Miss Foodwise

Celebrating British food and Culture

Food issues

Big companies are buying organic, but are they selling the real thing

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Vegetable display at Borough Market, London

Amazon just bid nearly 14 billion to buy Wholefoods…

There is something about the organic & health food narrative that is increasingly starting to worry me. A couple of years ago you had to go to small often obscure shops for organic food, natural products and local produce, but recently we’ve started to see a lot of mainstream supermarkets jumping onto the bandwagon, introducing a dedicated spot in their shop to organic vegetables and fruit. A great evolution I thought at first. In Belgium a supermarket chain even decided to launch an organic version of their store. They now have 25 large stores and 80 pick-up points, in a country with about 11 million inhabitants this is huge. It sends out the right signal that more people want to make a more conscious choice when it comes to food. In the UK and US we’ve known Wholefoods for some time now but todays news that Wholefoods has been bought up by the big giant Amazon got me feeling more puzzled than excited…

I started to dawn on me that in one of those big superstores organic isle I spotted potatoes from Egypt and pears from Mexico…

I want everyone to eat organic so that more farmers can survive growing organic or biodynamic fruit and veg in a way the land is nourished instead of raped. I want people to eat far less meat but buy more ethically reared meat. Meat from animals reared in good conditions, outdoors on grass instead of concrete, it doesn’t even have to be organic (getting certified organic is very troublesome for animal farms in many countries), kindness in this case is good enough for me. We can no longer tolerate factory meat farms and need to go back to the ancient method of crop rotation. …

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How free range is your bacon?

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kisses on the free range fields

It came as a bit of a surprise to me that less than 3% of the pork in the UK is actually truly ‘free range’. You think if you choose for the ‘freedom foods’ or ‘red tractor’ label, you’re sorted, but no, that doesn’t mean your bacon is free range at all.
To learn more, I ventured out to sunny Suffolk to meet up with second generation pig farmer Alastair Butler on their family farm Blythburgh Free Range Pork.
As it turnes out, a lot of the pork we think to be free-range, has actually not had a better life than a pig in an intensive farm. We assume when we spot the label ‘outdoor bred’ or ‘outdoor reared’ that it is free-range, only it isn’t.

First we have to understand how pig farming works.
There are two stages or herds, the ‘breeding herd’ – these are the sows and the newly born piglets, and the ‘finishing herd’ where the piglets go after they are weaned which is after about four weeks of age.
In the majority of the higher welfare farms, the high welfare terminology only applies to the first herd, the sows and their babies.

Outdoor bred and outdoor reared is NOT free range pork.
Outdoor bred: this means the breeding herd is kept free range but the after the piglets are weaned, they are moved indoors to the finishing herd where they are intensively reared. The pork from these pigs will not be any different from your average intensive farm.

Outdoor reared: here the breeding herd is free range too, and the finishing herd is kept in a semi outdoor arrangement of tents or huts. The pigs do not have free access to the outside, and are confined to these huts and tents at all times. Alastair refers to this arrangement as ‘intensively reared outdoors.’

Free range: here the breeding herd is free range, and the finishing herd is kept in an even larger free range space. This is the only true higher welfare farming system.

Blythburgh is one of the largest free range farms in the UK, this means that the pigs have an incredibly large amount of land to roam freely. The animals grow slower, which means the fat has been around the muscle for longer and therefore delivers more flavour.
But for Alastair the welfare of the pigs is what’s most important, he steps into the field with his dad and nearly all of the pigs in the field come storming towards him to see what is going on and have a sniff on the farmers leg and shoes. “This is what it’s all about” he says “pigs showing their natural behaviour which is that they are incredibly curious and clever animals”.
I asked him if he is still smitten with the breeding herd after years of seeing piglets being born, and he tells me that he still loves everything about the breeding herd, but the fact that they have to keep the sows on a more confined paddock means he prefers to visit the finishing herd which looks to me like a gang of friends having a nice play in the sand rather than a bunch of farm animals being finished for slaughter.

The natural behaviour of a pig is to root in the soil and eat the mud, they love a good dust bath or wallow in the muddy pools and enjoy a good run. Imagine if you would place an animal like this on a concrete floor, with no light apart from a couple of industrial lights if they are lucky. No fresh air, nothing. Farrowing crates contain the sows, they are so tight that they can not turn, they can not stand, they just have to lie there. Piglets are taken from these animals after birth, while pigs are known for being good mothers, imagine what the animal must be feeling. And that is what is important, we can’t ignore that animals have feelings. Farm animals are no different from pets. It is important to take a stand against intensive farming, and eat less meat, but choose to buy high welfare meat.
Ask your butcher where the meat comes from, investigate by looking up the farms website to see that you are getting your money’s worth in free range meat.

There is no room in this day and age for animal abuse, so find a free range source for your meat.

From farm to plate

 

The breeding herd
A happy mama and her babies fighting over the best teat
And suddenly another mama started farrowing, she covered her piglets in straw to keep warm
Alastair Butler and his piglets. I got to hold her too, she fell asleep on me.
A curious bunch – the finishing herd.
Didn’t I say they love a good run?
And that they love to eat and root around the mud?
Are you looking at me? Well you’re looking at us human!
Slaughtered and butchered by Gerard King.
The mark, so you know what you get.
The final stage – the table.

Thank you very much for inviting me to your family farm Alastair, and for the beautiful pulled pork lunch your mother made us.  Thanks Gerard King from craft butcher Salter and King for a butchery demonstration to round up the day and the process from birth to slaughter. Good meat can’t be taken for granted, it has to be respected.
Recipe for the roast coming soon.

My views are my own.

 

 

EDITED
While moving my blog the comments on my last few posts got lost, I’m so sorry if you are looking for your comment and it isn’t there. I’m really sad about losing our conversations!

A surcharge on sugary drinks versus IKEA fruit water

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Ikea, making us believe that their new fruit waters are healthier than their sugary fizzy drinks, because they contain 50% less sugar.
Meanwhile across the channel, a chef has had enough and is campaigning for a tax on sugary drinks – all sugary drinks, even the ones with 50% less sugar.

I thought the press might be all over this, I thought it would explode on health blogs and yet… all remained quiet. As I am getting ready to attend a food symposium in the UK with the theme ‘Food and Communication‘ I found it fitting to have a rant about how this communication by IKEA* is misleading us all.

