Listening to Tamasin Day-Lewis this morning on Woman's hour on Radio 4 just made me furious at the continuation of lazy cooks who can not be bothered to check the rubbish advice they are passing on to listeners/viewers..

They just read rubbish myths and pass it on as fact, without once testing themselves or even just doing a little search...at least Heston goes to the trouble of visiting a lab to test stuff, the equipment is now available.

First irritating rubbish that come out was that old myth that salting your beans while cooking hardens skin - it's so not true I spent a day last year testing side by side and proved that salted beans take 4 minutes longer than unsalted but they were still soft enough to crush between your fingers.

There is plenty of info about this if you bother to look and it's very easy to test yourself just need 2 pans!

the other rubbish she spouted out was when using white pepper to black pepper when the Radio 4 interviewer asked why she said...having paused giving me the impression she really didn't know why.."..well for one thing white pepper doesn't make me sneeze...white pepper has more depth" More depth???? what load of rubbish!

We use white pepper back home all of the time because it is more pungent..it is not more fragrant it does not have more depth!! AGAIN this is something easy to check up on....

I despair at this rubbish lazy tv cooks cashing in on giving out rubbish advice without bothering to check what they are saying! For the next poor generation that take it in hook liner and sinker!

I find white and black pepper are just different flavours to be honest and much prefer black pepper. My other half likes white pepper on fried eggs but black on everything else. If you put white pepper in mash potato it reminds me of school dinners !

Steve

It is annoying when you hear someone giving incorrect advice on T-V. It would be far simpler, ad truthful, to say "I don't know, but will find out for you".

Salt myth is very common. In India, generations boiled, and continue to boil/pressure cook, their chickpeas/beans/lentils etc. with salt added, saying that it makes them cooks faster. Not true when you test it. In fact, most will cook better/faster without salt. I am not sure if salt at this stage enhances flavour, I couldn?t tell the difference when I tested.

i use white pepper and black pepper and both taste different in my opinion. i dont use white pepper as much as i use black but i still use it from time to time. i must admit that i had heard that adding salt to beans and lentils should be done after the cooking process or it will make them hard and take them longer to cook. it is not something that i have ever bothered to experiment with to be truthful and i always leave the salt out while cooking them and add it at the end. that is how i have always done it. i agree that a lot of celebrity chefs probably dont know what they are talking about a lot of the time.

hi all - yes...I did have a bit of rant this morning but feel calmer now LOL!

It annoys me passing things as fact without them actually knowing for themselves if it's true...so you have the next generations of cooks be given false information.

Interesting Mamta about people you know think the opposite. We cook a lot of beans back home and usually with a salted piece of meat in the pot which is why you don't need to add extra salt as the meat seasons it for you.

I can taste the difference in beans if you salt them during cooking or at the end, even if you dressing with lots of stuff, I'm so use to eating them cooked with salt if tastes different to me.

I find if you salt the beans during cooking they don't taste salty like they can if you salt them afterwards because the salt gets absorbed by the bean and it's not just sitting on the skin of the bean...which is the first thing I can detect.

We freshly grind black pepper: pre-ground pepper loses its taste quickly, like many spices.

I'd like to get a hold of whole white peppers, and try grinding them: I grew up in Scotland with dreadful pre-ground white pepper. It'd be good to taste freshly-ground white peppercorns.

I assume that what the French call 'baies roses' are a species of peppercorn; we cook duck in raspberry sauce with those lovely spices, with Belgian raspberry beer: yum!

Chinese Szechuan peppercorns, which we use for some Chinese dishes, are not peppercorns, according to some. Not sure what the botanical facts are there.

Phil

This is my first post to this site and may I firstly congratulate Mumta, all her ?helpers? and contributors for putting together such an inspirational web site. I have learnt more here in the past 3 weeks than I have done from years of reading books about Indian cooking.

On the subject of pepper may I quote from the writings of my cookery hero Elizabeth David. Writing in 'Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen' (1970) Elizabeth David makes it quite clear that she considered white pepper inferior to black. She wrote, ?whole (black) peppercorns?.retain their aroma and savour almost indefinitely, once ground pepper rapidly deteriorates. For this reason all pepper, both for cooking and for the table, should be freshly ground, in a pepper mill at the moment of use.? She goes on to comment that while many cooks prefer to use white pepper (because of appearance) to season white sauces and other pale coloured foods she thinks that while the ?black specks?.perhaps look a little rough?.I do not think the point of great import.?

