food.
For the hard of reading I should start taking photos again, it would help with posts like this.
Yesterday, prompted by a remark by the Dear Leader earlier in the week (I follow behind with a notebook to jot down every word of her infinitely wise remarks), we had raw cauliflower as part of what our American cousins would call a 'dinner salad'. I've also heard the phrase 'garbage salad' used for something similar, though there is a notable difference between them - the former more refined and planned, the latter a way of using anything and everything (within reason) to hand.
The cauli was bought that day, was a fine shining white, and looked beautiful on the plate - thanks in particular to the contrast with red pepper and cherry toms, and the green mixed leaves. It was superbly crunchy and crisp, and had all the flavour without that unpleasantly lurking reek of the cooked version. As we don't grow caulis (too much faffery) we don't eat many, but when we do I love them raw like that, something I first came across in a mid-range restaurant in the USA (California if I'm not mistaken, spiritual home of the big salad).
It is not the only vegetable that I prefer raw. Give me coleslaw instead of cooked white cabbage (memories of school dinners) any day. Grated carrot rather than boiled (though I do like glazed carrots). Raw beetroot over boiled or baked. Crisp uncooked celery sticks instead of soft casseroled chunks. The purity of flavour is one part of those preferences, but the brightness of colour is as significant.
White - rather than very pale green, or dull gray/grey - is a rare thing in the kitchen unless significant quantities of dairy fat are involved. That scarcity made the raw cauli all the more enticing. But in case anyone wants to draw a point of political philosophy (or bigotry) out of that, alone it looked boring, only coming to life when set beside the vibrant red tomatoes and pepper.
For the hard of reading I should start taking photos again, it would help with posts like this.
Yesterday, prompted by a remark by the Dear Leader earlier in the week (I follow behind with a notebook to jot down every word of her infinitely wise remarks), we had raw cauliflower as part of what our American cousins would call a 'dinner salad'. I've also heard the phrase 'garbage salad' used for something similar, though there is a notable difference between them - the former more refined and planned, the latter a way of using anything and everything (within reason) to hand.
The cauli was bought that day, was a fine shining white, and looked beautiful on the plate - thanks in particular to the contrast with red pepper and cherry toms, and the green mixed leaves. It was superbly crunchy and crisp, and had all the flavour without that unpleasantly lurking reek of the cooked version. As we don't grow caulis (too much faffery) we don't eat many, but when we do I love them raw like that, something I first came across in a mid-range restaurant in the USA (California if I'm not mistaken, spiritual home of the big salad).
It is not the only vegetable that I prefer raw. Give me coleslaw instead of cooked white cabbage (memories of school dinners) any day. Grated carrot rather than boiled (though I do like glazed carrots). Raw beetroot over boiled or baked. Crisp uncooked celery sticks instead of soft casseroled chunks. The purity of flavour is one part of those preferences, but the brightness of colour is as significant.
White - rather than very pale green, or dull gray/grey - is a rare thing in the kitchen unless significant quantities of dairy fat are involved. That scarcity made the raw cauli all the more enticing. But in case anyone wants to draw a point of political philosophy (or bigotry) out of that, alone it looked boring, only coming to life when set beside the vibrant red tomatoes and pepper.
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Gray (or Grey) is not the New Red
I've written here before about the positive aspects of colour, but yesterday I produced something that, while delicious (even if I say so etc) was not a delight, as it was gray. The gray of John Major's skin in Spitting Image. The gray of a naval vessel too long without a re-coat.
Doubtless whole bookshelves of scholarly stuff must exist on why we react as we do to colour (I wonder if it is the same, as regards food anyway, across cultures?). Gray is so unappetising.
The colour came about as I used the insides of a previously roasted aubergine (now there is a beautiful colour) along with a tin of anchovies, plus garlic and red chilli, zapped in our smoothie maker with stock as the basis of a fish soup. Basa fillets poached in it remained pleasingly white. Large prawns added some vivid coral. More chilli cut into rings flecked it with bright red. But the whole was inescapably gray.
That said, the flavour was deep, and the aubergine did the job I wanted of thickening the soup without the need for cream or carbs. It was moreish enough for two bowls apiece to disappear before it had cooled beyond the tongue-burny. But our conversation, just like this piece, was littered with the word 'gray'.
I tried to think of other gray foods, and only really came up with coley, not the most enticing of fish, and mushroom soup (not mushrooms raw or cooked, just the result of mixing the dark fungi with white cream), though acceptable enough not the favourite of many I'd hazard.
So negative was the reaction to the aubergine-enriched potage that next time I do something along those lines I'll have to add to the stuff to be blended tomato, or more chillis, or maybe some orange or red peppers. Contrary to Spike's assertion in Notting Hill, chicks don't like gray, and nor do chaps.
Doubtless whole bookshelves of scholarly stuff must exist on why we react as we do to colour (I wonder if it is the same, as regards food anyway, across cultures?). Gray is so unappetising.
The colour came about as I used the insides of a previously roasted aubergine (now there is a beautiful colour) along with a tin of anchovies, plus garlic and red chilli, zapped in our smoothie maker with stock as the basis of a fish soup. Basa fillets poached in it remained pleasingly white. Large prawns added some vivid coral. More chilli cut into rings flecked it with bright red. But the whole was inescapably gray.
That said, the flavour was deep, and the aubergine did the job I wanted of thickening the soup without the need for cream or carbs. It was moreish enough for two bowls apiece to disappear before it had cooled beyond the tongue-burny. But our conversation, just like this piece, was littered with the word 'gray'.