From september 2015 they will ban all sugary fizzy drinks from their restaurants. That’s the headline and that’s the lie. Proudly they are replacing their imitation Pepsi and 7up with more healthy fruit waters which contain only half the sugar. Half the sugar. That’s still too much sugar.

The World health organisation (WHO) say that we ideally should be consuming no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. **Regular fizzy drinks contain up to 6 teaspoons per 330ml serving. That’s your daily sugar intake in one glass of sweet drink. That is bad.

So if IKEA’s fruit water contains ‘only’ half the amount of sugar of your average fizzy drink – it still contains about a whopping **3 teaspoons of sugar.
When having one glass of IKEA fruit water means you have consumed half the daily recommended amount of sugar. And you know what? They offer FREE REFILLS! So you can have more!

“Ikea schrapt frisdrank van het menu”

(Ikea bans sugary fizzy drinks from menu)

The communication to the world is that IKEA is trying to get a more healthy reputation… I think they are misleading the consumer with it.
Firstly their fruit waters aren’t healthy, nor are they more healthy because they contain ‘only’ 50% the amount of a regular pop per serving. Secondly they are motivating people to refill their cup at self service machines, so people can have another 3 teaspoons of sugar diluted in water with natural flavourings.

My advise to IKEA.
Serve water with real fruit, just fruit – no added sugar, no added colourings.


How do you do this?
Fill a jug or a barrel with water, just water, and just toss in sliced cucumbers, apples, strawberries or whatever fruit. Then and only then you have FRUIT WATER, and not fizzy drink with natural fruit flavours and only half the sugar.

I understand that this would make your system of free refills at a machine impossible, but I think we are outgrowing the machines and are yearning for human contact again. Then and only then will you be making the change you are shouting about right now. Then and only then will you be truthful with your customers. Right now, you are contributing to a world-wide problem of children and adults being overweight due to an extreme sugar intake. All because people buy foods and drinks which are low in sugar, to then consume double.

A surcharge or tax on sugary drinks
The contrast with another news item this month is stark.
Jamie Oliver is making good of his crusade to tax sugary drinks and is putting a surcharge on sugary drinks in his restaurants. The money from the surcharge will go to a charity that supports children’s health across Britain.

 

Jamie Oliver says that he expects the surcharge to raise £80,000 over the next year. He will donate the money to Sustain, a charity that “support’s children’s health food initiatives across Britain.

He told the Sunday Times: ‘I was born into the restaurant industry and I truly believe that by joining together on this issue we not only send a powerful and strong message to government but we also have the potential to make a longlasting legacy that could ripple across the world. 
‘I’ve seen first-hand the heartbreaking effects that poor diet and too much sugar is having on our children’s health and futures. Young children are needing multiple teeth pulled out under general anaesthetic and one in three kids [is] now leaving primary school overweight or obese.  
‘Soft drinks are the biggest single source of sugar among school-age kids and teenagers and so we have to start here.’ The chef said an explanation of the sugary drink levy will be printed on all his menus and waiting staff will be able to offer alternative healthy drinks for children.’   

Quite a different story from, we’re cutting down on sugar but you can still go for a refill so you can have all the sugar you want.

What Jamie Oliver is doing is being honest about the fact that the sugary drinks on his menu aren’t healthy. And by adding an explanation to why he is adding the surcharge he is educating people rather than trying to ban the sugary drinks all at once. Banning something will only make people want it more, but telling them about the dangers of excess sugar intake will maybe make people want to give up, or reduce their consumption of sugary drinks. What Ikea does is claiming their sugary drinks are healthy, and that is where they go wrong.

Further reading/watching
The Truth about Sugar BBC 2015 >
How much sugar is in your fizzy drink >
World Health Organisation recommends adults should have no more than 6 tsp of sugar a day >
Tax on sugary drinks to reduce obesity a study says – The Independent >

In Flemish
Ikea schrapt fristdrank van het menu (en vervangt het met fruitwater met 50% minder suiker) De Standaard >
Jamie Oliver heft belastingen op frisdrank – De Standaard >

Sources: Sunday Times, The Independent, Eater, De Standaard, BBC, WHO, press release IKEA

*This post is about IKEA BELGIUM, I have no idea what the situation is in other countries.
** I do not know how many teaspoons of sugar their fizzy drinks contained so used an average quantity. I will of course alter the numbers if they become known to me.

Apologies to my readers for going off-topic on this blog, but I truly believe you can’t be a foodie without being a food activist.

Food Revolution Day – Food education back on the menu

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Sign the petition www.change.org/jamieoliver

Today is Food Revolution Day, the day on which we come together from all over the world to pull on the same end of the rope. A better future for our children is what is aimed at here, and better food education will bring that.
At a time when 42 million children under the age of five alone are overweight, we need to take action against this enormous epidemic.

In the olden days when the girls were supposed to marry to spend their lives cooking and cleaning for their husbands, girls were taught their skills in school and from their mothers. Today luckily us ladies aren’t chained to the stove and washing basket anymore, but with our emancipation, slowly domestic housekeeping lessons disappeared from the schools.

So many people don’t know how to cook from scratch because they weren’t taught the basic skills to make a meal. It is of vital importance that cooking skills, and even growing food is put back on the schools learning plans. With a growing world population, we need to reduce food waste, and to do this, we need to cook more and learn how to deal with leftovers. It might seem so straight forward to you, whipping up an easy dinner after work, but for so many people out there it is a daily struggle. Those trying to survive on a tight budget have it even worse when they don’t know how to cook.

I can always make a meal, it might be a strange dish sometimes, but it is always tasty. You tend to take that skill for granted. I know I did, it is only when you talk to someone who really can’t cook that you understand that cooking is often a talent you’re born with but others need to learn it. I learned from Jamie’s Naked Chef Series because my mum wasn’t really the type to teach you how to cook, she had a tendency to overcook things, or downright burn them to their second death.
My husband can’t cook either. When we were ‘courting’ he made me a pasta dish with grated carrots which he had heated up in yoghurt. Not the luscious thick strained Greek style yoghurt, natural sour pungent yoghurt. It was one of the most vile things I’ve ever had to swallow. He thought so too and luckily I didn’t have to finish the plate to be polite but how the hell could he have cooked that? Well, he followed a recipe. He doesn’t use it intuitive nature because he doesn’t know what he is doing. If he would have cooked from his heart, he would have made an entirely different dish. Like his eggs, he can cook a mean egg.

