Authoritative advice on cooking pork safely from the chefs’ bible, Modernist Cuisine

• Food blog: would you take a fork to pink pork?

Misconceptions about pork (volume 1, chapter 3)

The “safe” temperature for cooking pork is one of the most misunderstood – and distorted – aspects of food safety. Numerous so-called authorities or experts recommend massively overcooking pork. Why pork? The usual reason given is the danger of contamination with the roundworm Trichinella spiralis.

This assertion is misleading for several reasons, as discussed below. Most importantly, improvements in pork farming and processing practices have virtually eliminated Trichinella contamination in commercially produced pork in developed countries. One study showed that only eight cases of trichinellosis (also called trichinosis) could be attributed to pork grown commercially in the United States between 1997 and 2001. During that same period, the American population consumed about 32 billion kg / 70 billion 1b of pork. That’s an awful lot of pork to generate only eight cases of trichinellosis.

Trichinellosis from wild game (mostly bear meat) and from non-commercially raised pork was also very rare: just 64 cases over five years, for a total from all sources of 72 cases. This is such a low incidence for a country of more than 300 million people that trichinellosis ranks among some of the rarest diseases known to medicine. When it does occur, the disease is neither fatal nor serious, and is easily treatable. It is hard to see what all the fuss is about; there are far more common and more serious public health threats than trichinellosis.

The alarmism also ignores two other points. First, most commercial pork is frozen to kill the parasite. Second, and perhaps more surprising, Trichinella is very easy to kill with a low heat.

The FDA cooking regulations for eliminating Trichinella include temperatures as low as 49C / 120F, albeit maintained for 21 hours. (The main reason to cook at temperature that low is to process ham in the style of a “raw” ham). The regulations do not even bother to list temperatures higher than 62C / 144F because the time required to eliminate the parasite would be less than a second.

The FDA 2009 Food Code makes no special recommendations at all for cooking pork. Instead it suggests using the FDA’s time-and-temperature table for whole-meat roasts for all meats.

Other pathogens that can infect pigs, such as Salmonella, are not unique to pork – another reason why the FDA Food Code does not require a different standard for it. The cooking recommendations in the FDA time-and-temperature table will destroy Salmonella to the 6.5D level in any meat, including pork. Yet most information sources for consumers, including the USDA website and the National Pork Board, recommend a cooking temperature of 71C / 160F, which is laughably high. Dry, overcooked pork is the inevitable result, particularly when leaner cuts are cooked at this temperature.

Why does this mistake persist? Exaggerated concern about Trichinella is clearly one factor. So is the failed strategy of relying on temperature only. A desire to maintain the status quo may also play a role; once you’ve taught people that pork needs to be overcooked, it takes some courage to change course, particularly if it means admitting you’ve made a mistake.

In the authors’ experience, convincing chefs that pork has no special cooking requirements compared with those for beef or other meat can be a difficult feat. Showing them the FDA Food Code provokes statements such as, “But that must be wrong!” Cookbook authors have less of an excuse for perpetuating this travesty. Many have repeated the silly claims about 71C / 160F for years without bothering to check technical sources to verify the facts.

Parasitic worms (volume 1, p120)

Fear of Trichinella spiralis, perhaps the most infamous foodborne worm, has inspired countless overcooked pork roasts. The trichina is widely dreaded for its ability to burrow into the muscles of pigs and other livestock, inflicting people who eat the contaminated meat with the disease trichinelllosis (also called trichinosis). Most of us learned of the danger from our mothers as well as from some public health authorities and nearly all cookbook authors, who have insisted for years that pork should always be cooked well done.

Yet in reality the Trichinella roundworm has little impact on either the number or severity of foodborne disease cases in the United States. A CDC surveillance report that covers the years 1997-2001 confirms that physicians have seen case loads associated with eating pork plummet: of 55 cases in which people developed symptoms of trichinellosis, investigators could link only eight to commercial pork products purchased in the US. Most of the few dozen other cases resulted from eating the meat of wild game – bears in particular, but also boars and mountain lions – or pork obtained directly from farms or home raised pigs, to which industry standards and regulations do not apply.

Although concern about foodborne worms can be overblown, no-one wants to harbour parasites that can stick around for years or even decades. So all cooks should know some basic facts about the parasitic roundworms, flukes, and tapeworms that sometimes make their way into the food supply.

The diversity of these organisms is underappreciated. Beyond Trichinella and other roundworms or nematodes, foodborne worms of note include flukes (trematodes) and tapeworms (cestodes) these parasites produce disease through two main mechanisms: the worms either penetrate body tissue during invasive infections, or the live in the gut as non-invasive infections.

