The Mann who changed my life

Thomas Mann has a lot to answer for. It was 2001 when I first read any of his work, but in just a few weeks, I’m setting off on a trip that will take me to the beginning of Mann’s own journey.

And it is no coincidence and will be – in part at least – a pilgrimage.

At the beginning of the century, my reintroduction to the one part of my O’ level history studies that I had enjoyed – Bismarck and German unification – had made me realise that I had more than a passing interest in a number of things Germanic, not least classical music.

After reading The Other Half’s copy of Günter Grass’s Tin Drum, I’d been searching for ideas of some other German literature to read, and it was m’friend George who had suggested Buddenbrooks.

I got a copy, read it and loved it. And on the back of that, I bought a volume of short stories that culminated in Death in Venice, which I had at least heard of.

It took me weeks to get through that book, so dense are the stories with ideas: I didn’t want to miss anything. And then Death in Venice itself left me absolutely shellshocked.

I had, for some years, been attempting to write. After that, I couldn’t put one word after another for three months.

It was only when I stood on the windswept Irish shore, desperate to describe to myself the sight of a carpet of pristine sand hovering above the beach itself, that there was an explosion in my mind of language; a tumult that seemed, in the coming days and weeks, to increase my working vocabulary expotentially.

In the face of such writing and such thought, it had felt as though I had nothing to say and no way of saying anything. It was an awed awakening to what literature can do.

It had a meteor-like impact, changing my reading for ever, and changing my own writing too – given that my core idea of what I wanted to write was both shattered and then remade.

In the years since, I’ve increasingly wanted to visit Lübeck, from where Mann himself hailed, and where Buddenbrooks is set.

There’s a museum to Mann and his brother Heinrich in the city – in what was once the home of their grandparents. Günter Grass lives not far away, and there’s a Grass museum too, which includes some of his paintings and sculptures.

There’s far more to Lübeck, though, than the sort of things that, according to one travel guide, can make it seem “terrifyingly cultural” – terrifying to whom?

Those two museums are both high on the agenda, although for a small city state – Lübeck was the ‘queen’ of the Hansa (the Hanseatic League, of which disappointingly little history is available in English), and is a UNESCO world heritage site – there’s a remarkably large amount to see, from galleries, to Gothic churches, to the Rathaus, where the Hanse court sat … well you get the gist.

I am even contemplating going to the Marienkirche, the city’s biggest church, on my Sunday there, to experience something new. Started in 1250 and finished a century later, it’s one of the best examples of Gothic around. And it is now a Lutheran church. I have never experienced a Lutheran service – and apparently it’s got a great organ, so that should make for good music.

There will also be food – and the cuisine of the region will be covered in more detail in future posts.

But in the meantime, preparation. I’m reading Buddenbrooks again – and such swathes of the weekend were invested in using maps and Google satellite to acquaint myself with the layout of the old city that, by Saturday night, I dreamt about walking the route from the railway station to my hotel.

So on the food front, making frikadellen seemed like as good a place to start as any.

Here’s goes my version – after researching a range of recipes.

For two.

Take 250g each or pork and beef mince.

Mix with a heaped teaspoon of dried thyme and a heaped teaspoon of celery salt – the latter is probably the nearest most of us will get to lovage, a herb that’s found quite often in this dish.

Take two banana shallots and dice finely. Mix together with one large egg and a thick slice of stale white bread that's been soaked in water and/or milk.

Allow to rest for half an hour.

Now, mix together into small balls, then flatten slightly.

Melt some lard and fry until each side is browned.

Serve with salted boiled potatoes and some sauerkraut.

It's not bad at all!

Time for a change

Just the thing to lift the tastebuds.

Mid-March, and a change of culinary tune was needed more than ever; something to provide a little zest as the gloom continues, with rain added in for good measure.

Early Saturday morning, pre-market, was invested in swotting both Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook and Elisabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cuisine.

On the one hand, Germany is beckoning loud and clear now. After months of procrastination brought on by both a complex work schedule and underlying panic, the last week has seen bookings finally made. Lübeck, here I come!

My first solo trip outside the UK might have had to wait until my 51st year, but now it is looming, less than a month away.

Of which much more in due course.

In the meantime, back to yesterday morning’s culinary ruminations.

Sheraton’s is a remarkable book, thorough and packed with culinary history. But it's not particularly easy to actually cook from. So for instance, I’ve put off trying frikadellen for ages on the basis that her recipe contains so many ingredients.

I’ve had these little burgers ready-made from Lidl in the past, but really wanted to make my own. A spot of Googling served to reveal that they can be much simpler than something like 18 ingredients.