But it isn’t simple, not for everyone.
So teaching children to cook, teaching them about how food production – farming – works and maybe even re-introducing school gardens, might just save out future generations.
The fact that so many children don’t know their onions from their tomatoes is downright shameful and unnatural. We are not surprised that children don’t want to eat the pink slime they call meat in processed food when they see it in their raw state, but as soon as it is turned into chicken dips by Jamie in his School dinners show, the kids all go crazy for it, even knowing that minutes before it was just pink slime…

Education, education, education. It is the answer to everything.
So if you have a minute sign the petition to put food education back ‘on the menu’ in schools, and do it here www.change.org/jamieoliver

“By educating children about food in a practical, fun and engaging way, we can provide them with the knowledge and skills they so urgently need to lead healthier, happier lives. We need to make practical food education a compulsory part of every school curriculum across the world, and that’s why I’ve launched a petition calling on all G20 countries to action this. With enough support from millions of people around the world, I truly believe that we can create a movement that’s powerful enough to make governments take action.” Jamie Oliver

Sadly I didn’t host my Food Revolution Event this year, life just was a little too hectic at the moment and I am seriously gutted about it but I can’t make myself ill while trying. I’m in the final stages of photographing my book and testing recipes again, and I’m a one lady team here so I’m up to my ears in work. It’s great, I’m super happy, but to organise an event this year, I couldn’t do it alone, I would have needed a couple of people to help while I remain indoors like a hermit only going out when I need eggs and cream. 🙂
Next year will be double cool I promise, and if you like to volunteer to give a hand, always welcome, just drop me a line or a tweet or shout at me in the street! 🙂

Take care for now, and think about your food consumption today, learn someone something about food, think of where your meat comes from, your fish, your poultry, your eggs, … Think about it, share your thoughts, get conversations going.

x

Regula

Enjoy some pictures of my past Food Revolution Events!

“The future for me starts with food education”
Jamie Oliver

Making pizza in a woodfired oven

 

Squeezing the whey out of the cheese
creative with toppings

You might also enjoy:
Mussels and fries for Food Revolution Day >

The last of the herring men

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Herring means Christmas to me
Fishing in a traditional and sustainable way, is decaying and it is becoming increasingly harder to make a living from a small fishing boat.
In November I visited my friend Stephen Perham, the last of the Clovelly Herring men.
Also the Clovelly Harbourmaster, he is the only fisherman still living in the village and the only one who sells his catch. One of the very few others is Tommy who is Stephen’s brother, but he doesn’t live in the village anymore.
Stephen lives with his betrothed Joy in his grandmother’s house, she’s a singer in the Fishwives Choir, lifeboat volunteer, and trainee doctor. His sister Rachel lives next door, in the house their father and mother lived and died in, like many before them. These houses are full of stories and ghosts of the past. His family is with us when we sit around the table in his kitchen, drinking port by the warming old Rayburn that’s drying tea towels and three beloved soggy dogs.Pictures of his ancestors and other long lost locals are found everywhere in his fisherman’s cottage and I’m told there are many more, as the old folk of the village have often left their old family photos to him when they died. Joy, very much amused, pointed towards a Clovelly souvenir plaque in their kitchen, showing a small lad on the cobbled street. “Guess who the little boy is?”
He is the last of the herring men of Clovelly, the last link between the old and the new; he is the one who keeps all those long lost souls alive, the keeper of hundreds of years of memories.Even when visiting the local pub in Clovelly, we find a lingering echo of Stephen and Tommy’s ancestors. The pictures on the wall of the snug bar tell the story of a Clovelly long gone, of fishermen gathering around the table smoking pipes and pictures of the most beloved wooden boats, of which only a few still remain in the harbour. These boats are unique to Clovelly and built to get out to sea faster than the larger boats when the herring arrives.
Stephen in his Picarooner, a wooden boat unique to Clovelly
The harbour at dawn
Traditional sustainable fishing methods that haven’t changed for centuries

Clovelly as a community, like many other similar coastal villages, once depended on the herring trade. Records show that two hundred years ago there were a hundred herring boats in the harbour with amounts around nine thousand herrings or ‘Silver Darlings’ brought in from sea. The days of the large herring fleet are long gone and today there are just a few fishermen who still go out for the herring, using sustainable fishing methods with drift nets.

Meeting Stephen, you immediately understand why the town’s herring festival each november isn’t just another food festival – it is a celebration of tradition and heritage, his heritage. Stephen is a 6th generation Clovelly herring fisherman, and with him and his brother, sadly, the line is very likely to end.

This proud and gentle-natured fisherman is the essence of this little village; he and his family represent the past and the future. He knows all the stories – where which boat got shipwrecked and who survived or was lost to the sea. He can read the waves, the sky and the sound that the rain makes when it hits the water. Fishing is in his blood, and fishing for herring is his passion as it has been associated with his family and this little village for centuries. As harbourmaster and the last full-time fisherman in the village, he knows where every boat is at any given moment and, although it is hard to sell herring these days -it is now a fish which is unjustifiably out of fashion- he continues to go out for herring because it is what he genuinely loves to do.

The fish he doesn’t sell, or eat himself, he salts down in barrels to use as bait. In the summer months he goes out to sea for lobster and crabs. To do this he needs bait, and the herring provides that. He needs a dozen barrels to get through the summer and with the number of herring being so plentiful, he usually only goes out for herring once or twice a week to fulfil orders after the herring festival ends.


Life by the sea was so different in the old days; nearly all the men in the village were employed in herring fishing up until the 20th century. In the past, fishermen had to move away from their beloved little coastal town with its steep hills and cobbled lanes during the summer when there was no herring to be caught. They would work on the Royal Yachts further away but by the time the herring returned to these pebbled shores they would be home. The season of the Silver Darling runs from Michaelmas to Christmas and that’s why for Stephen “herring means Christmas”. It’s the build-up to Christmas, his favourite time of the year. He says once you get to Christmas it is all about the food, the puddings and the cakes. This fisherman loves to cook.

 

Right: Stephen and Tommy’s ancestors on the wall of the village pub
Stephen looking out over the harbour from his kitchen, nothing happens without him knowing about it
Left: The large herring fleet of the past. Right: One of the last of the fleet today.

