This week’s recipe is for spinach, mushroom and lemon pilaf from Olive magazine’s 30 Low-Fat Recipes booklet, free with the February 2008 issue.

Spinach, mushroom and lemon pilaf

30 minutes * EASY

onions 2, finely sliced

garlic 2 cloves, crushed

chestnut mushrooms 150g, sliced

cinnamon 1 stick

cloves 4 whole

cardamom pods 4, bruised

basmati rice 250g

lemon 1/2, zested and juiced

vegetable stock 450ml

spinach 200g, washed and roughly chopped

- Cook the onion and garlic in the butter in a large shallow pan until soft and golden.

- Add the mushrooms and cook until softened. Add the spices and cook for 2 minutes, then stir in the rice, lemon zest and stock. Cover.

- Cook on a gentle heat for about 15 minutes until the liquid has been absorbed. Stir through the spinach and lemon juice, cover for 2 minutes until wilted and serve.

Serves 4

PER SERVING: 350 kcals, protein 8.1g, carbohydrate 56.6g, fat 11.7g, saturated fat 6.6g, fibre 2.4g, salt 1.45g.

Road test

A note on ingredients: All ingredients except the spices and the rice were organic. I used Yeo Valley unsalted butter, Joubère vegetable stock, Tilda rice, and Bart spices. I substituted crimini mushrooms instead of chestnut mushrooms.

Method: The method was very clear and easy to follow. It took slightly longer than 30 minutes when allowing time to prepare the vegetables.

Results: The lemon and spices provided tang and zip, the butter and mushrooms a full richness, and the spinach a slight sweetness and a nice contrast in colour.

Verdict

This was a big hit! I would definitely make this again, perhaps substituting swiss chard (silverbeet) instead of spinach or possibly adding some nuts. It works as a main but could also work well as a side dish with a nice piece of chicken. I am not sure that this fully counts as a low-fat meal given that it has 11.7g of fat and 6.6g of saturated fat per serve, but it’s certainly wholesome. You could probably experiment with reducing the fat but you would want to take care that it does not end up sticking to the pan and burning.

Julia over at A Slice of Cherry Pie is running this month’s In the Bag competition, which challenges us cooks and food bloggers to cook and eat more seasonal food. The ingredients for January are pears, lemon and nuts. For example, Julia has created a pear, smoked cheddar and walnut salad, while at new food blog A Forkful of Spaghetti we are treated to pear and hazelnut brioche toasts.

I decided to put my baking hat on and make some muffins, flavoured with pear, lemon zest and almond. I’m very pleased with how they turned out, especially considering that I was adapting a recipe and I wasn’t sure it would work. They were light and fluffy, with yummy crispy bits on top, and the combination of flavours went together very well. The only thing I would do differently is possibly to tone down the lemon. It tasted great but it did overshadow the pear. I used zest of one lemon; I would say zest of between half and one lemon would be perfect.

Ingredients

All measurements are metric, so 1 cup is equivalent to 250ml.

First bowl: 1 large pear, peeled, cored and diced
Zest of 1/2 to 1 lemon
1 tablespoon almond flour
24 blanched almonds, sliced in half
1 egg
100g vegetable oil
1 cup milk

Second bowl: 2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Grease a 12-cake muffin tin with butter. Mix together the contents of the first bowl, then slowly add the flour and sugar, stirring as you go. When the batter is thoroughly mixed, spoon into the muffin tin, aiming for an even quantity of batter, pear and almonds in each one. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until golden-brown.

The finalists for the 2008 Bloggies - the Oscars of the web - have been announced. Please go to the Bloggies website to help decide the final winners.

There are a number of food-themed blogs in the finals this year, both in the food category and in other categories such as the Australia and New Zealand category or the blog with best photography category.

The finalists include:

• The Breakfast Blog
• Milk and Cookies
• Chocolate and Zucchini
• 101 Cookbooks
• Smitten Kitchen
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks!
• Orangette
• The Food Pornographer
• Cupcakes take the Cake
• Gluten-Free Girl
• Waiter Rant

I hope I haven’t missed any out, but if you go to the Bloggies website you can see the full list for yourselves and cast your vote.

I heard on the Today show this morning that the UK Government wants to make cookery compulsory in schools for children up until the age of 14.  The theory is that teaching children about food and food preparation will both prepare them for adult life and help tackle the nation’s burgeoning obesity crisis.

I think this is a great idea but I’m concerned about the execution. Cookery needs to be taught properly and I’m not convinced that it is. I’ve just come back from visiting family in Cardiff and my 11-year-old cousin, who has just started high school, has cookery once a week. On Sunday his dad was running around Tesco buying stir-fry ingredients since there were no bean sprouts or five spice in the house.

The idea was that they would make the stir-fry in cookery class but they had to bring the vegetables in already chopped up because of the health and safety risk. So either they would buy a packet of pre-chopped stir-fry vegetables from the supermarket, or they or their parents would chop it up at home. All that would happen in class was that they would stir the vegetables around in a wok or pan with some oil and spice.