Roundworms (volume 1, p120)

In the kitchen killing trichinae does not require the excessive heat that most people imagine. the FDA Food Code recommends using the same time-and-temperature combinations for cooking pork as it does for beef or lamb (for example, 54.4 degrees C / 140 F for 112 minutes or 60 C / 140 F for 12 minutes ). US Government regulations for killing trichinae specify even lower values: 54.4 C / 130 F for 30 minutes or 60 C / 140 F for one minute.

So why did Mom think she had to cremate the pork roast? Well-meaning public health authorities have long exaggerated both the threat of trichinellosis and the cooking temperature needed to prevent it. Such overstatement may have arisen from good intentions, but at some point misleading recommendations become irresponsible.

Freezing also kills trichinae in pork. For this reason, virtually all pork and pork products sold in the US have been frozen even if they are labelled “fresh” at the store.

• This is an edited extract from Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (Taschen, £400)

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

One of the nice things about quiches is you can add pretty much any ingredient you fancy as long as it isn’t too wet

It’s picnic time again: an excuse to empty our wallets to furnish al fresco feasts. I can’t, however, muster any excitement for a flabby, damp, supermarket quiche. So, I’ve decided to concentrate on the classic of the genre, the quiche Lorraine – a recipe that can be adapted to suit anything you fancy.

A question of pastry:

Larousse Gastronomique notes that quiche was made with bread dough in days of yore, but both shortcrust and puff are now acceptable substitutes. I pit Good Food magazine’s ultimate quiche, with its rich shortcrust, against the Guardian’s Dan Lepard, and his rough puff. The former is more common, but the crisp flakiness of Dan’s recipe is a better foil for the creamy filling. To help with crunch, I take a tip from Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s The Prawn Cocktail Years, and brush the base with egg white to seal it.

Cream:

Although Elizabeth David glosses the quiche Lorraine as a cream and bacon tart in French Provincial Cooking, the proportions of cream vary enormously. Good Food’s version contains 200ml of both double cream and creme fraiche, and a miserly three eggs, making it rather bland. David’s quiche is more eggy, but almost too dense, and the Simon and Lindsey version, with more yolks, sinks like a rich, delicious stone.

The whisk:

Thomas Keller, of the Las Vegas bistro Bouchon, uses a mixture of milk and cream, vigorously whisked, which helps to keep the bacon from sinking to the bottom. It also gives the baked custard a light silkiness, but the milk waters down the richness of the egg.

Final touches:

Good Food includes cheese, which I think detracts from the bacon (also nutmeg in the Prawn Cocktail Years). Let the eggs be the main attraction. Dropping in half the lardons just before putting the quiche in the oven should ensure the filling sets quickly enough to keep them suspended. One of the nice things about quiches is that you can add pretty much any ingredient, as long as it isn’t too wet. Refrigeration will spoil the pastry, so eat it as quickly as possible.

Quiche Lorraine

(Serves 6)

For the rough puff pastry

225g plain flour

225g very cold butter

100ml iced water

For the filling

200g dry cure smoked streaky bacon, chopped

320ml double cream

4 eggs and 2 egg yolks (keep 1 egg white for brushing the pastry)

1. Sift the flour and a generous pinch of salt on to a cold surface. Cut the butter into 1cm cubes and stir in, then gently squidge the two together – you need small lumps of butter coated with flour.

2. Sprinkle a little water over the top and stir in. Add just enough to bring it into a dough, then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

3. Lightly flour a work surface and shape the dough into a rectangle. Roll it out until three times the length. Fold the top third back into the centre, then bring the bottom third up to meet it, so your dough has three layers. Give the dough a quarter turn, repeat the rolling and folding process, then chill for 20 minutes.

5. Preheat the oven to 180C, putting a tray on the middle shelf. Grease a deep 20cm tin, and line it with the pastry, leaving an overhang. Line with foil and weight down with baking beans or rice. Place on a hot baking tray and blind bake for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and beans and patch up any holes with extra pastry. Bake for eight minutes, then brush the base with egg white and put back into the oven for three minutes. Carefully trim the overhanging pastry.

6. Fry the bacon for 8–10 minutes, until cooked through, but not crisp. Spread half over the hot base.

7. Put the cream eggs and yolks into a large bowl or a food mixer with a generous pinch of salt, and beat slowly until combined, then whisk fast for 30 seconds until frothy. Pour over the base, then sprinkle over the rest of the bacon. Bake on the hot tray for 20 minutes and then keep an eye on it – it’s done when puffed up, but still wobbly at the centre. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Is this classic of the picnic basket due a revival, or are you happy to leave quiche to the wasps?