His passion for herring and the traditional methods of catching them made him think about how he could try and put herring back on the map. The Clovelly Herring Festival was originally the brainchild of Stephen, Bob Rouse and Sue Haworth, who both work for Clovelly Estate, and the author of the well acclaimed book about the history of herring fishing, Mike Smylie. Smylie, as a maritime historian, has done a great deal for the fishing industry, and the herring industry in particular, trying to record the traditions of a dying industry that for years had fed the nation. He and Stephen met when BBC Radio 4 introduced the two in a program about Smylie’s herring book and they have been friends ever since.

Mike Smylie comes down to the Herring Festival each year with his self-made herring smoker, which looks like an old outdoor loo. He believes that people went off smoked herring due to the usage of artificial dyes to speed up the smoking process of kippers during WW2. It is also a rather sad fact that people have become so used to buying ready filleted fish that they have lost the knowledge of either boning a fish or even just eating it straight from a hot pan from the bone. Herring contains a larger bone and tiny little long bones which you can actually just eat. These little harmless bones had provided the people with much needed extra calcium in the past.

Joy goes out to sea with Stephen whenever she can.

Herring was plentiful until stocks collapsed in the 1970s. Smoking herring into kippers or salting it down in barrels, either for bait or consumption, had always been the most common way the herring was processed. That way it could be kept for longer and transported further inland. As herring was a main food source it became a staple during the war. The ‘herring ban’ in 1976 caused the closure of the Celtic and the North Sea fisheries and it lasted until 1983.

Stephen Perham and his brother Tommy were growing up during the herring ban and his father taught them the ropes of the trade by drawing diagrams in the salt of the windows of his house. Unfortunately their father died a year before the ban was lifted, but Stephen has been fishing for herring ever since.

The extraordinary thing about Stephen’s method of fishing is that it hasn’t changed one bit from how his ancestors did it. The boat is still the same type of small 16 ft wooden ’Picarooner’ his forebears used, nicely painted white every year and finished off with a pretty red rim. The nets are also still the same design, although they are now made of nylon rather than cotton. The only thing that has really changed is the demand for this beautiful silver fish. The big markets like Brixham and Plymouth just aren’t interested in herring any more.

A lonely ‘Picarooner’, a wooden herring boat unique to Clovelly

 

It’s not difficult to see why these shiny fish are nicknamed ‘The Silver Darling’
Stephen shows me that the herring scales are everywhere. The boat looks like it is embellished.

 

Luckily a food festival, like the Herring Festival in Clovelly, puts a healthy, oily fish like herring back in the spotlight and onto the menu. Not only does the food festival offer a number of stalls selling herring delights traditional and more exotic, there is fresh herring to take home, and there are also several stalls selling other local produce. I was on hand this year to help Stephen and Joy sell their lobster rolls, which we lovingly prepared that morning. Perham herring, which is how Stephen and Tommy call their beloved fish, was celebrated and enjoyed by many for this one whole day. But it should be on our plates more often.Rick Stein and Marco Pierre White have both come down to Clovelly in recent years to fight the corner of the herring. And it deserves saving. Clearly herring is a versatile fish; it is gorgeous fresh, but just as good smoked into kippers, simply baked in plenty of butter or cured into rollmops. A fish abundant and healthy, we should eat it more to support small scale fishermen who catch these little fish in a sustainable way and support carefully managed fishing. But, foremost, we should eat this fish because it is good for us.

If there is one thing I’ve learnt on my few days with Stephen and Joy, it is the importance of heritage. Traditional sustainable herring fishing is under threat to be lost. Fishermen have difficulties to sell their catch so have to try and find other ways to sustain themselves and their families, or move away from their villages and learn a different trade. Their quaint fishermen’s cottages are turned into holiday homes and their boats into flower beds. But Stephen is sure he isn’t the only one who’s at the end of a line of fishermen, there are other fishermen in other coastal villages who are also trying to hang on to a small scale sustainable method of fishing. His dream is to take to sea with the small wooden boat, he lovingly named ‘Little Lilly’ and visit those other fishermen, and write down their stories like I am writing down his today. For Stephen it is important that these old traditional methods, and the names of those who keep it alive, are noted down somewhere, so that they aren’t forgotten and lost. So that their heritage doesn’t rot away, like the old boats do on the beaches all round the British coast.

I hope that Stephen can sell enough of his catch to go on his trip. Because it is an important work to write, and one I would love to read. 

 

Joy and Stephen when I first met them two years ago in the summer, with their catch of mackerel

When I was visiting them my friend Sassy and I also shot a little video when we went fishing for herring with them. I hope you’ll like it!
I’ve uploaded it to my new Youtube Channel, don’t forget to subscribe 🙂

 

The Herring Festival takes place on the second Sunday of November each year, and is organised by the private owners of Clovelly village, the Clovelly Estate Company.

Medieval Chicken Compost

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Many people ask me if I come across weird and unappetising dishes in those old British cookery books I collect and devour.

Of course there are always recipes in historical cookery books which might seem odd to us today, but I am quite sure if someone from the 18th century would come and visit us today, he would go home with as much stories about strange foods to tell his contemporaries.
It’s all a difference in how we look at food, and how we approach it. For example, most of us only ever see meat, packed in plastic, neatly arranged in the supermarket shelves. Small independent butchers are disappearing on our streets and so is our connection to the animal that provides us with our much savoured sausage. Only last year a butcher shop in Suffolk was asked to remove his elaborate game displays from the window so children wouldn’t be upset by the sight of dead animals. Man has become disconnected and doesn’t think past the plastic surrounding the factory farmed meat.

 

I don’t find eating the head of a pig weird at all, people in the past would have been happy to have it. But today it is seen as ‘medieval’ and not very appetising. I must confess I do not have a desire to eat a pigs head any time soon, but many have told me it is exquisite.

I am talking about a Medieval dish with a name that might sound strange to us today, but only because we have given a different explanation to the word, or the word as evolved. Medieval dishes have always delighted me in their inventiveness, and elegance. A pure kind of cooking, with herbs and spices that give your tastebuds a whole other experience.

In the 14th and 15th century the dish with the name ‘compost’ has been the term for any stewed mixture. A ‘composition’ of ingredients. This could have been meat, vegetables or fruit. The French term ‘compote’ very likely derives from the English ‘compost’ which later only meant stewed fruits. The name ‘Compost’ for a recipe can also be found in Flemish Medieval cookery books.
To anyone, this dish must sound intriguing, especially as one would immediately think this was a recipe for creating the best compost to fertilise your veggie patch with.

