‘Can you be my mum?’ Students turn to TikTok for a taste of home

Monica Singh adds whole red chillies, cloves, cardamom, a bay leaf and finely chopped onions to a searing pot of ghee. The base of her coconut chicken curry crackles and sizzles in the pot. The results, spooned over basmati rice, are thick, warm and extremely comforting – or at least that’s how they look on TikTok.Singh, who works in sales and marketing in San Francisco, learned to cook by watching her mother in the kitchen when she was growing up in India. Years later Singh’s daughter Anushka learned through higher-tech means

How to make a wholemeal loaf – recipe | Felicity Cloake's Masterclass

I like sourdough as much as the next stereotypical Guardianista, but, despite having been on various courses in that department, I currently prefer to leave the hard work of babying bubbling starters to the professionals. If I’m going to bake bread myself, it’s either a simple, if solid, soda loaf, or this easy wholemeal one.Prep 15 min Prove/rest 2 hr 30 minCook 40 min Makes 1400g strong wholemeal flour 50g strong white flour 2 tsp easy-bake/fast-action yeast 2 tsp fine salt (optional) 3 tsp soft light brown sugar (optional) 50g butter ½ 500mg vitamin C tablet (optional – see step 3) Neutral oil, for greasingThough diluting wholesome wholemeal flour with more refined white stuff may feel counterintuitive, doing so will give a lighter result, because white flour has more gluten (the protein that provides the structure for dough to rise in the oven). Make sure you buy strong (sometimes labelled as bread) flour in both cases, because that denotes a particularly high gluten content.Tip both flours into a large bowl with the yeast, salt and sugar

Coffee drinkers reap health boost – but only if they do it in the morning

People who get their coffee hit in the morning reap benefits that are not seen in those who have shots later in the day, according to the first major study into the health benefits of the drink at different times.Analysis of the coffee consumption of more than 40,000 adults found that morning coffee drinkers were 16% less likely to die of any cause and 31% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease during a 10-year follow-up period than those who went without.But the benefits to heart health appeared to vanish in people who drank coffee throughout the day, the researchers found, with medical records showing no significant reduction in mortality for all-day drinkers compared with those who avoided coffee.“It’s not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but the time of day when you drink coffee that’s important,” said Prof Lu Qi, an expert in nutrition and epidemiology at Tulane University in New Orleans. “We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future

Radioactive milk and magic doughnuts | Letters

Wendy McMullan’s letter (1 January) on alternative uses for evaporated milk reminds me of the distant past. Around about 1962, when I would have been nine, my mother bought a case of evaporated milk. We used it, diluted, primarily on breakfast cereal. Why? Atmospheric nuclear testing had raised levels of strontium-90, which was getting into fresh milk. I’ve no idea what strontium-90 might have done to us, but despite liking it initially, I was thoroughly fed up with the artificial taste of evaporated milk after six months

Slice of summer: watermelon and nectarines among Australia’s best-value fruit and veg in January

Stone fruit and Victorian berries are at their affordable best, while Hass avocados are creeping up in priceAfter a run of wet summers that put a damper on summer crops, this year’s drier conditions means there’s little that’s off the table this month.Stone fruit is particularly cheap and sweet, says Graham Gee, senior buyer at the Happy Apple in Melbourne. “Peaches and nectarines … you can get for about $3 a kilo, with premium varieties a few dollars more,” he says.Take advantage of the glut by pickling your ripe peaches or using nectarines in desserts. Thomasina Miers’ nectarine and raspberry sourdough pudding is a seasonal play on bread-based pudding with crunch, chew and tang

How to make chips without potatoes | Kitchen aide

It’s hard to deny the allure of a big ol’ pile of hot, fat, crisp, salty chips, but with the festive season finally over, now is a time to ring the changes. And if that means swapping your spuds for another veg, so be it. For a good chip alternative, “any fibrous root vegetable that can hold its shape will fry up a treat”, says Alice Zaslavsky, author of Salad for Days, but you don’t necessarily have to fry them: “You can roast them, or you can cook them in an air fryer. As long as there’s enough oil and a high enough temperature, you’re good to go.”Sweet potatoes are the obvious alternative, but they have a higher moisture and sugar content, and have form for turning soggy or just plain burning