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Hammier Horror with SPAM Spooks

Halloween is almost here and SPAM have just released a new variety that will be very useful during this haunted holiday. SPAM Chopped Pork and Ham with Garlic is sure to be a great way to keep those troublesome vampires away.

It is a special limited edition version of the popular canned meat and will be available in Sainsbury’s supermarkets from next month. For a limited time, garlic will be being added to the special variety of the meat and will make it easier for you to create tasty treats this Halloween. You will also be able to use the SPAM to create a special Halloween recipe which will create some spooky figures.

Makes 8 SPAM® Spooks

Ingredients
1 X 340g can SPAM® Chopped Pork and Ham with Garlic (lie SPAM® on its wide side and cut into 8/10 slices)
16 x slices medium cut white or 50/50 bread from a large sliced loaf
2 extra large organic eggs, well beaten
Vegetable oil for frying
Cardboard for templates

Method
1)  With the cardboard cut out templates of ghosts, skulls and coffins
2)  Place a template on to a slice of bread and with kitchen scissors, cut around the template making two for each SPAM® Spook

3)  Cut the slices of SPAM® Chopped Pork and Ham with Garlic to fit into the middle of each shape and press well together
4)  Pour the oil into a large frying pan to approximately 2/3 cm deep and heat until a cube of bread quickly fries to golden
5)  Dip each SPAM® Spook into the beaten egg, coating each side and carefully place into the hot oil
6)  Fry for approximately 1 minute until golden, carefully turn over and repeat.  Carefully take out of the hot oil and drain on absorbent paper.  Repeat with the other SPAM® Spooks
7)  Serve on a warm serving plate

Limited Edition SPAM® Chopped Pork and Ham With Garlic is available in a 340g can from Sainsbury’s, with a RRP of £1.69.

For further information on SPAM® Chopped Pork and Ham products, please follow the UK SPAM® Facebook page: www.facebook.com/OfficialSPAMUK and on Twitter: www.twitter.com/OfficialSPAMUK

You can easily make your own Kiev burgers with minced meat if you have the right recipe, as the Kiev video proves with the help of the right cook, anyone can produce a perfect dish.  In fact, the only thing you need are a few tips and some ingredients and you can have Kiev’s out on the grill cooking and ready to eat in just a few minutes.

To start with you will have to make sure that you have mince, courgette, a lemon, butter, and some parsley.  The butter you will want to keep at room temperature and then mince a bit of garlic and toss it into the butter.  Chop up a bit of the parsley and then put it in the bowl as well.  Now you can use your hand to mass up the butter so that you have a parsley garlic butter that is flavoured and set.  Place it into some cling film and use the wrap to shape it into a roll or ball, after which you can place a few pieces into the fridge for half an hour.

After the butter is set you can slice it into rounds and put it aside.  In the meantime, mince some peppers, sun dried tomatoes, lemon zest, or any other of your favourite vegetables along with some salt and pepper and mash into the minced meat.  Make a ball about the size of a tennis ball, push a hole into it, fill the hole with the garlic ball, and then seal back over.  Now you have the actual frame of the burger, which will also rest for twenty minutes in the fridge.

All that is left to do is spread some oil over the burgers and pop them onto a grill and you will be ready to go as fast as your grill can cook proving that with the right video aid gourmet style cooking is always within your reach.

Food safety experts have made the conclusion that milk and meat from descendants of cloned pigs and cattle should be allowed to be sold in the UK. The Food Standards Agency, the official food regulator is meeting Wednesday next week to make a decision as to whether consumer should be able to purchase products from cloned animals or their offspring.

Before the meeting they have published their opinion on the issue after consultation with different groups including animal welfare organizations and the National Farmers Union. The FSA decided that are no safety grounds for regulation of foods from descendants of cattle or pigs that were cloned. But these products directly derived from the cloned pig or cattle need a license to be sold.

This decision follows a row when it leaked that meat from the descendant of a cloned cow was sold at butchers shops that did not have the correct novel food license thereby breaking FSA rules at that time last year.

Opposition to the regulation changes, which by the way bring the UK in line with the other countries in Europe, has come from farmers organizations like RSPCA.  A beef and dairy farmer from Suffolk, Zoe Cawston said that allowing the sales of products that were directly from or a derivative of a cloned animal or descendant was equal to lowering the standards.

The National Farmers Union representing more that 55,000 farmers in Wales and England said it is not practical or even possible to identify each and every animal that has cloned ancestors. Martin Haworth the NFU director of policy says that EFSA the European Food Safety Authority and the FSA both have confirmed the lack of a health risk from these products of cloned offspring.

Currently cloning is not allowed in the EU nevertheless descendants of cloned animals abroad may be imported. A consumer group has said they feel there are scientific uncertainties about the use of cloning in animal production that is for food. The issue is far from over as cloning and the use of their products has just started.

For the uninitiated, barbecuing can seem complicated. From what to cook to what kind of grill to use and more, many variables go into cooking up the perfect BBQ. How do you keep track of what to do? If you’re in doubt, here’s our simple guide to the perfect BBQ – it lists the basics of what you need to know to grill your food just the way you like it.

Type of Grill

When it comes to choosing the type of grill for your BBQ, you basically have two options: gas and charcoal. A gas grill is a good choice for the budding amateur because they’re very easy to use. The gas knob makes the heat even and easy to regulate, while cleaning up is relatively straightforward compared with charcoal grills. The downside is that it’s not as authentic – meat cooked on a charcoal grill generally has a better flavour, smell and appeal than meat cooked on a gas grill (that’s the universal consensus). Charcoal IS messier, however. It is also more dangerous and more difficult to use than its gas counterpart and a pain to clean. Flavour vs ease of use is the main issue when it comes to picking a grill. Which do you fancy more? There are also BBQ innovations such as the BarbeSkew, which combines barbecuing and rotisserie methods, cooking the food on rotating skewers.