But no, the etymology of the word might be obscure, we are not making any kind of compost for the garden today.
This recipe for ‘compost’ I am bringing to you today is made with chicken and green herbs, and spices. Another contemporary recipe is made with chickens and some of its offal. Herbs vary in recipes and another ‘compost’ is made exclusively from root vegetables, dried fruits and spices. They are all very clean and pure dishes.

Chicken was always a noble type of meat on a banquet. It was considered more economical if a chicken was kept for her eggs. Killing off a chicken meant killing of your egg factory so chicken would be on the tables of those who could miss a bird, the elite.
This dish is fantastic, it is so pure and simple, it is the kind of dish that just makes my heart skip a beat when I first have a little taste. The dish eats like a soup, and I like to add a nice slice of stale sourdough bread as a ‘sup’ – which was in the past frequently added to thicken the soup and give more substance. This ‘sup’ is also what gave us the term ‘supper’ later on in history. A ‘sup’ could also have been a piece of cake soaked in booze or sauce, the Italian word for trifle ‘Zuppa Inglese’ still gives shows us the link with the ‘sup’.
To make it into an evening meal I added some new potatoes. This of course not ver Medieval as the potato was not known in the Middle Ages, but it is a lovely addition to this dish.

 

 

New potatoes are a lovely addition to make it into a main dish, but not very Medieval.

Original recipe from A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)

To mak composte tak chekins and halve them then tak saige parsly lekes and other good erbes and chop them small then tak a pint of hony and som of the erbes and lay in the botom of the pot and som of the chekyn then tak lard of pork smale mynced and lay it on and cast ther to pouder of guingere and canelle and boille it and serue it.

I brown my chicken before stewing, this isn’t done in the original Medieval recipe, but I find it improves the flavour and the look of the dish, I leave my chicken whole, but you can cut it in half if you prefer.
It might be so that the Medieval cook also browned the chicken, but recipes of that period weren’t complete as they were more often just aide-memoirs rather than clear instructions.

What do you need – serves 4 or 2 very hungry people with leftovers, it is very good the next day.

  • 1 large hen, free range (please, if you can)
  • 1 stalk of leek, chopped
  • a bunch of parsley
  • a bunch of sage
  • a teaspoon of cinnamon, and one of ginger
  • two large tablespoons of honey
  • optional, some pieces of bacon fat, for flavour
  • optional, stale bread, only decent sourdough or other artisan bread

Method

Preheat your oven to 160°C, you can do this just on the hob too, I just prefer to use the oven.

Have a big pot ready, large enough so you can cover the whole chicken with water, but small enough so it fits snugly.

In a frying pan, melt a generous knob of butter and brown your chicken slightly on each side. You just want some color, no crust or full browning. A medium flame on the hob is fine for this.

Place half the herbs and leek on the base of your pot, place your chicken on top and add the rest of the herbs.

Smear your chicken with the honey, doesn’t have to be neat.
Fill the pot with water so the chicken is completely covered, add the spices and give it a stir.

Bring to the boil and let it boil for 5-10 minutes without the lid.

Close the lid and transfer to the oven (or leave on the hob on a small flame) for 45 minutes – 1 hour. Cooking time depends on the size of your chicken, and the quality, a free range slowly grown bird cooks faster than a factory farmed chick. The meat should just not be falling of the bone, so keep an eye on it on those last 15 minutes.

Strain your broth using a colander or something similar, and take out your herbs and veg.
Then, take the meat of the bones and place in the broth. Place some or all of the herbs and veg back into the broth if you like, I do, as I like to eat the whole thing.

Have warmed soup plates ready and place a piece of bread in each of them, pour over the broth and give everyone some meat from the breast and some from the legs.

Serving tip: some nice cooked new potatoes work well to make this a main dish. It is very strengthening and ideal for winter, or on chilly summer evenings. It is also very nurturing when you are unwell.

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Medieval mulled wine – Ypocras >
The poor man’s bread >
Sussex stewed Steak >

The white loaf that will make you proud

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The power of an image.
I posted a picture on Instagram and Facebook of two loaves of bread I baked on wednesday. I was proud of them, they were beautiful, they were utterly perfect to me.
I had scored the bread this time with little hesitation and fear it would ruin my loaf, and while it was baking in the oven, I watched trough the oven window in true British Bake Off style how my score cracked open and baked into my most proud bake in my life.
Slightly embarrassed by my pride and joy I mentioned that to you the bread might seem plain, but to me they were special. The answer came in the form of that image becoming the most ever likes picture on my facebook and my instagram feed. You loved it too.
So much that you emailed me for the recipe, to go home and bake these loaves yourself, to see it rise, and bake and fill the house with the smell only bread is capable to induce…
Utter joy.

Bread has been a staple since the beginning of time, it evolved from a flat, dense gritty loaf to the small bun sized wheat loaves of the Saxon monks. Wheat and bread was so valuable that often food rents consisted partly of loaves or grain. Wheat and barley would be planted together so if one harvest failed, the barley which was a hardier grain would survive and save the people from the starvation that was luring behind every tree and every sheaf of corn. But harvest failed plenty of times and so bread was made from dried peas and beans. This must have been an very heavy and unpleasant bread but it would provide plenty of nutrition during shortages. Windmills and communal bread ovens can be found in the Domesday book but as they were owned by the manor or monastery, they were not free to use. A portion of the grain or bread dough had to be payed for the use of the mill and oven, therefore the peasants continued to mill the grain themselves using a hand quern that must have taken many long hours of hard labour to end up with a small portion of flour.
People must have suffered from acute toothache with the amount of grit in the bread. Even the upper classes preferred to soak their bread in their all important sauce and have their meat so succulent that it fell of the bone. Chewing would have been difficult if you would have lost most your teeth in your early adulthood.

Bread remains a staple food in the centuries following the Norman conquest and the Middle Ages, but recipes for breadmaking remain unknown from that period except for a mention of the process of bread making in a poem.

