Food Preparation and Nutrition

January 9, 2020

Vegan bean sausage rolls

These vegan pastry rolls are filled with a spicy bean mixture which needs careful flavouring with onion, smoked paprika, cumin and celery salt.
You can use ready made shortcrust pastry or make your own. Ready made pastry needs to be taken out of the fridge for 30 minutes before using.

Makes 12

Ingredients

1 can butter beans (400g) drained of juice 250g drained weight

1 small onion finely chopped, 50g, 

1 level tsp smoked paprika

1 level tsp ground cumin

Pinch of celery salt

1 level tbs tomato ketchup

Chopped spring onion, chives or parsley

Sesame seeds

Shortcrust pastry – either ready made or use Vegan shortcrust pastry recipe 300g

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Line 2 baking trays with non stick baking paper.
  2. Put the drained butter beans in a bowl and mash with a fork or bash with the end of a rolling pin. Keep the bean liquid to use to glaze the pastry.
  3. Stir in the finely chopped onion, paprika, cumin, celery salt and tomato ketchup. Add chives, spring onion and/or parsley. Taste the mixture and see if it needs more flavour.
  4. Roll out the pastry into an oblong about 25x35cm and cut in half lengthways.
  5. Divide the bean mixture into 2 equal portions and roll into 2 long sausages along the length of the pastry. 
  6. Brush the long side of the pastry with some of the bean liquid and roll up to make a cylinder. Press to seal and put the sealed pastry edge underneath on the baking tray.
  7. Brush the top of the pastry with bean liquid and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
  8. Cut each roll into 6 equal rolls and cut the top with scissors to make a peak.
  9. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
  10. Serve warm or cold.

Research

Find out how companies are making Vegan sausage rolls

Greggs Vegan sausage roll is made with flaky pastry and a vegan Quorn filling.

Greggs best selling Vegan sausage roll

https://www.greggs.co.uk/bakes/vegan-sausage-roll

Marks and Spencers has a Plant Kitchen with a range of products made from plants. Their No Pork Sausage roll has vegan flaky pastry and a filling made from soya protein and spices

Marks and Spencers Plant kitchen

Quorn has vegan pieces that can be used as a vegan protein for dishes.

Mycoprotein (89%), Potato Protein, Firming Agents: Calcium Chloride, Calcium Acetate; Natural Flavouring, Wheat Gluten, Pea Fibre, Stabilisers: Carrageenan, Sodium Alginate.
December 16, 2019

Vegan lasagne with aubergine

Made from aubergine and soya mince with oat milk for the bechamel sauce

In this Vegan lasagne I use vegan ingredients to replace meat lasagne recipe  

  • Soya mince replaces meat mince
  • Plant based drinks like oat, soya, almond replace milk
  • Vegan spread replaces butter

Things to watch for

Make sure the lasagne sheets are not made from egg otherwise they are not vegan. There are plenty of plant based drinks to replace milk – this recipe uses unsweetened soya drink. The meat free sauce needs careful flavouring – herbs, tomatoes, vegetarian seasoning, salt and pepper. Taste after it has cooked.

Use Nutrition Program to look at nutrition

Serves 4
The recipe is made for 4 as it is hard to scale it down to serve 2.

Ingredients

180g meat free mince (Sainsburys) made from soya
100ml water
1 tbs vegetable oil
Small aubergine 150g cut into slices then cubes
1 small onion 90g, peeled and finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ of a 400g can of tomatoes (200g + juice)
1 tbs tomato ketchup
Large pinch mixed, dried herbs
Vegan stock cube or 1 tsp vegan bouillon powder
Salt and pepper
Vegan white sauce
2 tbs vegetable oil
40g plain flour
400ml plant based drink – soya, oat, almond
Salt, pepper, grated nutmeg

4-6 sheets dried egg free lasagne 60 – 90g

Method

  1. Mix the meat free mince with water and stir so it absorbs and swells.
  2. Gently fry the aubergine cubes, onion and garlic in oil in a large frying pan for 3-4 minutes until they soften, stirring all the time.
  3. Add the softened mince and stir in the tomatoes, tomato ketchup and a little water to make the sauce.
  4. Season with vegan bouillon and mixed herbs. Cook gently for 5 minutes.
  5. Make the white sauce. Heat the oil and flour in a pan for a minute to mix together then gently whisk in the plant-based drink until the sauce thickens.
  6. Season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg.
  7. The lasagne is ready to assemble. Choose a dish that will serve 4.
  8. Put half the meat free mixture in the base of the dish, then layer on half of the sheets of lasagne. 
  9. Spread in the remaining meat free mixture and top with the lasagne sheets.
  10. Pour over the white sauce so that it covers the lasagne sheets.
  11. To serve, set the oven to 150°C and bake 20 minute to thoroughly heat through. It should reach 75°C. Test with a food probe.
October 23, 2019

Evaluate a food product for NEA 2

Samosas and cucumber chutney

I’ve made samosas with cucumber chutney – an example from OCR.

