Slow Food London: Food and Drink

Going Slow Week 44 - 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 forty-fourth week:

This week I have been using up things in our freezer. I have to admit that whilst a freezer is useful for storage and particularly for avoiding waste, a piece of defrosted meat or fish does not have as much appeal as something bought fresh from our butchers or fishmongers. Nevertheless, with the addition of the fresh vegetables from the Farmers market I have made some very successful meals.

One such thing was some crab lasagna which I cut into slices and gently fried in a tiny amount of rapeseed oil until it was golden brown and we ate it with a salad of land cress dressed with lemon, honey and oil. Another was some smoked mackerel, which I broke into flakes, and we ate it on sourdough toast with real butter and a salad of young leaves with sliced baby cucumbers and Spring onions and a dressing of horseradish vinegar and oil. I defrosted some ox cheek to make a casserole and just before eating it, added a dressing of finely chopped anchovies, garlic and parsley and we ate this with cabbage and leeks sweated in butter.

By Thursday we were ready to stock up with more slow foods for a host of visiting family and friends over the Easter weekend. We were expecting lots of people so keeping the meals as simple, “slow” and as stress free as possible was particularly important. Here are some of the things we had:

Friday lunch: Whole Gilthead bream which the fishmonger informed me was sustainable and from Cornwall (four large ones were plenty for eight people) – baked in the oven with sea salt and rosemary and eaten with raw baby leeks marinated in lemon and garlic dressing with rocket leaves, and my husband’s now famous (in our family at least) root vegetable coleslaw with mustard dressing. We also had a huge loaf of sourdough bread and butter. For pudding we had chocolate cake.

Friday supper: Pot-roasted salt silverside of beef with potatoes, roast beetroot and white sprouting broccoli, which we had not tried before but it is very good and looks great, horseradish cream and chestnut chutney. We followed this with British cheeses: Stilton, Lincolnshire poacher and our new one this week – Perl Wen, a creamy white cheese, with oatcakes and figs soaked in desert wine.

Breakfast offerings were: porridge made with jumbo oats, Conference pears, poached eggs, bacon and sourdough toast or spelt toast with sunflower seeds.

On Saturday we had a pub lunch of fish and chips or fish pie; and for supper, a light meal of fresh crab, brown shrimps and salad followed by Bramley apple and cinnamon crumble.

On Easter Sunday we had a large roast chicken, which I cooked at 150c for three hours whilst we went out for a long walk. We ate it with land cress and more of the delicious slaw and followed that with some homemade coffee ice cream.

We have slow roast lamb planned for tomorrow’s supper and probably a special stir fry with leftover chicken for lunch but this evening it will be a light supper at the pub.

I was interested to read about the Rosewood Slow Food and Living Market in Holborn and I am hoping to visit it soon.

Posted at 18:11 in Food and Drink, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going Slow Week 43 - 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 forty-third week:

I have come to depend on the Saturday Farmers Market in Barnes for our fruit and vegetables. As I am sure I have mentioned before, these things in particular are outstandingly good and fresh and really do last well for a week or more. This week we had our family coming for lunch on Saturday but we planned and prepared some of the meal in advance in order not to miss what is now a much enjoyed routine at the market.

Some welcome new things have appeared on the vegetable stall: spring onions, young carrots, young leeks, small cucumbers, curly parsley and pointed cabbage to supplement the purple sprouting broccoli, delicious potatoes (I am afraid I forgot to ask the variety again) and turnips amongst many other things. We also tried a delicious new variety of apple - Kidd’s Orange and some Concorde Pears. So, my fear that there was going to be a ”lean time” for vegetables have been overtaken by the hope and eager anticipation of all the new things to come in Spring.