I tried to think of other gray foods, and only really came up with coley, not the most enticing of fish, and mushroom soup (not mushrooms raw or cooked, just the result of mixing the dark fungi with white cream), though acceptable enough not the favourite of many I'd hazard.
So negative was the reaction to the aubergine-enriched potage that next time I do something along those lines I'll have to add to the stuff to be blended tomato, or more chillis, or maybe some orange or red peppers. Contrary to Spike's assertion in Notting Hill, chicks don't like gray, and nor do chaps.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Leftovers or Thinking Ahead?
When are leftovers not leftovers? When you cook with the deliberate intention of having something to use later on. Roast chicken always provides more than one meal (at the very least the carcass makes stock); indeed every Sunday roast should offer the basis of Monday's dinner. But it is not just meat that does the trick - think cabbage and mash making bubble and squeak; or just mash with a few strips of meat pointing the way to rissoles.
I rarely cook just enough rice for one dish, as there are so many ways to use a bowl of the stuff the next day. And even if I forget and it languishes unloved in the fridge the chickens will eventually be pleased to have it, though that is an extravagance.
Thursday's basis for the fried rice dish left plenty enough to make a simple stuffed yellow pepper each (how very Eighties), with a tin of anchovies, four cloves of garlic sliced thinly, lots of pepper and sprinkles of paprika and celery salt, plus a splash of olive oil and the juice of half a basics lemon. Stood upright in a metal cake tin, tops minus stalk back on, the filled peppers stopped one another from sagging and the filling stayed moist. They cooked for 40 minutes in the oven at 180C to a soft sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the anchovies, though Sternest Critic said I had overdone the latter.
In warmer times this with a salad would make a main meal, but yesterday they were served as a boost to our vegetable intake after the main course, and to brighten the meal with almost luminous yellow.
We still have enough rice left to make a ramekin each of cheesy rice - grated Parmesan, a dab of butter, spoon of boiling water, and some garlic, cling-filmed and cooked briefly in the microwave.
I rarely cook just enough rice for one dish, as there are so many ways to use a bowl of the stuff the next day. And even if I forget and it languishes unloved in the fridge the chickens will eventually be pleased to have it, though that is an extravagance.
Thursday's basis for the fried rice dish left plenty enough to make a simple stuffed yellow pepper each (how very Eighties), with a tin of anchovies, four cloves of garlic sliced thinly, lots of pepper and sprinkles of paprika and celery salt, plus a splash of olive oil and the juice of half a basics lemon. Stood upright in a metal cake tin, tops minus stalk back on, the filled peppers stopped one another from sagging and the filling stayed moist. They cooked for 40 minutes in the oven at 180C to a soft sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the anchovies, though Sternest Critic said I had overdone the latter.
In warmer times this with a salad would make a main meal, but yesterday they were served as a boost to our vegetable intake after the main course, and to brighten the meal with almost luminous yellow.
We still have enough rice left to make a ramekin each of cheesy rice - grated Parmesan, a dab of butter, spoon of boiling water, and some garlic, cling-filmed and cooked briefly in the microwave.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Colour? Bah! Humbug!
Forgive the title if you would, always the most difficult part of a post to write, and a longish life influenced by punning newspaper headlines makes it hard to avoid such tropes.
When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.
Even in the early years of James I's reign such artificial colouring (powdered sandalwood one of the ways of doing it btw for bright red) was thought to be 'countrified', yet we still do it, the worst offender that luminescent-yellow smoked haddock which hurts the eye when surveying the fish counter. Colour? Bah! Humbug! indeed. Sadly that is cheaper than the undyed version - a bit illogical other than on grounds of volume, so let's stop buying it. When I was a kid my local mini-supermarket, Taygreens, in an echo of an Arthur Lowe anecdote I love, sold two cheeses, cheddar and red cheddar. Even then I couldn't see why people wanted red cheese which looked like someone had mixed it with paint.
On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.
Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.
Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.
The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.
When I prepared my wife's packed lunch this morning - as per a previous post an act of love and economy, a somewhat incongruous pairing - I began to think about colour in food. This was prompted by the cheerier of the two little salads I was making - carrot, red pepper, mandarin segments all bright, ginger less so - and by reading something the previous evening about the English habit of dyeing foods in the late 16th early 17th centuries.
On the positive side colour - natural of course for preference - brightens our plates and cheers us. The grey stir-about eaten by prisoners in past times must have been part of their punishment. So I left the apple in my wife's other salad unpeeled to keep the russet red. And colour it appears is an indication of the presence of different vitamins and minerals, so I try to use fruit and veg of different hues to ensure we get a bit of everything.
Even for someone preparing food in times of austerity it is not too hard to add a dash of brightness to a meal - a bowl of cheapo small apples on the table is a tempter and a decoration for example. I use a lot of basic range red and yellow peppers in salads (smaller, knobbly, perfectly fine and cheaper) and (added late on) in stews and ragouts, not big on taste, but good texture and great colours.
Tinned tomatoes are another fine and cheap source of real red (again, why pay for premium tins when the ones at a third the price in the basics range are marked down because they have a few bits of skin, or colour variations - they are not going to be off, and a spoon of sugar will correct any minor under-ripeness). Lidl's I recall won an Observer (?) taste-test some time back.
The Arthur Lowe story in case you're interested was of him asking at a hotel in times of postwar austerity if they had cheese, to be told by the waitress 'Yes sir, both sorts,' which speaks volumes about hard times then, and the poverty into which British culinary standards had fallen.
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