Keeping It Simple Isn't Stupid

I had good rump steak for lunch today, fried in my beloved Le Creuset pan, maximum heat, about a teaspoon of olive oil, two minutes each side, with a chopped stick of celery in the pan with 5 tiny plumb tomatoes, about one sixth of a red pepper, a few shards of onion and a chopped clove of garlic in the pan with the meat. A sprinkle of salt, and plenty of chilli flakes, some chopped red cabbage going in the pan for the last minute, followed by a handful of baby spinach leaves for mere seconds. Dijon mustard smeared over the steak as it caught its breath on the plate.

Can you imagine how good that tasted? And this is what I have to do to lose weight? Where's the pain with this one?

I will admit to having been converted by the Low Carber argument. For years, I counted calories and the pounds went on, yet still too many authorities focus their attention on that solitary dimension. When I start tinkering with the number and nature of my carbohydrate intake, I see the impact immediately. Yet it stands to my reason at least that controlling carbs alone is never going to be the whole answer. This is a muti-dimensional issue and it demands a similarly complex and nuanced response.

For instance, I am more and more coming round to thinking there are some foods we really should not bother with eating. I don't find myself craving either bread or pasta, so why should I bother with them? Yesterday, I was talking with a bloke over coffee who has shed three stone lately by making one change in his life: he's cut out gluten, which the mighty Wikipedia assures me is a 'protein composite that appears in foods processed from wheat and related species, including barley and rye'.

It's easy to see how one could emulate Jon by by dropping bread or pasta (not an issue for we low carbers in the camp), but it seems that, just as the blessed food manufacturers have set nasty traps for us with their hidden fats and occluded sugars, there is similarly is a problem with hidden gluten. It's everywhere, as any aggrieved coeliac would tell you. Among very many other uses these clever food scientists invent for gluten, they employ it as a stabilizing agent in ketchup and ice cream.

Because they consider it seemly so to do.

Only a week ago I, along with plenty of other innocent TV watchers - of BBC1, not some nasty satellite channel - discovered the horrible secret of xanthum gum, a little something I've seen on the ingredients box of countless food packages over the years. Idly wondered what it was, never did anything about finding out. So Wikipedia, again tells me 'xanthan gum is a polysaccharide used as a food additive and rheology modifier, commonly used as a food thickening agent (in salad dressings, for example) and a stabilizer (in cosmetic products, for example, to prevent ingredients from separating). It is produced by fermentation of glucose or sucrose by the Xanthomonas campestris bacterium. After a fermentation period, the polysaccharide is precipitated from a growth medium with isopropyl alcohol, dried, and ground into a fine powder. Later, it is added to a liquid medium to form the gum.'

Alright? Sounds tasty? Bet you can hardly wait to sink your pearlies into a nice bowl of xanthan gum, eh, readers?

Imagine my surprise when the TV man (whose name was Jimmy) held up a mouldy disgusting slimy rotten cabbage, pointed to the putrefaction and said, right we're going to turn this lot into xanthan gum. The TV man (did I mention that his name was Jimmy?) went through the complicated procedure to make low-fat mayonnaise. The sort that slimmers like. This involved mixing large quantities of this wondrous xanthan gum – which you squirmed watching him make from the aforementioned slime at the bottom of a rotting cabbage – with starch and citrus paste along with the more conventional and comfortable eggs, oil, mustard and vinegar.

In my kitchen I have a food processor, a liquidiser, an electric hand whisk, a manual hand whisk, and several balloon whisks. I doubt that I'm alone in this. I find that using just one of these implements, I can make me a superb mayonnaise using just the following ingredients:

290ml/½ pint groundnut oil
2 eggs, yolks only
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 heaped tsp powdered mustard
1 level tsp salt
freshly milled black pepper
1 tsp white wine vinegar

No sight of of any xanthan gum in sight, nor anything else that has needed the resources, technology and misguided ingenuity of the wonderful food industry. By the way, if you want the rest of the recipe I use, it's Delia's so you should proceed to the sacred sainted source at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/homemademayonnaise_67195 and, as Duke Ellington so frequently said, knock yourself out.

To be frank making up that recipe is really the most difficult thing I'd ever do in a kitchen, and even that 'most difficult thing' is really very easy when you stop and think about it, extremely easy when you've done it once and go for a triumphant repaeat performance, and remember: no cooking required.

It tastes better than anything you'll spoon out of a jar, and it's wholesome: no additives, colourings, flavourings, stabilisers, E-numbers, stuff left over from nasty experiments swept up from the laboratory floor and dumped in the mixer, and no bloody xanthan gum.

In fact, the whole thing goes to illustrate the simple truth so beautifully and eloquently expressed by the comment Glenda made to yesterday's post:

'I've come to the conclusion that the first thing people have to learn is the difference between food producers and food manufacturers, and then to recognize that a factory cannot produce real food, only a farmer, an animal husbander and an orchardist can.'

Apart from the caveat that I don't like the way agribusiness goes about its work in the fields, I take Glenda's point entirely. If we keep it small scale, keep it local, keep in whole and unprocessed, keep it fresh, and keep the carbs down, we shouldn't go too far wrong.

A final word on the xanthan gum issue, added as a p.s., after a nice comment added by Indie, and shoe-horned here really so I don't forget it, more than anything else:

Indie pointed out that it's easy to use reduction and/or dairy as a thickener, and that she has never needed to use the blessed gum: nor have I, and I will continue in that way.

It would appear, however, that Messrs Kraft, Hellman, and Heinz find it impossible to venture near a kitchen without their handy bucket of slime. Given how completely respectable and honourable and that are Messrs Kraft, Hellman, Heinz and all their mighty megamates (and McMates), whatever are Indie and I doing wrong?

I have just noted how magical xanthan gum is described on their sales website by manufacturer Tianjin Baibang Chemical Co., Ltd. They don't find it necessary to speak of its slimy microbial origins, but instead assure us that: 'It can not only enhance the performance of water-keeping and shape-keeping, but also improve the freeze/thaw stability and mouth-feeling of food and beverage products. 'Meanwhile, Xanthan Gum can extend the shelf life of products, simplifying the filling and sterilization during the course of production. Little consume of Xanthan Gum can save lots of production cost and increase the profit rate.' Oh, so that would be it then......

Bon appetit.

Till next time,

Your old pal,

Fred

p.s. I find myself in sympathy with the Facebook group Fast Food Is Killing Us. I urge you to join up and support their campaign. If anyone asks, tell them Freddy sent you.