But that’s for another day.

In the meantime, before the onslaught of Germanophilia, a change was still required. And it came via Luard’s wonderful book.

Like Sheraton, Luard's scholarship is a joy – with the added bonus of a deliciously dry but light writing style. The answer to my need came in the shape of a French classic, chicken and 40 cloves of garlic.

Now if you don't like or aren't used to garlic, that's going to sound like a vast amount, but long, slow cooking makes it beautifully soft and sweet.

It's an easy dish.

Take your cloves of garlic – it's about three large bulbs – but don't peel them. Pop them in the bottom of a good, solid cooking pot and add about half a wine glass of olive oil.

Ready for the oven.

Take your bird and wipe it inside. Season and place on top of the garlic before adding more oil 7 the same amount again – on top of the bird. Just olive oil ordinaire, of course - not virgin.

Pop a lid on and, if it isn't a really good tight fit, Luard suggests sealing the pot with flour and water paste. I used my Le Creuset, with a sort of cartouche of foil over the top before the lid was placed on top.

And then it's into the oven at 170˚C (fan) for half an hour before the heat is turned down to 160˚C for around another 45 minutes.

Luard suggests serving it with toasted slices of bread, onto which you can then squeeze the garlic.

Unfortunately, I have a combination oven and grill, and there is no toaster in the place, but a sliced, decent-quality baguette is perfectly good.

And it was served with a salad of frisée lettuce, endive and watercress, with a dressing of white wine vinegar, olive oil, seasoning and grain mustard.

The chicken skin doesn't brown, but in this case, no matter: the meat is moist and wonderfully tender.

And given that there were just the two of us, there was plenty left over. My lunch tomorrow will involve some of the meat, plus a dressing made from the jelly that was left over, reduced and then whisked with the juice of half an orange.

For a jaded appetite in need of a lift, it was the perfect thing – not least the salad: how do I forget that salad is not just a summer thing?

Then today, I roasted a rolled and boned piece of pork shoulder.

The oven was set for 180˚C (fan). Sage leaves were pressed into the rolled meat and the scored skin rubbed well with coarse salt.

It had half an hour at that temperature, before the oven was turned down to 160˚C, a little boiling water added to the dish, and a peeled, cored, chunked Bramley apple tossed with liquid and fat, before the meat was put back on top.

It had another 90 minutes like that, with par-boiled spuds tossed in melted lard and popped in alongside after an hour.

On the side, tender stem broccoli.

Apart from sausages and mince and the very occasional gammon steak, I tend to avoid pork; fear, mostly: getting it too dry can be an issue after all.

But this worked well, was tasty and well cooked, not dry but with crispy skin – and like yesterday's chicken was a welcome change from a diet that seems to have been largely the same, week after week, as the second half of winter has dragged on.

And of course, could there be anything much more German than a bit of pig? Well, I'm going to start exploring that cuisine a little in the coming days.

Kitchen sink drama – part 2

Okay – who has been paying attention? Some of you may remember my interview with Leeds artist Gary Kitchen last year.

Now as is undoubtedly clear from that, both The Other Half and I like Gary's work. And when I wrote that piece, we already had two paintings on our walls.

Well, a third has now arrived.

Because, as a birthday present for The Other Half, I commissioned Gary to paint Wheldon Road – or The Jungle, if you're feeling rather more modern – the home of Rugby League's Castleford Tigers.

The thing is, the Tigers are, in the next few years, either going to leave Wheldon Road for a new home altogether, or going to see Wheldon Road rather drastically redeveloped.

So it struck me that I wanted to find a way, for The Other Half, of preserving it as it is – he has already bought a brick, which will have his name on, for either form of development.

He was – thankfully – happy.

Not that that prevented him from pointing out that Gary – himself a Leeds Rhinos fan – had painted the stadium from an away fan's perspective and that the absence of players was probably because the last time Leeds visited, they were defeated.

But he was rather pleased with it.

There is (remarkably enough) space in our office for this – it's not small.

But I love the way that Gary chose to show the ground under floodlights – and he's captured the light wonderfully – and without players. So before or after a match.

Do check out Gary's website and blog – he does, for instance, do some amazingly good dog portraits for any of you out there who are dog people.

It's been a fascinating process being a commissioner and discussing the piece with him – I'm delighted. I think that he's caught something rather special.

But I really do recommend his work heartily.

Go and look at his website. It's got loads of good stuff.

Here and here.

The price of everything and the value of nothing?

Shouldn't that sky signal good weather?