Samosa and cucumber chutney evaluation Comments
Good points about food productNice shapes, well cooked, tasty filling
Improvements neededSome samosas split open and baking was uneven.
Sensory words – descriptorsEasy to hold, spicy, golden, tasty and crisp pastry.

Fill in a chart like the one above.

Then decide on the Sensory Tasting words to use – Descriptors

I’ve chosen – easy to hold, spicy, golden, tasty and crisp pastry.

For the best samosa result that I want, I give each descriptor a mark out of 5.

easy to hold5/5
spicy4/5
golden4/5
tasty5/5
crisp pastry5/5

Open the Star Profile in the Nutrition Program to evaluate your results.

Put these marks in the Rating column.

Get 2 or 3 people to taste your samosas and give a mark for each descriptor. Put their name on +Add Taster – the first one is Jenny – that’s me!

My tasters are called Jenny, Ali and Mosha. Enter their marks.

Complete the Evaluations for each Descriptor. Think about the marks the tasters have given.

Export as a jpeg.

You can put this image into your work. The Evaluations on the left show your comments. My samosas need a little more baking and more flavour with some spices.

All done!

This video shows how to make a Star Profile.

August 22, 2019

Food and Nutrition GCSE results 2019

These are the results for 2019 summer GCSE.

There were 5.5 million exams taken altogether and Food and Nutrition was taken by 0.9% of total.

The charts below show the results for male, female and total and the % for grades 7 , 4 and 1. The chart shows disappointing results for boys – only 50% got grade 4-7 so this needs looking at and maybe get evaluation on results in NEA 1, 2 and written exam.

Home Economics GCSE plods on with only 3528 candidates. Reading newspaper reports of results, we are not doing enough to get any mention of Food and Nutrition in the newspapers – this could lead to extinction!!

Results on JCQ site

Food and Nutrition GCSE 2019

 

September 13, 2018

Sugar in cakes – NEA 1

For NEA 1 you need to evaluate and annotate your results. Here’s how to do it using the Nutrition Program.

Use Food Science You Can Eat to help

The Task – To discover what happens if you reduce the sugar in a sponge cake recipe.

We made cakes with full amount of 60g sugar and then did a batch with 50g, 40g, 30g.

You can evaluate the Functional properties of sugar in cakes – the purpose for which the ingredient is being used and can be linked to –  its structure, nutritional value, taste, texture, appearance, shelf life.

Star profile to show evaluation of results of reducing sugar in cakes.

How to do this

  1. Create a recipe for your sponge cake in My Recipes.
  2. Bake and compare your cakes and then click Star Profile
  3. Name the recipe ‘Star profile sponge cakes’.
  4. Choose descriptors – how the cake should look and taste. The descriptors we chose were – golden, yellow sponge, open texture, moist, dry.
  5. The Control cake was marked golden (5), yellow sponge (4), open texture (4), moist (4), dry (1) – this was our perfect cake.
  6. Taste the cakes and mark them on the chart – tip in the +Add Taster put the name of the cake – for example, full sugar, 50g sugar.
  7. The Nutrition Program Star Profile fills in – now you need to Evaluate the results under Evaluation – see our chart.
  8. To get extra exam marks you can annotate the Star profile.

This shows an example of annotating a Star Profile to show what the results mean.

Task

Compare the nutrition of sweeteners for cakes and desserts – use for experiments changing the types of sweetener used in cakes and desserts.

We are told to reduce the amount of ‘free sugars’ in our food, especially cakes and desserts.

But how easy is this to do and how much sugar is found in ingredients used for sweetening?

Compare the sugar content of different ingredients

To do

Use the Nutrition Program for this investigation.

Click My Recipes, +New Recipe and call it Sugar Investigation.

You want to find ingredients that you can use to sweeten cakes and the amount of sugar they contain in 100g

Find Ingredient

Type sugar and see the list. Tip – put a comma after sugar, then more appear. Some are lower sugar products.

Also choose fruits and vegetables which can be used to sweeten such as prunes and figs.

My choice

Sugar

Sugar, half spoon

Hermesetas, granulated sweetener

Banana

These are the results from the Nutrition Program

Nutrition of sugar
Nutrition of half spoon
Nutrition of Hermesetas
Nutrition of banana
Sweetening ingredientSugar in 100g
Sugar105 g
Sugar, half spoon99 g
Hermesetas, granulated sweetener14 g
Banana21 g

For Investigations, you need to make the cakes and find out how the results look and taste.

Then you can decide which sweeteners are the best.

Star profile of sugar in cakes with annotation