Bluegrass Soy Sauce

My brother's mother-in-law came to the UK for a visit recently. She's from Louisville, Kentucky, and she's a gem. As she knows I like food and food related foodstuffs for fooding, she very generously brought me a dinky little bottle of Bluegrass Soy Sauce.

Told ya.

This is made in Kentucky, in the US's only soy sauce microbrewery. Apparently that's a thing. It's aged in old bourbon barrels, and it's fancy as balls.

Now, I like soy sauce, but in my experience it's rarely anything more than brown salty water. Written down that looks kind of gross, but it fills a need. The need for brown salty water. But the Kentucky stuff, I've got to hand it to them, this stuff is cool. It's smoother, less salty, and muuuuuch more complex. Smoky and spicy and tasty. Well played, America. Well played. As far as I can tell it's not available in the UK, but we must have some comparatively fancy soy sauces? Right? No, no probably not. In a way it's a shame that I was given this free taster of a high end product to get me hooked, ensuring I keep coming ba- waaaaait just a second. Carla, you sly fox.

I have a standard recipe for a meat marinade that I use quite a lot, but that's for regular soy sauce, not fancy soy sauce. I pared it down in this instance so you could taste the soy more. If you happen to have some fancy soy sauce, use this version. If not, add some grated ginger, a pinch of chinese five spice, and half a teaspoon of liquid smoke (if you have it).

You will need:

1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp rice wine or white wine vinegar
3 tbsp fancy soy sauce
1 clove crushed garlic
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon crushed chilli flakes
1 tsp tomato puree

Mix everything together, and use immediately. Phew.

I use this as a marinade for all types of meat, but mainly chicken or belly pork. This time round I had some diced turkey. I let the meat sit in the marinade overnight before making skewers with onions and peppers, and cooked them on a griddle. I poured any remaining marinade over the top while cooking so that it would thicken into a nice glaze.

It worked exceptionally well. Turkey is already quite a smooth meat, so the marinade kept it nice and soft and stopped it from drying out.

Bluegrass Soy Sauce, then. I'd recommend you try it, but I'm not sharing sooo...Well. The weather's nice, isn't it?

Basic Vegetable Salad

I've been poorly this week. A nasty cold made me all tired and spacey, so I left most of the cooking up to Pete. And I'm very grateful, too.

The other day I thought I was better, and bought everything I needed to make burgers and a vegetable salad, then collapsed on the sofa and didn't move again for the rest of the day. Conversation that evening went as follows:

Pete: Shall I cook these burgers then?

Bron: OK. But I'll make the salad.

Pete: Don't be silly.

Bron: I will. I'll make the salad.

Pete: We don't even need salad.

Bron: WE DO NEED SALAD. WE'RE GROWN UPS.

Pete: [Looks at Bron]

Bron: Just burgers is fine.

I'm more or less better now. Still a little groggy but basically ok. And now I've made the salad I was going to make. It's my favourite 'basic' salad, as it keeps for a couple of days in the fridge, and you can add any number of optional extras to it to keep it interesting.

Basic:
4 carrots
1 cucumber
3 spring onions

Optional extras (suggestions):
Capers or olives, chopped
Peppers
Crumbled feta
Croutons
Bacon bits
Grated ginger
Chopped fresh coriander
Salad leaves (I like rocket)

Dressing:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper
crushed clove of garlic

Grate the carrot and cucumber, and finely slice the spring onion. Leave everything in a sieve for half an hour so that the juice can drain out. Mix the dressing up separately, and toss with the salad, along with your extras (strongly recommended)

If you don't add leaves it won't wilt, so it will last a bit longer than other salads. I like to make a big bowl so I can eat it over a few days without too much fuss, even if I'm sick and can't make anything fresh.

Here with feta, green peppers and toasted sesame seeds and coconut

As well as a side to main meals, this is good in a wrap, mixed with cous-cous, or added to some hot chicken stock with a little chilli and some noodles for a very quick soup. Or for proving that you are a damn adult, and can cope with eating your vegetables even if you don't have to and don't want to. It's a matter of pride.

The GBM Experiment (BBC et al, 2014)

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd say. The finals week of Great British Menu is reminding me a lot of the Psychology course I did on the International Baccalaureate.

I've already said all I need to say about the show so far (in short: the brief is weird, the editing is weird, the chefs are pricks), but now it's finals week, and there's one element of finals week that I find absolutely fascinating.

In the regionals it's always a treat to see someone cook their little socks off, just for one of the judges (probably Oliver) to say 'Well, this isn't good enough. They clearly haven't tried at all'. Always makes me laugh. In finals week, though, it's not just the judges giving out scores, but the chefs too. And they don't sit round a table and discuss it, they splinter off into little groups. There's ususally about three or four separate groups all pronouncing their judgements independently of the others.

Now to psychology. In the fifties, Solomon Asch conducted studies into group conformity. In his initial experiment, one test subject was placed with a group of stooges. All were asked a simple visual question with an easy answer (pick which line is the longest, or something). The stooges all gave the wrong answer. Asch found that, after conducting the test a number of times, around 75% of people would give an incorrect answer at least once to conform with the group consensus, with 35% conforming at any one time. Asch then ran a number of follow ups, finding that conformity rates were highest with three stooges, while high group numbers actually lowered conformity. The presence of just one other person disagreeing with the group would lower conformity rates.

Back to the chefs. They're all off in their little groups, and you can actually see Asch's theories play out in front of you. Obviously here it's all subjective and there's no strictly right or wrong answer, but the cheeky editor is very keen on following one person saying 'This is really over seasoned', with that group nodding in agreement, with someone from another group saying 'The seasoning is perfect', with their group nodding in agreement. One person's strong opinion will sway the whole group - and these are people not short of confidence in their own opinion. Keep an eye on Colin and Emily. Emily is quite generous with her scores, and any group with her in will probably mark a dish highly. Bless Colin, but he is a little bitch, and will pull the scores down in his group. And just like Asch found, there's more disagreement when the group is larger. If I were a scientist, I would be positively aroused at the papers I could write on this.

Any psychologists reading this, maybe look into writing something on the practical applications of conformity theory in modern competitive cooking shows. But remember to reference me.