 

Although today bread still remains the most popular base of our diet, it has also become a source of worry with gluten and wheat intolerances becoming nearly as frequent as famine was in ancient times. Although bread has been a staple food for centuries, in the early years it was labour intensive to mill the grain by hand so bread would not have been the thing to fill up the bellies of the poor. They would have had a modest piece of bread, with their pottage, or a piece of cheese but not as plenty as we often have it today.
Wheat has also been modified to an extent that it is easier to harvest, but the quality is less. The need to have everything fast and plenty changed the way we create bread, with added chemicals to make is rise in a fraction of the time if would actually need to break down the enzymes in the grain which make it harder to digest. There is talk of a modern day ‘bread belly’ with people suffering from the effects from fast factory made bread which has little resemblance to the real bread of our ancestors. In my opinion the modern everlasting, spongy bread, sometimes dyed with malts or molasses to make it appear as a wholewheat loaf while it is not, is a new kind of poverty, the poverty of quality of the most basic of foods. Our daily bread.


So
here is my recipe, which I just in true honesty came up with by winging
it. It’s quite the recipe for a plain white loaf, but strangely enough
it came out differently than before. I added a spoon of my precious 1
year old organic wholemeal spelt sourdough starter, and a drizzle of
good English rapeseed oil. Other than that of course, (I always use)
Cornish sea salt, organic strong white bread flour and water which I
first boiled and let cool to tepid before adding organic dried yeast.

To make two 700-800 g loaves

What do you need

  • 1 kg of organic strong bread flour, stone ground if you can obtain it, is the best
  • 700 ml of tepid water
  • 2 heaped tsp of dried yeast
  • 20 g of seasalt flakes, not the over processed, white powder kind please
  • 1 generous tablespoon of sourdough starter if you have some
  • 1 teaspoon of rapeseed oil, or olive oil

Method
Turn on your oven on the lowest setting to just make it nice and warm, then turn off.
Boil water and let it cool until blood heat (tepid is fine) before adding the yeast
In a large bowl or soup pot add the flour and make a well.
Drizzle in your oil, salt and sourdough on the edges without letting them touch eachother.
When you have mixed your yeast with your water start adding it to the well and make a turning movement with a couple of fingers or the back of a wooden spoon to gradually mix the flour with the water and yeast.

Keep on doing this until you get a well mixed dough, now either turn out the dough on a floured surface to knead or do as I do, leave in the bowl and use one hand to pull and twist and push your dough for about 15-20 minutes, constantly turning the dough so you have kneaded it well and the dough is nice and springy. It really is very important to work the dough well.
Now put a shower cap over the bowl to keep the dough from drying out.

Place in your warm oven – please make sure it is not too hot, just like a nice warm summers day – and leave your dough there for an hour or until doubled in size.
I feel my dough rises much better when I do this, I live in a very cool house which is never warm enough to give your dough that cosy feel it needs to feel happy and rise.

After your dough has risen for 30 min to 1 hour, take it out of the oven gently and turn it on to full heat. Mine is 250° C. Also place a baking tray in the oven to heat.

When your oven has preheated knock the dough back by simply removing it from the bowl onto the floured work surface where you can divide and shape it in two for two loaves, or in four long stretches to get a ciabatta style bread, by that I mean one that is perfect for dunking in soup, to serve with cured meats and cheese and so on.

Dust the tops of your loaves with flour and just before you place them on the heated baking tray, score the bread with a very, very sharp knife about 1 cm deep. A stanley style knife works best, other knives are often not sharp enough, and not thin enough to make that all important score.

Place in the middle of your oven, on the heated tray, and chuck a bit of cold water on the bottom of the oven to create steam
Bake for 10 min on full blast
After 10 min turn down to 220°C and leave for 20-25 minutes.

These loaves freeze perfectly, when you need them, defrost in a kitchen towel the evening before and preheat your oven to full blast, place a ramekin with water into the oven with the bread and bake for 5-10 minutes.
Fresh home made bread in 5-10 minutes, epic. Just think ahead and always make two loaves instead of one. 1 kg of flour is also easier to work with that 500 g of flour.

Enjoy and if you bake this bread, show me a pic! I love it when you send me your pictures of your creations!

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Soda bread, a loaf in 45 minutes

What’s your favourite bread recipe?
Don’t forget to leave a comment!

Food Revolution Day 2014 – keeping cooking skills alive

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A Day of cheese making, dough kneading, and pizza baking!
Yesterday was Food Revolution Day and like last year (you can see it here) I got my thinking cap on to see how I could make a difference on this day. Why? Because doing nothing won’t change a thing.
Like I said last year and will say again, every day should be a Food Revolution Day, this day is just the moment when we celebrate it, and get other people involved, to spread the word. Knowing so many ‘foodies’ in my line of work, I is my opinion you can’t be a foodie without being a food activist. You can’t love food and not want to be a part of a world wide battle for change in food choices. As a foodie you want the best produce, and the best meat is raised stress free and with respect, the best veggies are local and the best grains are those that are GMO and chemical free. You don’t want additives, colorings and other types of crap that shouldn’t be in food. But is saddens me to see that there are in fact ‘foodies’ who don’t care about where the food came from and how the meat was reared. Or they do care, but don’t care to take a stand and try to educate others about the dangers that linger on our supermarket shelves. Anyway, we can’t all be pro-active.

Food Revolution Day is the brainchild of Jamie Oliver, who finds it important to use the fact that he is famous for a good cause by getting people involved in this day dedicated to food education. He has been campaigning for better food education in schools in the UK and USA and a change in school dinners. He has also set up Ministry of Food centers where people can come and have cooking lessons for free, just so that they would be able to cook from scratch for themselves and their children. He also has his Food Foundation charity to raise funds for projects in food education.
Why having a day to raise awareness and having a jolly good cook off is important is stated on the Food Revolution Day website here > 

“It’s time to take action!
We need every child to understand where food comes from, how to
cook it, and how it affects their body. This is about setting kids up
with the knowledge they need to make better food choices for life.” Jamie Oliver

This year the focus is on children, they are our future after all and for the future’s sake, something has to change in our eating habits. So the plan was, get some kids together!