Ah, it’s picnic time of year again: an excuse, for the lazy (“spontaneous”) among us to empty our wallets on the counters of fancy delicatessens in order to furnish the impromptu “al fresco feasts” the media demands of us. (Somehow, it’s easier to hand over a banknote for a couple of sausage rolls when the sun’s shining.) While I’m a sucker for luminous green olives and pungent cheeses worth more than my flat, I can’t muster any sort of excitement for a supermarket quiche, so sadly damp and flabby in its foil tray.

This classic French pastry has been done a major disservice by mass production: however imaginative the filling (I recently encountered one studded with meatballs, the memory of which still keeps me awake), they bear little resemblance to the delicately wobbling, full-flavoured beauties you can turn out at home.

A quiche is essentially a rich baked custard, encased in crisp savoury pastry – even a real man should be able to see the virtues of that. Here I’ve decided to concentrate on the undisputed classic of the genre, the quiche lorraine, but it’s a recipe that can be adapted to suit anything you fancy, with the dishonourable exception of meatballs.

A question of pastry

Larousse Gastronomique, the culinary encyclopedia which can be relied upon for all things foodie (as long as it’s French) informs me that, although quiche was made with bread dough in days of yore, both shortcrust and puff are now quite acceptable substitutes. I like the idea of a trying out a bread dough quiche, which I imagine rather like a deep-pan pizza, but in the absence of a reliable-looking recipe (anyone?), I decide it probably fell from fashion for a reason. Instead I pit Good Food magazine’s ultimate quiche, with its rich shortcrust, against the Guardian’s very own Dan Lepard, and his rough puff.

If I’m honest, I’ve already decided in favour of the former, which is much more common on this side of the Channel, and a particular buttery weakness of mine, but in a side-by-side tasting, I’m forced to admit that the crisp flakiness of Dan’s recipe is a much better foil for the quiche’s creamy filling. To help maintain that all-important crunch, I take a tip from Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s The Prawn Cocktail Years and brush the base with a little egg white to help seal it; a soggy bottom has been the ruination of many a picnic.

Cream

Although Elizabeth David glosses the quiche lorraine as a cream and bacon tart in French Provincial Cooking, the proportions of cream vary enormously from recipe to recipe. Good Food’s version, for example, contains 200ml of both double cream and crème fraiche, and a miserly 3 eggs, which get completely lost in all that dairy, making the filling rather bland for my liking. David’s quiche is more defiantly eggy, containing 3 yolks and 1 whole egg to 300ml double cream. It’s definitely richer and more custardy, but perhaps almost too dense. The Simon and Lindsay version, which calls for 4 yolks and 3 eggs to 500ml cream, sinks like an extremely rich and delicious stone. I can imagine eating this to fortify myself for an afternoon’s toil in the potato fields of Lorraine, but on a less active day, a slice could well leave me pinned to the picnic rug.

The whisk

Just as I’m about to start fiddling with Elizabeth David’s formula (the cheek of it), I run across a piece on quiche in, of all places, the LA Times. The reason it catches my eye, apart from the fact that any feature that devotes fully nine web pages to a flan must be imbued with a special kind of nerdy brilliance, is the mention of Thomas Keller. The memory of the delicately rich pastries in the Californian chef’s Vegas bistro still lingers with me two and a half years on, so his recipe has much to live up to.

It uses a mixture of milk and double cream, and, interestingly enough, calls for the filling to be vigorously whisked until “light and foamy”. This, apparently, helps to keep the other ingredients suspended, rather than allowing them all to sink to the bottom. It also, I discover, gives the baked custard a light silkiness which knocks the texture of its competitors into the long grass. I’m not so sold on the flavour however: the milk seems to have watered down the richness of the egg. Looks like the French can still teach the New World at least one thing about quiche.

Cheese or no cheese?

The Good Food recipe also commits the dreadful sin of including cheese in its filling – to be fair, this is a foodie shibboleth with some legs, if Elizabeth David was able to observe back in 1960, that, although Parisian and English cooks often add Gruyère, “Lorrainers will tell you that this is not the true quiche lorraine, whose history goes back at least as far as the sixteenth century.”

As with my shortcrust pastry blinkers, I firmly believe it’s impossible for me to not to be seduced by cheese, but actually, thinking sensibly, it makes the custard rather salty, which in turn detracts from the bacon, and distracts from the more delicate flavour of the egg. The latter is also true of the nutmeg in the Prawn Cocktail Years recipe, which, in this context, reminds me unpleasantly of a British custard tart.

