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ROAST CAULIFLOWER WITH TAHINI SAUCE

by March 25, 2018

I made this delicious roast cauliflower dish, the recipe of which was in The Age newspaper (Melbourne) on 20th February 2018. It is a recipe by Travis McAuley.

My photo does not do it justice, it was really good.

Roasted cauliflower with buttermilk and tahini dressing.

1 whole cauliflower
50ml extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste
100 ml buttermilk (I could not get buttermilk so used keffir instead – the bacteria in the keffir would not like the heat, but tastewise it worked well)
60g Greek yoghurt
juice 1/2 lemon
30g honey
30g tahini

Preheat oven to 220C (same if fan forced)

Wet two pieces of baking paper large enough to completely wrap the cauliflower. Lay one sheet across another. Rinse the cauliflower and place onto the centre of the two sheets. Drizzle with the extra virgin olive oil and season with salt. Bring up the edges to completely encase the cauliflower and tie with string. Roast for 55 minutes or until skewer inserts easily into the core.

To make the dressing whisk together the buttermilk, yoghurt, lemon juice, honey and tahini in a small bowl until smooth. Season to taste.

Remove the cauliflower from the oven and increase oven temperature to 220C. Cut the string form the package opening up the baking paper to expose the cauliflower. Spoon over half the dressing and return to the oven for 10 minutes.

Spoon over the remaining dressing return to the oven and bake cauliflower for another 10 minutes or until golden brown.

EASY BREAKFAST PANCAKES

by March 18, 2018

Here is a recipe for very easy breakfast pancakes. They are quick to prepare and delicious.

  • 2 very ripe bananas
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder (for gluten free pancakes use a gluten free baking powder)

Mash the bananas with a fork until squashed, but you still want to have some chunks in there.

In a bowl whisk the eggs and baking powder.

Add the bananas to the egg mixture and mix through.

Heat a frypan with a very small amount of coconut oil. I use a piece of kitchen paper to wipe the oil around the base of the pan just so the pancakes don’t stick.

Put spoonfuls of mixture into the pan, and cook until the underneath is nicely brown and the top is looking cooked through. Flip over and brown the other side.

You can put them in the oven on a very low heat just to keep them warm whilst you make the rest.

We serve them with assorted berries. You could also add a light drizzle of maple syrup, some yoghurt, some seeds or nuts – what ever takes your fancy.

KNOWING INGREDIENTS ON PACKAGING

by March 16, 2018

As I have mentioned before, the INGREDIENTS LIST on packaged food is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to read before buying the product.

I wanted to give you some examples of what to look for if you are looking to see how much sugar, salt or fat is in a product. Often a product can have more than one component of these ingredients, for example a biscuit might contain sugar, golden syrup and concentrated fruit juice, which means it has three forms of sugar in it.

Here are a few of the most common forms on packaging.

Sugar can be listed as: – sugar, cane sugar, fructose (fruit sugar), glucose, dextrose (another name for glucose), honey, invert sugar, golden syrup, treacle, agave nectar, high fructose corn syrup to name just a few. There are over 40 different names for added sugars!!! Also, concentrated fruit juice, another version of added sugar, can be added to food without it being included in the sugar section of the Nutrition Information Panel.

(One very popular breakfast cereal I looked at had 4 different types of added sugar, being 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th on the ingredients list – 26.7%)

Fat can be listed as: – beef fat, butter, shortening, coconut oil, palm oil, cream, sour cream, dripping, lard, mayonnaise, olive oil, vegetable oil (or variations of such as sunflower oil) hydrogenated oil, monosaturated oil.

Salt can be listed as: – seasoning, flavoured salt (chicken, garlic, onion, celery salts) beef extract, yeast extract, rock salt, sea salt, stock concentrate.

Common allergens also need to be listed on a package, either in bold on the list of ingredients or on a separate list underneath it. Common allergens are cows milk, soy beans, peanuts, tree nuts (such as almonds, pinenuts cashews etc), fish, shellfish, gluten, eggs and sesame.

Dairy can be listed as: – milk, cream, yoghurt, non fat milk solids, milk solids, whey, casein, sodium caseinate, lactose, milk powder.

Egg can be listed as: – powdered egg, egg lecithin, albumin, ovalbumin, globulin, silica albuminate, vitelin. Egg is often used for binding foods so it can be in a lot of packaged food.

Soy can be listed as: – textured vegetable protein (TVP), hydrolysed vegetable protein (HVP), soy lecithin, soy protein, soy sauce, tamari, shoyu, miso, soybean paste.

Gluten can be listed as: – wheat, spelt, farro, kamut, semolina, durum, couscous, bulgar, wheat germ, cornflour, rye, kibbled rye, barley (and variations of – barley flour), oats (and variations of – oat flour, oatmeal, rolled oats).

The packaging below is a good example of an ingredients list showing allergens in bold as well as listing them underneath.

However, have a look at these Mother Earth (sounds healthy) Baked (sounds healthy) Oaty (sounds healthy) Slices and see how often sugar comes up in the ingredients in various forms. I counted sugar, or a variation of it, 7 times !!

FOOD ADDITIVES IN PRE PACKAGED FOOD

by March 13, 2018

As with my previous posts, I am again looking at packaging, labelling and content of pre prepared food. This post is about some of the various things added to food.

Additives are substances added by food manufacturers to improve the appearance, flavour, texture, stability or storage life of food.

On a label they have to state what the additive is and either its name or number, eg: Food Acid (Citric Acid) or Food Acid (330).

Food Acid (may be called Acidity Regulators) help maintain a constant acid level in food.

