The Mediteranean diet

[Sweep]

I sometimes use really cheapo Aldi pasta sauce to which we add sweated onions ..... a

Italians wouldnt be able to make such a nice dish because along with most of Europe, their sausages are crap Although I sometimes add a few bits of chopped Chorizo.

Al

Pray tell al, how do you make an onion sweat? Does it involve being nice to it in some sort of sensual way or are threats involved?

Bit of a generalisation about the sausages maybe?

all the best

sweep

[al_yrpal]

I sometimes use really cheapo Aldi pasta sauce to which we add sweated onions ..... a

Italians wouldnt be able to make such a nice dish because along with most of Europe, their sausages are crap Although I sometimes add a few bits of chopped Chorizo.

Al

Pray tell al, how do you make an onion sweat? Does it involve being nice to it in some sort of sensual way or are threats involved?

Bit of a generalisation about the sausages maybe?

all the best

sweep

Put them in a frying pan? Recently I have been making my own pasta sauces using tinned tomatoes, onion garlic etc. I often add a lot of turmeric which is apparently a powerful antioxident.

As for sausages, having visited lots of European countries I honestly havent eaten anything that beats the good old British Banger. However, I do like Chorizo and use it in meals often. Polish stuff is dull, french garlic sausage is very nice in slices, Toulouse sausages are pretty tasteless. Nothing to touch the Banger that I have tasted so far. They are all quite different, but less satisfying at the heart of a meal. One of our favourites is sweated onion, courgette, peppers, mange tout, pasta, pasta sauce and chopped up cooked Bangers! An insult to Italy!

Al

[Sweep]

so is the sweating in the frying pan with no oil - just water or something?

I too make my own sauce as needed - don't make any great claims for it and no doubt an Italian would scoff at it - me, I just scoff it and am happy. Takes no time. One thing Italians do scoff at is prepared sauces - no need for it. I use a little (very little) mince - and turkey mince, lower in fat and is fine. And some paprika. Tinned premium tomatoes from Aldi and a lot of genuine tomatoes - I like the small ones - chopped in half.

If forced I could probably live on this week in week out.

Antioxidents confuse me. I thought the idea of them had been knocked on the head a few years ago. But I keep reading about them.

By the by, for the minimal meat bit of my sauces I sometimes use British high quality banger meat - just slice it out of its skin to return it to mince.

[al_yrpal]

Have a look at this on Turmeric http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/article ... rom-cancer

I eat lots of anti oxidents. Rocket, Kale, Brussel Sprouts as well as lacing everything possible with Turmeric just lately.

I do use Turkey Mince sometimes but it has little flavour. Those little tomatoes do add something, I use them too.

I have a Carluccio's "Invitation to Italian Cooking" a brilliant book, so I suppose the recipes are authentic? He quotes his mother in many of them.

Al

[mjr]

As for sausages, having visited lots of European countries I honestly havent eaten anything that beats the good old British Banger.

Please stop generalising: a tasty Lincolnshire is very different from a nice Newmarket and both streets ahead of those bland pale pink things found in supermarkets.

[Sweep]

He quotes his mother in many of them.

Al

Now there's a surprise

[ianrobo]

As for sausages, having visited lots of European countries I honestly havent eaten anything that beats the good old British Banger.

Please stop generalising: a tasty Lincolnshire is very different from a nice Newmarket and both streets ahead of those bland pale pink things found in supermarkets.

I do have a rule now that only buy meat from local butchers etc they make their own sausages from their own sausage meat.

[al_yrpal]

Ha ha , I used to work in a highly regarded butchers and all the pork scraps cut off joints and chops + Paxo stuffing went in their sausages. Loads of fat gristle etc, you don't want to know! At least with a named brand you get some quality control.

Bangers are an emotional subject. I agree there is loads of variation in quality and taste but we have the opportunity to choose branded ones that are (hopefully) consistent. My favourite is Aldi's Specially Selected Pork and Apple but some local butchers ones can be good too.