Odds and ends

A substantial pan is required here: to get that lovely custardy texture, barely set in the middle, the filling ought to be a good 3cm deep. Keller also furnishes me with a useful tip about adding the filling in 2 stages: dropping in half the lardons just before putting the quiche in the oven should ensure the filling sets quickly enough to keep them suspended there.

One of the nice things about quiches is that you can add pretty much any ingredient you happen to have lying about – I also like cheese and leek, spinach, cheese and onion, flaked salmon … the important thing is to ensure whatever it is won’t leak any water into the filling. This means sauteing onions, leeks and bacon, and blanching and squeezing out leafy vegetables such as spinach. Refrigeration will spoil the pastry, so eat this up as quickly as possible – but keep away from real men; they might forget themselves.

Perfect quiche lorraine

Serves 6

For the rough puff pastry:
225g plain flour
225g very cold butter
100ml iced water

For the filling:
200g dry cure smoked streaky bacon, chopped
320ml double cream
4 eggs and 2 egg yolks (use 1 egg white for brushing the pastry)

1. Sift the flour and a generous pinch of salt on to a cold surface. Cut the butter into 1cm cubes and stir it in, then gently squidge the two together, so the flour combines with the lumps of butter – the aim is not to mix it completely, so it turns into crumbs, but to have small lumps of butter coated with flour. Like the name, it should look quite rough, even unfinished.

2. Sprinkle a little of the water over the top and stir it into the dough. Add enough water to bring it into a dough (unless your kitchen is very dry, you probably won’t need it all), without overworking the mixture, then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

3. Lightly flour a work surface and shape the dough into a rectangle. Roll it out until 3 times its original length.

4. Fold the top third back into the centre, then bring the bottom third up to meet it, so your dough has three layers. Give the dough a quarter turn and roll out again until three times the length, fold again as before, and chill it for 20 minutes.

5. Preheat the oven to 180C and put a baking tray in to warm. Grease a deep (at least 3cm) 20cm tin, and line it with the pastry, leaving an extra few centimetres overhang to minimize shrinkage. Keep any extra in case you need it for remedial work later. Line with foil (shiny side down) and weight down with baking beans or rice. Place on the baking tray and blind bake in the oven for 40 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and patch up any holes with the extra pastry if necessary. Bake for a further 8 minutes, then brush the base with egg white and put back into the oven for 5 minutes. Carefully trim the overhanging pastry to neaten.

6. Fry the bacon for 8–10 minutes, until cooked through, but not crisp. Drain and spread half over the hot base.

7. Put the cream and the eggs and yolks into a large bowl (or a food mixer if you have one) with a generous pinch of salt, and beat together slowly until combined, then give it a fast whisk for 30 seconds until frothy. Pour over the base to fill and then sprinkle over the rest of the bacon. Bake for 20 minutes and then keep an eye on it – it’s done when it’s puffed up, but still wobbly at the centre. Allow to cool slightly before serving – hot quiche tastes of disappointingly little.

Is this classic of the picnic basket due a revival, or are you happy to leave quiche to the wasps? What are your favourite flavours (any heretics willing to admit a taste for cheese in their quiche lorraine?) – and what do “real men” really think of it?

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

This summer will belong to Britain’s burgeoning pop-up restaurant scene, so keep an eye out for what’s happening near you

“We cook outside,” says Sara Chambers. “The pizza oven’s got a massive chimney, so it wouldn’t work in the rain.” Chambers has been running her Squisito pop-up pizza nights in rural Warwickshire for two years, and she is a firm believer that summer is when pop-up restaurants – which often occupy unconventional spots and appear and disappear faster than the English asparagus crop – come into their own. The days are long, the weather’s fine and people want to eat outdoors. Restaurant chefs are more relaxed about when, where and for whom they cook, while amateur-run supper clubs need to move outside their hosts’ stuffy living rooms. This summer’s calendar is full to bursting with temporary kitchens.

Some of the highest-profile pop-ups involve established chefs relocating to summer quarters. For example, there’s the Dishoom Chowpatty Beach Bar (until 4 October, dishoom.com), which will see London’s Dishoom Bombay Cafe occupying a colourful shack on the South Bank as part of the riverside strip’s most ambitious urban beach yet. Or, for something a little more glam, there’s Tom Aikens’s pop-up at Somerset House (until 25 September, tomskitchen.co.uk/tomsterrace), where the river views will be accompanied by cocktails and posh barbecue food. And not content with settling in one place, Jun Tanaka of Pearl and Mark Jankel of First Restaurant (which includes the Notting Hill Brasserie), will take their Street Kitchen (streetkitchen.co.uk) to festivals and locations around the capital.

