& DRINK TIN STAR
IT’S pretty much a given that at the back of most people’s kitchen cupboards, are several cans we’ve had for years and totally forgotten about. However, as we all seek to be a little more sustainable, canned food may be about to have a moment.
“I feel like tinned food sits in people’s minds in a time gone by when you were struggling, or rationing, when people turned to tins when you don’t have anything else,” says Lola Milne, author of new cookbook, Take One Tin. “It must be a UK wartime attitude.”
She says there’s a snobbery around food that comes in a tin. In much of continental Europe, there’s a different attitude. “Especially with tinned fish; I was in Seville and all the tapas bars have huge sections of the menu to do with preserved fish.”
Wherever our scepticism comes from, it’s due for a shift, not least because our obsession with buying fresh food
– and not eating it all before it goes off – contributes to a huge food waste problem. The Food and Agriculture Organisation for the United Nations estimates that one-third of food made for human consumption is wasted.
Lola thinks tinned food can help. “I throw away very little food. I always have beans and fish already [in cans] and loads of different oils and spices, so I buy a few fresh things every week, but not much.”
The problem is, “most people don’t use tins in overly creative ways”.
The 27-year-old’s debut cookbook is a collection of recipes – all using at least one key tinned ingredient. Think crab thoran, flageolet bean and artichoke gratin. Lola says, there’s a focus on beans and pulses, fish, fruit and vegetables.
There’s no meat, because she doesn’t think canned meat is as tasty as its fresh counterpart.
Tinned fruit meanwhile, has a definite Seventies image; remember fruit cocktail from a can and evaporated milk? But Lola’s pear and prune cobbler or pineapple, lime and coconut cake recipes might change your mind on that. For a seriously underrated tinned fruit though, go for figs.
“Often when you buy fresh figs here, they taste of nothing,” she says. “Tinned ones actually taste really figgy, sticky and firm all year round.”
Cheap, long-lasting and time-saving
(more tins equals less shopping?), the humble tin deserves its place in your store cupboard.
Can do: