Food Warnings

I feel compelled to quote and archive the following news article I read recently.

Plans were outlined in the Cabinet Office report detailing the UK's food strategy for the 21st century. The report, backed by Premier Gordon Brown, outlines far-reaching plans to improve the nation's diet. The document examines rising obesity rates, spiralling prices and the problem of millions of tons of good food going to waste.

Restaurants in the UK face demands to change their menus and put health warnings on meals in the hope of improving the national diet.

Firms may also have to identify the 'carbon footprint' of their dishes, possibly listing those items that are airfreighted to Britain.

Diners could soon find more interesting information on menus......
Fast food outlets, curry houses, kebab shops and even Michelin-starred restaurants will be given guidelines on how to deliver healthy food.
They will be required to list the amount of fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar included in items on the menu. Britain could follow New York which has brought in laws requiring chain restaurants to list the calorific value of their dishes.
Restaurants may even be asked to follow the 'traffic light' system of red, amber and green logos on dishes, which is seen on many supermarket ready-meals.
The Cabinet Office report recommends that the food served by public bodies, from prisons to Army barracks and hospitals, should meet minimum nutrition standards.
It says the Food Standards Agency will be expected to ensure restaurants deliver healthier dishes.
Recent studies have warned that single take-away meals such as curries or Chinese dishes can include more saturated fat than an adult should eat in an entire day.
Similarly, the sandwiches and cappuccinos served in High Street sandwich chains can contain huge amounts of fat and sugar.

Changes in eating patterns would bring huge health gains here in the UK as it would reduce health costs due to poor dietary habits.It also hopes to reduce the incidence of lifestyle and food related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension
It is well accepted that the economic burdens of diet-related ill health are huge - £6billion in additional NHS costs alone each year.

The hotels and restaurants will not like it if the government were to impose such regulations.In Malaysia,that would increase the prices of dining out and could put many food handlers out of business.

That brings us to the question of choice. Before anybody add more regulations to our favorite national pastime of eating around the clock, we have to decide whether we want to live a longer healthier life or we prefer to continue living your life in oblivious indulgence?

BEEF STRIPS IN SOYA SAUCE ( DAGING MASAK KICAP)

Beef in soya sauce is a favorite among small children as it is not hot.It is easy to prepare and delicious too.

My Mum used to make delicious daging masak kicap.The children will eat the liver if you substitute the beef for liver. Normally, they won't touch it.I started taking cooked liver during my first pregnancy to increase my haemoglobin levels.It works wonders.In Malaysia you can eat cooked cockles or fried chicken liver cooked in sambal if you don't like beef liver.

To make the soya gravy you need the following:
600g lean beef cut into thin strips and mixed with the following grounded ingredients and juice of 1 lime.

Grounded:
1/2 tsp black pepper
1.5 cm cinnamon
2.5 cm ginger
5 pieces cloves
1 tsp fennel seeds

Stir fried:
7 shallots, sliced
2 cloves garlic,sliced
2 large onions,sliced round

3 potatoes,sliced round and deep fried

3 red chillies,halved for garnishing

3 to 4 tablespoon sweet soya sauce

Cooking:

Lightly fry the shallots, garlic and onions.Add the marinated beef slices and cook gently.Add in soya sauce and add a bit of water.Cook until beef is tender and gravy is thick.Serve with chillies as garnishing and fried potatoes.

Some people add salt and sugar but that is not necessary as the soya sauce has sugar and salt in it.If you run out of spices, you can substitute with readily sold soup spices powder.( rempah sup).

Kari Kapitan

Zaty has started her matriculation. I have lost my faithful assistant in the house. For the past six months Zaty has done the washing and ironed some of them, cooked dinner and maintained the bathrooms when necessary. What a relief to come home to the smell of fried fresh fish and dinner already cooked. Anyway the past 6 months must have been a good learning experience for Zaty.In her new apartment at College, there are two electric hotplates and a microwave oven.With the refrigerator to store the perishables and a hypermarket across her apartment, if she were not in Malaysia, she should be able to cook. But with the hectic schedule, I don't expect her to do so.

Since we all have to eat and my children needs some good recipe reference,I'd like to post the chicken curry recipe here based on the Nyonya recipes from Malacca.Nyonyas and Babas are the descendants of Peranakan people settling in the Straits Settlement ( Malacca, Penang and Singapore) who adopted the Malay culture in terms of food and dressing but not the religion.