As for salt I have to follow a ?low salt? diet and have not added it to my food for years. One of my pet hates about TV cooks is the way that they add liberal amounts of the stuff to nearly every thing they cook ? have they not heard about hypertension!

Colin (in Torquay)

Thank you for your kind comments Colin. Welcome!

I agree about the salt - chef's using copious amounts of it. Much restaurant food is very heavily seasoned - I seem to recall Gordon Ramsey saying he wouldn't let his own children eat in his restaurants because of it. However in reality not many could afford to eat at Gordon Ramsey's regularly! (Although we have probably all had those days when we have that second bag of salty crisps!) To me there never seems much discussion on alternatives in seasoning - be it fresh herbs, lemon juice etc.

For pepper by habit/instinct I use freshly ground pepper always except when making Chinese food when fine white pepper just seems 'right.'

Winton

The road salting method of salting food in restaurants is a joke. They lose their sense of taste and just keep adding more and more over the years. When they cook something and it doesn't have enough flavour from good cooking methods and good ingredients they just bung in more salt.

Steve

three threads in one?

I get so annoyed by 'celebrity chefs' giving out misinformation that I no longer watch cooking programmes on TV any more. The TV companies really should be brought to book, as should 'Indian restaurants' for their misrepresentation of Indian food.

Salt levels seem to be a personal thing, everyone needing different levels. I now add little or no salt to dishes and allow people to add it themselves, to taste, after they have sampled their food, not auto condiment. I should add that I believe salt is added so that we can appreciate the flavours better, I do not know the mechanisms, but breaking emulsions will be one of them, and supplying electrolyte to the cells of the tongue is likely to be another.

Black and white pepper are the same, although white pepper has had the black skin removed. The black skin also contains flavour compounds not found in the white seed, along with more of the hot principle, called piperine. Pepper has a complex mix of flavour compounds, including linalool (from coriander seed and lavender), phellandrene (from angelica) limonene (from, well, you guess) and pinene, from pine trees. Loss of any component due to poor storage results in a less than convincing flavour, and is why pepper is (and should be) used freshly ground.

HTH

i now make garam masala without using pepper corns and i grind the pepper fresh in the p&m and mix it with a teaspoon of garam masala. i read what you wrote a few weeks ago lapis about pepper loosing its flavour once ground. to make gm i just grind (in varying quantities) cassia bark brown cardamom bay leaves cloves nutmeg and black cumin. i dry roast the black cumin for a few seconds so it is easier to grind but i dont dry roast any of the other spices. i have had really good results this.

glad that the flavour is good, sid. I wouldn't bother with the bay leaves, though. They are not Indian, and contribute the same kind of flavours as green cardamom.

'Bay leaves' in India are cassia leaves, and taste of cassia, but if you are using cassia, then both leaves are superfluous.

Lapis at some point in the next few weeks I'll be posting about dry-roasting spices or not dry-roasting spices for masalas and I always refer to where I've heard/read advice and I'm going to mention Mamta's forum but was also wanting to name you here.

I have no other way of contacting you which is why i'm here :) if you don't want me to mention you no problem...let me know.

you can get hold of me through my blog just google azelias kitchen and the About Me page has my email address or Mamta & Kavey both have my email address.

thanks

azelia

Hi Azelia,

I have no feelings on this, either way, the most important thing to me is that this is Mamta's forum, and I will do what I can to help, and nothing to hinder the purpose of it.

Obviously Lapis is not my real name, so it's not going to harm my character whatever you say, but I have had several experiences of 'editorial license' being abused, so I now demand editorial control in those circumstances. You wouldn't believe what rubbish some people try to hang on one!.

I think a mention of 'roasting spices' is going to help cooks, as most of what I've read is rather arbitrary, whereas the science behind it is pretty well known. If you want a science explanation, please let me know, but I am aware that this is likely to be too dry for general consumption, but dumbing it down loses so much.

Ladies

If you'd like me to put you in email contact, send me your email addresses to kaveyf at hotmail dot com

x

the last post is of course me....Azelia!

I really don't mind any references, as long as you don't alter the meanings.

Your efforts on your blog are excellent, IMHO, although I've only just skimmed the first one.

From what I think I read, you have mentioned that sucrose is inverted to glucose and fructose, but don't mention that sucrose is made from a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose, and that the bond has to be broken to form the monosaccharides. That's why they don't reform and crystallize, although there is nothing stopping the crystallization process, really.

Sucrose is a disaccharide, like lactose (made from glucose and galactose) and maltose, made from two glucose units. If more glucose units are bonded together, we get dextrins and eventually starch, although the reverse process is the useful one.

