Next you’ll be telling me to make my own passata…

Does anybody have a decent spice mix/recipe for fajitas. The packet ingredients are very simple but I’ve been struggling to match the blend. Maybe it is the msg that adds that zing?

FWIW with the OP. In general when people say they have found a revolutionary health benefit from a particular diet what I believe is happening is that they are now paying more attention to what they eat and that is what makes the difference not the new diet.

There’s an excellent one in a hairy bikers cookbook I’ve got at home – I’ll post it up for you.

“Whenever I’ve tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it’s been seriously rubbish.”

not enough salt is my guess based on what you have said.

“+1 for sweet potato wedges/chips, I’d have them over spuds any day!”

oooooh yes , i love sweet potatoes me , sweet potato mash , roasted sweet potatos , sweet potatos in my curries , sweet potato goes with everything.

much better than the bland ole white potato……(fresh new tatties from the garden boiled excepted.)

“Whenever I’ve tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it’s been seriously rubbish.”

not enough salt is my guess based on what you have said.

Pfft. I rarely add salt to my food, even that which I cook from scratch, so I don’t have a salt-inclined pallette.

I’ve had lots of salty pre made food, I don’t like it so I don’t buy it.

Plus I can tel the difference between shit food and good food. I once had someone rave about their amazing chilli, so I asked them for the recipe. It was basically tomato puree and chillis so that’s what it tasted like.

@miketually – share your recipe? I’m up for improving on Lloyd if you can.

IME there’s really no secret to bolognese – beef, onion, garlic, seasoning then tomatoes, finely chopped celery and carrot. just don’t use cheap tomatoes and reduce it all slowly

IME there’s really no secret to bolognese – beef, onion, garlic, seasoning then tomatoes, finely chopped celery and carrot. just don’t use cheap tomatoes and reduce it all slowly

Chicken livers, milk, red wine, nutmeg.

“Whenever I’ve tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it’s been seriously rubbish.”

It’s about taste and adjust not just following the recipe

Bolognaise needs wine!

PS there’s half a tsp of salt in a jar of dolmio – some of it will be from the ingredients I assume and some added. Roughly 3g in a jar of Lloyd’s.

Is that a lot?

Molgrips of course you are correct, as ever, nothing is black and white. Some processed food is better than others. If you like Loyd Grossman sauces fair enough, they are one of the better ones I assume.

I’m no fanatic slaved to the kitchen making my own passata and stewing down kilos of tomatoes. For my bol I usually use tomato puree, but I get the best I can afford, and I only use a glass of white, but that’s down to my personal taste preferences, which may be different to yours.

However I believe the point is still valid: it is better to get as close to basic ingredients as is practical for you. If that means buying the best ready made sauce you can get, well it’s not for me but it’s better than not caring at all.

I just have an issue of trust. I find it too easy to imagine Premier Foods PLC (producer of Lloyd G sauces) valuing shareholder return over quality. They don’t sit there on day 1 with the intention to make unhealthy food, but I cannot believe that there is no pressure at all on revenue, and imagine that over time suppliers get swapped and pushed, ingredients get replaced, the original intention slips away, and shareholders clap.

(yes I am a middle aged well off middle class liberal, so sue me)

sadly we live in a world where food can come from some worrying sources such as gm

Oh no, not that horrible GM stuff. The stuff that can be grown on a large scale without requiring the use of such high levels of pesticides and/or fertiliser.

Cross and selective breeding animals and veg is basically like GM anyway. Mixing the genes from one species to another to improve the quality and/or (in the case of veg) resistance to pests etc.

Chicken livers, milk, red wine, nutmeg.

Pancetta, skirt steak.

jonba – Member
Next you’ll be telling me to make my own passata…

err, you do know passata is just mashed tomatoes? The italians pick the summer crop, stomp it good, stick it bottles and then live off it until next summer, same with the olive oil.

anyway, nice fresh tomatoes and pasta from the Nonna-inlaw at summer is where it’s all at – you can stick dried pasta and jarred sauce right up ya……

oh, and sauteed peppers too. nom nom nom..

it is better to get as close to basic ingredients as is practical for you.

Indeed, and I do cook from scratch sometimes. For me, the biggest issue with making stuff is logistical. I have to buy the fresh ingredients and use them before they go off which requires planning. Also it’s an environmental thing – if you want to use fresh stuff you have to have a different menu in winter and summer. However canned sauce (and tomato puree for that matter) can be easily preserved (without preservatives) and kept all year long.

However you make a good point about profit. There are two ways to make profit – reduce costs or increase margin. Lloyds is marketed as a premium product and the price is higher – they can therefore use better ingredients and still make a profit. There’s a decent market segment (including me) who are prepared to may more for a product seen as premium, and that’s what LG is marketed at. I think it is definitely a higher quality product both in taste and how it’s produced. This could be an illusion – I have no way of knowing for sure.

These big companies tend to designate one brand as the cheap one and one as the premium one – and will drop one if it’s not profitable and produce something else – rather than bastardise it (I think, at least).

Processed is tricky though – I mean – canned tomatoes anyone? Nowt wrong with them in my eyes. Or tatoes in oil.

