Oda Rygh

I visited my sister the past week.

She walks everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
In addition to this she left cooking to me. During our time together we ate:

Sausage and vegetable gratin
(fry sausages and vegetables. Add soured cream. Pour over broccoli, cover with cheese, oven, done)

Curry
(fry onions in spices, add chicken and veg, add coconutmilk, wait, done)

And we ate out. At a chinese.  Chinese thick soups are usually thickened with Agar Agar, not starch, and are atkins-safe. And ONE tiny little piece of ricepaper kinda drowns in the amount of filling in a spring roll. Yes, I had two starters.

I got horrendously drunk one night there, but avoided the snacking that comes with drinking.

So when I returned to my Mums, I weighed myself and, voila. 6 kilos less.
The combo of excersise and eating right actually works.

Damn.

As I am too ill to think, have not slept at all, and am feeling the stress of not going to have any money next week due  to being off work, I am making one of the cheapest soups possible: Mushroom potage.

In it: an onion. Some closed cup mushrooms. Some chestnut mushrooms. (any mushrooms will do, but I have a ting for the flavour of the chestnut mushrooms…) some worcerstershire sauce. a spoon or two of sour cream. Salt. Pepper. This is essentially Umami on a plate, and very high in protein and all the other things that mushrooms have in them.

Being ill is the single most boring thing to happen. Last time it was parmageddon/hamtrax, but this time it is plain old cold. I technically could go to work, but I would be unable to do my job (talking at people) and I would infect the entire office with my slimy chesty coughs. But! exiting thing! I have lost another pound since I started low-carbing. So far four pounds down. BMI down to 30.14.

Primal Soup is essentially pale green scum. It came to be after I bought myself a kenwood handblender.

In the freezer I had an old bag of broccoli and cauliflower florets. I boilt them in a vegetable stock with half a leek untill tender and zoomed it with the blender. After which I added some old cheeserinds from a wedge of Dolce Latte I didn’t manage to finish a month ago, and some lumps of hard cheddar that had been left out. And zoomed it again, then added salt and white pepper.

For garnish in the primal soup there is the emergence of life in the form of simple proteins (in this case some smoked ham in very thin slivers in the middle of the bowl).

Let there be life!
(omnomnomnom)

So we have decided to go Atkins/low-carb for various reasons ranging from a BMI of over 30, my love for food, and the promise of the wedding dress in a year or two. The boy has refused to get a Kilt till he is slender and slim as well. So, onwards to skinnyness!

Why Atkins (Or South Beach, or Fedon, or Low GI, or whatever)?

Well, here follows a breakdown of reasoning:

Efficiency: It works. It works fast, it works steadily, it gives measurable results week for week. It, like all diets, works perfectly as long as you stick with it.

Sticking with it: I love food. But that is not why I gained weight. I gained weight NOT eating the food I love. I gained weight eating takeaways that were sub-par, chips that were soggy, drinking beer that was cheap and flavourless, eating large piles of icecream in depression that I didn’t even think about eating. I particularly remember a week I had gorged myself on cheap, fatty, carby foods and ordered a kebab. I didn’t manage to finish it, because the first thing I ate was the side salad. I hadn’t had vegetables in a week. This is not the food I LOVE. This is the food i eat when I am feeling too ill to love anything. It is comforteating. It is placing myself in a food-trance. It is Hyper-Stimuli in order to drug myself into a food-induced stupor. And I got over it six months after my degree when i got a job, had financial stability, and got a clue about the future. Sticking with eating the food that I love is not going to be difficult.

Love of food: What I cannot eat on this diet (every day or in large quantities that is): Stuff that when is broken down in my body turns into sugar. Or simpler: Stuff that is white or contains stuff that is white (sugar, flour, rice, potato).

