Going Slow Week 11 - A journey of the highs and lows of eating Slow for a year

Slow Food London set a challenge: could regular Londoners go slow for an entire year? Would it be easy? Would it be hard? Would there be times when it would (slowly) start to go wrong?

Here, Susan Paul talks us through her eleventh week.

11th August to 17th August

We have had lots of visitors this week and so I have deliberately kept the food as
simple and “slow” as possible:

On Monday:
Roast shoulder of lamb with the redcurrant jelly made last week
Runner beans given to me by a friend who had grown them in her garden
Cara potatoes braised with onions and thyme
Gooseberry crumble and elderflower cream

On Tuesday;
Crab and barley with spring onions simmered in seafood stock
Fresh English grown lettuce with a dressing of mustard, honey, rapeseed oil and
white wine vinegar.
Mrs Temple’s Copys Cloud cheese – a soft cows milk cheese from Norfolk,
similar to Brie
Some raspberries with cream

On Friday;
Potatoes (parboiled for 10 minutes), red and brown onions, courgettes and
tomatoes, all roasted with thyme, sherry vinegar, grain mustard and rapeseed oil
for about 45minutes at 200c.adding some fillets of grey mullet seasoned with salt
and pepper and roasting for a further 15 minutes.
Followed by more Copys Cloud cheese, Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, soda bread,
fresh greengages and fresh cobnuts.

Greengages

I have been given a number of lovely food presents by visiting friends; the tender
runner beans, sweet tomatoes, a jar of salted caramel saffron sauce, some huge
courgettes , some blackberries and some honey.

I have appreciated the value of “Slow food” since starting the “challenge” and
I am thinking of things I might give as Christmas gifts this year. I have been
wondering about blackberry vinegar – it could be good in salad dressings and
probably other things, which I have yet to think of. Most importantly it’s easy to
make as follows;

Blackberry vinegar

Put 500g of washed blackberries in a bowl and cover them completely with
700mls. of white wine vinegar. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel or some
cling film and leave the berries to soak in the vinegar for 3 – 5 days.
Strain the blackberries through a sieve lined with some clean muslin, set over a
bowl and leave it, covered, overnight.

Put the vinegar into a saucepan and add 300g granulated sugar. Slowly bring
the whole lot to the boil (give a good stir occasionally) and when the sugar has
dissolved, raise the heat and let the mixture boil for 2 minutes. Allow the vinegar
to cool before pouring into sterilized bottles or jars.

Susan's beautiful blackberry vinegar

Other highlights have been;

Some fresh mint tea – simply add clean, fresh mint stalks to boiling water.

Some sweet, small, home grown tomatoes on sourdough toast.

Some new season calabrese, broccoli.

An omelette made with Cara potatoes and Binham blue cheese

A stuffing made with softened onions, breadcrumbs, bacon, thyme leaves and the
Copys Cloud Norfolk cheese and used to fill scooped out courgettes (I added the
scooped out flesh to the stuffing) then baked in a 180c oven for 45 minutes

Binham Blue cheese omelette

I have noticed how it is getting dark earlier in the evening. It’s cooler now too
and I am hoping Summer isn’t quite finished yet. I am starting to think about
what September will bring and I am considering growing some herbs for Autumn
and Winter indoors.