Meal trends for 2018
IT’S not just what we eat that’s subject to trend predictions this year; how we eat is coming under the spotlight as well. Should we be fasting, grazing or eating “proper” meals at regular intervals? With so many pundits out there, it is hardly surprising that there are conflicting views on what we should be eating and when.
According to Britain’s Independent newspaper, top young chefs are predicting that substantial healthy breakfasts will be on the increase this year as time for lunch breaks becomes progressively more restricted. I’m not sure about the logic of that one, because if you don’t have time at work to stop for lunch, you certainly won’t have time to stop for a substantial breakfast and are unlikely to get up extra early to cook yourself a full meal before leaving home.
Nevertheless, on days when you have time to cook (not necessarily just at weekends), a substantial breakfast can see you through for hours, leaving more time to do things without having to stop for lunch.
So, thinking about substantial healthy breakfasts, eggs are an excellent place to start. Boiled, scrambled, poached, whipped into an omelette . . . we all have our particular favourite way of cooking eggs, but have you tried these? Eggs, allow two per person Hot buttered toast Any optional extras you wish, eg grilled mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon etc
Separate the eggs — the whites can all go into a bowl together but keep each yolk in its own half shell. Heat the oven to 200°C and line a baking tray with non-stick parchment.
Whisk the egg whites as if you were making meringues, until they form peaks. Spoon roughly equal mounds of the whipped whites onto the prepared tray (eg four eggs, four mounds), making a dip in the middle of each for the yolks to sit in later. Bake in the oven until starting to brown (about six or seven minutes), then carefully add a yolk to each white “cloud” and bake for a further two or three minutes until cooked.
Serve hot, with toast or your favourite accompaniments. Cloud eggs do cool rapidly, so make sure you have plates heated and your bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms or whatever ready to serve.
Another popular “substantial healthy breakfast” option is shakshuka. Popularised in the UK thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi including it is his book Jerusalem: A Cookbook, shakshuka is set to maintain its appeal as a breakfast/brunch dish for another year. Basically an egg-and-tomato dish, to which you can add almost anything you fancy, shakshuka is North African in origin; not to be confused with Turkish şakşuka, which is more like a finely chopped ratatouille. It was brought to Israel by Sephardic
Jews but now everyone loves it and it is hugely popular in Jerusalem, hence its inclusion in Ottolenghi’s book.
The recipe below is a basic one, which you can customise to suit yourself. A nice tweak is to sauté some sliced peppers along with the onion and garlic. Ottolenghi favours red peppers but we rather like green ones, especially the çarliston peppers we get here. Another good addition is crumbled white cheese. 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 onion, peeled and chopped 2 plump garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
1 teaspoon pul biber (or sweet paprika if you prefer) Salt and pepper 4 eggs Chopped coriander or parsley
Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook for three or four minutes, until the onion starts to soften, then stir in the tomatoes and pul biber (or paprika), and season generously with salt and pepper. Simmer until the sauce becomes rich and pulpy. In summer, it is good to use very ripe fresh tomatoes but out of season, tinned tomatoes are more reliably flavoursome.
Crack in the eggs and stir gently to muddle the whites very slightly into the sauce. Simmer until the eggs have set, usually about five to 10 minutes, depending on how soft you like your egg yolks. Garnish with chopped coriander or parsley just before serving.
The other side of the meal predictions coin is the so-called Fourth Meal. Apparently more and more people are now trying to squeeze a small fourth meal into their everlengthening day and the latest Waitrose Food and Drink Report suggests this is set to continue in 2018. The report says that this “is not about gluttony, rather it is about adapting our eating schedules to our busy lives”. In other words, they foresee a growing trend of people eating “little but often” rather than having three traditional meals a day.
If you are sneaking in an extra “little something” at home, it is easy to make sure it has some nutritional value. Here is a classic example. 1 egg 40ml milk
2 drops of vanilla extract A generous pinch of cinnamon A little freshly grated nutmeg 2-4 slices of dense-textured bread Butter for frying
1 banana, sliced
1 tablespoon walnuts, roughly broken 1-2 tablespoons golden syrup
Put the egg, milk and spicing ingredients into a bowl and beat together until thoroughly blended.
Arrange the bread in a shallow dish large enough to hold the slices in a single layer, pour over the egg mixture and set aside until soaked through, turning the slices over if necessary.
Melt some butter in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the bread slices in a single layer and fry on both sides until golden, flipping them over occasionally. Cook the bread in two batches if necessary, rather than overcrowd the pan.
Serve the toast hot, topped with sliced banana and walnuts and drizzled with golden syrup.
Other good “fourth meals”, especially if you have to prepare them in advance and take them out with you, could be humus with wholemeal pitta wedges or a finely chopped salad (such as pico de gallo) topped with chickpeas.
And finally, on the subject of takeaway snacks, the London Evening Standard asks whether the Croissushi — a croissant sushi hybrid — might be the weirdest food trend for 2018. Created by an American bakery, Mr Holmes Bakehouse, it’s sold at the chain’s stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seoul in South Korea.
Advertised as a “California Croissant”, the sesame seedtopped pastry “houses a smoked salmon, wasabi and pickled ginger nori seaweed roll and comes served with a Kikkoman soy sauce sachet”. Personally, I think I’ll pass on
that one.