But while these proper restaurateurs embracing the pop-up movement can only be a good thing, many believe that fleeting eateries are at their best on a smaller scale and there are plenty of offbeat projects that will do you dinner.

Chambers runs her Italian food business from her Warwickshire home, making sausages and teaching cookery. She describes her location as the middle of nowhere, but a typical menu at one of her sociable pop-up village-hall pizza nights will not disappoint. Crisp pizza topped with mozzarella, passata and homemade sausage might be followed by pannacotta, tiramisu or Chambers’s own ice-cream, made with eggs from her rare-breed chickens. If you find yourself in the verdant stretch between Rugby and Coventry while the sun’s out, check her website (squisito-deli.co.uk).

Meanwhile, Scottish food writer and cook Christopher Trotter will run a pop-up seafood restaurant during August’s Pittenweem arts festival (pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk). Every year in the picturesque fishing village in Fife’s East Neuk, homes and outbuildings become temporary galleries, and this year visitors will be able to sample the more luxurious elements of the locavore Fife diet – cullen skink (a smoked haddock soup), mussels, prawns and smoked salmon – at Trotter’s as-yet-unnamed restaurant.

And taking the local food and cultural themes even further, the mobile Energy Cafe (energycafe.wordpress.com), the brainchild of Ella Gibbs and Amy Plant, sources food within a six-mile radius of their ever-changing spot. It is cooked using experimental off-grid energy sources and comes with art, traditional crafts and the odd cooking lesson; they will be at London city farms and Welsh green sites in the coming months.

Secret supper clubs – paid-for, under-the-radar dinners held in people’s homes, to which The Man is definitely not invited – have also spawned some pop-up highlights. Kerstin Rodgers, AKA Ms Marmite Lover, is taking her Underground Restaurant (marmitelover.blogspot.com) on tour, visiting Bestival and Camp Bestival (in the Isle of Wight and Dorset respectively) with her romantic flower-strewn menus.

Back above the radar, Kristjan Bigland and Alexis John are pop-uppers who work in the food industry but don’t want to open a permanent restaurant. A cookery teacher and chef respectively, Bigland and John run a Bristol-based pop-up called Mi Casa (find it on Facebook), whose formative outings were in a sea scout hut on the city’s docks. They will spend this summer serving Mediterranean and North African food in bigger and more adventurous locations – a lovely almshouse in the midst of Bristol’s roaring traffic, and a couple of pretty spots in Somerset and Gloucestershire. Warm weather, walled gardens and four courses for £30 from a team who know what they’re doing: it sounds like the perfect pop-up.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Red faces at veteran sauce-maker after cheap rivals pip ‘nation’s favourite’ table product

It is the name synonymous with the nation’s favourite sauce and one of the best-known brands in the world. But Heinz tomato ketchup has come near the bottom of a national consumer taste test, trounced by cheaper supermarket own brands.

In a blind tasting of 13 ketchups, carried out by the consumer group Which?, Heinz failed to make it into the top 10, finishing joint second from bottom, along with Aldi.

Overall, the top-scoring “best buy” was Sainsbury’s own-brand tomato ketchup, which was singled out for its “rich tomato taste, with a nice thickness to the sauce”. M&S and Tesco own-brand ketchups came joint second.

All three scored four out of five for appearance, aroma, taste and texture. But Heinz scored just two out of five for taste, with many tasters describing its flavour as “artificial” and ‘”synthetic”, and claiming it had a “bitter” and “vinegary” taste.

Heinz cost almost twice as much as the top-scoring Sainsbury’s product (£1.75 for a 460g bottle compared with 95p for a 485g bottle).

Heinz said in a statement: “Heinz tomato ketchup is the nation’s favourite with around 80% share of the market. Consumers are not fooled by imitators – they know that no other ketchup will do.”

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Nothing says ‘man’ more than this jolly, show-off activity, far removed from the grind of daily family cooking

Sleeves rolled up, tongs in hand, smoke blowing in their eyes: what a sight to behold, the free world leaders Barack Obama and David Cameron manning a barbecue this afternoon, just like a couple of normal guys. Normal guys! Because if there’s anything that normal guys (or normal blokes, even, as I imagine Dave would describe himself and his buddy Barack) like, it is cooking meat outdoors. Especially when the women look after the salads.