The family lunch was a bit of a feast. We started with a salad of land cress, marinated leeks, crisp bacon, fried mushrooms, finely sliced radishes, spring onions, peas (just a few cooked from frozen) and some small discs of crisp, fried bread with a dressing of rapeseed oil, white wine vinegar, English mustard and honey. This was followed by Lasagne (prepared from scratch by my husband a day earlier), which he layered with a carefully seasoned Béchamel sauce and fresh crabmeat – it was stunning and very much enjoyed by all. We followed this with three British Cheeses – Lincolnshire Poacher Double Barrel, Colston Basset Stilton and our new one for this week – Oxford Isis, a soft cow’s milk cheese washed in honey mead which gives a slightly sweet taste. We ate the cheese with lovely fresh breads and some figs soaked in dessert wine. It was a delicious and simple meal and, apart from the making of the pasta which my husband enjoyed doing, was easy to prepare.

The family lunch was the second time I ate crab this week. The first was at Riva restaurant in Barnes when I had crab stuffed ravioli, which was both delicate and delicious. Others at our table had suckling pig, lamb chops with mint and mustard sauce and Stutzichini – a delicious selection of Anti Pasti.

Other good things this week: some Yorkshire salami; a casserole of duck with flageolet beans; more slow roasted beef short ribs; the special chicken stock made several weeks ago and stored in the freezer with added parsley and dumplings made with breadcrumbs and leftover Lincolnshire Poacher cheese; turnips added to our usual salad of carrot, swede, parsley, onions and parsnip; more lovely British beers – there are so many good ones – I would love to become an expert in matching them with food.

I mentioned last week my interest in the “local and seasonal” motorway services on the M5 in Gloucester and so was pleased to learn this week that the government has an initiative to improve our motorway services – I hope they use Gloucester as a model example.

I have already started thinking about food for the coming Easter weekend – four days off and we have family visiting again so I am really looking forward to it.

Posted at 18:04 in Food and Drink, Go Slow, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going Slow Week 42 - 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 forty-second week:

As promised, my husband made more fresh pasta. Tagliatelli, this time with the aid of a pasta roller and cutter. We had some with leeks, which had been slowly cooked in butter – cooked this way they break down to form a sauce to which we added crisp bacon and thyme leaves. Later in the week we had some more, this time with our British cheese for this week, Blacksticks Blue (from Preston in Lancashire) which, together with some toasted walnuts and tiny pieces of purple sprouting broccoli, was delicious and meat free.

I have given up buying ready made packaged sandwiches – there are too many ingredients in the list that I don’t recognise as food – preferring to make my own. A favourite bread is spelt and sunflower seeds which is lovely with crab, green leaves and lemon zest, or hummus with leaves and lemon zest. Also this week we had some Wensum cheese in a sandwich with bacon and leaves.

Despite the cold weather, there are definitely some hopeful signs of Spring including the mint in our garden just beginning to make an appearance. At the Farmers market there were lovely pointed cabbages, young leeks and rhubarb amongst many other lovely things from Perry Court Farm where I buy most of our vegetables and land cress and rocket leaves (from Wild Country Organics), which are very welcome additions to our slow diet.

Other good things have been: a pub lunch of beef stew with horseradish dumplings; a pot roasted shoulder of lamb and potatoes with thyme; a salad of young leeks and rocket leaves; a casserole of flageolet beans and Old English sausages; more delicious British beers; James White organic beetroot juice with apple; eggs in an omelette, in a sandwich with land cress and real butter or poached – they are brilliant as “slow” convenience food.

The BBC British Food and Farming awards nominations were announced this week. It is brilliant to see the range of amazing things people are doing. I was particularly interested in “Gloucester Services” the motorway services on the M5 that has a café and also a food shop selling and serving local and seasonal foods – it sounds well worth a visit and I hope the idea will inspire others.

I bought a few extra Cox’s apples from a shop this week – they looked fine but their texture and flavour were not what we are used to from the Ringden Farm stall at our Farmers market in Barnes.

Posted at 14:45 in Food and Drink, Go Slow, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going Slow Week 41 - 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 forty-first week:

My husband made lots of the grated vegetable salad using: red onion, parsnip, swede, parsley and carrots and mixed with a dressing of plum vinegar, English mustard and rapeseed oil. We have found this to be a good thing to have in the fridge over the Winter months as it keeps very well for several days and is good to eat with many things – once this week with roast chicken; and another time with Aylesbury duck legs, and flageolet beans flavoured with garlic and rosemary; and also with a potato and soft cheese omelette and some rocket leaves. The leaves we have been buying at the farmers market from “Wild Country Organics” keep extremely well – at least a week and probably longer than that – they are good value too.

