What the experts recommend
The joys of brown food
In the Instagram age, there’s a bias towards elaborate and colourful dishes that look appealing on social media, says Katy McGuinness in The Sunday Times. But a number of chefs are now rebelling against this trend, by pointing out that the key thing is flavour, and many of the foods we most enjoy – from pies and stews to simple vegetable soups – are more muted in tone. “A lot of the food I love is literally brown and beige,” says Anna Tobias, who opened Café Deco in Bloomsbury last autumn. “A plate of stew with mashed potato on the side is more delicious than one with a million ingredients.” Tobias isn’t alone in believing our priorities have become skewed: Nigella Lawson’s new book, Cook, Eat, Repeat, features a chapter entitled “A loving defence of brown food”, in which she tries to counter our culture’s “rampant championing of the colourful”, and urges home cooks not to judge foods by how good they look in photos – whether on social media or in books. “To the naked eye, brown food is beautiful: rich, warm and full of depth and subtle variegation,” she notes. “None of this can be easily caught on camera.”
Why do we eat octopuses?
The popularity of Netflix’s My Octopus
Teacher – a documentary about a yearlong relationship between a man and an octopus he encountered diving off the coast of South Africa – has focused attention on the morality of eating this creature, says Simon Barnes in The Spectator. Physically, octopuses are mysterious and alien: they are molluscs (part of the same phylum as snails and mussels) and because their brains are diffused through their bodies, their eight legs have “limited autonomy”. And yet they are clearly of superior intelligence: they can navigate all sorts of mazes and open containers; they have excellent longand short-term memories; and people who work with them, in aquaria, insist they have distinct personalities. In Britain, we have a horror of eating dogs and horses, partly because we feel that they, like us, have minds that make them individual. So why do we happily eat octopuses?
A perfect pasta dish for winter
Now is the time of year when citrus fruits are at their best, says Rachel Roddy in The Guardian. And perhaps perfect for this winter is the Italian favourite spaghetti with lemon, parmesan and cream – a dish that is very comforting, and also extremely quick and easy to prepare. To make it for four, cook 450g of spaghetti in a large pan of salted water (set your timer for one minute less than the recommended cooking time). Meanwhile, take two unwaxed lemons: use a vegetable peeler to pare the rind from one, and cut the pared strips into very thin slivers; then grate the rind from the other, before squeezing out its juice. In a wide frying pan, gently warm 50g of butter with a peeled and gently crushed garlic clove and add the lemon slivers and zest, plus two tablespoons of lemon juice. Once the butter is foaming gently, stir in 120ml of single cream and two tablespoons of parmesan, and bring up to a bubble. Turn the heat to low and keep warm while the pasta finishes cooking. Once it’s ready, drain it (reserving some of the water) and toss it in the creamy sauce, swishing vigorously. Add two more tablespoons of parmesan and a few grinds of black pepper – and a little pasta water if it seems stiff.