I’ve long been curious about what it is about the heady scent of charcoal that lures chaps who are otherwise quite indifferent to cooking to get behind a grill: it’s a very special relationship. Dave and Barack may not always see eye to eye when it comes to policy – or, for that matter, ping pong – but cooking meat outdoors is a great uniter of men. As most of us have observed at summer parties, those that have little in common will often come together in intense co-operation over some hot coals (it’s a particularly good thing to keep in mind if, say, you’re introducing your new boyfriend to your dad). But what is it, exactly, that makes this particular form of cooking say “MAN” in a way that a well-executed soufflé never could?

Barbecuing is masculine at its essence, some claim, because it appears to be a descendant of the kind of dangerous cooking that men used to do in hunger-gatherer days, when they went out into the brutal wilderness and killed animals and cooked them over a hot fire, while women stayed home and looked for plants. To be made in to salads. The Weber grill: totally Darwinian.

And, as Elizabeth S D Engelhardt and Marsha Abrahams explain in their book, Republic of Barbecue, barbecues have a long history of significance in American politics. In pre-suffrage days in the south-west, barbecues were agenda-setting, hours-long, male-only gatherings where political types literally chewed the fat. Obama is one in a long line of barbecuing presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Lyndon B Johnson and, of course, ranch-loving George W Bush (Laura puts jalapenos in her potato salad).

That women are now welcome to munch burgers elbow-to-elbow with men is, it seems, yet another thing that we can thank our suffragette foremothers for. But I’m surprised how often men seem to dominate barbecues in a manner that’s seen far less often in other parts of the domestic sphere (and quite often in the political one). Though British and American men have lately showed more inclination to get in to the kitchen, particularly when it can involve swearing, the fact is that women are still more likely to take on the weight of responsibility for the daily grind of feeding families.

And thus, it’s hard not to feel that men sometimes get a little more credit than they’re due when they offer to do something a bit domestic – whether they’re showing off about how they like to wash dishes (as Obama did in a post-election interview in late 2008, saying he found it “soothing”, much to his wife’s amusement) or incinerating sausages while women and their salads watch. This summer, if the men in your life elbow you aside at the barbecue, I suggest that you elbow them back. Women have more than earned our turn at the most jolly, show-off form of cooking: here’s to the equal right to scorch our eyebrows off.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

The USDA has accepted what chefs and food scientists have known for years and lowered the minimum cooking temperature for pork. Do you trust pink pork?

It is a momentous day in meat cookery: the US Department of Agriculture has lowered the recommended minimum cooking temperature of pork by 15 degrees Fahrenheit (9.5C). That may not seem worth a crackling to you, but to pork chefs it is a victory of the light over ancient forces of prejudice and ignorance. David Chang, the two Michelin-starred chef / proprietor of Manhattan’s Momofuku restaurants declared in the New York Times this morning the death of a terrible dogma: “Everyone thought the sun revolved around the earth, too.”

The revolution is that science has overcome misguided fears about the inherent dirtiness of pigs: the key disease associated with them, trichinosis, appears to have been wiped out in US pork production, mainly because most pigs are raised indoors and chemicals have largely dealt with the parasites. So pork may now be lawfully cooked In the United States at 145F (62C), the same temperature as whole cuts of beef and lamb. That’s 20F less than poultry, which must still be cooked to 165F (74C).

The “to” is important, of course – the meat has to reach this temperature internally, and then stay at it for three minutes. Times are crucial. Another US body, the Food and Drug Administration suggests even lower cooking temperatures if combined with longer cooking periods for baked and roasted meats: 130F (54C) for over 112 minutes, or 140F (60 degrees C) for over 12 minutes. (This is not a debate the UK government enters into – but here’s the NHS advice on cooking, temperature and hygiene).

Temperatures are a hot topic (ahem) because this is the key area in cooking where issues of safety and enjoyment clash. Chefs, from the highest to the lowest, are very interested in cooking meat at temperatures that would horrify many home cooks. There are savings in energy costs, of course. But more important are the gains in taste and texture.

The science is quite simple. The collagen that makes up most of the connective tissue of meats start to break down and dissolve at around the same temperature that bacteria like E coli die in numbers deemed safe – also known as the pasteurisation temperature. That is around 55C – cooked at that temperature for given amounts of time meat can be relied on to get less tough and more healthy. It still holds oxygen, and its juices do not evaporate much: so more flavour and colour will be retained.

Thus low-temperature cooking is one of the key – though little spoken of – trends of modern professional cooking. It is why sous-vide (slow cooking in vacuum packs, in a water bath at a set temperature) is said by Heston Blumenthal and many others to be the most important cooking innovation of the last century. Forget “browning” as a way to seal in flavour: slow’n'low is the key, say Heston and co.