Nine in the morning and it feels like the silence before the storm. Twenty five 11 year old children are coming to my friends Loes and Krikke’s restaurant to learn how to make cheese and bake their own pizza’s in an old Flemish wood fired bread oven. To make it all more exciting for the children Bruno has designed another smashing set of goodies, a box containing a diploma, a recipe booklet and a wooden spoon for them to take home as a prize of the day.
They arrive, with a storm, as anticipated. They are eager to learn and we start off with a little talk on what Food Revolution Day is all about. I explain to them that although cooking is so much fun, so many people never cook because they don’t know how to. They totally agree that packed meals and processed foods are bad for you and see no sense in why you would buy it – fantastic, these kids understand! All but a few know who Jamie is and think he’s cool for getting us all cooking and breaking a world record by hosting the worlds largest cooking lesson. Cheering and jumping up and down follows when I tell them that the record has been broken. I love these kids.

 

We start with cheese making, we are working with raw milk that came straight from the farm that morning and I explain that this is raw milk because it hasn’t been pasteurised. Once the milk has been heated to blood temperature, one of the kids adds the buttermilk, salt and vegetarian rennet and we wait and see what happens. ‘Oohs’ and ‘aahs’ when the milk starts to thicken and true amazement when I show them the pot of milk I made an hour before. The fresh pot goes to rest and we transfer the curdled milk to a bowl with cheesecloth to drain. They take turns wiggling the cheesecloth and then comes the coolest part of squeezing the curds. Twenty five little hands squeeze and squeeze and I stop them before there is no cheese left to squeeze, the kids just love to get hands-on and feel every process.

 

The cheese is now ready to drain further and the children go to my friend Loes who explains them the process of making your own bread and pizza dough. She explains why we are using spelt and the difference between yeast and sourdough. To show them a live organism she passes around her sourdough starter which is bubbling away. The children are eager to smell and look at it as the curious little creatures they are.
The kneading is fun and they love to put their weight in and they are amazed by the rising little balls of dough. Veggie cutting for toppings happens with dedication and they can’t wait to start creating their own pizza’s. Pizza time shows us how hungry 11 year olds can be and we soon fear we won’t have enough to fill their bellies as they keep on coming back to decorate more pizza’s and devour them in seconds.

 

Luckily we have strawberries straight from the farm with the cheese we made before, to fill those last gaps in their tummies. They go through the lot in minutes and keep on asking questions, these kids are eager to know more and gives me hope for the future. They really get the importance of this and seeing their happy, excited and amazed faces throughout this day fills my heart with joy.
I think I’m going to do more of these workshops with children, I know my partner in crime Loes will be up for it too. The future is bright when you want it to be.

Special thanks to:
Bruno, my rock, for always supporting me in things like this and for the artwork he created for the workshop • Loes and Krikke, my friends who were a part of this last year and again this year. Loes especially for teaching the children the pizza making on one of her most busiest weekends of the year • To the children of this class, you guys were brilliant • To the parents for trusting us to teach their children good things. 
And last but not least, a huge thanks Jamie, for being there to motivate us to take action and get cooking. You rock, big time.

Regula x

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Food Revolution Day 2013: Last night’s leftovers lunch
Food Revolution Day 2012: My local food

Food Revolution Day 2013 – The ‘Last Night’s Leftovers’ lunch

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There was a time when everyone knew how to cook, cooking skills used to be passed down from generation to generation but somewhere in the last decades it all went terribly wrong.

There are now millions of people who struggle to cook up a basic meal. If we don’t take action now, soon there will be a generation without cooking skills and no knowledge to pass on to their children. It is of vital importance to our health and those of our children to eat well as obesity is spreading like a plague. But it’s not only for our health but for community and family spirit, to sit down to enjoy a meal together and talk, to exchange recipes and to keep our food traditions which are historically and important alive.

 

Jamie Oliver says: “Food Revolution Day is all about people power.
I was amazed and massively inspired by our first global day of action last year.

For me, this is one day for us all to get together and shout about the importance of food education and the need to share and pass on food knowledge and cooking skills. This is an opportunity to build better relationships with great food, whether that’s through hosting a big event like a farmers’ market or a small dinner for your mates and cooking everything from scratch. It’s about giving people
the knowledge and confidence to  cook using fresh ingredients and to make better choices about what they feed themselves and their families.”For last years Food Revolution a bunch of my food blogger friends and I joined forces for an online ‘local food’ potluck dinner. We all brought a dish to the virtual table that was local and sustainable. I brought mussels and Belgian fries – remember not to call them French 😉

This year I’m focusing on the workspace as we spend most of our time there. I myself tend to take my lunch box to work containing mostly the leftovers from dinner the night before or a quick spelt or couscous salad. Next to breakfast lunch is the most import meal of the day. It is to provide us with fuel for the work day.

Inspired by my own lunchbox I came up with the idea of cooking everyone a ‘Last Night’s Leftovers’ lunch pack.
As I’m not at the office on friday the 17th, I decided to do an early Food Revolution event on tuesday. My 13 colleagues all ordered one, some even two lunch packs. The catering company and pop-up restaurant that is also housed in the old printing factory where my office is kindly donated me the use of their kitchen and ordered for the entire family. Bruno’s colleagues, also graphic designers like the guys at my office and me also put in their order. I am thankful for the positive response and I hope people will bring in their leftovers more often now. I so enjoy a decent meal at lunch time, although I adore bread and cheese, it is not my idea for a working lunch.

Chilli con carne is one of mine and Bruno’s favourite leftovers as it just gets better by the day. Naturally this was also the first thing I thought of when I put down some ideas for leftover dishes. I cooked up a veggie version and a meaty one and had plenty of salad on offer for on the side. I made lunch bags containing an apple, bread and a few little bunt cakes for dessert.
It was the first time in my life I cooked and served 30 people and although I was completely knackered, I was very happy.
The thing that made my day were the words of a five year old little girl named Pilar.
She is the daughter of Loes and Krikke from the catering company who had my
‘Last Night’s Leftovers’ lunch pack for dinner. When her dad -the chef- put her to bed her final words were “Daddy we had such a delicious meal tonight, really yummy”.

 

Thank you to all who supported Food Revolution by ordering my ‘Last Night’s Leftovers’ lunch pack. Your fivers will all be going to ‘The Better Food foundation‘
You can still donate on the website of Food Revolution day.

Thanks to
Bruno, my husband for his support and help every time I get a grand idea.
My office, Volta, for donating the ingredients for the lunch • Loes & Krikke, for the donation of the use of their kitchen and their orders • the grandparents of Krikke for their lovely words of support while I was cooking in their sons kitchen • my colleagues at Volta for ordering their lunch packs and eating them with joy • the people from IWWU for ordering their lunch packs • to the lady from Washington DC who wanted to order a lunch

I promise I’ll add the recipe for my chilli con carne once I get home xxx

 

 

 

A farmers life for me.

