Slow Food London

Going Slow Week 13 - 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 thirteenth week:

We have had stewed plums with yoghurt for breakfast a couple of times this week and we have also tried some “Katy” eating apples, and some damsons – all good.

We had some very special smoked bacon with English tomatoes. The bacon is especially delicious and can be ordered online from the Norfolk Bacon website and they will send it by first class post. They do very good ham and “Banquet” sausages as well.

I repeated the stuffed courgettes from week 11 for a family supper and we ate them with roast chicken and bread sauce this time. I might try the stuffing in a marrow, if I can get one.

We had rabbit casserole again for a family supper and after a degree of suspicion regarding its fat content (it is actually very low in fat) everyone enjoyed it with some green beans, boiled briefly then tossed in butter and lemon zest.

 

I baked some Black Bream with salt, thyme leaves and blackberry vinegar for a lunch with friends along with some pink fir apple potatoes and some dressed Little Gem lettuce. I am finding it difficult to find any other good variety of British grown lettuce now. We finished off this meal just as we had the family suppers earlier in the week  - simple but delicious British cheeses with soda bread, fresh plums and damsons. The new British cheese we tried this week was Black Bomber, a mature and slightly sweet cheddar – it has been very popular with family and friends.

Other good things this week:

Toad in the hole using some of the “Banquet” sausages mentioned earlier, with red onion gravy and savoy cabbage, shredded finely and gently wilted in a small amount of butter.

A chicken, bacon and blue cheese salad with sliced Little Gem, honey and mustard dressing and some of the croutons mentioned in week 9.

 

 Cheese on toast with tomatoes and Balsamic vinegar.

Some smoked prawns with brown bread and butter and Little Gem lettuce. I used the prawn shells to make some very good stock. Just put all the shells in a pan and cover them with water. Add some parsley stalks if you have them. Bring the whole lot to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes only. Don’t boil any longer than this as it will spoil the stock. Strain the liquid into a clean bowl and use for fish risotto or something else appropriate. The stock can be frozen too.

Not so good things – the plum chutney I made last week still tastes of too much star anise so I fear it is ruined.

I tried the green beans, which I had lovingly pickled in week 7. They are ok but honestly, not really worth the effort and their colour was so diminished by the pickling process, they look very unattractive.

I am a quarter of the way through the challenge now and I am really enjoying it. The changes I have made to the way I shop for and use food have proved beneficial in so many ways. What seemed like so much extra effort at the start now seems like no effort extra effort at all, it is just about changing habits.

I am looking forward to seeing what September brings.

Ed Note: Star Anise can become more subtle as time goes on. If you make a chutney like Susan with a touch too much spice, let it rest and try it a few months later

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Week 9: “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.” ― Erma Bombeck

Week 9: (mostly) Slow in London by our community manager

Argh is all I've got to say Monday morning. Massive con come down, got Soul II Soul's Back to Life (back to reality) in my head.

Monday 18 August 2014

Not the usual breakfast of  a boiled egg with or without E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast, and a cup of Colombian coffee with raw milk. Coffee is a given but I've run out of eggs so I have 2 slices of toast (bread from the freezer) with cheese - I think protein for breakfast is important, well at least it works for me. I have to constantly remind myself that genetically in terms of food and what works for one person is still a hugely inexact science, it really is. We know more about what we don't know than what we can categorically state. Just look at the current debates over full fat food vs low fat vs carbs to see its gone full circle - actually probably more of a spiral and that some govt nutritional advice can be taken with a pinch of salt.

Of course after 4 14-hour days at the con I have no bread and no fillings and no fruit. Priorities - I do have milk for my morning coffee.

Lunch was a bought tuna and cucumber baguette and an iced coffee. I also went to a nearby bakery and they'd run out of bread, boo. I refuse to buy supermarket bread.

First semi home cooked meal in a while - I was so tired that when doing a top up shop I succcumbed to buying Linda McCartney sweet potato and quinoa kievs. I had 1 with left over veg - romanesco, yellow courgette and corn that I fried up. I swear it's the 1st Linda McCartney product I ever bought.

Tuesday

The usual breakfast.

Went to the bakery before work and got some good bread. And a doughnut! How can you resist when it's a famous St John's doughnut?

A Pilpel falafel, satisfyingly crunchy.

Out: tasty Italian for dinner - wonderful ravioli stuffed with burrata, and served with sage butter. Sage is so underrated, boastful basil gets all the attention. A couple of halfs. Did I tell you HOW much I LOVE burrata?

The doughnut.

Wednesday

The usual breakfast.

A banana, an iced coffee.

A home made tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise sandwich.

Matched Japanese Ales and food  with Melissa Cole - a great night.

Thursday

The usual breakfast and 2 coffees.

A banana (in my mind I call them nanas).

 A home made tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise sandwich. 2x iced coffee.

