Food Campaign Recipes - how we score

We give the recipes two scores – one for carbon emissions and one for other environmental impacts.  The latter covers indirect effects like the chicken which is often fed concentrates made from soya.  The huge demand for soya to feed animals has resulted in forests and other important habitats being cleared in the Amazon and elsewhere.

We have referred to Mike Berners-Lee’s book How Bad are Bananas  for carbon emission scores.  Our environmental impact scores may be more controversial of course.    Over one million people in rural Africa are supported by the fresh fruits and vegetable exports to the UK much of it by air.  It’s not easy to weigh environment harm against development gains.  For a further discussion of this issue see Q1 on our FoodFAQ page

Recipes Week 1

Score from our Carbon Footprint Team (5 is good for the planet, 1 is bad)
Carbon Emissions:  3 out of 5
Environment: 2 out of 5 

The chicken brings other negatives with it besides carbon emissions.  Chicken are often fed food largely made from Soya Beans and this is an issue – see our Food FAQ page.  And where do the green beans and baby sweet corn come from – often flown in from Kenya or India this time of year.
With some small changes this recipe could easily move up to 8 out of 10 by substituting cauliflower for the chicken and other UK vegetables for the green beans and sweetcorn.

Thai potato and chicken curry

This is a great favourite with the family and grandchildren and easy to do.  If you want to make it 100% veggie use cauliflower instead of chicken – it’s just as good.

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion chopped

2-3 garlic cloves

1.5 tbsp Thai red curry paste (Tesco’s works well)

1 tbsp tomato puree

500g potatoes peeled and cut into 2-3cm chunks (preferably Maris Piper)

450 g skinned and boned chicken thighs cut into smaller pieces (or chicken breast if you prefer)

1 smallish red pepper cut into pieces

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 can coconut milk (400gm)

100gm  baby corn cut into small pieces

100gm green beans cut into pieces

1 lime juice only

handful of chopped coriander

Method

  1. Saute the chopped onion and garlic in a wok/frying pan using the vegetable oil.
  2. Prepare the potatoes, green beans, baby corn and red pepper.
  3. Add the curry paste and tomato puree to the onion and mix it in.  Add diced potatoes, chicken and red pepper stirring for a couple of minutes to get everything well coated.  Add the fish sauce and coconut milk.
  4. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer and cook uncovered for 15 minutes before adding the baby corn and green beans.
  5. Continue cooking for 5 – 8 minutes until the vegetables are just tender.  Just before serving stir in the lime juice and coriander.

For a pdf version of this recipe (with cauliflower instead of chicken) which you can download and print click ThaiPotatoCauliflowerCurry