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Sugar I’m amazed that sugar has survived at all. It has as politically incorrect a history as you could imagine (vast fortunes made, untold numbers enslaved) and for the past twenty years has had the full attention of the food police as one of the Big Bad Foods. Yet
sugar has maintained a central role in our diet, first as a fabled luxury, then
a medicine and now simply as one of the world’s most popular ingredients. We
are certainly born with a predilection for sweet flavours, and although we
graduate to savory tastes, our fondness and fascination for sugar lingers in the
terms of endearment we bestow on our loved ones. When
fresh sugar cane is crushed and cooked, it becomes a mass of dark brown, sticky
crystals known as jaggery. But jaggery, like salt, is hygroscopic – it absorbs
moisture from the air. So raw cane sugar is normally processed soon after
harvesting by shredding and heating to produce a clarified liquid. This is later
crystallized to produce several different kinds of unrefined sugars, each with a
subtly different flavour: from treacly molasses to the toffee flavoured
muscovados, through to glinting demeraras and fine buttery golden caster. Pure
white, refined sugars, such as we find in everyone’s home, are normally made
from the roots of the sugar beet. Although
we see sweet alternatives to sugar, at some point we must admit that French
patisserie, Belgium chocolate and almost all baking could not exist without it. In
this country, we have yet to exploit the full array of unrefined sugars
available. Molasses in fruitcakes and gingerbread, dark muscovado in rich
chocolate cakes and light muscovado when baking with whole-wheat flours, spicy
Indian dishes and fudge and golden demerara in brandy snaps, cereals and to give
a nicer crust in fruit pies. The list goes on and on. The important thing is
that the sugar should have a distinct flavour and presence – then you will
need less of it. Refined
sugar can be given character by adding aromatics. Homemade vanilla sugar is
unrivalled in cooking and you can make two kinds: seed free and seed rich. For
the seed free variety, simply snip a vanilla pod into four or five pieces and
place then in a jar of white or fruit sugar, seal and shake. Use this in baking
and for sprinkling over cookies and cakes. For seed rich vanilla sugar, split
the pod lengthwise, carefully scrape out the seeds with the blade of a knife and
add them to the sugar. The empty pod will also add some flavour. Use this sugar
is sauces, custards and ice creams where the tiny black specks enhance both the
flavour and appearance of the dish. Tucking
a few sprigs of the herb into fruit sugar makes lavender and rosemary sugars.
Use these to flavour biscuits and shortbreads. For poaching and baking fruit, I
like lemon verbena and for sweetening sauces and sorbets, citrus sugar with
threads of lime, lemon and orange are excellent. Memories of childhood are
revived by cinnamon sugar sprinkled on toast. Perhaps
the most delightful of all is rose petal sugar. Highly scented red roses are
best. Make sure the blooms are dry, and then layer the petals in a jar with
fruit sugar. Keep in a warm place for a week or two, shaking the jar each day.
Before using, sieve the sugar and discard the petals, then sprinkle the sugar
over thick cream, trifle or vanilla cookies. That
sugar is a staple was never in doubt, to turn it into a varied and nuanced
ingredient has yet to come. |