chicken – Food Hygiene Essentials

New Hampshire Camp Closes For Salmonella Investigation

OK, enough of the serious stuff for a while. Now it’s time for some frivolity in the form of cooking a couple of good chicken recipes. Here’s a two of my favorites. I hope you will like them too.

Remember that in order to keep your chicken bacteria free and to avoid all forms of food contamination please adhere to all the principles frood hygiene essentials stated throughout this blog.

Chicken Fillet Snitzels
This one’s so easy
Ok, Bascially you need to serve about 3-5 pieces per person to really sastisfy the apetite.
So work out how many pieces you need and then flatten the fillets gently between a plastic sheet (I prefer using a rolling pin for this).

Ingredients:
Chicken fillets.
3-4 eggs
1 cup of flour
bread crumbs
salt & pepper
sesame seeds.
Italian Herb mixture (optional).

We have already covered how to prepare the Fillets so I won’t go into that again. Next you will need 3 bowls or plates. In one you put the eggs which you will beat, in another the flour and in the last the bread crumbs, sesame and herbs. Add a little salt and pepper to the flour and to the crumbs.

Take each fillet individually and flour. Ater flouring dip into the egg. Shake off any excess liquid and place into the bread crumbs. Cover the fillet with the crumbs and press lightly. Remove onto a clean and dry tray or plate and repeat the precedure until all the fillets are breaded. If you have a lot of pieces you can divide the layers by using grease proof paper or baking paper.

To avoid the possibility of bacterial growth within the chicken or cross contamination between the eggs and the chicken keep the preparation time as short as possible. Twenty minutes should be ample time for this process and it will help to prevent the the devision of bacteria. Wile you are breading the shnitzels start to heat your oil. The time interval between finishing breading and frying should also be as brief as possible. It you can, serve straight from the frier, if not keep at a temperature of at least 65 degrees celsius until served. Any leftovers should be cooled and refrigerated to avoid bacterial contamination.

Now take a frying pan and add about 1/2cm. of cooking oil. Heat and fry the snitzels on both sides until golden brown. Serve with fries , rice or pasta. Add a little lemon and your favorite dip to the side of the plate. Don’t forget to eat plenty of fresh vegetable salad at least once a day.

Chicket Fillet Fajitas in fried Tortillas
My Personal Recipe
This recipe make a great main course, Brunch or between meal hunger stopper.

For this you will need about 5 fillets per portion.

Other Ingredients:
1 medium tomato (sliced) per 2 portions
1/2 green pepper per 2 portions(sliced)
1/2 medium sized onion per 2 portions(sliced)
Tomato puree
1-2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper
Cumin
Chopped corriander
Corn starch
Cooking oil
Chilli Pepper or sweet chilli pepper sauce.
Tortillas

Equipment:
2 frying pans.

Before you start to fry rub the bottom of the pan with the garlic cloves. Slice the chicken fillets length ways and fry on a deep skillet. Add the onions and work in stir frying carefully for about 1 minute. Add peppers stir frying for about 1 minute also. Now add the tomatoes mixing gently until they begin to show signs of softening. Add salt & black pepper to taste. Put in about 1/2 teaspoon of cumin per 2 portions (reducing by 1/4 teaspoon for each 2 extra portions added). Add the chilli pepper or sweet chilli sauce. Add a little tomato puree to intensify the colour.

Now blend in the chopped corriander adding an ammount according to your own taste preference. Add a little sugar if the mixture needs it. Because you are going to fill the tortillas with the fajitas mixture it needs to be a little firm so mix a teaspoon of corn starch diluted in a little water into the fajitas to make the sauce a little less runny. Put the tortillas onto a table and fill them lenghwise with your fajitas mix. Roll them up gently making sure not to split them. Add a little beaten egg onto the lip of the tortilla and set aside. Now heat another frying pan with about 11/2 cm. of coking oil. Heat to a temperature of the oil 150 degrees centigrade Now add your tortillas to the oil carefully taking care not to get burned or to spill the content of the tortillas out. Fry until golden brown on both sides. Remove and place on kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil. Serve on lutuce with salza mexican rice or fries. Buon Apetite

A new Hampshire camp was close while it was being checked for the cause of salmonella food poisoning. Children fell sick after eating a pudding that was contaminated with pathogenic salmonella bacteria. After all the negative publicity about salmonella in the media over the past couple of weeks, another salmonella outbreak was the last thing this well renowned camp needed.

Puddings and other deserts are quite common vectors of salmonella poisoning for several reasons. I would like to go over some of these reasons in this article to give you insight into the world of puddings and deserts.

Last courses are very often very minimally cooked. Sometimes they incorporate meringue which is basically just egg white beaten with sugar. Often last courses are not cooked to temperatures that exceed the boiling point of milk which is around 80 degrees Celsius. Some strains of resistant and virulent bacteria are very capable of withstanding such temperatures.

Camps are places which function only at certain times of the year and infrastructure of camp kitchens is not very sophisticated. Fridges may not function at required temperatures and food stores may be open to many different persons from within the camp. In addition, the staff which are hired by camps to do kitchen work might not be state of the art professionals, particularly in matters of food hygiene. If that were not enough and to cut staffing costs still further camp cooks are requested by management to work with casual workers who may have little if not no prior knowledge about the workings of a large kitchen.

Chefs are known to like to mix many ingredients by hand, particularly when using corn starch. Corn starch likes to coagulate when it comes into contact with liquid and many chefs like to feel that the consistency of a mixture is smooth. If the chef or one of his workers has not washed his hands properly after going to the toilet or after handling meat or fish (particularly chicken or turkey), bacteria will infest the desert mixture.

Another possibility for salmonella contamination is if the chef or one of his helpers failed to notice that eggs, milk of both used in the mixture for a pudding were not fit to be used. Often casual staff do not know the signs of contaminated milk or eggs.

Yet another possibility is that the chef made a pudding mixture early in the morning before he started to prepare meats and other foods that may contaminate a pudding mixture but failed to insure that it was refrigerated. On discovering the mistake he may have decided to take the chance that the mixture was not contaminated. These things do happen in many, many kitchens.

Another scenario could have been that staff cut corners and failed to wash cooking trays properly after a previous usage. These dirty dishes may have been exposed to cockroaches rats,cats or racoons and thus contained with salmonella. The final possibility that I would like to mention is that one or more of the ingredients other than eggs and milk that went into the pudding may have been infected with salmonella. After all, salmonella has been turning up all over the place recently. Why not on ingredients such as dried fruit? In the worst scenario several of these factors may have occurred simultaneously. If this was the case, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Extra care must be taken when preparing food for the young, the elderly, pregnant women and the infirmed. These people are the most vulnerable and as fate would have it these groups are exposed to the highest percentage of cases of food contamination. As you can see from the breakdown I have given you, more than one factor may be to blame. Trouble starts when the approach is as fault. The only way to minimise food poisoning risk is meticulous attention to detail and correct practice at all levels of an operation like a camp.