Another class involved learning how to ‘make’ pizza. The children were instructed to bring a supermarket-bought pizza base, some pre-grated cheese, tomato paste, ham and pineapple chunks. They then had to arrange the toppings on top of the pizza and bake it in the oven. There were no herbs or garlic and everything was preprepared. My cousin, who loves to cook at home and is probably a bit more advanced than this, asked if he could make his own pizza base. (He would make it at home and then bring that to school instead). The teacher said no, as she thought that would be too much trouble. He did anyway, using his mum’s bread maker, and half-baked it at home and of course the teacher didn’t even notice.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to take shortcuts, but it’s a good idea to learn how to do it for yourself at least once, and I don’t think the kids are going to learn that much from arranging some very boring toppings on a pre-made pizza base. To be honest, the supermarkets do a pretty nice line in pre-made pizza with the toppings already on, so if you’re going to take a short-cut you may as well buy the whole thing. Or at least do some more interesting toppings.

I did one semester of cookery in high school. We did that for six months and then sewing for six months in the first year of high school; after that it was optional and I never took it as an elective. But even in that very first year of high school, when I was the same age my cousin is now, we made more challenging dishes. These included hamburgers (we made the beef patties from scratch), scrambled eggs, vegetable casserole,  apple crumble, and pastry making (which resulted in a jam roll). We had to chop vegetables for the casserole and that was done in class, under supervision.

The other thing that bothers me is that there seems to be no discussion of seasonality and locality. Telling kids to buy pineapple and bean sprouts in the middle of a Welsh winter seems a peculiar thing to do when it could be a really good teaching point to talk about what can be sourced locally.

The Government is consulting with the public on what eight dishes children should learn to make in school. I think as well as learning eight dishes and the basics of nutrition, they should be taught about where food comes from, how their food choices affect the world around them, how a recipe can be spun in different ways to create new dishes, and creative things to do with leftovers.

My eight dishes would include spaghetti bolognese with a vegetarian alternative, nachos or tacos, frittata or baked omelette, roast dinner (this would require an extended session), soup (made from something in season, eg. pumpkin or leek and potato), cakes, cookies or brownies, curry, and maybe casserole (this could be about using leftovers). I would emphasise learning a variety of techniques rather than dishes.

Do you agree with the government proposal, which would see kids learn cookery up until the fourth year of high school? What eight dishes would you nominate? What other concepts or techniques should they learn? What is your experience with school cookery, either as a child or as a parent?

A weekly round-up of foodie news and features online.

* Should we be eating insects? Tim Dowling at The Guardian thinks so.

* Lively discussion on the Word of Mouth blog on the merits of cloned meat.

* 2008 is apparently the International Year of the Potato. (Maybe this will give me some inspiration for what to do with the mountain of potatoes I have in my kitchen. Or I could just make this soup from the Chocolate & Zucchini blog).

* The mystery of the origin of fortune cookies has been solved, according to the New York Times.

I have been working in Farringdon this week so I popped up to Exmouth Market to sample some food from the street market. I had various choices, including Italian sausages and Breton pancakes, but I was most struck by Spinach & Agushi, the Ghanaian food stall.

It’s obviously quite popular because, as well as having to wait in a short queue, when I got to the front they were sold out of the eponymous spinach and agushi. So I had a vegetarian bean stew with rice instead. The curry was rich and spicy with red kidney beans and chick peas, which had a satisfying chewiness. There was none of that nasty tin flavour you sometimes get with the canned variety.

I liked it so much I came back the next day, determined to get the spinach and agushi dish. They change the menus daily and also offer meat-based dishes such as beef stew or coconut chicken curry but they do the spinach and agushi every day. This time they had freshly cooked plantains that had been deep fried in a wok so I had that instead of rice. I didn’t know what agushi was but the sign said it was made from ground melon seeds. It tasted like a mild, almost sweet paste, and went very well with the spinach and spices.

If I ever see agushi for sale I might buy it simply for the curiosity factor - I have found a few recipes online that use it, such as agushi soup and this stew using kontomire (coconut yam leaves) with spinach listed as a substitution.

Plantains are a close relative of the banana that provides a staple food in much of the developing world, including Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean - you can buy it in the UK in places like Brixton and Kilburn High Road. Plantains, unlike their sweet relative, are starchy and can only be eaten when cooked, but they are highly versatile, making anything from salty chips or crisps to sweet baked or stewed dishes.

On the Spinach & Agushi website I learned that Ghanaian food is made from maize, cassava, plantain and rice based dishes, usually served with soups or stews. Fish is usually smoked and dried and beef, chicken, lamb, guinea fowl and goat are also popular.

Tthe stall is run by Lloyd and Adwoa Mensah-Hagan, who were runners-up in the BBC2 show, The Restaurant with Raymond Blanc. They run the Exmouth Market stall Monday to Friday and a stall at Portobello Road market on Saturdays, but they are looking for suitable restaurant premises. I wish them luck!

1 down, 191 to go.

Spinach & Agushi

Location: Exmouth Market (Monday to Friday) and Portobello Road Market (Saturday)

Web: www.spinachandagushi.co.uk

Inspired by my friend Alex, I have decided to embark on a mission to eat food from all 192 members of the United Nations.

It could take me years and it might be hard to find cuisine from some of the more obscure states but I won’t be defeated! From guinea pig in Peru to spätzle in Austria, there’s a whole world of food out there.

The Observer has proclaimed that Aussie Chardonnay is on the up, describing it as a “cutting edge” grape.

I find this odd. I am Aussie and I love a good Chardy but I would hardly call it “cutting edge”. To me, it’s the classic 1990s drink and if anything I would have thought it was a bit passé. I still drink it but only because I like it, not because it’s “cool”.

What is your favourite white wine? What do you like about it?

Photographer Carl Werner has created amazing still-life landscapes out of food. My favourites are the Forest of Greens and the marine landscape. The seascape with the peapod boat is pretty cool too. What is your favourite?