Things that are ok to a varying degree include: Steak with asparagus, mushroom omelette with a side salad, stir-fry with cashews, steamed salmon with broccoli and hollandaise, carpaccio, greek salad, cream of cauliflower soup, cheese and ham salad, tuna steak with roasted peppers, Salade nicoise, Falafel, scottish breakfast with bacon/egg/sausages/fried mushroom/baked tomato, crudites with raita dip, deviled eggs, Fårikål, meatballs in gravy with stewed cabbage, smoked sausage and cheese, vinaigrette, gin and tonic, sour cream, chilisauce, grilled mediterranean vegetables… and so on. There is a reason why Nigella Lawson called atkins the diet of foodlovers. Imagine a diet that lets you avoid all the filling up bits and just have the tasty stuff. It is like that. If you can cook. If you can’t, you may resort to eating nothing but bacon and fried eggs, with good results in term of losing weight, but rather poor results in term of health.

Health: Being fat is not really that unhealthy. If anything a slight overweight increases your lifespan (yes, really: Orpana, Heather M. et al. (2009) BMI and Mortality: Results From a National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Adults) Living in the ways that make you fat however IS unhealthy. And once you are a little bit fat, you are likely to become VERY fat, and that is not at all good for you. Things that are unhealthy: Massive fluctuations in bloodsugar, high levels of stress hormones, grazing on things that are essentially fat and salt and sugar, not getting enough veg and vitamins and minerals, drinking too much, not having enough water, not having enough fibre, not moving enough.. So other than making me slightly less fat which is vanitybased and not at al because I am healthconcious, low-carb makes me not snack on bad things, makes me eat non-starchy vegetables at every meal, keeps my bloodsugarlevels even, and got rid of my anaemia due to not having enough meat and leafy veg. Oh, and I don’t drink beer, but am thirsty for water all the time.

TMI: Horrible periodpains? Constipated? Deadly farts of doom? You may not be eating very well. I digest far better after only one week on atkins. And I am no longer needing to drug myself down with codeine to keep periodpains off. My spots are reduced, my skin is more colourful in the right way, and I am loving it.

The bad side of Atkins: The first week is hell. Your body will resist losing the addiction to sugars. You will be hungry ALL THE TIME. You might get a headache, you may get bad breath untill you realise just how much water you need to drink, and nothing you eat will feel like enough. The first week is not fun at all.

Then on the other side of it you feel better. You get more energetic (May even feel like going for a walk..), you sleep better, you digest better, you weigh yourself for the first time and realise that after a week you have lost a pound, or two, or three. The first weeks you lose all the weight ever. Most of this is water (If you like me have a water-retention issue, this is amazing in itself.), but some of it isn’t. And your lunchbox is envied throughout the office, with its bits of cheese and cucumber and tomatoes and eggs and ham, and bits of grilled vegetables. And you feel good.

I will blog about this fairly regularly from now on. From the point of view of a foodlover, and in hope of being unable to quit it due to having it all on the internet. My BMI started at 30,74. It is now 30,30 after 5 days. I have set myself a six month target of looking amazing at the Discworldcon Gala Dinner in a tiny corset. And staying that way till I get married to a young strapping lad in a tailored kilt.

You are ill, you have a runny nose, a sore throat, you can’t move, your head hurts, you can’t breathe properly, and worse, you are alone at home and need to eat. But you are too ill to shop.

I present to you: Egg drop soup.

The basic recipe is like this: You head up stock. You thicken it with some flour, you maybe spice it a little or put some soy sauce in, and then you drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly. Done.

Variations include using a pack of noodles, then drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly. Or put some macaroni in, then drop an egg in whilst stirring briskly.

Egg drop soup done properly has silky threads of eggwhite running though it and is an art of some controversy.

That is not the point of todays soup. Todays soup is meant to be a cure for all ills. It is watery enough for you to get some liquid, soothing enough for your throat, has stock and carb so will keep you alive, replenishes salt, and the egg is the protein you need in an easy-to-swallow, no chewing needed format.

This soup is also a great way to survive as a student on noodles without getting malnourished and dying.

Yesterday I bought a vegetable in the local african shop.

The man who runs it is a Moor of the noblest sort, he has a thick accent that I am ashamed I can’t place (I can place most accents from all the other continents, but the african ones are lost to me. And to most other people I suspect… It is a symptom of a horrible view of a continent and its peoples..), he is always politely flirting and pushing whatever is in fresh today. You can’t quite tell if he means the flirting or not, but I always spend far too much money on vegetables in there.

