CT FM 004: Food Culture & Favourite Cuisine

CT FM 004:

Food Culture & Favourite Cuisine Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our fourth Podcast from CT FM. For our 4th Podcast I wanted to talk about the culture of food both from the respective of someone addicted to food but also as a food blogger.

This came about last night after reading a comment on Facebook that upset me so much that I just had to talk about it.

One of my pet hates is prejudice and it is awful and if I could wipe it out I would. Someone had simply commented on Facebook that all Brits were obnoxious because they dared to argue with them on one of their recipes. I find this really, really rude and offensive and YES I AM BRITISH. I was born in England and love Britain and had the first 26 years of my life there.

What I miss the most is the food as it is delicious and a lot better than a lot of countries. But then I only find that applies when you visit the North of England as I have always hated London food.

But back to the comment, the reason why she was mad is because as an American she had wrongly named a dish.

He had politely corrected her and she got mad. The Facebook thread then turned into an anti-British thread and I unfriended it as I just didn’t want to be part of it. It claimed that British food was horrible and that they should be embarrassed by the food. I don’t know what others put as I left the discussion but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

And it also got me thinking as foodies that we will often get it wrong when we try to cook a different nationality. So we should stick to what we are good at or research it more thoroughly. After all have you ever eaten at a Chinese restaurant and had a British chef?

Cooking Tips The best time I ever had in the kitchen was when I was 16. I worked in an Indian takeaway and they would feed me up all night. I am surprised I didn’t gain three stone while I was working there  but because I had other jobs and was a busy teen I stayed slim.

I watched as the kitchen assistant (who had a drinking problem) could make the best ever curries even when wasted, then the owner would show me how to make Tandorri chicken and also how to make the best ever side dishes.

It was heaven.

Then he would drop me off at home when we closed and I would have my hands full of free curries. My dad thought it was amazing and there were enough free curries in the freezer to keep him going for years.

And this brings me to the best part of learning to cook. Instead of just relying on food blogs and recipe books, find an expert on a certain type of food. This will be one person that knows of a cultural food that you don’t and get them to teach you three dishes.

They could be really good at baking and will teach you how to make delicious cupcakes, cheese muffins or some chocolate chip cookies. Then you might return the favour and cook your favourite three meals for them. And there is nothing better than this level of cooking experience.

If you want to learn about new cultures it is always best to learn about it from someone with experience, otherwise you could be following a recipe that is all wrong.

To kick start you on your best of three here is Dominic showing you how to cook his signature roast potatoes….

Hello, So I am going to be taking you through how I cook my roast potatoes and get them nice and tasty. Firstly I find about 4 large potatoes peel and chop them into evenly sized chunks of potato. About 4cm x 4cm roughly.

Now grab a thick bottomed tin because you do not want your roasties to burn and put them init. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and then about 100g of butter slice into small pieces and spread around the potatoes.

Then get some salt and sprinkle quite abit over the potatoes then massage the potatoes to get all the salt, olive oil and butter over each one then put in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 4/180 degrees for 1-2 hours.

Always turn the potatoes at 15 minute intervals so that they end up evenly cooked all over. I say 1-2 hours because everyone likes there roasties done different.

I like them just nice and soft not too much colour but soaked up enough of the fat and salt to taste great. Some people like them nearly burnt with plenty of colour so this is why I put a big margin for cooking, I cook mine for 1hr 30 minutes. I did not say that these were going to be healthy now did i. They are not.

Anyway that is my roastie recipe and how I like to cook them for a Sunday roast or at Christmas time.

Anyway thanks for listening and now I will pass you back over to Sam to continue.

Family Cooking Time If there is a family meal that we have that shows off our British roots it has to be our five ingredient fisherman’s fishcakes. They came about as they were the same ones that my Grandad would make for me when I was growing up.

They are super simple and have a best of British theme about them. And if you visited the North of England this is exactly how they would taste if served up in a family home or at the local fish and chip shop.

You mix together cooked drained fish flakes (such as catfish, haddock or hake) with mashed potatoes with some milk, butter and seasoning and then you have amazing fish cakes.

Even better, it is 75% fish to 25% potato making it really easy for measuring so that you can ditch your kitchen scales.

You can of course get the full recipe via the Podcast transcript and try it out yourself.

Family Healthy Eating So why is it that we all turn to the Chinese for a meal even though most of us have never even met a Chinese person? Then the food doesn’t take anything like how they make it and you’re left disappointed.

The result always ends up with you using processed foods to get the flavour and then you end up eating unhealthy yet again!

But if you use some simple flavours then you can easily recreate a Chinese dish without as much processed foods.

What I like to do is make Chinese kebabs.

They are with some pork or beef mince and have some soy sauce, Chinese five spice and a few other flavours in them. Then prepare them with some Chinese rice and you have a meal. Never mind trying to recreate a meal that you are not very good at, this will give

you a starting point.

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 4 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention the kebab machine that we have. If you want to get your kids eating healthy and also enjoy cultural food then it never gets any better than this. You can add kebabs to the skewers and it will then do the work for you with the electric bulb cooking them for you.

You can find out all about it at recipe this dot com forward slash kebab grill.

Frugal Family Cooking Okay so how would I make something really frugal that is based around favourite cuisine that we all love?

Well this is the meal I would always go for‌‌.burgers and chips. No matter what age you are you just love them. You can use pork mince in the burger to make it cheaper, potatoes are really low cost for making fries and then you can top it up with some favourite sides.

We particularly love to have ours with some garnish, fried onions and some corn on the cobb with melted butter. When I think that 250g of pork mince (at a cost of $1.60) is enough to make four burgers then you can easily do this on a Saturday night for less than $4 for a family of four.

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

   

Five Ingredient Fisherman Fishcakes Chinese Kebabs & Rice The Ultimate Airfryer Burgers Kebab Grill Review

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Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your cooking.

Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media:  http://facebook.com/recipethis  https://twitter.com/recipe_this

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