Of course, a combination of inadequate cooking and poor food hygiene is the fastest way to put diners in hospital. But the prizes low-temperature cooking offers are enticing. Amazing flavour and texture effects can be got from meat, vegetables and fish.

Sous-vide is also brilliantly idiot-proof. “All you have to do is prep it, bag it, note the time and temperature, and snip open the bag to plate,” Antony Worrall Thompson, another slow-low convert, says. “The machine is another pair of hands in the kitchen.” Beef steak, one of sous-vide’s most spectacular advertisements, is bathed in restaurant kitchens at 56C for as much as 12 hours – then quickly seared in a pan to finish it.

But how many of us would contemplate chancing a Sunday roast cooked at the temperature of hot bathwater? I’ve borrowed a sous-vide machine and done sirloin steaks at 56 degrees in it with great success. This was beautifully produced beef, from Millers of Granttown. That makes sense, at these temperatures. “You don’t want to be fooling around at 60C with a £2.99 battery chicken,” growls Worrall Thompson.

Low temperature cooking in the oven is rather more challenging. Crucial are a good oven that circulates heat properly and a digital probe thermometer. Cooking at around 55-60 degrees, you must know that the core of the meat has got to those temperatures. Otherwise, a world of pain and shame may lie ahead.

But it’s worth the risk. I’ve been cooking lumps of beef fillet at my (not great) oven’s lowest setting for an hour, searing it quickly first and then wrapping it in non-PVC cling film – the temperature is too low for that to melt. (Here’s a recipe from TV’s James Martin, though I would question the cooking times he gives.) It was spectacular. The meat was amazingly tender: it had the strength under the teeth of medium-boiled cauliflower, and other than those sous-vided sirloin steaks I’ve never eaten something with so much taste. It was verging on scary.

What do you think about low temperature cooking – is pink pork for you? Would you take the risk of cooking pig at bathwater temperatures?

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Facebook campaigners call for boycott of Danish bacon and urge rethink by Danish food officials

Marmite fans in Denmark are planning a revolution against the authorities for banning the spread.

Several groups on Facebook have already emerged in reaction to the ban imposed by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration because the product is fortified with added vitamins. The groups include “Eating marmite in Denmark because you’re a fearless bastard“, “Save Marmite in Denmark, Boycott Danish Bacon and Lego Now!!” and “Bring back Marmite in Denmark“.

There is even an Expats Annual Marmite Day being organised, due to be held, if the page is to be believed, on 6 June. Founder Pat Kelly encouraged outraged Marmite eaters in the country to join forces and, presumably, eat extra Marmite on the allocated day.

“Spread the word, but most importantly spread the Marmite,” wrote Kelly. “On every street in good old Denmark, show ‘em what they’re missing after they’ve banned this iconic product from our supermarket shelves! Make it a Marmite day everyday folks! Let the rise of the Marmite army begin!”

But even on the page, opinion remained divided. A perplexed Ray Weaver wrote: “but… it’s horrible…”

On the page calling for a boycott of Danish goods, fan Joe Figg feared the ban could have far-reaching consequences. “This dastardly move could bring about global warming of toast,” he wrote. While Mark Salisbury wrote: “Down with spread fascism!”

Unilever, which produces Marmite, is weighing up its options to keep Marmite on Danish shelves.

“We are sad to hear reports that our devoted fans may not be able to purchase Marmite in Denmark,” said a spokeswoman. “We’re looking into ways to ensure our Marmite lovers will not be left without their beloved spread. In the meantime we want to remind our fans in Denmark that they can still purchase Marmite from the Marmite shop – www.marmiteshop.co.uk”.

She said the Facebook pages revealed a true love of the divisive savoury spread. “People are being very vocal and passionate about their favourite product,” she said.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

A quick and simple dish, bursting with summer flavours

On a recent trip to Puglia, Italy, I ate platefuls of this salad, made by one of my best friends, Simon. Puglia is on the “foot” of Italy and has the most amazing climate; so you can expect perfect tomatoes and basil. They also make olive oil there, so although the region may be considered by some to be a poor relation to northern Italy for its cooking, I think it stands out for its light, fresh flavours.

We had amazing dinners in an off-the-beaten-track restaurant called La Cantina in Alberobello. It’s a family place and when I first went there many years ago the owners’ newborn son was happily asleep in his pram, while papa cooked. Simon took it upon himself to reinvent the salad he had a few years back, and during this trip we went back to La Cantina to see whose we thought was the best. I have to say, Simon is the reigning champion.