Yesterday I got a sort of squash thing. Yes. That is right. A sort of sqash thing.

“What is this” -I said poiting at an obscene looking vegetable, after having got some ghee and okra and vindaloo curry paste (It is excellent if you suffer from poverty, you only need a little).

The Moor muttered a name I couldn’t quite pick up. Then said the important thing: “It is for Sambar, for curry”

I was sold.

You ever wondered why italians put parmesan or anchovies on everything?
And the same thing about chinese food and soy sauce? and Thai with their Nam Pla?

The answer is Umami.

From wikipedia:

“Umami (旨味^?) is one of the five generally recognised basic tastes sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue. Umami is a loanword from Japanese meaning roughly “tasty”, although “brothy“, “meaty“, or “savory” have been proposed as alternative translations.^[1][2] The same taste is also known as xiānwèi (traditional Chinese: 鮮味; simplified Chinese: 鲜味 literally “Fresh Flavor”) in Chinese cooking. In as much as it describes the flavor common to savory products such as meat, cheese, and mushrooms, umami is similar toBrillat-Savarin’s concept of osmazome, an early attempt to describe the main flavoring component of meat as extracted in the process of making stock.”

Ok, that clarified everything. So how do we use it?

Well, imagine that you have food you want to taste.. ehm..  tastier. The usual solution is to add salt and pepper, or put sauce on. Now this is all well and nice, but salt is unhealthy, and to be honest, salt and pepper can only do so much.
Umami you can use to CHEAT. It is the easy route to everything nommy.

Some suggestions:

Mash: Use a vegetable stock cube instead of butter.

broccoli: sprinkle parmesan over for instant goodness, or pour weak stock over cooked veg.

sauteed onions: a few drops of nam pla or sweet soy sauce in

Add cheese to sauce to thicken them, learn from the Cæsar salad where the dressing has hidden bits of anchovies in it, use soy sauce other places than in chinese food..

In essence: Learn what tastes of umami and use it actively, have fun, experiment, become a better cook.

-Or just go to your local chinese supermarket and buy a bag of MSG. That works too.

So I bought some mutton at the farmers market. Getting it had been difficult. At one point a butcher informed me that it was illegal in Britain. I bought a rolled shoulder of lamb, which I turned into a wine pot roast (the day after a party that had left a half bottle of Wolf Blass Shiraz..)

Mutton has the amazing ability of being TOUGH. I mean severe tooth and jaw work that makes you look like you are on drugs for a week afterwards. It also has the amazing ability of having a far stronger taste/smell of lanolin (that “sheepy” smell) than lamb -Making the flavour rich, lovely, and capable of combatting stronger flavours than lamb. Now all you have to remember is that tough meats (like oxtail and mutton) turn into not-tough meat when heat is applied for a long enough time. Four hours ought to do it.

These are the very basic things about curries:

In my fridge, there were a few vegetables about to go a Bit Funny. I had a carrot, some small potatoes, a sprig or five of cauliflower, a green pepper. And that was it. I also had a freezer with some chopped spinach, and about 200 grammes of diced mutton shoulder. Not much. I also had a lump of unsalted butter. Lacking ghee, I melted the unsalted butter.

To spice a curry is a bit of an art and can be a bit scary before you know what all the spices DO. I reccomend patak’s pastes for the people not too familiar with indian spices and how much they like. Just add a spoon or two of the paste to the fat at the beginning of cooking and don’t worry any more about it.

Underneath is a guide to ANY saucy curry you may EVER want to eat in your life. I guarantee it. Then I will tell you what I did to my mutton.

BASIC CURRY CONCEPT 1: You first fry the spices or spicepaste. This gets the flavours out properly and make the ghee/butter/oil turn into a spice heaven. I used a generic “Hot Curry Powder”, And then some pepper, a bay leaf, some turmeric, some cumin, and a lot of fenugrek (which is an excellent spice to go with spinach). The hot curry powder I used about two heaped table spoons of. But I am not human when it comes to curries, you may want to not use as much. In with the spices and the oil you want to add onions and meat. The meat will be sealed. Do not hold back on your onions. Two, three, four is about right. India had massive riots over the cost of onions during the foodprice crisis last year. It is a staple almost more than bread is. They also taste nice. Once the onions are seethrough add diced vegetables of your liking. Root-vegetables are good. Potato, turnip, carrots. Peppers and spinach is too. Curries are MADE for that wrinkly potato at the bottom of the bag, or the leftover cauliflower.

