The “ultimate store cupboard It item” What the experts say
A few years ago, upmarket tinned tuna and mackerel – with beautiful labels, from companies such as Ortiz and Naval – could only be found in a few select outlets, says Hannah Evans in The Times. These days, they’re in shops “up and down the country”, and online purveyors such as the Tinned Fish Market are also seeing booming sales. Tinned fish, in other words, has become the “ultimate store cupboard It item”. According to chef Mitch Tonks – who recently launched his own premium line of tinned seafood, Rockfish – British consumers have been slow to realise how delicious tinned fish can be. “In Europe it’s been a delicacy for years and years,” he says. But the appeal of tinned fish is also based on ethics. Tinned fish often makes use of smaller species that have healthier wild populations; it doesn’t require refrigeration, so uses less energy; and it lasts for years, until it’s opened, meaning that it is less likely to be wasted.
Keen barbecuers will often spend a lot of money on the ingredients they chuck on their charcoal, says Xanthe Clay in The Daily Telegraph. But those same people may give barely a thought to the provenance of the charcoal itself. And that’s a shame, because the charcoal really makes a difference – both to how well your barbecue cooks, and to its impact
on the environment. According to live-fire cooking expert Genevieve Taylor (see recipe below), it’s best to avoid “tropical hardwood charcoal” from countries with deforestation problems, such as Paraguay and Nigeria. As a minimum, look for charcoal certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC): this guarantees it will have been responsibly produced. Best of all, though, is British-produced charcoal, from companies such as Whittle and Flame, and Slate Hill Charcoal. It comes from “coppiced or managed woodland” and is “cooked” using the retort method, deploying the “wood’s own volatile gases”. Such charcoal may be relatively expensive, but it will allow you to cook for much longer, as you’ll no longer need to wait for a layer of white ash to appear before you begin. That traditional piece of advice, Taylor says, is “designed for crap charcoal that contains chemicals”. Good-quality charcoal lights easily; it will be ready to cook on in as little as five minutes; and will produce barely any smoke.
In praise of crisp sandwiches
A recent poll – admittedly one commissioned by Walkers – found that “the average UK adult eats 35 crisp sandwiches a year”. This revelation made me feel “oddly proud of my country”, says Olivia Potts in The Spectator. For I have long regarded the crisp sarnie as the “ultimate fast food”, a simple, salty and satisfying snack (perhaps best consumed alone in the kitchen) that “speaks of the person you are, rather than the person you want to be”. There are, of course, different schools of crisp-sandwich making: purists insist that they should only contain crisps and butter, whereas others see the crisps as a “general-purpose ingredient”, deployed to give other fillings extra crunch. Nonnegotiable, though, are the basics: thick white sliced bread (“chewy” posh bread is a non-starter), and similarly bog-standard crisps (posh ones are “too thick, too crunchy”). A crisp sandwich may not “scream nutritional balance” – but it deserves its status as a classic.