What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate. Joanna Blythman
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small quantities of one salad at a time, say lamb’s lettuce or mustard cress, and then choose a different leaf next time. This way you avoid waste and get your salad variety, not in one bowl, but over a period of time. The same ‘mix’ of salad leaves inevitably becomes tedious if you never vary it.
Tender, young pea shoots and tendrils are all the rage for salads and sell for a premium price. Rather than shelling out for them – excuse the pun – if you don’t have a garden, then you can grow your own either indoors, or on a patio or balcony. Just fill a container with compost in spring or summer, plant some shop-bought dried peas, put them in a light place and then water them regularly. The shoots will pop up in around two weeks and you can harvest the shoots and tendrils for weeks, just like a cut-and-come-again lettuce.
THE EVERLASTING ICEBERG
Salad leaves have always featured in our diet. In 1699 the English gardener and diarist John Evelyn’s book, Acetaria, catalogued an astonishing diversity of plants that could be used for ‘sallet’. He also recommended ‘a particular Composition of certain Crude and fresh herbs, such as usually are, or may safely be eaten with some Acetous Juice, Oyl, Salt, &c. to give them a grateful Gust and Vehicle’: what we now know as a French dressing or vinaigrette.
The dark ages for British salad leaves were in the post-Second World War years when a salad typically consisted of a couple of flaccid leaves of curly lettuce, topped with boiled egg and tomato, temptingly garnished with that peculiarly British condiment known as ‘salad cream’. When the American iceberg lettuce arrived in the 1970s, it felt revolutionary. We devoured them with enthusiasm despite their almost total lack of flavour because they delivered that welcome juicy crunch. The cabbage-like iceberg could be kept in the fridge, apparently fresh, for weeks on end. For a nation that ate green salad infrequently, more out of a sense of duty than anything else, the everlasting iceberg was just the job.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, restaurants began to showcase more exciting salad leaves such as curly endive and oak leaf lettuce, stimulating consumer demand for what we took to be foreign varieties. The dreaded iceberg has now been relegated to crummy sandwich bars and we have embarked on a love affair with rocket. British salad leaves have perked up no end in recent years as neglected native varieties have been complemented by fascinating newcomers from as far afield as Japan. This diverse selection is now in small-scale commercial production around the UK.
Mushrooms, cultivated and wild
(large white, button, chestnut, portobello, oyster, enoki, shiitake, porcini (ceps, boletus) chanterelles, morels)
Mushrooms, or edible fungi, come in lots of different forms, each with its own colour, scent, texture and flavour. Wild chanterelles, for instance, have an almost apricot-like perfume, while shitake can have a smoky presence. Large black portabello and field mushrooms are distinctly meaty. Chestnut mushrooms have more of that woodland taste than the white button sort. But, taken as a family, they share certain characteristics. They taste earthy and savoury, and are one of a few plant foods capable of producing the rich flavours found in meats and cheeses. Japanese people refer to this quality as ‘umami’, and consider it to be the fifth component of taste along with sour, sweet, salty and bitter. Mushrooms have this rich savoury flavour because they contain glutamic acid, a naturally occurring flavour enhancer – not to be confused with the synthetically made food additive, monosodium glutamate (MSG) – along with other natural flavour enhancers. When mushrooms are dried, these natural flavour enhancers are intensified, which is why dried mushrooms pack more punch than their fresh equivalents.
Whatever type of mushrooms you are buying, the same rule applies: look for firm, dry heads and avoid any that look wet or shiny as this is a sign that they are starting to decompose.
Things to do with mushrooms
• A basic liquidized soup made with fresh mushrooms, onion and stock is transformed by the inclusion of a couple of soaked, dried porcini before blending.
• Fill large flat mushroom heads with herby butter (try thyme or tarragon), top with breadcrumbs and bake or grill until they are soft below and crunchy on top.
• Sauté mushrooms with strips of bacon or pancetta, some fresh sage (if you have it), season with black pepper and sea salt, and add thick cream and chopped parsley: an instant sauce for spelt, pearl barley or pasta.
• Brush toasted sourdough bread with olive oil and a thin layer of Dijon mustard, then top with a pile of pan-fried wild or cultivated mushrooms, tossed with chopped tarragon, and a fried egg for a quick, filling supper.
• You can turn the remains of a beef stew into a cheat’s stroganoff by stirring in sautéed, sliced mushrooms and soured cream. A dusting of chopped dill adds sparkle.
Are mushrooms good for me?
Mushrooms may not look that promising, but they have many nutritional strengths. They are a good source of soluble fibre, which slows down the speed at which sugar is released into the bloodstream, and B vitamins, which provide energy and support brain function. While it used to be thought that vitamin D was not found in plant foods, a plant sterol – ergosterol – has been identified in mushrooms, which converts to vitamin D when exposed to light. Vitamin D is increasingly being recognized as protective against a wide range of diseases and it is thought that many British and Irish people do not get enough of this for optimum health. For vegetarians especially, mushrooms are a welcome source of vitamin D.
Mushrooms are also a good source of key minerals such as copper, which helps blood cell production, and selenium, which is thought to be protective against certain cancers. Some research suggests that the fatty acids in mushrooms, particularly conjugated linoleic acid, may inhibit breast cancer cell growth. Other research has suggested that certain mushrooms, such as shitake, have immune-modulating effects; that is, they help regulate and strengthen the immune system.
Cultivated mushrooms are usually treated with fungicides while they are growing. Use of insecticides and chemical disinfectants, such as chlorine, is also routine for sterilizing mushroom sheds between growing cycles. If you would rather that your mushrooms weren’t grown this way, choose organic. Organic growers are not allowed to use these chemicals and their mushroom sheds must be steam-cleaned.
Eating mushrooms collected from the wild is a risky business as it is quite easy to confuse edible and poisonous types. However enthusiastic you are about foraging, it is vital that any you intend to eat have been correctly identified by a reliable, experienced person – a poisonous one can kill you.
How are mushrooms grown?
The cultivated mushrooms we eat are nearly all grown in Britain and Ireland. They are cultivated in indoor environments that mimic the natural stages of mushroom growth. Many types of mushroom can be grown this way, not only the familiar white- and brown-capped types such as button and chestnut, but types that are often thought of as wild, such as oyster mushrooms and shitake. First a growing medium, or compost, is prepared, typically a mixture of straw, gypsum (a mineral used to make plaster) and poultry litter. Poultry litter is a euphemism for bedding cleaned up from the floor of indoor poultry production units. It consists of straw, poultry droppings (manure), feathers and possibly uneaten feed. Compost for growing organic mushrooms is mainly made from organic straw, but sometimes sawdust or woodchips are used. It can also contain manure from organic, but not intensively farmed, livestock.
Once mixed, the compost is allowed to decompose naturally for a time, then it is pasteurized to kill off any potentially dangerous bacteria or moulds. This method produces the crumbly dark compost that you see clinging to the base of mushroom stems.
The compost is then inoculated with mushroom spores (mycelia) and put in bags, or spread out on trays, blocks and shelves, in hot, humid, dark sheds. This encourages the spores to multiply throughout the compost. When the spores have thoroughly colonized the compost, it is covered with a layer of ‘casing’, usually peat mixed with sugar beet lime, and the temperature is reduced to encourage the mushrooms to fruit. The mushrooms come through in flushes, and are harvested by hand in low light. Some types of mushroom can also be grown on inoculated logs.
Wild mushroom spores spread underground in woods, then, given