A final note, pH is always written as such, as the H stands for hydrogen, always capitalized in chemistry when it represents the element.

References are fine, and is de rigueur in scientific works, but gives little chance for one's own thoughts, which is the raison d'etre for your blog. But suggesting, 'I'm only quoting references, and if they are incorrect, it's not my fault' is a bit of a cop out. Does it move us forward?

hi Lapis

"From what I think I read, you have mentioned that sucrose is inverted to glucose and fructose, but don't mention that sucrose is made from a molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose, and that the bond has to be broken to form the monosaccharides. That's why they don't reform and crystallize, although there is nothing stopping the crystallization process, really."

This is where there's too much information to the average Jo like me to understand and does the average Jo need to go that far to understand why her syrup worked one time but not the other?

And this brings me on to the other point of you bringing up Monosaccharides... I read that both in the How Baking Works book and at some point on the net...but to me it meant nothing in understanding what I was trying to figure out...when they mentioned it it did not click for me...things have to be put into simple terms.

If you re-read the article you'll see at one point I mention I was struggling to understand why enzymes were being added to syrups in order to change some of their glucose into fructose but then I would read that sucrose was already part fructose???

This is the kind of thing that my head has trouble getting in order or make sense...but then reading something as I was writing up the article it clicked into place...realised the corn syrup is different in its make-up to sucrose but none of the books specify this...

"Sucrose is a disaccharide, like lactose (made from glucose and galactose) and maltose, made from two glucose units. If more glucose units are bonded together, we get dextrins and eventually starch, although the reverse process is the useful one."

This is the sort of information I read but goes right over my head and eyes glaze over...I have to make it relate to something I understand already or at least relating to in food terminology...

If I go to find what a scientific words is on wiki....if I'm lucky I'll understand half of the first sentence and then that's it the rest when it goes into details and there's little symbols and connections with other chemicals etc...it's all googlie-goo to me!

"A final note, pH is always written as such, as the H stands for hydrogen, always capitalized in chemistry when it represents the element."

thanks for that I'll amend it.

"References are fine, and is de rigueur in scientific works, but gives little chance for one's own thoughts, which is the raison d'etre for your blog. But suggesting, 'I'm only quoting references, and if they are incorrect, it's not my fault' is a bit of a cop out. Does it move us forward? "

I put a smiley at the end as it was a tongue and cheek but to take it seriously I'll say the following, I'm not a scientist nor do I have the capabilities to understand scientific things...I truly wish I had that kind of mind but I don't and I'm envious of those who have it. If you ask me how a room can be decorated and to visualize it then I'm your person..in fact I'm excellent at any creative challenges.

My knowledge of cooking/food comes primarily from experience of watching things and often things going wrong, looking up whys and try and put pieces together...so if I try and explain something I do not have science degree behind me to know the molecule structure of things or as said above understand it when I read it. I also don't have access to any scientist to ask to explain it to me in a when I can make it digestible to the average Jo (me). I don't work in a lab...and have very little at my disposable including time!

Why do I blog the way I do? After all I could just post a recipe and leave it at that...there's plenty of blogs like that and do very well...but this blog is really a labour of love...there is no way I could put the amount of time and effort and cost into it without it being a love that I have for the subject and the satisfaction of looking at either a recipe I've developed or a piece of writing/research I've grappled with and made some sense for me. Over the last year I've seen myself grow...what I understand now about bread for example, not just the making of lovely sourdough but the understanding of what gluten actually is, is an example of how I moved forward so much...

I can not write anything on my blog when it comes to the technical side unless I have referred to someone with "higher" knowledge than me....and I don't have the time to attend full time college to learn the scientific details of baking for example...but even if I did that wouldn't I just be learning about someone else's work anyway from a textbook? That's hardly moving it forward! Aren't the scientist the only people who move things forward? The baker just does things from knowledge passed on and experienced...until he reads what the likes of McGee or This has to say on the subject.

The other reason I blog is personal, I want to collect a bunch of recipes for my kids, they always go on how I change recipes but then forget how to make them again and this is for the time when they'll set up their own home and have a reference to things they ate.

I also blog to express my frustration as a parent of multi-food allergy child and the parent of a young child with cerebral palsy...

...and lastly but probably one of the most important it's an outlet for my creative juices...I can work around my family's demands and husband's work demands and do something that's all about me expressing...at times it can be quite therapeutic and I feel like I'm not wasting my time when looking back at what I've done and that is worth the late nights...the lack of spare time...the obsession!