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I have a dream… I live in a limestone cottage in rural England that catches the golden color of the sun in its walls and I have a small rare breed pig farm. In my dream I would be getting up early in the morning, jump into my morning clothes, run down the stairs to turn on the fire and slip into my boots to head outside to bring the pigs their breakfast. On my return I will jump in the shower and then do some work on my blog and photography, just after lunch I would check on the pigs again and spend some time with them. Of course pens need to be cleaned and housework needs to be done, but I’m not getting hung up on the less enjoyable things. In the evening I will know that I have yet another day taken care of beautiful creatures, help them give birth, rub their bellies and keep them happy before delivering the best meat to feed a small number of people who respect the work that went into producing this meat. I would have shortened the food chain, I will have made a difference. That is what I want, I keep asking myself  ‘what am I doing to make things better’ Sitting behind my desk designing and creating layouts isn’t going to make a difference in the bigger picture of it all. I have the need to do more.

Mahatma Gandhi put my feeling into words perfectly “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

So a few weeks ago I went on a rare/native breed pig keeping course in West-Sussex, because you have to start somewhere …

Middle Whites, one of the rarest British breeds.

It was a freezing day, my cloths as it appears aren’t nearly warm enough to be running around on a farm all day. My pretty red wellies are too small for thick woolen socks or even a triple pair to keep my feet from turning into ice cubes.
Luckily I had a lot of excitement keeping me warm, the cold didn’t bother me at all.

The day started by waking up the pigs and giving them their first feed, we walked up the field where the paddocks were divided by gender, breed and age. The pigs were eager to tuck in and it became instantly clear they have a pecking order, if you aren’t careful to keep an eye out when you feed them, one pig would be very a very happy bunny and the others would go hungry. Every pig reacted to his or her name when called out, a lovely sight to behold and it shows how clever these animals are.

Gloucester Old Spots

The severe rainfall and cold climate this year has made for muddy conditions at the farm, fortunately pigs are happiest rolling and playing in piles of mud. They will eat the mud as it is their primary source of iron. Piglets who aren’t able to go out in these wet conditions in fear of drowning are given a nice fresh pile of mud in their pen to roll in and eat every day so they don’t become anemic. When they are a week or two older, they are let out to have a play under the watchful eye of Neil and his son Oliver who is going to train to be a vet.

Michaela told us that they know when a sow is going to give birth as she will start to create an elaborate nest with straw, twigs and sometimes even flowers. At times the nest will have some things in it that she will remove, like larger branches that could possibly hurt the sow or one of the piglets but when she does the sow will show her disapproval by loud sighs on which the pig will take the branch back and place it in the nest again.

 

Sally the Middle White, and her babies.

After we had a nice cuppa and a delicious moist piece of lemon drizzle cake we sat down to defrost our hands and feet and to talk about the legal things involved in starting your smallholding, which breed of pigs to keep, and how to keep your animals healthy. I’m not going to go into detail about this, you will have to go on a course if you want to know all the rules and regulations but I can say it is all very doable.

When we went outside again we were going to learn about measuring your animals to see when they are right for their final stop, the slaughterhouse. It is the less enjoyable part of being a farmer or smallholder when you care for your animals deeply, but a necessary step to preserve rare/native breed lines and keep livestocks healthy. Of course their pedigree breeding pigs don’t go to slaughter for a very long time, they have names, witty ways and are loved almost like pets.

The time has come to weigh piglets of different ages and learn how to pick them up and handle them with care so you don’t disturb the small creatures.
Upside down seems to be the way  – though not for a long time of course – before slowly turning them to hold them in the much favourited ‘baby position’. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to holding a piglet, suddenly I’m 8 again and happy as a child. The Saddleback didn’t seem to enjoy it very much so we got him back with his mum but the Middle white baby, a few weeks older than the Saddleback didn’t seem to mind very much. They had to ask me to give him back or I would have remained standing there until the little one would start screaming for his big mum. Reluctantly I handed over the piglet.

Michaela had prepared a gammon and slow cooked pork for our lunch, I felt very humble to share this with them, the meat from their precious Saddleback pigs. Such a treat, I never tasted pork full of flavour and succulent like this in my whole life. I paired the meat with apple sauce and British watercress she had prepared – oh heaven. Michaela however trying to convince me she isn’t a cook just served me one of the best meals I ever had. I do adore uncomplicated simple food with big natural flavours.
One of the most moving things I encountered was the way Michaela and Neil were proud to share their food with us, proud of the hard work they put in -next to their jobs- to care for animals.

After the much enjoyed lunch we went back to the pigs for some serious exercise with ‘stick and board training’.
I ran after a giant Saddleback pig for almost half an hour, I
wasn’t giving up. Using a curly walking stick and a board, I was learning
how to guide a pig to a direction I want rather than the direction the
pig wants to run to. I admit, most of the time the sow was walking me
and I was convincing myself I was guiding her resulting in me running
after her trying to catch up …
But in the end I think it started to
work, I got her to her pen, back out again and back in again. I felt a
feeling of pride – I had done it – but was still not sure I had actually
pulled it off. I asked Neil if there was any hope for
me and he told me that a first day is always tough but that I had
perseverance … you got that right, I don’t give up.
I ended my stick
and board training with a session of hugging Molly the sow, petting her
and rubbing her back and belly while telling her what a good girl she
was. I really got into it – in a big way. These animals welcome a nice
rubbing, they love it when you make a fuss. They are such playful
creatures, running after each other and into each other -some breeds
like Saddlebacks and Old spots don’t see very well with their ears
covering most of their eyes –

Me and Molly, the friendly Saddleback.

My
wrists, back and shoulders were sore… I had healthy rosy cheeks from
the exercise and my heart was glowing with happiness. A farmers life is a hard one, but they will always tell you it’s worth it. If you spend time with the animals you see why. Pigs really are the most amazing creatures. If only …

The watchful eye of Neil.
Going to feed the pigs.

Are you interested in taking a pig keeping course? I did mine at Tedfold Farm in West Sussex, a farm where all animals are are slowly reared at their own pace and with lots and lots of love. Thank you to all at Tedfold Farm for a wonderful day.

I entered this course at my own expense.