Media Moment. Corruption and KFC

First- Taito Phillip Field

This is a quick angry vent before we move to a more enjoyable topic – Homemade KFC packed full of MSG!.

This is a massive story – this guy has been found guilty of corruption, perverting the course of justice and bribery – -very serious charges. The most serious thing – and the saddest thing – is that Labour not only protected a man who was dodgy as all hell and abusing his power over the weak – -they actively helped keep his misdeeds quiet.
Imagine a guy who is the local MP dealing with immigrants who are wanting citizenship. Could there be a more vulnerable person?

They don’t live here, they don’t have the language, they can’t ask for help or protection. So they go to the MP. Bad move. He makes them work for nothing on his properties – and in return he gets them citizenship. What is this – medieval France?
The worst thing is that Labour were so desperate to keep South Auckland on side  – the electorates that won them the 2005 election – -that they ignored official advice and any ounce of ethics they had left after nearly a decade in power and instead colluded with a power-abusing, bigoted dinosaur. Just to save their bacon.

What Labour did was steadfastly ignore the weight of evidence and then when it became too much to continue ignoring they commissioned an inquiry that had no chance of finding anything out and then when that inquiry came back and pretty much said ‘I think they were lying to me and this stinks’ they ignored that too and claimed it was all roses. Well, Fuck you Labour, you should be ashamed.

If you out there ever look at the National Government and think -

‘Oh shit, how did we end up with these clowns in charge?’

I can give you the answer – Labour became so corrupt, out-of-touch and self-serving that the electorate had no choice but to bump them out.

If this was a National MP doing this to the most vulnerable people in our entire country there would have been an enormous astounding earth shaking outcry..
It is really sad that Labour – who you would hope went in to power to help the poor ended up spending their third term defending the indefensible – Winston Peters’ and Taito Phillip Field. Every time you see National axe something dear to you or sell your internal organs to the Chinese – remember – Labour stood for corruption. What choice was there?

Topic Two:

KFC

The secret recipe for KFC has been cracked, I can tell you this first hand as I made it the other night. This fellow Ron Douglas is a food detective – -he makes his living going around famous eateries and finding out their recipes then publishing them. What a dude! Anyway – after a lot of experimentation he figured he’d worked out the KFC secret 11 herbs and spices. This is what he came up with:

‘KFC’ mix
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)

Now – -that shows that of the 11 – -4 are salt (Garlic powder is pretty much Garlic salt), and proportionally those four are way out of whack to the rest.

I decided to make this for myself to try it out after seeing an amazing video on this site for a blog on the most esteemed of liberal publications, The Guardian.
In it a dude that is very Guardian – cool and reserved and English – makes the recipe, then tries it in a taste test against store-bought KFC.

On tasting it he just about has kittens – I thought -’well, fuck me, that’s a bit of me, I’m gonna make that’- a friend of mine described it as cute the way he gets so excited. Watch it to see.

Anyway  – -here’s a couple of tips – - use soya oil. This is what Southern Food experts on the Chow site recommended. (Thanks Simon Farrell-Green for the tip). Also, marinate and poach your chicken in milk first – -for two reasons – to make sure it is actually cooked…as you don’t want to give your dining companions food poisoning (I’d hope) and because it makes it tender, tasty and awesome.

My lady and I made it with homemade potato and gravy, and coleslaw too, and it was a magic night.

We had Age and Huia and Shav and Liam around. Straight out of the deep fryer it was heart-stoppingly good. Much like the grease. Only thing I would change is that I don’t think you need all those salts. Drop both the MSG and the natural salt back and it will be heaps more manageable. And make sure you have some coke to wash it down. We were all drinking wine and being terribly civilised, until about two mouthfuls in and we were all like OMFG where is some COKE??? like thirteen year olds at Burger King. Salt’ll do that to you.

What this kicked off though was a lot of conversations about MSG. Which is the secret ingredient.

Pretty much everyone thinks that MSG is terrible. But few people actually know what they think is terrible about it. Why is it bad? What does it do to you? Do you know?

It has a bad reputation. Many are convinced that it gives you migraines, and headaches and cancer and shot JFK. But there is no evidence for any of this – check this awesome article also from the Guardian about why MSG got such a bad name, and what the truth is. Article Here.

The basic story is that Glutamate, that is what Mono Sodium Glutamate is out to replicate – -is an amino acid the body naturally produces. The Mono sodium just is a form the liquid is stabilised in – put into crystal form with a bit of salt. .

It occurs naturally in food – cheeses, meats, mushrooms, ripe tomatoes.

Parmesan Cheese has one of the highest naturally occurring rates of glutamate. So next time you make pasta and salt the water then grate Parmesan on – well – you’re making MSG fancy styles.

There is no evidence it is bad and plenty to the contrary – if it was bad then the whole East – where it is used ridiculously frequently, would be stuffed. A famous quote that sums this up makes up the title of that excellent Guardian piece -

“If MSG is so bad, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?” (attributed to Jeffrey Steingarten,  American Vogue food writer).

So – -here we have a case of a bad media and worldwide reputation without any fact. Quite fascinating really.

The long and the short of all this is to say – don’t believe MSG is bad without knowing why you believe that, and if you do make the KFC recipe at home use a little less of all the salts.