A few days ago, The Other Half joshed that any harvest from the potager this year will prove to be the most expensive vegetables in history.

Eee. You can tek the boy outta Yorkshire …

It’s tempting to open a log of exactly what is being spent and when. And then, presumably, all produce could be weighed as it is harvested and costed against, say, top-end, organic, ‘flavoursome’ supermarket prices.

But although I almost got as far as creating a new Excel spreadsheet, I stopped myself in time. Phew!

To do that would be to fall into a trap. Which is not to say that it isn’t an interesting question.

I’m fortunate enough not to have had to count the pennies that have been ploughed into both the patio and the potager thus far.

Some of it – such as the initial clearance of the patio a year ago last November – needed to be spent simply in order to make the place reasonably tidy. Indeed, the whole process didn’t start with my having any plans beyond a few pots for herbs.

And maybe a tomato or two, a few chillies and strawberries, and some more decorative additions.

I hold my hands up to one or two indulgences – the Burgon and Ball greenhouse tidy and the seed tin are a bit like designer handbags for gardeners. It could have been done much cheaper, but even I have my girly moments.

Having said that, it’s been astonishing to discover that there are entire ranges of pastel gardening attire for women – but I shall be remaining proudly scruffy. In the last week or so, indeed, my ancient, baggy cotton roll neck sweater, which was on its way to the bin, has found a new lease of life as perfect gear for pottering around outside in rather nippy conditions.

So there’s little likelihood of my prancing around in floral pink, à la Margot Leadbetter. Actually, there’s less than little – there’s none.

But the bulk of the expenditure has been invested straight into growing, and largely into food production.

Compost, the growhouse and good tools have been this year’s big buys. Only the other day I saw a tweet from Monty Don with a picture of the new garden that he’s working on.

Did I mention peas, beans and radishes?

It sent me into raptures – not simply because it looked enchanting, but because the state of my soil looks not far removed from the bare, unplanted areas in the picture. Which I am taking to mean that, gradually, I am meaningfully improving the texture beyond the claggy clay that, while rich with worms, was insanely dense, particularly when wet.

I arguably made errors with buying trays and pots and propagators, but this is a learning curve and that will mean mistakes.

The point though, is that the money is an investment.

Already, I have 10 (out of 10!) peas growing in a propagator in the growhouse – you may have realised already that I am absurdly proud of this.

That, plus five out of five broad beans and even – whisper it quietly and with fingers crossed – one runner bean slowly emerging into light. There are plenty of radishes too and even – finally – a first hint of a spring onion.

And all this while the weather resolutely remains ‘changeable’: London saw intermittent flurries of snow on Monday and, while yesterday was much brighter, the fearsome wind might have been blasting straight in from the Russian steppe. Today, we managed a crazy mixture of snow, sleet and hail at one point.

But unlike last year, there is a plan – and it is not to have a few vegetables, but to have as many as possible.

March marks the first anniversary of my gardening project. This time last year we had a week-long heatwave, during which I basked outside in a sleeveless t-shirt, potting away like nobody’s business and starting a tan.

And then, when I’d pretty much filled the available space, I realised that it wasn’t enough: I wanted more.

It wasn’t until May that I placed my first order for seeds to sow in the first small bit of carpark flower bed that I had cleared – and those were selected almost entirely on the basis of what could still be planted at that time of year, with an expectation of harvest before the growing season ended.

The damp and gloomy summer intervened to drastically reduce crops – and I never tried any successional sowings – but the bug had bitten. And the more I do, the more I get a great sense of wellbeing from doing it, together with a great sense of achievement when anything actually works.

Have I mentioned my baby peas?

So how do you calculate the worth of that? Or of the exercise I get while doing this stuff – it’s cheaper than gym fees!

But the most crucial matter has been that of taste.

Otto exploring the potager.

Chives first: not a herb I have use a great deal, but when I have, it costs 80p to a pound for far more than you need and will use. So planting some in a small pot seemed sensible.

The first time I snipped off a few green stalks, I blended them into butter to serve with some fish. This was the first taste revelation.

The sorrel too, with its powers of recovery, was another real discovery – wonderful shredded in an omelette.

But the next real taste revelation came as the strawberries ripened.

The tomatoes were not such a shock to the system, as we’d learned what good tomatoes can taste like from the market in Collioure.

But the runner beans – crisp and with a precise ‘snap’ – were another taste revelation.

And at the end of my limited growing season, when in complete defiance both of the persistent gloom and the seed packet notes on how long they would take to grow, I was finally able to harvest a handful of small turnips.