Emulsifiers ensure that oil and water mixtures do not separate into layers – eg salad dressings.

Humectants prevent foods from drying out.

Thickeners/Gums thicken foods or give a smooth texture.

Preservatives help keep food from getting mouldy and slow the growth of yeast and bacteria.

Antioxidants prevent oxidation in food causing the food to go rancid and change color.

Anti Caking Agents help sachets flow freely.

Prepackaged food can also contain colors which are categorised into three groups, Natural colors from plants or animals, synthetic colors that are chemically identical to natural colors and synthetic colors which are not found in nature.

These will be shown on the package as Color followed by either the name or number, eg: Color (Carotene) or Color (160a).

Obviously cooking from scratch is always better as you know exactly what you are putting in your food. However, sometimes this is just not possible, so make sure you read the ingredients label and know what you are going to eat. Try and buy the closest to natural ingredients as you can.

The packaging is very interesting to read – a packet of popcorn and a packet of Doritos. The plain variety of both have just three ingredients, corn/popcorn, oil and salt. Compare this to the Cheese flavoured variety of both – and you can see how many extra ingredients are added. Keep this in mind when buying these snack type foods, the plainer they are the less additives they will have.

 

NUTRITION INFORMATION PANEL ON FOOD PACKAGING

by March 6, 2018

The Nutrition Information Panel (NIP) on packaged food tells you what nutrition is in the food and also allows you to check nutritional claims on the package.

It also tells you the manufacturers serving size relating to the percentages of nutrients per serving. This is important as different manufacturers will have different serving sizes which makes direct comparisons more difficult.

See if the serving size is realistic – weigh out the serving size and see if you would eat less or more.

The NIP must have three columns. The first column lists the Kilojoules/Calories followed by the nutrients. The second column lists the quantities per serving (see above re serving size) and the third column lists the figures per 100g of food (a percentage!). This third column is the one to use if you want to compare brands. (Some may have a fourth column, with the % daily intake per serving however this is an average figure so may not apply to you!)

The list will comprise Energy, Protein, Fat, Carbohydrates, Sodium (may include fibre) and must include any added vitamins, minerals, additives etc.

Fat will be listed as total fat and will also show saturated fat separately (some will show all types of fat separately).

Carbohydrate includes starches (from flour, potato, grains) and sugars (from fruit, milk, added sugar, honey, agave etc). A separate line must appear for sugars. This is not just added sugar, but both natural and added.

Sodium is a component of salt and appears in milligrams. Sodium intake has been linked to high blood pressure and therefore it is shown on the NIP.

The Per 100 g column are really percentages, so 80 grams of carbohydrates means the food is 80% carbohydrate. Say you wanted to increase the fibre in your diet and you wanted to check some museli brands, this is the column you would look at. For each brand the fibre would be listed per 100g. So if fibre was listed on one as 65g (65%) and another was 75g (75%) this makes it much easier to compare between them.

Companies are required show additional nutrient information such as fibre, vitamins and minerals if making a health claim on the front, for example, a juice with added Vitamin C would have to list Vitamin C on the NIP.

What would be considered high per 100g? (Bear in mind these are general percentages and do not take into account specific dietary requirements)

Protein 12% or more
Fat 20% or more and Saturated Fat 20% or more of total fat
Carbohydrate 60% or more with Sugars being more than 20%
of total Carbohydrate
Fibre 7% or more
Sodium 600 mg or more

What would be considered low per 100g?

Protein 1% or less
Fat 3% or less with 1.5% or less of saturated fat
Carbohydrate 7.5% or less with Sugars being 5% or less.
Fibre .5% or less
Sodium 120mg or less.

So for example in these photos, based on the above high and low ranges, the Chickpeas would be considered low in fat as total fat is 2.2% and they would be a good source of protein and fibre (not high, but good). Again based on the above, these Organic Oat Clusters, whilst the packaging is full of feel good blurbs, would be considered high in fibre at 9.7% but would also be considered high in fat at 20.3% and high in sugar at 20.3%.

This is why I think it is so important to read the ingredients and not rely on the feel good packaging (more about this next time).

I looked at the following websites for the information above if you want to do more research! http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
https://ec.europa.eu/…/labelling_n…/labelling_legislation_en

USE BY DATE / BEST BEFORE DATE – WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

by March 3, 2018

As I have been talking about reading the labels on food, I thought I would do a couple of posts about how to actually read them.

Today we will look at the difference between the dates printed on food packaging.

USE BY DATE: this is put on highly perishable food such as milk, yoghurt, meat packed in the supermarket. Shops cannot sell this food after this date. Even though it might not have signs of being off (visible mould or it smells) you should not eat it after this date. The photo of Keffir has a Use By Date.

 

 

BEST BEFORE DATE: this is generally on long shelf life foods, the type of things you might keep in the cupboard such as cereals, biscuits, tinned foods. You can eat food after the Best Before Date, but its quality will have begun to decline. The tin of chickpeas has a Best Before Date.

 

 

 

BAKED ON DATE: this may appear on baked goods such as bread products, instore cooked biscuits or cakes and shows you how fresh they are.

Date marking only refers to food which is unopened. There should be instructions on how to store and use the food once it is opened. For example the Keffir bottle says that it needs to be consumed within 7 days of opening whilst the chickpeas are to be consumed within 3 days of opening, put in a non metallic container and to be kept in the fridge.

STORAGE is also important. As you can see the Keffir is to be kept in the fridge from the beginning, but the chickpeas can be kept in a cupboard until opened, when they also have to be kept in the fridge.

Next time I will post about reading the Nutrition Information Panel.

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