Lighting the Grill

While lighting up a gas grill is pretty much a case of following the instructions that came with it, lighting up a charcoal grill is trickier. We recommend squirting about ½ cup of lighter fluid for every kilo of charcoal if you haven’t got any firelighters to hand. It’s best to stack the coals in the centre of the grill in an even pyramid shape. Once the coals are coated in white ash, you can spread them out and start cooking!

BBQ Recipes

How you flavour your meats and vegetables for the BBQ is key to making everything turn out delicious. BBQ rubs and marinades add flavour and tenderise the meat, while BBQ sauce – homemade or bought – can give your meat a real flavour kick. A simple salt brine may also be used for meat placed in a smoker. It adds flavour and lots of moisture to the meat. Of course, you can drop the traditional barbeque flavours in favour of something completely different such as a salmon brushed with lemon, olive oil and parsley. Don’t be afraid to try something non-traditional.

For many of us, tucking into a perfectly cooked steak is an indulgence.  However, you may not have considered that lean red meat can help in maintaining a healthy body weight and the prevention of obesity, a major risk factor for heart disease.

From quality lamb to beef and pork, there are a wide variety of cuts to choose from, all of which can provide delicious and low fat meals for the whole family.

New butchery techniques provide cuts of meat that are really lean and ideal for quick healthy cooking methods such as stir frying, dry frying and grilling.

Red meat is an excellent source of iron, protein and B vitamins, which help give your body energy. This is especially important for young children and teenagers as they are more in need of essential vitamins and minerals.

It can even help you fit into that dress or those favourite pair of jeans.  That’s because lean red meat can help with satiety (the feeling of fullness after eating) which means it can potentially play a part in preventing over-eating or snacking between meals.

So what better reason to start cooking up a storm in the kitchen using meat as the basis for the meal?

In order to celebrate World Heart Day, MeatMATTERS has launched a campaign to highlight the role that lean red meat can play in a balanced diet to achieve a healthy heart and to challenge the misconceptions surrounding red meat. In our live webTV show actress Lynda Bellingham and nutritionist Nigel Denby explain how you can get the most from meat and share some mouth-watering, heart-healthy red meat recipes.

Lynda Bellingham and Nigel Denby join us live online on Friday 24^th September at 1pm to discuss the health benefits of meat

Click here to submit questions before the show and to watch it live from 1pm.

For more information visit www.meatmatters.com

The help available for novice chefs has moved on a long way since the time when looking through a leading chef’s cookbook was the only way to increase your culinary knowledge; the Internet is now home to food sites that contain everything from online recipes to information on the seasonality of fresh ingredients like vegetable sand spices. It has never been easier for people to access information and advice about cooking, building up their culinary expertise in the kitchen with a few clicks of the mouse.

The development and growth of the Internet has seen a gradual move away from physical cookbooks to having thousands of recipes online that can be accessed by anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. The ease of accessibility of recipes online is a great advantage for people who don’t have a lot of time but are interested in increasing their cooking ability and are keen to learn more about food and how to create perfect dishes.

The availability of everything from chicken recipes to vegetarian recipes is one of the main attractions of food websites, but the sites are also home to more than just recipes: these sites now contain a wide range of information that can provide the most basic cookery help and advice for novice chefs, as well as catering for more advanced chefs who are simply looking for some inspiration for their next culinary masterpiece.

For people who are looking to get the most out of their ingredients, the information on what products are in season will be of great help and may go a long way to whether they decide to cook a hearty winter stew or a fresher and lighter summer salad. For each in-season ingredient, a wide range of recipes are available for access and feature details on that specific ingredient and how to utilise it to its full potential.

Another advantage of food websites is that they are home to an online community who can give advice and feedback on the recipes that they have tried. You can access people’s own thoughts about particular recipes and whether the dish worked well or not, with the feedback given by others used to compile a list of the most popular and most highly rated dishes that may well influence your choice of dish to cook.

The sites are also a great starting place for novice chefs in particular, with recipe videos on hand to provide a visual demonstration about how to go cook a specific dish. There are videos available on easy and more difficult recipes, so if you have mastered the simple dishes you can move onto cooking a more complex dish when you feel that you are confident enough to tackle it.

Time is always something that people are short of as well, so if you only have a spare half an hour to cook a dish then you can choose a recipe that takes a short time to prepare and cook. The recipe of your dreams is also easy to find through the search functionality, and once you have found the perfect recipe then you can save it in your recipe folder so that you can access it straight away when it comes to cooking it again.

It’s hard to imagine the Traditional breakfast without bacon; whether it’s part of a full English, or piled between two slices of bread for a butty, it is undeniably delicious. However bacon is much more versatile than you may think. With a range of different cuts and cures available, it can liven up an assortment of meals.

This year’s Bacon Connoisseurs’ Week, launching Monday 22nd March 2010, featured the search to find the best bacon cure of 2010 as part of the national ‘Bring Home the Bacon’ competition.

In this video Anton Du Beke takes us to Smithfield Market, Europe’s largest meat market, to learn from the experts about curing, and explains why we should look for packs with the Red Tractor Mark. Home economist Clare Greenstreet also demonstrates some delicious recipes, including a tasty Chilli and lemon Kedgeree, an Upside Down Bacon Hotpot and even some savoury brunch or teatime Muffins, which are sure to be enjoyed by the whole family.

For more information visit www.lovepork.co.uk