Outdoor bar visit. Good selection of drinks. Shame the wind was so freakin cold. The food looked good but considering the tiny portions I thought it was over-priced. We left at sunset for a warmer location and on the way to the pub we went by a micro brewery normally only open on Saturdays but open tonight. So we sampled their fine brews and I delightedly discovered that there is London made mead: Gosnells, apparently London's first meadery. Delicious too.

Friday 

The usual breakfast.

A banana and some cashews.

 A home made tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise sandwich.

A sweet potato and quinoa kiev  with veg - onion, yellow courgette, corn, that I caramelised. Half way through I remembered my purple potaotes lingering in the cupboard so I boiled then sliced and fried them, delicious.

Saturday

The usual breakfast.

Pimm's in the sun.

The stand by fried halloumi sandwich at home.

Later some grilled cheese on toast and maybe I ate 2 Daim bars. Crunchy caramel, win.

Sunday

The usual breakfast.

Had a cappuccino after my swim. 

An unremembered lunch.

A fantastic dinner at a friend's: aubergine parmigana and a brilliant dessert which was cold melted chocolate and fresh berries. There was prosecco and white wine and cherry beer and whisky ...

Read Week 10: “If you're afraid of butter, use cream." - Julia Child

 Read Week 8:
 "I cook with beer, sometimes I even add it to the food." - W.C. Fields [adapted for my liking, the original mentions wine]

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Going Slow Week 12 - 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 twelth week

The weather has cooled down now and there is an occasional Autumnal feeling in the evenings. I have been thinking about what foods will cease to be available to me and what new foods will be available in the coming months. There are fewer English lettuces and courgettes around now and I will miss them when their season ends.

We have had friends from France staying with us this week and they have truly embraced the “slow food challenge” with us. One is diabetic and he emailed when he returned to France to tell me that his blood sugar level had shown significant improvement after spending the week with us, so another success for the Slow Food regime.

Breakfast has continued to be raspberries, strawberries and blueberries with yoghurt and a spoonful of honey. But this will have to change soon.

 
Summer Berries

We have been out for lunch most days and enjoyed a number of good things including, oysters, steak and kidney pie, baked crab, fish and chips and lots of seasonal vegetables including marsh samphire.

At home we have had roast pork, grey mullet, bacon, sausages, lots of cheese and some very special vegetables.

Some of the particularly good vegetables have been curly kale, a purple variety and a green one prepared as follows: wash the kale and tear the curly leaves from the tough stalks (discard the stalks). Shred the leaves as finely as you can, then toss them in a little rapeseed oil, a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar; spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake them in the oven preheated to 220c until they are crispy – this will probably take between 5 and 10 minutes. I have also tried simply tossing the kale leaves lightly in some salad dressing and that worked really well too.

Courgettes with stuffing which I mentioned in week 11 except that I cut the courgettes across to make several smaller pieces and we ate them as an appetiser whilst waiting for a friend to join us for a late lunch.

Stuffed courgettes

 Pink Fir Apple potatoes, which I boiled and served with butter to go with roast pork, quince jelly (which I bought readymade) and some runner beans. The season for these weird and wonderfully shaped pink potatoes has just started so they are a welcome new additional food. There is no need to peel them but they need a fair amount of careful scrubbing because of their unusual shape.

Pink Fir Apple Potatoes

Our friends from France were delighted and impressed by the British cheeses we sampled which included: Colston Bassett Stilton, Mature cheddar, Wells Alpine, Mrs. Temple’s Copys Cloud and our new one for this week, Millstone. We enjoyed drinking some good English cider with the cheese.

Our neighbour has given us rather a lot of delicious ripe plums from a tree in her garden.  I stewed half of them with some sugar until they had turned into heavenly scented softness. As if that was not prize enough they produced a luxuriously scented, deep crimson, viscous liquid, some of which I have drained off to keep as a sauce which I will freeze in small amounts for future special occasions.

I made chutney with the remainder of the plums. The recipe included some star anise, with which I think I may have been rather heavy handed, so I added some sherry vinegar and balsamic vinegar, which I hope, has balanced that.

Local plums

Incidentally, all the recipes for plums I looked at required you to remove the stones from the plums before cooking. This is a rather glib statement in my view as it is exceptionally difficult to do this with plums that are not overripe and could completely put people off using this lovely fruit. For the chutney I left the stones in the fruit until the chutney was cooked and removed the stones by hand when it was just warm. For the stewed plums, remembering having these when I was I child, I just left them so that they could be removed when eaten which is no great hardship.

Sunday supper was a casserole of rabbit, leeks, bacon, potatoes and prunes. It was absolutely delicious. My husband and I made it together and it really was unique. This was mainly due to the prunes, which had been marinating in brandy for two years (yes really) because I had never before found a use for them. Even allowing for the prunes in brandy, this meal cost £6 and fed four people although I did buy the rabbit at a country butchers for £2.85!

