As always, I won’t beat around the bush, or waffle on.
This month’s three conundrums, plucked from a mailbag fit to bursting, are as follows:
What’s the best thing to cook when it is roasting hot outside?
I really want to perfect barbecued squid but it always ends up tough and chewy.
How would you create a vegetarian version of Coronation Chicken for sandwiches for an office party?
Do remember, if you have a little culinary concern or niggle that you’d like explored, explained, expanded upon or dispelled, let me know and it will be added to the list to be dealt with in good time.
And we’re off…
What’s the best thing to cook when it is roasting hot outside?
Ah, the million pesos question, and a very salient one too. It is indomitably true that what you eat when it is scorching outside can very much make a difference.
When it is hot the human body craves hydration, so far so mundane, and as such an easy answer is to consume things that happen to have high water content. Anyone with a working knowledge of cucumbers will know that their personal narrative is based on being 97% water, so cucumber is a good place to start. Mainlining cucumber though is hardly a reliable diet, nor a particularly fascinating piece of food writing. The intention is right though. On average, you see, the human body is said to derive 20% of the water it needs on any given day from the foods it consumes, but on a hot day, we can do ourselves a favour by making that as easy as possible, as well as avoiding foods that remove water from our system, and on top of it all we can potentially achieve the Tote Double by eating foods that overtly hydrate us as well as triggering a reaction in our nervous system that senses rising temperature and prompts a type of sweat gland called the eccrine glands to release the salty stuff to better cool us down. After all, each of us has up to 4 million sweat glands across our doughy bodies and, as such, triggering sweating cools us off more efficiently than simply slurping at an ice cream or downing an icy drink.
So, if a working list of high-hydrating foods is helpful in this heat, then berries and watermelon are right at the tip of the pyramid. Possessing upwards of 90% water, plus plenty of sugar and a bit of fibre, snacking on strawberries, melon, pineapple, oranges, apples and pears is a good place to start, with cherries and grapes offering plenty of hydration too.
We’re not cooking yet though, are we?
In the pantheon of vegetables, cucumbers and radishes win the victor ludorum. Cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and spinach are right up there too. We’re very much in gazpacho territory here, and for very good reason.
The flip side of all of this is that going down the classic route of grilling some meat outside in the sun and then tucking into an ice cream once it all gets too much is in fact making it worse for us rather than better. Meat and other high-protein foods demand a lot from your digestive system to break them down, which creates heat in itself, meaning we’re making a rod for our own backs, internal-temperature-wise. When we then inhale a Calippo to cool ourselves down we actually double down on the same problem by making our digestion work hard again and use up lots of water to metabolise the sugars we’re ingesting, as well as making it think our insides are now suddenly dropping in temperature fast, meaning our body actually overcompensates to raise our core temperature - i.e. we’re tricking ourselves into being hotter still.
Finally, just to complete the bad news cycle started above. It is worth noting that foods we might assume to be good in the heat, things we actually crave like mangoes, fennel, artichokes and asparagus are actually diuretics, meaning they will flush water out of the body, so on a ripping hot day they are actually better avoided than sought out.
What a boringly scientific answer to a very practical question. My apologies. What I can say is that a spicy watermelon and feta salad is a very good thing indeed in the heat. Simply cube some watermelon and feta and arrange on a plate. Drizzle with a little oil, then with lime or vinegar and some fresh red chilli before tearing over loads and loads of fresh mint. Of course, you are going to be drawn towards a bit of grilled meat or fish alongside such a tempting salad, and of course, you should give in to that craving, you can always rehydrate with water if it all gets too much.
Otherwise, gazpacho is obviously a winner and requires no cooking, so you’re not going to be heating you or your kitchen any further. Other cold soups such as Ajo Blanco served with little hydrating pearls of melon inside work wonderfully for your cooling hydration too.
Failing all of that, eat something spicy to trigger all those sweat glands, there is a reason that Mexicans cover everything in a mix of lime and dried chilli, it feels good to sweat in the heat.
I really want to perfect barbecued squid but it always ends up tough and chewy.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to No Cartouche to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.