Food fads to fling far away

08 January 2015 - 02:02 By Andrea Burgener
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Andrea Burgener
Andrea Burgener
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Food fads to fling far away from

Fickle fads

A new year means new food and diet fads. It's unavoidable. In case you want a heads-up on what's around the corner to annoy you, here are some of the most touted offenders.

Drinkable quinoa heads the list, and must surely be one of the most desperate and misguided attempts in the history of food production to give a trendy ingredient extra legs.

Quinoa has always been about texture (it pops like caviar) and delicate lightness, so what this weird pulp offers is anyone's guess. Should we expect drinkable popcorn next?

Another bit of madness comes in the form of ear-stapling as a weight loss measure. Stapling through the cartilage of the ear apparently works on pressure points which are linked to appetite control. It sounds marginally kinder than stomach stapling, but you can already guess its lifespan.

Third on the new fads list is the bone broth craze. Throw out your juicer, say the broth evangelists, it's time to sip hot or cold consommé at every opportunity. They are right about the health benefits - as your granny knows - but one can already see in what an annoying, extreme (and in many cases downright unappetising) way this will play out.

Caffeine is king?

Coffee is also in the food news, and in a good way. Research increasingly seems to show that a few cups of coffee a day is just the thing for lowering your risk of Alzheimer's. Fantastic. At least one vice you can hang on to. And a good excuse to try affogato, a simple Italian dessert.

Sometimes found in restaurants (though not often enough), you can make a good one at home if you have a cafetiere or a Nespresso-type machine. Two ingredients have rarely combined to make such deliciousness.

For each person: one shot espresso or quasi-espresso in a coffee cup and one scoop of vanilla ice cream (no other flavours please, this isn't the time for getting clever) in a little bowl.

Serve scoop and coffee separately. Instruct people to pour entire coffee over ice cream and eat immediately. I can't promise that the sugar in the ice cream doesn't cancel out the coffee benefits, but a zero-sum dessert seems a better deal than most.

Cooking the books

There's no cash left to spend, I know, but the reality is that some unthinking person will go and have a birthday in January.

If the person is of unsupervised-cooking age and likes being in the kitchen even the smallest bit, I suggest buying them the award-winning and beautiful Persiana.

I truly thought I'd seen enough recipes sporting this sort of currently fashionable cuisine to last me a lifetime, and then some, but Iranian cook Sabrina Ghayour has me hooked. Published by Mitchell Beazley, R368.

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