We have had such fabulous food since starting the challenge and we really have spent far less on food than ever before.

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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.

Stuffed courgettes

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Week 8: "I cook with beer, sometimes I even add it to the food."* - W.C. Fields

   "Week 8: (mostly) Slow in London by our community manager

With bonus beer blog this week as I went to the Great British Beer Festival.

Monday August 2014

The usual breakfast: a boiled egg with or without E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast, and a cup of Colombian coffee with raw milk.

A banana (I'm trying to eat more fruit).

I took some left over pasta from last night (white pasta shells with fried romanesco and yellow courgette, tinned tomatoes, beans, seasoning, Sriracha, garlic, topped with grated cheddar and a squeeze of lemon) for lunch. A bought iced coffee.

It was book club night in the pub. I was a bit worrried about my "fritto misto" - assorted fried fish - with chips that looked like the only half decent option on the menu (no fish'n'chips and I was not having a sandwich for dinner). I'm suspicious of overly complicated names on menus in average English pubs. One or two of the fried bits had a weird /disgusting extremely acidic sauce layer inside that was obviously meant to be lemony but was more cleaning product. At least the chips were good.

A Daim bar.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

The usual breakfast.

Left over pasta for lunch.

Went to Olympia for Camra's Great British Beer Festival. I go every year, and now have a tradition 
of having a beer with our committee member Bill Green who always volunters. My strategy at the beer festival is to drink halves and for the first half of the evening progress from any new wheats and good looking English bitters and end with the foreign beer bar. In the second half of the evening I adopt a further strategy which is to buy beers based purely on their name, and this strategy has served me surprisingly well. The other strategy is to ensure you eat a meal so I had vegie noodles from a stall. So I enjoyed: 

- Red Dwarf by Back Hole Brewery (a lovely English bitter) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Space Frontier - India Pale Ale with grape must, an Italian Brewfist Ales collaboration brew with To Øl from Denmark -(a  tasty unusual IPA)

- an old favourite I've only ever had at GBBF, a wonderful zesty refreshing lemon bitter, Lemon Dream by Salopian brewery (UK). I LOVE this beer.

- was very happy to discover a sweet cherry beer I didn't already know which we ended the night with as a pudding beer, Kasteel Rouge  8% ABV (a bit of searching just told me that it's a blend of Kasteel Donker -  oh whoa a Belgian quadrupel styled dark ale with an alcohol content of 11% ABV - and cherry liquor, first brewed in 2008). So great.

But probably the find of the night was an incredible chocolate and peanut butter porter (and I don't like porter) Liquid Bliss by Terrapin Brewery  (US 8% ABV). It smelt and tasted wonderfully of peanut butter . If you're a PB fan GET IN THERE!

Wednesday

Not the usual breakfast. A fried egg and tomatoes on sour dough and a coffee. A fry up's the first step back to normality. Lots of water.

A banana. Left over pasta for lunch and 2x iced coffee.

Am going to a 4 day convention this week and had a lot of to-dos this evening so bought myself a pizza for dinner and it was not too bad.

Some Pipers' crisps I didn't eat at GBBF.

A Daim bar. 

Thursday

The usual breakfast and 2 coffees.

A banana (in my mind I call them nanas).

More coffee. Some better than I hoped for choices at ExCel - I had some beers = Brakspear bitter, rather good, a bean burrito for lunch and a paneer wrap for dinner. Oh and stuff, a glass of wine at the NZ tent and random chocolates.

Friday 

The usual breakfast.

A banana and some cashews.

More coffee. A tasty vegie curry and rice, a paneer wrap (sadly disappointing compared to yesterday, there was about a third the amount of paneer, what a rip off, the wrap was so skinny). Some pizza, some Brakspear bitter.

A Daim bar.

Saturday

The usual breakfast.

A banana and some cashews.

COFFEE! So when you're at ExCel you choose a different outlet twice a day.   But now I feel like I've eaten at all of them. I had a brie baguette, and the vegie curry and rice again.

 Some Brakspear bitter and other drinks.

Sunday

The usual breakfast.

A banana and some cashews.

More coffee. A Ploughman's.  After 4 days none of us could handle eating anywhere on the food concourse and an American attendee said a nearby hotel was ok. As I commented, it had to be at least to the same standard as the food mall, and possibly higher since a hotel has a kitchen. We ventured there and my fish'n'chips was fine.

Some Brakspear bitter and other drinks.

* "I cook with beer, sometimes I even add it to the food."* - W.C. Fields [adapted for my liking, the original mentions wine]

Read Week 9: “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.” ― Erma Bombeck

Read Week 7: "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch." -- Orson Welles.

By our community manager Georgie Knight @slowfoodLondon aka @mermaid99.

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