Serves 4

250g cherry tomatoes
400g orecchiette
1 medium-sized bunch of basil, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
150ml olive oil
30ml white wine vinegar

Chop the cherry tomatoes in half and put them in a bowl. Add the garlic, white wine vinegar and olive oil, then allow to marinate.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and add the orecchiette (if you cannot get hold of this specific type of pasta, use fusilli or any variety that the vinaigrette and garlic can really get into).

Cook the orecchiette for 8-10 minutes, before checking it. When cooked, drain well. Mix together with the marinated tomatoes, while the pasta is still warm.

That’s the secret to this dish – make sure the pasta is hot, otherwise it will not absorb the flavours of the tomatoes, basil and garlic.

Serve immediately. Ideal with grilled chicken or lamb – or simply eaten on its own.

• Angela Hartnett is chef patron at Murano restaurant and consults at Whitechapel Gallery and Dining Room, London

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

If the dry weather’s affecting your rhubarb fear not – with this recipe everything’s coming up rosé

With the ridiculously early arrival of elderflower this year there have been a lot of requests for an elderflower champagne recipe. Do not fear – to celebrate this happy occasion I will be explaining this sometimes dangerous process next week with another elderflower recipe the week after. After that I think it should be up to you. I was thinking of more beer (you can’t have enough beer), strawberry wine, perhaps some “liqueurs” like blackberry whisky or cherry plum gin, and how about seaweed wine? I like seaweed. Mushroom wine? Perhaps not.

Gardeners have a hard time of it. They must cultivate the soil, buy plants or seeds, plant them, keep the weeds down, worry about plague and pestilence and then, eventually, pick the crop. I had an allotment once but my attitude to weeds and fear of hard work proved my downfall and the parish clerk unceremoniously evicted me. My medium-sized garden contains what from a considerable distance can pass as a lawn, a few flower borders, some trees and a shed (obviously). However, in an uncharacteristic bout of tidying earlier this year I uncovered a previously overlooked area and, full of good intentions, made a raised bed. The first thing I planted (well, the only thing I have planted) was rhubarb.

I am very fond of rhubarb as it is just about the only local plant you can make fruity puddings out of early in the year. And very fruity it is too. Despite its reputation for containing the poisonous “oxalic acid” this occurs mainly in the leaves and only as a trace in the stems. The chief fruity acid is the powerful but non-toxic “malic acid”. I was a furniture maker/restorer for 30 years and frequently used oxalic acid as a wood bleach. I rather fancy that I have become sensitised to it. Too much rhubarb and I get hot flushes. Maybe it’s just my age.

My new rhubarb plant will take a year or two to produce useful stems so a few weeks ago I bought some from the market to make into wine. For the committed foragers, there’s a possible wild substitute in the terrible Japanese knotweed which has so enthusiastically taken over vast tracts of our roadsides. As it is the young shoots that are used, Japanese knotweed wine will be a project for next year.

Rhubarb wine recipe

This simple recipe produces one of the best wines I know – fruity, crisp, slightly sweet and very powerful. While I was bottling some up last Friday my friend Alan came round. I can’t quite remember when he left.

1.5kg rhubarb
1.3kg sugar
250ml white grape juice concentrate
1 sachet general purpose white wine yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
(the more esoteric items are available from high street homebrewing shops or online from places such as 4u2brew.co.uk)

Wash the rhubarb, then chop finely into 6mm lengths. Place in a sterilised, food grade bucket and stir in the sugar. Cover with a lid or a clean tea towel and leave for three days. I forgot mine for a week and it started to go a bit mouldy on top – not that it seems to have done any harm.

Crush the pulp with the end of a rolling pin then stir in three litres of boiled but cooled water. Strain through sterilised muslin into another clean bucket, add the grape juice concentrate and make it up to 4.5 litres with more water. Add the yeast (activate it if necessary first) and the yeast nutrient.

Cover and leave for a week. Siphon into a clean demijohn and add a bubble trap.

After three or four weeks “rack off” into another demijohn (this disposes of the muddy stuff at the bottom which can taint the wine). Any shortfall should be made up with a sugar syrup made from boiled water, three parts, to sugar, one part, and allowed to cool.

When all fermentation has stopped siphon into clean bottles. It is ready immediately though patience may have its reward.

The bottles pictured here show a slight “haze”. Early rhubarb, like the rhubarb I used, can suffer from “pectin haze”. I added the enzyme “pectolase” when I noticed it, but evidently not enough. Still tastes great though.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink