Forget a sacrificial (British) lamb at Easter

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It seems that most everyone is feeling depressed at the unrelenting tramp tramp of winter, but if you think you have it bad, then spare a thought for the country’s hill farmers, for whom this latest snow is proving fatal to many new-born lambs.

There’s something particularly poignant about that as Easter approaches, given that the most traditional celebratory meal in many western countries is roast lamb.

That’s not just a matter of seasonality (the best lamb you could eat at this time of year would have been born last August), but it has a long religious tradition too.

In Christian terms, the use of ‘lamb of God’ to describe Jesus originates in John’s gospel, where it is credited to John the Baptist.

My school in Manchester, Fairfield High School for Girls, which was linked to the Moravians, had as its badge the lamb of God carrying a vexillum – a well-known motif and the seal of the Moravian church.

It goes far further back than Christianity, though: the paschal lamb, for instance, was one sacrificed and eaten at the Passover.

Although eating lamb at Easter seems a rather odd tradition in terms of Christianity: given that the lamb is a symbol of Christ, it’s a trifle cannibalistic, albeit not nearly as much so as transubstantiation.

Anyway, there have been calls on social media to support our farmers by making sure that any lamb we buy for Easter comes from the UK.

Actually, what would be far better would be to try to buy British throughout the year and not just as a sort of charitable act when headlines raise awareness.

British farming shouldn’t be a sort of charity case.

Agnus dei – lamb of God with vexillum.

There are a number of reasons why supporting our farmers would be positive.

To start with, we need to seriously consider sustainability in terms of the food chain – the first months of this year have surely proved to everyone just what a convoluted food chain means in reality, as the horsemeat scandal proved to have a large reach.

If we buy as locally as we can, we reduce that chain, and in doing that, we reduce the carbon footprint of our food too.

Better yet, if we can possibly buy from farmers’ markets and the like, we help to ensure that the producers get a decent rate for the product – not one that’s been squashed down as low as possible by a big company with the power to do so.

Nor are these the only points. We also need to think seriously about the UK’s food security. We produce a decreasing percentage of our own food, and that’s not good.

Some politicians appear to believe that this is not a problem – we can just fly food in from somewhere or other. So we get asparagus from Peru, which is pretty tasteless to start with – unsurprising, given the distance it has had to come: it’s a vegetable that needs to be eaten as soon as possible after harvesting to be at its best.

But setting aside the question of taste, the mass production of a non-indigenous crop for the foreign market is damaging Peru’s own water supplies, with wells that local communities rely on drying up.

And could anything really be as crazy as carnations grown for the European market – grown in Kenya?

They’re not even easy to grow in the south of Europe because of the vast amounts of water that they need – just think Jean de Florette.

There’s something that’s almost beyond screwed-up about that. After all, nobody needs carnations out of their natural season in this country or anywhere in Europe.

For anyone who thinks that such situations are good for developing world countries, no they’re not – as Joanna Blythman illustrates perfectly in Shopped: The shocking power of Britain’s supermarkets.

And indeed, an article from January by Blythman reveals similar problems with the ever-so-trendy quinoa.

Yet again, it’s a good reason for anyone who likes to think of themselves as a shopper with a conscience to shop as locally as possible and as seasonally as possible.

But back to food security – it has to be a matter of simple logic that we should be producing as much of our food as possible. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that.

And that means remembering who produces out food – and reconnecting with them.

Personally, I’m not planning on lamb this weekend – but whatever I do decide to cook, the fresh ingredients will be bought, on Saturday, from farmers and artisanal producers and small, independent suppliers.

And please, if you can, help to support our domestic farming and agriculture. You’ll get a far better product too.

A taste of the south

It's not the obvious souvenir to bring back from a break in Paris, but an hour's wait at Gord de Nord for the Eurostar last week had offered the opportunity for a bit of last-minute shopping and, together with a bottle or perfume, I couldn't resist a book about Provencal cooking.

Lovely to look at and full of mouth-watering ideas (some of which I was already familiar with), it proved a calming read on the journey home from civilisation (which is basically how I always feel on returning from the Continent).

That was Tuesday – and it was followed by three extremely busy days as we turned around a publication and got it out, on time, on Friday. Okay – we always knew that we would, but the timetable still meant that it was a lot of actual work in a short time. I think I designed/set seven pages on Thursday alone.

So finally to Saturday, and time to sit down with the new cookery book as I contemplated the weekend's food.

So many great ideas made it a difficult choice. In the end, my weekend menu saw me poach a bit of salmon on Saturday, served with new potatoes, sautéed baby courgette and freshly made aioli (which is becoming a weekly habit). This was not from any recipe, but I'm always aware that, unless I cook some, The Other Half is unlikely to ensure that he has at least one portion of oily fish a week.

For Sunday, however, it was a dish from the new book: chicken, sautéed in a Provençale style.

Depending on how many you're cooking for: take some chicken pieces (I used four thighs for the two of us), pat them dry and season. Heat some olive oil in a large sauté pan and fry the chicken until golden on the skin side; turn and get it cooked on the flesh side too. Remove to a plate.

Pop in a sliced onion and cook for a minute or two.

Add a good glug (100ml or so) or white or rosé wine. Deglaze.

Add some skinned, deseeded and chopped tomatoes, some black olives, a good squeeze of tomato purée and a bouquet garni – ideally including oregano or marjoram, but I hadn't got any, so used flat leaf parsley, basil, thyme and bay. Cook for a few minutes and then pop the chicken pieces back in. Cover and simmer until the meat is really tender (the book said 10 minutes – 20 was hardly over the top).

Not bad at all. Tasty and pretty healthy too.

In the meantime, I was a little surprised to read Christopher Hirst's A bitter taste in the mouth? The myth of British gastronomy in the Independent.

He makes some valid points, but can he really have forgotten (or perhaps he's not old enough to have experienced) what food was like in the UK back in the 1970s, say?

In terms of my weekend fodder, I no longer have to go to a supermarket and be surrounded by whole aisles of 'potato snacks', while struggling to find one decent loaf of bread of a tomato that has taste – I can use one of the markets that he mentions: something that has only been available to me in the last six years.

I don't have to use it – it's a choice. Because the presence of such a market hasn't removed choice, but added to it.

Hirst is right – to an extent – to pour some cold water on the sort of claims that the food at such markets is as good as it gets anywhere, but he forgets that this is, to a very large extent, a new and developing world of British foodyism. And while it's difficult to argue that any British artisan baker is as good as their French counterparts, for instance, British cheeses – but mostly not the ones found in supermarkets, wrapped in plastic – are high up there with the best.

S is for Saturday, shopping and stock

It’s a rather sybaritic day, in other words.

As I plod into middle age, it becomes increasingly clear that food is truly one of life’s great pleasures.

Thus my Saturday, as so often, started with a mug of coffee, a few cookery books and paper for the compiling of lists. There are two lists – menus for three days and then the shopping list itself.

It is said that real foodies descend on the market sans such lists: they are prepared for whatever treasures they might unearth, and able instantly to know what they’ll conjure with their finds.

I am nowhere near that experienced or confident: it’s a racing certainty that, if I tried it, I’d forget something important. Like the wine or the crème fraîche – you know. So I sit up in bed with a coffee, browsing my books and making my lists.

For almost five years now, our little corner of Hackney has entertained a farmers’ market. It’s a haven for those who don’t share the rather widespread British belief that the belly is best served by taking a trolley around a supermarket and filling it with a week’s worth of ready-made meals, selections of crisps in perverse ‘favours’ such as Cajun squirrel and builder’s breakfast, and bottles of lemonade that have never been within a million miles of a lemon.

Until the farmer’s market arrived, helping to breathe new life into a street that had been three-quarters derelict for decades, I too had to endure the supermarket trip.

Now, I start by delivering my empty egg boxes back to the farmer I bought eggs from seven days earlier. If I have meat I want from him, I order it then and pick it up on the way back.

The next port of call is Vicki, my fishmonger. She has a small stall, full of wet fish, gleaming and bright on a bed of ice. This is a paradise all of its own – and as near as I get to that list-less shopping. The new-old shopping experience of the market means, today, waiting quite a while as, with consummate skill, she fillets eight herring for the customer in front of me.

The British have forgotten herring. We used to eat it by the ton, but now we neglect it. Unfortunately, The Other Half isn’t a big fan, so I take a nice piece of tuna, which will be poached later in a tomato sauce with garlic, chilli and rosemary. A Spurs fan, she has us all, I suspect, categorised by our interest or otherwise in the game. Mr Herring is a West Ham follower: they discuss the possibility of coach Gianfranco Zola being poached by Chelsea (but not quite as nicely as my tuna). When it’s my turn, we consider Manchester City’s chances this afternoon at Portsmouth.

At a stall that sells Dartmoor beef, the farmer tells me in jovial fashion about dealing with the recent snow.

At the French deli, Stephane updates me on how well the move to their new premises is going.

And as always, I exchange pleasantries with Turkish Tony in the general shop.

This is shopping as it should be: a sociable affair; friendly and not rushed. Food is worth taking time for: producers and shopkeepers worth building relationships with.

Back home, once everything has been unpacked and put away, I roughly chop onion, carrot and celery. Celery is one of the miracles of the market – it comes covered in soil, and it smells and tastes, for goodness sake. Smells and tastes, not of water and insipid nothingness, but of celery – real celery. Peppercorns, bay leaves from the tree in the garden, parsley stalks and crushed garlic cloves go into the pot too, before the water is added. I’m in the mood for more risotto in the coming days, and good stock is essential.

And it’s hardly as though making stock is difficult or expensive. This is another joy – knowing how do make these building bricks, and knowing what a difference they make.

Then it’s time to consider lunch: since we’re doing our own thing, I chop more celery, a couple of shallots, some chilli and some more garlic and sauté them gently in olive oil. Re-hydrated couscous is added, together with a few pine kernels and some raisins. Then the whole mix is seasoned and packed into a halved and cored courgette and a yellow pepper to be baked. How easy is this? Tasty, cheap and healthy too.

Some locals complain about the market. They complain about the £3.50 loaves of bread that have taken on an almost mythical status amongst those who have heard, who have never been but who like to carp.

One day, a neighbour was complaining thus to me in my local pub. Every so often, she went outside for a cigarette (over a fiver for 20), between swigs of an almost-£3-a-pint stout. How odd to think that £3.50 for an organic seven-day sour is considered particularly expensive alongside much more ephemeral pleasures.

But that’s what so many Britons seem to think – that food is merely fuel: it should be cheap as chips, should take as little time as possible to prepare and should be consumed in front of the telly, in a house that doesn't even have a dining table.

For myself, I’ll continue to take my time, to appreciate and learn, thank you. It’s the only properly sybaritic approach.