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I take it you disagree that mashed potato is the King of Foods then? ;-)

Or if you meant the second-last question, he clearly didn’t understand what the interviewer was asking. Can hardly crucify someone for that. The interviewer should have clarified the question because the answer seems to relate to either additives for mass-produced foods or GM foods.

“Ignorant twat”, just because he doesn’t agree with you? Smooth.

He’s just talking about the value of fresh, high-quality ingredients, which is what you were doing yourself, and trying not to get distracted by deconstructionalism. I tend to agree with him. And while I agree with you about xanthan, lecithin “and so forth”, they’re not the only ingredients on the planet, and some of the other ones might have effects you don’t know about.

Only yesterday we were discussing Chinese Restaurant Syndrome don’t know whether MSG causes it or not. So it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that some ingredients might have unknown effects, and it’s up to him if he wants to use them himself or not.

It’s nice to see people getting all hot and bothered about cooking. Hugh, this blog convinces me that every taste sensation I have ever had was a pathetic bland thing, so that if I ever become privileged enough to try a morsal of what Valvona can offer, my head might fall off with the intensity of flavour.

However I’m a student and compound that with the credit crunch makes Valvona a no go area.

So, what’s the solution for great tasting food on a shoe string budget?

P.S: Valvona aren’t sponsoring you are they?

PAJH – I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on our interpretation of what he meant. Going straight from the text of what he said, I read it as “Well, I don’t want to diss Alinea, but if you go there or anywhere like there, it might kill you or make you grow another head. And even if it doesn’t, that freaky shit he does with food is against God and Nature.”

(On a related note – has the word “unnatural” ever been used in a context where the speaker wasn’t just talking out of a) fear and b) his/her arse? It’s been used to justify slavery, oppose rights for gay people, oppose interracial marriage, oppose the Internet, and oppose just about every scientific advance from GM foods to, one suspects, the wheel.)

Sabrosa – I’m going to be talking a bit about food in the credit crunch next week – stay tuned!

Person-With-No-Name – That was one of the tips I was going to use in the frugality article, actually. One of the reasons for the growth in the Californian school of cooking (the fresh-ingredients-and-do-very-little-to-them school) was the rise in availability of really good, fresh ingredients. Before that, spice and heavy sauces were used to disguise potentially-dodgy ingredients. Hence, if you’re on a serious cash crunch, use more spice and cheaper meat if you need to.

Turnip – I suspect a lot of it depends upon the source and quality of the turnip. I’ve had some lovely roasted baby turnips in the past. Anyone?

Your comments on V&C’s pasta and now on their tomatoes made me want to try them for myself. That’s when I found out that Google doesn’t know EVERYTHING. For example, Googling “Valvona and Corolla” won’t get you there. You have to spell it right: It’s Crolla, Hugh!

This is a topic I feel pretty confident about, as I became intimately familiar with salsa pomodoro in grad school; lots of time to experiment and compare. I should tell you, though, that my approach is from the dodgy-ingredients school, and as such is a highly, er, manipulated product.

A tomato sauce (which is a kind of fruit sauce) can be thought of as tomato pulp, sugar, a faint trace of flavor molecules, and miscellaneous other stuff (MOS) dispersed in water. Now, you can address the issue of sauce properties.

Thickness can be added using roux or corn starch, but using (whole or diced) tomatoes packed in tomato puree rather than juice gives you more pulp per unit volume, more tomato flavor, and more cling (tomato paste added to the cooking sauce tightens it up as well, but I’m biased as I could eat tomato paste straight from the can). This works with a wide variety of canned tomato products (even stewed tomatoes). If the sauce is too tight, it can be released with tomato juice. This gives you good control of the fiber/flavor ratio.

Fructose doesn’t read as /sweet/ as sucrose or glucose, but this can be pointed up using the Sweet’n’Sour Pork principle: grit your teeth, add tomato paste, then wash the can out with wine vinegar and add that as well. Tomatoes aren’t acid enough, surprisingly, to be interpreted as fruit, which is probably why they appear in salads. The effect will, I promise, not read as sour; its the acid in fruit that makes them taste sweeter and more fruity. Table added to tomato sauce (fairly common in the US) just tastes sickly. Alton Brown has suggested pureed carrot to moderate acid levels.

Fresh herbage is frequently cheaper than imported tomatoes; I generally set on a bunch of fresh basil and skip the oregano (or use marjoram). This leverages any windowbox basil you may be cultivating.

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