Al

[ianrobo]

Ha ha , I used to work in a highly regarded butchers and all the pork scraps cut off joints and chops + Paxo stuffing went in their sausages. Loads of fat gristle etc, you don't want to know! At least with a named brand you get some quality control.

Bangers are an emotional subject. I agree there is loads of variation in quality and taste but we have the opportunity to choose branded ones that are (hopefully) consistent. My favourite is Aldi's Specially Selected Pork and Apple but some local butchers ones can be good too.

Al

I got you but I do trust my butcher on this one as I explained the diet I was on required as much meat as possible in them

[Davidwd]

I'm 4 stone over weight but was 8 ..!
Cycling is my exercise and the initial weight gain coincided with stopping cycling for 15 years due to work issues.
My experience of the Mediterranean Diet (MD) has been through living and working in Cyprus, Italy and Sardinia and the understanding of the MD in the UK is not what you actually see on the ground.
One of the engineers i worked with in Cyprus would unwrap a whole cucumber and a bread roll ... that was his lunch.
There appears to be little meat eaten and then usually chicken.
Fish is not as prominent as the ad's on tv would have you think.
Vegetables, fruit and bread products where the staples.
And oil on everything !

Not far off a vegetarian diet.

Completely agree, I was diagnosed with CKD with has progressed to coronary artery disease and my heart specialist advised the MD. I have visited crete and rhodes to research this traditional diet. I had a meeting with a chef who's family lived in the mountains on the traditional MD and he cooks nowadays for tourists. We had a long chat about the diet and also from the research I have done I found hat crete had the healthiest population, this was de to the fact that they were the poorest, had fewer animals to eat and more olive trees per head of population than anywhere in the world. A vegan diet with fish once a week and meat once a month with extra virgin olive oil on everything is the way to go, I have already seen improvements. I also think omega 3 plays an important role, we have far too much omega 6 in our diets!

[ed_phelan]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/29/mediteranean-diet-could-prevent-19000-uk-heart-attack-stroke-deaths?CMP=share_btn_link

'They'are always exhorting us to eat this way. Our weekly diet usually includes a curry, steak and chips is a Saturday treat if we are at home, caseroles pretty regularly, liver and bacon, stir frys, Fish pies, Paella, Chilli Con Carne, various chicken dishes, lentils, etc, pretty normal stuff. Pasta based dishes - Spag Bol naturally, chopped cooked sausages with stir fried veg and pasta is about as far as we get on the Mediterranean stuff. We eat plenty of veg and salads most lunchtimes and most of the things mentioned above are rich in vegetables too. I think its misleading to talk about 'Mediterranean', plenty of 'British' food is rich in veg too. I think, 'eat more veg and salad' would be better advice coupled with 'eat less fibre less pasta which makes you fat'.

Al

BTW you may get a pop up asking you to fund the Guardian because its going broke. I just gave them a fiver for the daily email article digest they send me. I am often dismayed by their political and naive environmental fibs but I think they are worth keeping.

It is not pasta that makes people fat, it is the unhealthy sauces that people put on it. I have Italian friends who eat pasta everyday and are in no way at all fat.

[al_yrpal]

I based that comment on the fact that 75g of pasta, quite often the recommended portion, is 265 calories - people often have much more than this. Whereas the bottled pasta sauce we sometimes use is about 60 calories per 1/4 of a jar, even less when we make our own. When eating out in Italian restaurants one often gets served massive portions of pasta, far more than I can possibly eat. If the sauce contains large quantities of olive oil, like the Lloyd Grossman stuff then I would agree that the sauce is also the 'fat' culprit.

Al

[Sweep]

Spot on al.

Pasta does/can make you fat. All those carbs. Italians exercise rigorous portion control in pasta as so much else - all that pasta, gelato and wine and still they are generally trimmer than the brits.

Not many brits i think weigh their pasta before cooking it.

[ed_phelan]

Generally trimmer?! The Italians are a lot more trimmer than the Brits...they also eat a lot less processed bread than we do. We also tend to coat our pasta in a lot more sauce than they do.

[Canuk]

Turmeric has been getting rave reviews of late as a 'super food' addictive. Everything for blood cleaning to preventing cancer!