Ingredients for Kari Kapitan:

4 pieces of chicken

Grounded(A) (B)
5 gm belacan (Shrimp Paste) 125 ml thin coconut milk
1 stalk lemon grass 250 ml thick coconut milk
6 candlenuts a dash of black pepper
3 cm young ginger salt
3 cm fresh turmeric root
3 cloves garlic
3 shallots
cooking oil

Heat the oil and fry A till fragrant.Add in the chicken Pour in the thin coconut milk and cook till chicken is tender.
Add in the thick coconut milk and stir till the mixture boils.Add in salt and black pepper.

If you prefer a spicier curry, add in grounded chillies in A.When the chicken is cooked you can also add in chopped torch ginger flowers ( Bunga Kantan. That would make your curry stand out from normal curries.

Tainted Tomatoes

I have copied and paste the news headlines in the US that should concern us too in this part of the world.Many outbreaks of foodborne diseases that were once contained within a small community may now spread like wild fire in global dimensions. The SARS outbreak is one example.
Food safety authorities all over the world have acknowledged that food safety must not only be tackled at the national level but also through closer linkages among food safety authorities at the international level.
In the US, there have been 13 outbreaks of salmonella in tomatoes since 1990, which puts the fruit on the list of high-risk foods that are prone to infection. But unlike the bagged spinach from the 2006 E. Coli scare, the tomatoes don't come with a traceable bar code. "When you're dealing with tomatoes, it is much, much more complex," explains Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's Associate Commissioner for Foods. The FDA's great tomato hunt has an ever-expanding list of suspects. A salmonella victim can point to the supermarket (or restaurant) that sold the offending fruit, but that store probably sources its tomatoes from several suppliers, each of which uses several distributors — and distributors buy from any number of growers.

Even if the FDA can pinpoint the source of the outbreak, it's hard for consumers to know where their tomatoes are grown. Certain imported foods are required to carry country-of-origin labels, but that doesn't apply to domestic produce. "I'm not aware of any tomato outbreak that was not domestic," says Acheson. There is no such thing as a mandatory state-of-origin label for food, and federal authorities have yet to create such a law. "Saying 'product of the U.S.' isn't necessarily going to confer safety," he says. Federal officials hunted for the source of a 16-state salmonella outbreak linked to three types of raw tomatoes, while the list of supermarkets and restaurants removing those varieties from shelves and dishes grew.

In Malaysia, the government has introduced the Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) whereby the Certificate of Farm Accreditation is given for farm produce that have met certain criteria.The SALM (Sijil Akreditasi Ladang Malaysia) has to be backed by documents as evidence of the product source of origin and processes involved from harvesting to packaging.This is to ensure that the products are environmentally friendly and safe to eat.I am sure the US being more advanced that us, would have a similar system in place.Or don't they?If the system is present for domestic produce,whereby each source of product is assigned a number and given a name or brand, I am sure identifying the source of the salmonella contamination would not be a problem.
After this, all vegetable products have to be coded,labelled and branded like what I think is being practised in the oranges, pears and apples industry.But how do you label and brand spinach and cilantro?

Meanwhile,boil your tomatoes and turn them into puree or ketchup.

Playing Cook

I will be away for a few days.My husband and I have already stocked up the fridge with enough foodstuff for the children.Now they have to learn to play cook.I think they have enough knowledge and skills to do so. Sorry I have not enough time to prepare the sauces and freeze them since I only received a short notice to go on an outstation trip.

I have already bought some meat and dory fish.Zaty can coat the cut fish fillets with a bit of flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper and dried mixed herbs and then fry the fish in hot oil.The fish can be eaten with plum sauce or black and pepper sauce. the sauces can be improvised by adding water and pepper or chilies and some vegetables like carrots, capsicums or cilantro.This can be eaten with rice or chips.Voila, you've got a complete meal.

The meat can be marinated with barbeque sauce added with some pepper if you prefer a hot marinade and some oil and mixed dry herbs.You can grill in the oven or cook over the stove at low heat to prevent the meat from being overcooked.

Or if you prefer, cook the meat in soya sauce. Look up the recipe as I can only post it later in the future.

Alternatively,the tougher meat can be pre-boiled for use in use in fried rice or fried noodles.

The children should not go hungry if they take some initiatives in the kitchen.Making omelettes, hotdogs and burger sandwiches is easy enough. They must learn to cook up easy meals as the price of everything has gone up since the hike in petrol and diesel prices earlier in the week.Everybody must learn to save.Someday even hawker food may not be affordable to the ordinary person.Sometimes I feel its not worthwhile buying when you can prepare more delicious and clean, nutritious food if you only try.