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.
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 thirty-ninth week:
We have had even more good food than usual this week. Marrow bones roasted and eaten with toast, lemon, capers and parsley; Aylesbury duck, slow roasted with flageolet beans, thyme, garlic, mustard and honey; slow roast short rib of beef (enough for 3 for £9) with cauliflower in a Stilton cheese sauce.
A few days in Norfolk and so we had mussels – the last of the season I think. And oysters – we are trying to become experts in opening them. We also tried more local beers and a local white wine from Humble Yard which was surprisingly good.
My husband made pasta from scratch – using the “oo” flour I bought a few weeks ago. He used some to make sheets of lasagna, which he layered with béchamel sauce, fresh crabmeat and parsley - absolutely delicious. He also made a few ravioli stuffed with some Stinking Bishop (the British cheese we have tried this week) that were also delicious with a few drops of olive oil and some thyme leaves. We were both delighted that the pasta turned out so well at this first attempt – I am hoping he will become an expert before too long.
Lots of no meat meals too: omelette with a base of potatoes and Wensum soft cheese; cauliflower soup with Stilton cheese and rainbow chard; purple sprouting broccoli with anchovy dressing; free range eggs laid a few minutes from our Norfolk base, poached and eaten with toast and butter; stewed apples with raisins; stewed rhubarb with ginger.
A Sunday roast of a half shoulder of lamb slow roasted with potatoes, onions, garlic and rosemary with mint sauce made in the Summer - £8 and enough for two and also enough left over for a stir fried meal for two with added lemon, onions, garlic, mint vinegar and purslane. A simple salad of rainbow chard with a dressing of rapeseed oil and blackberry vinegar and melted Stinking Bishop cheese to end a week of delicious local and seasonal food for around £30 per person.
I haven’t mentioned it before but our increased use of fruit and vegetables has resulted in lots and lots of peelings. I have been dutifully composting these and this week I dug through the compost container to find to my delight that the bottom of the bin was full of dark compost ready to put on the garden – another benefit of the slow food challenge.
Two items of particular interest in respect of the food we eat this week. The first a report in the Sunday Telegraph last week about farmers being forced to convert their land from food production to other uses in order to stay afloat leaving us to rely more heavily on food from abroad. It a great concern to me that we could let ourselves become so dependent on other countries for our food.
The second is the publication of a new book by Joanna Blythman – “Swallow This: Serving Up The Food Industry’s Darkest Secrets” which contains some shocking but sadly not surprising food facts.
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 thirty-seventh week:
We have been away for most of this week in France and Italy where the weather was mild, sunny and absolutely lovely. During our trip it occurred to me that taking part in the “challenge” and seeking out the local and seasonal foods in other countries makes trips abroad more interesting.
We stayed for several days in Le Broc, a small village in the Alpes Maritimes in the south of France. The road from Nice airport is dominated by an industrial estate with enormous supermarkets with the usual rows of brands and types of foods (amongst many other things including skis!) – all a bit overwhelming for me. To my delight we found a small grocery shop in the centre of the village, which specialises in Italian produce – the Italian border being only 30 minutes away by road. So, very seasonal and very local with especially lovely fresh vegetables and even some honey produced in Le Broc.
We ate out a few times but there was nothing locally to compare to eating and drinking at the homes of our friends in the area. Here are some of the things we had: black olive tapenade; fish soup with rouille and croutons; radishes; oysters and champagne; all kinds of cured sausages and hams; onion and fennel pastries; leek tart; little dishes of local delicacies; lamb chops with herbs, cooked on the barbeque; red wines in the evening and rose wine in the sunshine and, on one occasion, a glass of the famous Tesseron cognac. And the cheeses – French cheeses in France are delicious of course and we tried lots although the very local goat and ewes cheeses are not available until March.
A trip to Ventimiglia, in Italy, was a highlight of our week. There are numerous food and wine shops lining the busy streets, which surround the food market. To have such a place close to home is a delightful dream indeed for me and I confess to feeling envious of the local people. The market is open from 7am until 1pm on weekdays and all day on Saturdays. There is a whole section of homegrown and artisan produce where I bought olive oil and herbs, ravioli with mushrooms, and Pecorino cheese all of outstanding quality and at very reasonable prices. We later enjoyed all these things for our supper with some delicious Italian wine. After the market we visited one of the food shops which had so many lovely things to buy but I settled for some dried figs which I have plans for back at home.
Lunch was at a local restaurant in Ventimiglia– spaghetti vongole and tiramisu. It was a very good finish to our adventure.
Back at home on Friday and the cupboard was bare so I raided our freezer and found some lamb and lentil casserole, carrot soup and sourdough bread to last us until stocking up at the local shops in Barnes and of course the Farmers market for vegetables, fruit and bread. We bought lots of good things as we had visiting friends and family for the weekend: fresh crab with barley and purslane; another Phil Truin chicken; black kale, radishes and red onion; a shoulder of lamb; and lots of other vegetables including fennel, carrots, cauliflower, potatoes and parsnips; parsley, thyme and the usual eating apples, pears and cooking apples.
The British cheese we tried this week is Walsingham, which I used to make cauliflower cheese as it is rather like good cheddar.
My husband has decided to learn to make pasta and so has bought some “oo” flour – I am not sure what has brought this on but I am really hoping he does actually do it.
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 thirtythird week:
The food left from the family gathering at the weekend was put to good use:
I stripped the remaining meat from the enormous Phil Truin chicken and used the bones, and even the skin, some parsley stalks, thyme and black peppercorns, covered the lot with cold water and let it all simmer gently, covered, for two hours. I usually add carrots and or onion or something but the remains of this bird filled my biggest pan and so there was no room! This nevertheless resulted in a very good stock indeed. It seems therefore that good quality bones make good quality stock - I am going to save it for something special.
The enormous liver from the enormous bird was sliced and fried with mushrooms and only a splash of sweet sherry and some salt and pepper added. With some winter purslane stirred through at the end of cooking, piled on to some buttered sourdough toast, it made a special Monday supper.
I used the leftover chicken meat between layers of leftover pureed carrot, leftover bread sauce, leftover gravy and some fresh young spinach leaves for a pie (actually 3 separate pies) topped with potatoes mashed with butter and milk and seasoned with freshly grated nutmeg and a little salt. All this use of leftover food may sound a bit like a “dog’s dinner” but we ate one for supper on Tuesday and it looked and tasted absolutely delicious – equal to a good Shepherd’s pie – possibly better.
There were a few roast potatoes left from the weekend meal too. These were sliced and browned in a pan and then with the addition of beaten eggs, a little salt and the last of the White Lake goat’s cheese provided another delicious omelette.
So, we are continuing to get exceptional value for money as well as the taste benefits from all this high quality food.
On Tuesday I had lunch with Shane Holland, Chairman of Slow London when he introduced me to Terroirs near Trafalgar Square. It is described as a wine bar but also serves delicious and “slow” food. We sampled a range of small dishes; duck rillettes with cornichons, smoked eel with celeriac remoulade, a salad of endive with walnuts and a salad of cavalo nero with anchovy dressing. And to drink, cloudy Prosecco which was particularly good with the food. It was a special lunch and I came away with even more enthusiasm for the “challenge” having had lots of my questions and concerns positively dealt with by Shane.
I had bought some cavalo nero from the farmers market last week and decided to use it for a salad similar to the one we had eaten at Terroirs. I stripped the stalks from the leaves, washed and dried them and tossed them in a dressing of rapeseed oil, wine vinegar and a clove of crushed garlic and added some shavings of some of the Lord of the Hundreds cheese from last week. This was a very good use of the cavalo nero.
A couple of days in Norfolk at the end of the week and I bought more vegetables from a smallholding which has a stall at the side of the road. More cavalo nero (called black kale in Norfolk), Pink Fir Apple potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, leeks, Conference pears, eating apples (Spartan variety) and cooking apples (Howgate Wonder variety).
I used the black kale for another salad but for this one I stripped the washed leaves from the tough stalks, cut the leaves into very fine shreds and tossed them in a dressing of rapeseed oil, blackberry vinegar (made in week 11), mustard and added a few roasted walnuts. We ate this salad with some roast partridges, boiled Pink Fir Apple potatoes with parsley butter, bacon stuffing and bread sauce and it was very much enjoyed by all.
The British cheese we tried this week was Wissington, a Ewe’s milk cheese made in Norfolk. It has a mild flavour and we ate it with soda bread and fig relish, which was a lovely combination.
Other good things this week: Brancaster mussels, pear and almond crumble with chestnut honey, and egg and bacon sandwiches with tomato relish.
An exceptionally good week of food in terms of flavour, economy, quality and enthusiasm for Slow Food.
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 thirtysecond week:
I have been looking more carefully at meat in “slow terms” and was surprised and pleased to learn that lamb raised in Britain is most likely to be a reliable choice. Furthermore, whilst lamb described as “new season” or spring lamb” is moist and succulent, bought later in the year it is likely to have a more distinctive taste. So, I cooked some leg of lamb with lentils, sliced fennel and anchovies for a wholesome and delicious supper.
A sizeable family gathering gave me an excuse to buy a very large Phil Truin chicken (almost 6 kilos!) from J. Seal, our butcher in Barnes. Someone had ordered it for Christmas but failed to collect it so it had been stored in the freezer. Consequently I bought it at a discount. I roasted it and we ate it with some Desire potatoes roasted in goose fat from Christmas, purple sprouting broccoli, bread sauce and gravy using stock made from the giblets. These chickens are delicious and in my view if you want a large bird, preferable to a turkey. I have plans for the remains of this lovely bird.
An omelette made by browning a few previously cooked sliced potatoes in a pan and then adding the beaten eggs seasoned with salt, and some thin slices of the White Lake goat’s cheese from last week. Once the eggs are almost set, finishing it off under the grill. Served in generous slices’ with some dressed young spinach leaves it made an economical but actually rather classy, Saturday lunch.
I bought a horseradish root and used some grated into a dressing of rapeseed oil and blackberry vinegar to flavour a beef stew - one of our sons took most of the stew back to University for a treat and I have frozen the rest for another day. Having looked up uses for horseradish root I decided to peel the remainder and cut it into chunks, covered it with wine vinegar and stored it in a strerilised jar. Apparently, whilst this process will mean the horseradish loses some of its pungent flavour, it will produce delicious and unusual aromatic vinegar.
The British cheese we have tried this week is Lord of the Hundreds, a hard, sheep’s milk cheese with a mild but nutty flavour – it is a favourite of mine.
Other good things have been: some pureed carrots with a little bit of cream; some fresh crab with lemon and nutmeg buttered toast; a delicious kitchen supper at the home of friends; some finely sliced cabbage wilted in butter; some (new to me) winter purslane, bought at the Farmers market. It has a delicious flavour rather like watercress but less fiery.
I have continued to try more British beers, all of which have been excellent. Needless to say I am still very much enjoying the challenge, saving money, avoiding waste, enjoying the health benefits of the “slow food diet” and learning a lot.