Until we have learned to taste....

"Until we have learned to explore, our tastes are so limited, our experience is so narrow, that we can make no valid comparisons, can found no true judgements. So it is with food. We must learn to eat first." (The Robert Carrier Cookbook)

Forgive me for being such an unreliable blogger over the past month. I have been recovering from a back problem. Due to the combined magic of painkillers and an osteopath I am slowly getting better and returning to normal life. And back to blogging!

I haven't ventured outside much but I couldn't resist the invitation to be a judge for the Great Taste Awards at the Real Food Festival in London. Having spent 18 months of our lives tasting an entire alphabet of vegetables, Freddie and I have learnt to explore tastes. But until you have had to taste 10 different flavoured sausages, 9 boozy ice creams, 8 sloe gins, 7 chocolates with chilli, 6 gluten-free cakes, 5 fruit jams, 4 savoury biscuits, 3 hot puddings, 2 fine butters and 1 noble anchovy you haven't really earned the title of taster. On my table was a wondeful lady from Devon, a farmers wife and an experienced Womens Institute judge known as Ruth Maile. She taught me how to scrape back the butter and see whether it is well blended, to think about the balance of flavours in a spoonful of jam, and to consider the crispness of a savoury biscuit. I left feeling as if I had been through the equivalent of an aerobics exercise for the palate. On the final day of judging I took Freddie with me and we were invited to sit on the Supreme Table.

This table receives all the recommendations from the other judging tables for the coveted gold awards. You don't know what products you will be sampling. So he was a little nervous. Until the plates of chocolate started to arrive, lining up on our table, waiting for a second opinion. He turned to me and said,"This is my idea of a brilliant job - can I be a chocolate taster?" And on our table was just that - an experienced chocoatier Marc Demarquette who encouraged this fledgling chocolatier to put aside his pocket money chocolate palate and learn to identify the taste of a really good quality cocoa bean.

Learning to explore food, learning to taste, Richard Carrier was right. Until we have done that we can't make valid judgements. Children should be given classes in tasting and exploring food. Any of you have any inspiring ideas for encouraging children to widen their taste horizons?

Great Big Lunch Out Challenge no 2 - Welcome to Little Chef.

This is the second of our Great Big Lunch Out Challenges. The aim is to praise the best attempts by restaurants and cafes to feed children good value, good quality food. This time it's more of a Great Big Breakfast Out Challenge but it is the holiday season, a time when many of us spend hours on the motorway and sometimes it is hard to avoid motorway service stations. It was 9.30 am on the A38 outside Exeter in Devon when the portly figure of Mr Little Chef beckoned. I should have known that he was not to be trusted. If you look carefully, his chef whites look decidedly grubby. But I wanted to give Mr Little Chef a chance - especially after reading that Heston Blumenthall has been advising the owners on how to turn round the restaurant chain's fortunes. I have no idea on whether the chain is being refitted, whether it is about to alter its menu, but all I know is that none of the hype appears to have reached the A38 outside Exeter. We sat down at one of only two tables with diners. After 20 minutes a waitress decides to ask if we would like to order. We were more than ready. The children ordered the Early Starter Breakfast for £5.99. I plumped for the lighter touch - the healthy choice breakfast which offered me fruit compote, low fat yoghurt and crunchy cereal on top for £4.95. Another 15 minutes passed and the breakfast arrived in a curious order. First of all one glass of water arrived, then another, and then a cup of tea was plonked in front of my husband Chris. The tea bag floated appealingly on top. There was no saucer on which to place it. I suppose any sense of ceremony must have been extra. He asked for a plate on which to place the tea-bag and the waitress looked a little offended. Then the breakfasts arrived. A plastic pat of butter for the toast

sat on top of the fried egg - another strange touch.

Ok, so its clear by now that Heston hasn't stepped into this branch of Little Chef. (If any of you have visited one that is different please review it and let us know). I was still waiting for my healthy offering. Then the waitress came over empty handed. "I'm afraid we have run out of yoghurt,"she apologised. The thing is when you have waited so long for something so simple and everyone else is already eating their breakfast, you run out of sympathy. I must have looked disappointed because the waitress tensed up and grimaced at me. "Well since we have run out of yoghurt, we can offer you more toast instead."

"More toast? But the whole point of the dish is that it is fruit compote and yoghurt. Toast doesn't really work as a replacement. And how can you run out of something so simple as yoghurt? Why don't you just go to the local supermarket and buy some?"

"Well..." hesitated the waitress. "Well we ran out last night and we haven't had any more in yet. Would you like the extra toast instead?"

I declined. I know it's not the fault of the waitress and I wasn't rude but really, how hard can it be to make sure you have some yoghurt in the fridge? And if you run out, why not use some initiative and buy some more? And if that is too hard and you spot this yoghurt deficit the night before, why are you still taking an order for fruit compote and yoghurt? By now the children have finished their breakfasts which are unimaginative, and we leave. Their score for taste - 5 out of 10. Our score for value - 2. And Heston, if you are really involved in helping out the fat guy in grubby chef whites, please rush down to Exeter. Unless Little Chef is prepared to pay for us to try out their food at a refurbished branch, then we won't be going back. It was appalling.

Now I know that there is better out there for families - let us know about it. Wherever you are in the world, take photos, write a review, score it for value and taste and email us here. Because families deserve better!