Other good things were: lemon sole, simply coated with seasoned flour and fried gently in a little butter with lemon, parsley and capers; roasted beetroot and Wild Country Organics rocket leaves with a dressing of blackberry vinegar and grain mustard;

Some unexpected but very welcome visitors meant a change to our plans including missing our usual shopping trip to the Barnes Farmers market and shops. We consequently found ourselves in the Walsingham Farm shop in Heacham, Norfolk where, I was surprised to find, we could buy enough “slow” food for the weekend and probably the whole week, and at a good price. This shop sells mainly local fruit and vegetables, local meat, fish, eggs and cheese and lots of locally made breads, pies (we bought a venison pie)and preserves amongst many other good quality local things. It was a pleasure to shop there and the food proved to be very good in terms of quality and value. We even bought some very tasty wine – Seyval Blanc, produced in Norfolk by Winbirri Vineyards.

This week’s British cheese we have tried is St Swithins, Norfolk soft cream cheese that I mixed with some fresh crabmeat, lemon and chives, which have just recently made an appearance in our garden, to make a delicious dip, which we ate with some spelt flour and sunflower seed toast.

More good things over the weekend included: the venison pie; some finely sliced leeks and bright green cabbage sweated and softened in butter; roast chicken and bread sauce; a pear dessert cake flavoured with elderflower cordial; a Mother’s day breakfast made by the children: very local and fresh poached eggs, local bacon, local sourdough toast and pea puree made with frozen, small English peas; oysters and a roast beef lunch overlooking the sea – all these things were delicious, particularly the breakfast, and were very much appreciated.

My husband has resurrected our pasta machine and has promised to make more fresh pasta next week.

Posted at 22:20 in Food and Drink, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going Slow Week 40 - 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 fortieth week:

I have had a vegetarian diet for most of this week. There was no particular reason except that I thought I would try it. Lots of good things: Cauliflower soup with cheese and nutmeg; yellow split peas with onions, kale, parsley and spices; roasted beetroot with rosemary; carrot and lentil soup; cabbage soup with this week’s British cheese - Snowdonia Ruby Mist; boiled eggs; poached eggs; frittata layered with potatoes and softened leeks; finely sliced kale with plum vinegar dressing; raw cauliflower, carrots, radishes and sourdough bread with a warm anchovy dressing rather like Bagna Cauda . I didn’t miss having meat but I would not like to give it up altogether.

I sorted out the spices in our cupboard and I am afraid I had to throw several jars of ready ground spices away as they had turned to non-descript dust. Ready ground spices rarely last very long and I have resolved to do my best to avoid them in future. I made the spice mixture for the split peas by toasting some whole spices (fennel seeds, cumin seeds, a stick of cinnamon, star anise and cardamom pods) in a pan and then ground them to powder in a small coffee grinder – you could use a pestle and mortar instead but I would probably omit the cinnamon stick and star anise as they are probably too hard to make into a powder.

I did not force the vegetarian diet on my family and friends, so I have still been cooking meat for them; lamb chops with potatoes and spinach – all cooked in the same pan and then eaten with lavender jelly; slow cooked chicken stew with barley, lemon, bay, carrots, onions and parsley; slow cooked beef, potatoes, carrots and parsley with a dressing of oil, mustard, and my homemade horseradish vinegar. The beef, salted silverside, was a large piece, bought but not eaten at Christmas. So I had cut it into four pieces and frozen them. It was particularly good done in this very easy way and I am looking forward to repeating it. Indeed I have found all the “one pot” meals I have been making recently to be both delicious and easy to cook.

There was more rhubarb to add to the stewed Bramley apples for breakfasts but this week I baked the rhubarb in the oven with brown sugar. We still like Cox’s apples very much despite having at least one each day since September!