Can be distilled for me – to eating food that contains as few ingredients/additives as is possible and as much natural raw product as is also possible.

So biscuits generally out for example but Shortbread maybe and cheap multi-coloured chemical biscuit discs out.

It’s nice not to have too clearly defined boundaries.

Cooking properly is time consuming and not cheap so I sympathise with most folk on their eating habits.

canned tomatoes anyone? Nowt wrong with them in my eyes

Except for all the nasty chemicals leeched out of the plastic lining.. 🙂

cheap multi-coloured chemical biscuit discs out.

How many synthetic chemicals are actually in cheap food any more? Example – Fox’s party rings:

Colours: Spirulina Extract, Beta-Carotene, Apple Concentrate, Blackcurrant Concentrate, Carrot Concentrate, Radish Concentrate, Safflower Concentrate, Hydrolysed Wheat Gluten

Not entirely natural but not a string of synthetic chemicals either.

Yeah but your getting down to levels of dissection that make eating anything a bit too much of a complex choice.

I wouldn’t have put fox’s in the cheap class but I take your point – was thinking more of the stuff that litters the local service station draws. Monster munch, space raiders, various nondescript biscuits etc.

Even the biscuits you cite have lots of ingredients – (9). That’s tipping towards being moderately Frankenstein for one food item.

(As an aside I genuinely didn’t know about the canned food thing. Interesting.)

Yeah but your getting down to levels of dissection that make eating anything a bit too much of a complex choice.

All I do is look at the ingredients list. If it’s too long with stuff I don’t know what it is (or don’t like the sound of), I don’t buy it. It doesn’t take much effort because most of what I buy is repeat purchases so I have already checked.

The only pre-made things I buy are sauces for italian/mexican/indian, stuff like biscuits etc, table sauces, the occasional pie and so on. Everything else is meat/fish and veg, or soups made from their leftovers.

@miketually – share your recipe? I’m up for improving on Lloyd if you can.

I don’t do recipes, but milk and red wine are the ‘magic’ ingredients.

And experience – we cook from fresh pretty much every night: last night was meatballs in tomato sauce with spaghetti; tonight will be a lentil and chicken curry with roasted butternut squash and kale. (This also mean we get better at using up odds and ends, so don’t waste food.)

Try the chicken tikka masala in jamie Oliver’s comfort eating. I generally make a load of it so that we can freeze it and have nice meals ready for defrosting before leaving for work.

Wee tip, use half the coconut milk though, it’d be watery as hell with the suggested amount.

I barbecue the chicken and use thighs. It’s as good as any curry I have had from an indian restaurant, I kid you not.

I’m not all pious about cooking from scratch, but both me and Mrs Nobeer really enjoy cooking, and want our 8 year old growing up eating real food too, not overly salted msg foodstuffs. Batch cooking is great, nothing better than getting home from work in a stinking wet night to a proper meal.

Nothing Jamie bloody mockney Oliver related gets anywhere near my house or mouth.

But batch making curry stuff, I’ve used for years a little book called The Curry Secret, which describes curry house/takeaway curry methods. Basically batch make loads of onion sauce and that’s the basis of most curry dishes a British Indian takeaway will make.

Over the last few months I’ve been working in loads of different food processing factories up and down the country.
I’ve been quite pleased to see that it really isn’t eyelids and arseholes that go into sausage rolls and pies etc. the meat that was going into the mincer looked pretty much like any other meat.
I was in a curry place last week, the smell was a bit overwhelming but the the ingredients were just normal ingredients, nothing unusual that I could see.
This place was knocking out own brand curries for Tesco, M&S, Sainsburys, Waitrose and Asda.

Yet another subject where molgrips gets it all wrong. 🙂

Seeing cooking as ‘wasting time farting about in the kitchen’ – what a shame.

Also includes tomatoes. Roasting them nicely takes a bit of time, and you have to plan ahead to buy them and use them before they rot.

My wife had loads of surplus tomatoes (chillies & peppers too) out of the greenhouse last year, she slow roasted them and preserved them in jars, great flavour and I reckon they’ll last until this years crop ripens.
So no need to worry about them rotting etc. just cook them and store them.

eating processed food is human nature

heres a kick in the nuts for the paleo diet heads….

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/the-remarkable-archaeological-underwater-discovery-that-could-open-up-a-new-chapter-in-the-study-of-european-and-british-prehistory-10073458.html

Nothing Jamie bloody mockney Oliver related gets anywhere near my house or mouth.

But batch making curry stuff, I’ve used for years a little book called The Curry Secret, which describes curry house/takeaway curry methods. Basically batch make loads of onion sauce and that’s the basis of most curry dishes a British Indian takeaway will make.

I have that book, and the curries in there are not a patch on the JO one. Hate him if you wish, his recipes are fantastic.

It’s all about time though I’m sure.
I buy off the shelf as to be honest by the time I get in from work all I want to do is eat and **** around in a kitchen after a bloody hard days work is not very high on my to do list.

But going back 15 years or so, going out and killing something butchering it then cooking it, that feeling cannot be beaten and it tastes MILES better 😀