Use garlic to get rid of this little bugger.

Despite the fact that it tastes fantastic, and is incredibly healthy for humans, a lot of insects don’t have the same opinions and reactions to it.

While I feel a bit sorry for aphids, etc. that they can’t experience the great joys of garlic, it does make it even more useful to us, because we can make a very effective natural pesticide out of it.

This particular concoction will kill aphids, mosquitos and onion flies amongst other things.

The ingredients

The trickiest bit of this whole process is finding the ingredients. Aside from the garlic you will need fish emulsion and mineral oil.

Fish emulsion

Fish emulsion is a fertiliser that is produced from the fluid remains of fish that has been processed to make fish oil and fish meal. It is completely organic and has a high nitrogen content.

The biggest problem with fish emulsion is that it comes accompanied by a pretty minging smell. You can buy deoderised versions but they aren’t completely fragrance free.

Fish emulsion is pretty easy to find in any decent garden centre. It’s quite inexpensive and because it is a concentrate a 500ml bottle will last for ages.

I can’t imagine why you’d really want to, but if you would prefer to make your own fish emulsion rather than buying it, then you can find a good article on how to do it by clicking here: Make fish emulsion

Mineral oil

Mineral oil is a clear odourless liquid that is a by product of the distillation of oil into petrol. It is used for all kinds of things, from protecting wooden surfaces to medical uses as a laxative or emollient.

It’s really easy to get hold of mineral oil, you can buy it in any pharmacy, most beauty shops, cookware shops, and also in some supermarkets. It’s inexpensive and available in bottles of various sizes. If you have the option, then pay slightly more and get ‘food grade’ mineral oil, you are going to be spraying it on things you might want to eat later after all.

How to make it

1. Peel and roughly chop the garlic, put it into a container with the mineral oil and leave it to soak for 24 hours.

2. Dissolve the fish emulsion in about half a litre of cold water, add the garlic/oil solution to it and stir well.

3. Strain the liquid through a sieve into a glass container and store it until needed.

The pesticide will keep for quite a while in a cool dark place, but make sure that you don’t store it in a metal container because a chemical reaction will take place.

How to use it

1. Give the container of pesticide a good shake, because mineral oil is not soluble in water and the mix will have separated while it has been standing.

2. Dilute your solution with water at a ratio of 1:20.

3. Spray using a normal plant sprayer, remembering to shake it every so often so that the mineral oil doesn’t separate out.

Eclectic loveliness in the heart of Barcelona

Note: This is not, never has been, and isn’t going to become a restaurant review website. There are already more than enough of them out there, and I’m not a restaurant critic.

Despite that, every so often you discover somewhere to eat that just excites you enough to want to let the world know about it. Whenever that happens, you will find a post about it here!

This week I discovered my new favourite bar/restaraunt in Barcelona, then the next day I rediscovered it, and if it weren’t for the fact that it is closed on Sundays I might have gone to discover it all over again today.

In a nod to the ever shrinking international world that we live in, the waitress was Swiss (and lovely), the chef was Irish (and talented), the decor a bit all over the place, and the food on the lunchtime menu was inspired by Persian/Lebanese cuisine. In the evening the menu gets a bit more eclectic, with influences from all over the place.

It’s called Kabara, and can be found on Calle Junta de Comerç, in Raval, Barcelona.

The decor is inviting, the staff fantastic, the ambience is really relaxing, and the food is original and very tasty. The extra special bonus, and this is a rarity in Barcelona, is that the prices are also great.

The food

We tried twelve dishes over two days, and I liked every single one of them. In fact, the only two faults I can pick with anything is that I didn’t particularly like the texture of the pureed potato that came with one dish, and that some salad leaves hadn’t been drained well after being washed and it made the side salad taste watery.

Everything was beautifully spiced, all meat was tender and there was a wonderful fresh and clean feeling running through all of the dishes.

My favourites included:

Aubergine kashk with Persian sauce

Similar to aubergine caviar (see recipe here), but completely different at the same time. I don’t know exactly what was in it, but you could taste aubergine, salt, lashings of olive oil, something citrusy, and of course kashk. Served with Arabic bread, it is a really great way to start a meal.

Goats cheese salad with dates and bacon

A really nice salad with a young Catalonian goats cheese, juicy dates, crispy bits of bacon and walnuts, with a variety of green leaves.

Chicken & lamb skewers

Such a simple dish, pieces of spiced chicken and lamb grilled on skewers and served with rice. It might be simple, but it was also sublime, both the lamb and chicken were beautifully spiced, and cooked perfectly.

Lemon sorbet with Limoncello

It is possible that there are more refreshing things in the world on a hot summers day than a lemon sorbet, but there can’t be many of them. The sorbet at Kabara was nicely made and then drowned in limoncello. Pure summery goodness!

Orange tiramasu

I love tiramusu, but what you find on most restaraunt menus is has little to no resemblance to a real Italian tiramusu. I am incredibly happy to be able to report that the tiramusu on the menu at Kabara is as good as the rest of their food. We tried both the strawberry tiramasu and the orange one, both were good, but the orange was better.

and the drink

A special mention has to be for the house white wine, which is a Catalonian blanc de blanc. It’s crisp and refreshing with summer fruit flavours. It strongly reminds me of a New Zealand Sauvignon blanc, but at a much lower price.

Oh, and the coffee is pretty good too.

This is a first, we don’t normally cover fashion or clothing issues at johnonfood.com.

What we have here though is not your average bit of clothing, it’s one of the coolest range of foodie t-shirts on the planet.

The ‘Instruccions’ range of t-shirts from Catalunyam gives you instruccions (or instructions) on how to make some classic Catalan dishes, and I want all of them!