Read our first review here

Sweet Potato and Sausage Casserole

Pavlov's dogs drooled when he blew a whistle, trained to associate the whistling with mealtime. Within just four days, my children are showing that they too have conditioned reflexes. When our visiting Vitasteam machine pings at the end of the cooking cycle, they rush through to the kitchen. I think I may record the ping for future use, long after the Miele machine is returned to their head quarters.

We were following their recipe booklet but I now feel confident to go off piste. I made an organic sausage and sweet potato casserole which Freddie scored 9 out of 10. I've got into a rhythm now. Using the steamer speeds up the process of making a casserole, but you still have to start the process on the hob. Then you put it all in the steamer , stir in a little cornflour and cook for 3o minutes. And Ping, the kids run through.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Casserole
2-3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

3 large potatoes peeled and cut into chunks

2 medium onions peeled and finely sliced

500 ml good quality stock (vegetable or chicken stock works well)

2 large tablespoons of concentrated tomato paste

1teaspoon of Za'atar (sesame, sea salt,somac,thyme,oregano,marjoram)

half a teaspoon of harissa paste

1 tablespoon of olive oil

salt and pepper to season

In a large pan on a medium hob heat the olive oil with the onions and softened for 6 minutes, add the sausages and brown them gently. Add the cubed sweet potato and potato with the stock, spices and tomato paste and harissa paste. Stir well and bring to the boil. Take out a little of the stock and in a cup mix a tablespoon of cornflour with the stock and then re-add to the casserole, stirring in to thicken the sauce. Place in a oven proof casserole in an oven at 170 C for an hour, stirring every now and again.

If you are using a Miele steam oven then at the point after you have added the cornflour, out the casserole into a lidded steam container and cook in the vitasteam for 35 minutes at 100.

Serve with flat bread.

Steamed eggs for breakfast!

I blame binge-drinking. Not me, I hasten to add, but other people. Because at around five o'clock this morning a drunk couple zig-zagged up my street laughing hysterically and I woke up. I couldn't get back to sleep. So I read the Vitasteam manual and found out that I could steam eggs. I also read the bit about using heat-proof containers. You should never act on thoughts that come to you at five in the morning. Three hours later and I have refilled the water container, put two eggs in two Alessi egg-cups and set it to 3 minutes for soft-boiled. Easy. The roary-steamy bit happened, the odd puff of steam shot out and the machine beeped to say,'ready'. The children are excited, looking on as I open the door. A sorry site greets me. The cheery faces of my egg cups have altered, as if they have suffered some kind of stroke, one side of their face appears to have slipped slightly. They have dropped their precious cargo of eggs, unbroken and lie prone on the tray base. The asparagus spears are perfectly steamed.
The children are crestfallen but hungry so once I transfer their steamed eggs to a new cup they are happy again.

We've had to bin the egg cups as they can no longer hold an egg, but that's my fault. I thought they were heat proof, having sterilised similar containers before. "This is the perfect egg," says Freddie to console me. "Really, really soft and delicious." He dips the asparagus into the egg, one of the first vegetables that he learnt to love with the Great Big Veg Challenge. And day two of my steam-cooking crash course I put it all down to experience.

How to turn your kitchen into a sauna

As I write there is an unfamiliar sound in my kitchen; a bubbling, perculating noise coming from a black and chrome box on the kitchen counter. This is my introduction to the world of steam-cooking. One of the fun side-effects of writing 'The Great Big Veg Challenge' blog is that I am occasionally invited to try out food products, bakeware and for the first time I have been leant a state of the art steam oven by Miele to try out. For a few weeks the 'Vitasteam'
email sat in my junk mail file alongside the offers from Mr Adjela in Lagos to share in his 'wondrous good fortune, Lord bless you' and guarantees that I had yet again won the Spanish Euro Lottery. Matt from Miele persisted and I am pleased he did. Not being hugely in touch with the world of cooking appliances, I don't know much about steam-cooking other than my steel steamer. This machine is like something out of Star Wars. It is the R2D2 of steam-cooking.

Once Freddie has popped all the bubble wrap, my husband commented on where exactly we would have the space for this monster steamer and Alex asked for supper. That was easily answered. I've been sent a recipe booklet. "Tonight, we will be having Spring lamb Casserole". Alex helped me to prep all the ingredients, I filled the machine's water container and looked at the recipe and panicked. I need to find a steam container with a lid. I had visions of blowing up the fancy machine and having to email Miele Matt with my tail between my legs. I find a heat proof dish with a lid and stick the ingredients in, turn on the machine and after a quiet ten minutes, the machine beeps at me and a code number flashes up. I look through the manual searching for code numbers. I'm under pressure. The family is hungry, the casserole is uncooked and I have a pathological hatred of manuals. The code number informs me that I have not properly installed the water container. I open the oven door, jiggle around with the water container and close it again. The casserole starts cooking. Every now and again the perculating oven sounds angry. I get anxious. The roary-bubbly sound calms down and the machine becomes eerily quiet. That is more unsettling. Should steam be so quiet? I am expecting more of a Flying Scotsman presence, the occasional train whistle, maybe even a Brief Encounter moment as I view my husband through billowing steam. But steam-cooking is far less dramatic. It just bubbles away until a beep informs me that dinner is ready. It worked. I open the door of the bubbling machine and a puff of steam hits me. (Note to self, do not stand directly in front of the door next time - the manual HAD warned me). The casserole is perfectly cooked. Freddie eats everything, even the carrots and the runner beans. For the next week or so my kitchen will become more of a sauna than a kitchen.