BASIC CURRY CONCEPT 2: Balance bitter with something sour, and balance hot with something sweet. -What you should have at this point is fried vegetables and meat all covered in hot fat. This may taste the way you like. But if it doesn’t it is either too spicy, too bitter, too dry, or not salty enough.Here are some guidelines for tasting your way to your personal heaven.

To add a salty flavour, use a lamb stock cube in a little water. Or some salt. Or some soy sauce. Both the soy sauce and the stock also carries in it “umami”, the meaty flavour, which makes food taste rounder and more savoury.

To make a sauce, which is traditional in scottish curries (The chicken Tikka Masala was invented in Glasgow), you have three options generally, there is a “creamy”, a “sweet”, and a “sour”.

Creamy: Add to your fried vegetables either a tub of yoghurt/creme fraiche/sour cream or some thick coconutmilk. This makes a creamy sauce wich you may know from kormas and other relatively “mild” sauces

Sweet: Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, or some tomato puree and water. Remember that there is generally too little sugar in tomatoes these days, so add a spoon of brown sugar aswell. The sugar also makes the curry have less initial heat, but makes it still be hot a few spoonfuls in. This is the way to make a “Rogan Josh”-type curry.

Sour: This is the classic way to make a curry MORE hot. In with the spices you not only add some thick goop like coconutmilk or tomato puree, but also add vinegar. The white vinegar you use to clean windows with. That vinegar. This is the classic “vindaloo”. Another option is lemonjuice, as in the “Madras”.

BASIC CURRY CONCEPT 3: Time is your friend. Depending on what meat you are using, time is what you need. Whether you are marinating chicken in a yoghurt dressing overnight, or are simmering mutton lightly, WAIT. Even fast stuff like chicken benefits from simmering for a long time on low heat. You CAN make chicken curry in ten minutes, and indeed this recipe is lovely, but time always makes things better. Remember that chillies that have been boiled for five hours are far nicer than chillies that have been in for three seconds.

BASIC CURRY CONCEPT 4: Cheat. Your sauce not thick enough? Add a spoon of flour mixed in with water. -This is also good for if you want to use both yoghurt and water/tomato in the sauce: Thicken the watery sauce before you add yoghurt, then it won’t separate.
If things are too hot, add another tin of tomato sauce and sugar, and some peas a minute before serving.

BASIC CURRY CONCEPT 5: Stuff to go with makes it all nicer. Make raita which is really easy, all you need to make it impressive is mint and cucumber. Chop up a few tomatoes in boats to have on the side. When you boil rice, add a cardamom pod and a cinnamonstick and some turmeric to make it yellow. Garlic naan and poppadoms you can easily buy. And if you also have a chutney and some lime pickle, you have enough to impress even real adults. Milk is the only drinks that make curry less spicy, as fat dissolves capsaicin. If you have children and other frail people trying the food, have some around. Otherwise, a good light beer is always nice. Cobra is especially made for curries.

What I did to my mutton:

I added water and boilt. And boilt. And boilt. I stirred, lowered the heat, and boilt more. Mutton takes TIME. Then I went and got a few tins of chopped tomates and some set yoghurt. I added the tomates, thickened the goop with flour, added half the pot of yoghurt and stirred. And then I realised it was too bitter, so I added two spoons on brown sugar. Realised it was too sweet, so I added another stock cube and some soy sauce. Stirred again. And boilt some rice. Boiling rice is an art that took me YEARS to learn properly. Most asian families I know have a rice cooker.

Then I wired some speakers with xanthspod, moved a desk, took the rice off the cooker to steam for 15 minutes, and served.

The pot of curry turned out to be about three days worth of food. This does not matter. Remember that thing about spice and time? Curries are always best the second day. Tomorrow I will freeze the rest.