Each shirt features a cartoon strip style illustration of how to prepare the simple but fantastic dishes.

Pa amb what?

There are currently three designs in the range. Pa amb tomàquet (bread with tomato), Allioli (garlic mayonnaise), and Calçotada (spring onion party).

The following descriptions are lifted straight from Catalunyam themselves:

Pa amb tomàquet

The Catalan national dish. Very easy to prepare: you spread ripe tomato on the slice of bread – it’s better if toasted – and you add a little bit of salt (if you wish) and olive oil. You usually eat with different kinds of cheese and “embotits” (processed cold meat).

Allioli (Garlic mayonnaise)

Traditional Catalan sauce, perfect to accompany grilled meat. To make it, you need to beat peeled garlic in the mortar while adding oil.

(John’s note: It’s not the same as French aioli, but it is very similar.)

Calçotada

A sort of gastronomical party that involves a group of people meeting up to eat grilled calçots (spring onions) with Romesco sauce (made of ground almonds, hazelnuts, tomato, garlic, parsley, olive oil and vinegar). It is recommended to wear a bib to avoid getting romesco stains on your shirt.

I want one!

Sadly, that might prove a bit tricky.

At the moment you can buy them in about 40 shops, but they are all in Catalalonia. You can also order them online, but the entire website is also in Catalan, so unless you speak it, or you feel comfortable ordering something and paying for it in a language that you don’t fully understand, you might have a bit of a problem.

I think they are fantastic, and I’d like to sell them online through this website. Watch this space, it might happen soon.

Don't worry - it won't hurt you

This entire article was largely prompted by a sensationalist piece that I read on the internet, telling everyone how bad Teflon is and about all of the health risks it allegedly poses.

A bit of history

Ok, Teflon is actually just a trade name, from Dupont the chemical company that owns the formula. What we are really talking about is:

Poly-Tetra-Flouro-Ethylene (PTFE)

It is quite simply the slipperiest substance known to man.

Like so many things, it was invented by accident. In this case by a chemist called Ray Plunkett, who was trying to do something completely different and ended up with the polymer PTFE in 1938.

Sine then it has been used for all sorts of things, including electronics, aeronautics, clothing, industrial machinery, on the space shuttle, in atomic bombs, and of course for non-stick cookware.

So, is it safe?

The fact is that Teflon is not only the slipperiest thing know to man, but also one of the most inert substances that we’ve come up with. In a stable state it is completely non-toxic, any possible problems only arise when you heat it to temperatures over 260°c.

At these temperatures, Teflon starts to break down, and this can lead to the release of some potentially dangerous chemical fumes. These fumes are toxic to birds, and could induce some flu like symptoms in humans. Most people don’t get their cookware anywhere near 260°c at home, so this isn’t going to be a huge problem.

If you do need to cook at very high temperatures, then there is really no need to use non-stick pans, as any metal pan becomes naturally non-stick when it reaches high enough temperatures anyway.

Is Teflon a carcinogen?

There have also been some concerns about whether or not Teflon contributes to cancer.

The reality is that PTFE itself is not a carcinogen, but that one of the chemical compounds that is used during its manufacture, called POFA, may be.

This is really only worth even thinking about if you work in a factory making Teflon, not if you are using it to cook with. Statistics show that you are more likely to find traces of POFA in your carpet than you are in your frying pan.

Well, here is another one. Not just because I so love typing out tables of data, but also because this site contains a number of recipes and it seems only right to provide all of the info that you need to cook them in the same place.

I’ve added a separate column for fan assisted ovens in °C, the general rule is that you subtract 20°C (about 36°F) when using a fan oven.

Oven Temperatures

If you want to convert between any temps that aren’t listed here, don’t forget that you can always use Google for just about type of conversion, simply by typing the amount you want to convert and the from and to units into the search bar.

It doesn’t work for me in the same way as “Human Porn” doesn’t work for me, but that isn’t because food isn’t sexy. It’s because food like sex is a multisensual thing.

It’s not just about the way that it looks, it’s the way that it smells, the way that it tastes, even the sound of it.

There is also the fact that if you are a good enough photographer, then you can make anything look fantastic and exciting.

Having said all of that, I still love the concept, and I still get hungry flicking through the pics. So, here are some of the best Food Porn sites out there.

foodporndaily.com
foodgawker.com/
fpdaily.net/
photograzing.seriouseats.com

In amongst the thousands of recipes contained in that lot there are some that I love, some that I think need a bit of work, and some that I can easily dismiss, either having cooked and not been impressed by simply not needing to.

In order to make some sense of all of this, I’ve been looking for a piece of recipe management software. Something that will let me enter details of all my favourite recipes, edit them as I experiment, and then sort and search through them in a way much easier than pulling book after book off the shelf and flicking through the indexes.

Just a quick note: I use a Mac, so if you are using a PC then you might as well stop reading this post now (or a better option, go to the apple store and switch).

So far I’ve tried out three options, Dishbase, MacGourmet and Yummysoup! Of the three, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind which is the best. Yummysoup! offers some additional features which can’t be found in the other programs, i.e. a fantastic web import interface that makes it stupidly easy to import your favourite recipes from any site on the web. As well as this it gives you a good looking and intuitive user interface, and is very simple to learn and use. The full screen recipe view is very handy, but I would prefer it if I could turn the picture off, and have just the text.

Yummysoup! is available at hungryseacow.com, for $20 (about £10.50), and you can download a free 15 day trial, I’d highly recommend giving it a go.

Of course the ideal solution would be to create my own database using something like the fanstastic Bento and tailor it exactly to my needs, but at the moment I just don’t have the time. Until I do, yummysoup! does pretty much everything that I ask of it.