The taste … oh my, the taste!

So the ultimate reason, the one big reason that draws me on, is taste and knowing that, even as a complete ingénue in cultivational terms, is that I can grow food that tastes better than anything that I could hope to buy in a supermarket and even than much of what I can buy anywhere, if for no other reason than that it is fresh, fresh, fresh.

And the value of that freshness to taste simply cannot be overstated.

Increasingly, there is another motive too – and that is the desire to have increased control over my food in the sense of how it is grown – whether pesticides and assorted chemicals are used and are then passed on to me, for instance.

With that comes a feeling that it is good to grow in a way that does no harm to the environment – and perhaps even benefits it.

If nothing else, that very freshness means a lower carbon footprint.

There are still things that I will be buying in the coming weeks – the biggest strawberry planter that I can get my hands on for starters, plus I’m working out the feasibility of a compost bin, since there is only very limited room. This too would save money and cut waste even further.

The cost question is a useful exercise – not least because it does offer the opportunity to rethink how much you spend on food and how much is wasted – see that packet of shop-bought chives.

And if we could measure taste on a scale of some sort and then factor that into the equation, I’d be prepared to wager that my gardening exploits will be saving money by next year at the latest.

Garden firsts and squidgy cakes

Coral spot.

Life as an apprentice gardener is full of little firsts. Having 10 out of 10 peas germinate in my growhouse is the sort of first that leaves you bursting with pride (albeit having done little more than offer nature a helping hand).

Correctly diagnosing a garden problem, followed by taking appropriate action, leaves an entirely different feeling.

There have been three bushes of pyracantha in the garden for years and, when we finally got around to having the entire area paved a year last November, these were cut back and the slabs arranged around them.

The amount they grew last year was just one of a series of lessons in how resilient plants are. You may think that you, the snails or the weather have killed something off, but give it time and there is every chance that it will come back.

Last year alone we seemed to witness more revivals than Billy Graham.

But back to the pyracantha – or firethorn as it sometimes known. It was one of the first things we planted, years ago when we moved in and the garden was just a few flags in a square outside the door, and a small ‘L’ of rather poor and uneven grass with a plain, light wood fence to keep the rest of the world out.

It was one of the first things into our small patch after an early attempted break in at the back. The flats were new and, in an area that still had some years to go before the trendiness only then starting to Hoxton would move further east, must have looked pretty damned posh, even though it was a housing association build.

It provides all-year-round greenery – and wonderfully sharp thorns.

There are nice berries for the birds in the autumn and winter – although our three bushes, theoretically producing different colours, only ever actually seem to manage red.

However, one of the bushes, after serious cutting back, has seen one thick trunk die off. And that, together with a little of the joined trunk, had pinky orange spots on it.

Anyway, that’s why there’s a Royal Horticultural Society book on Pests and Diseases on the shelf, for precisely such cases.

It turned out to be a case of coral spot – nectria cinnabarina – which can infect parts of dead trees and shrubs.

Treatment is pruning carefully and possible wound sealant to stop the infection getting in again.

Down on Columbia Road, Les explained that such sealants are usually bitumen-based. But my idea of using melted wax met with approval.

Here’s a thing: you don’t get to go to B&Q and get this sort of conversation. Don’t just cultivate your garden, but your local suppliers too, wherever possible.

Back at the ranch, The Other Half removed the infected parts and then dripped wax over the fresh-cut wood, as a hint of sleet filled the air.

Hopefully, that will do the job.

Not that it was all that needed doing this morning. I’d dug more of the compost in yesterday, finally seeing something that looks like a much more mixed, lighter soil.

But while I’d been doing that, I’d noticed just how many weeds were showing their faces in the rest of the patch that is marked out for communal decking.

If I don’t do anything, they’ll be in my bit before you can say Charlie Dimmock.

Once I was out there with the Dutch hoe, in community-minded mode, I gave Michael’s bare bed a few minutes of attention too, as there were weeds sprouting where he’d cleared away another dying bush, ready to take flowers this year.

So far this year, I’m the only one doing any actual gardening, but I suspect that won’t last, once the weather is a little more consistently warmer and brighter. If …

After that, my hands – even having worn gloves – were frozen. The wind was biting.

And so to the remains of yesterday’s Westmorland farmhouse pie – topped with freshly-rolled pastry from the leftover dough.

Perfect fodder for such a day.

One of the joys of having cupboards that seem to be bursting at the seams is that on the sort of day when it’s cold and grim outside, and you suddenly fancy a cake, it’s not usually too difficult to find enough ingredients in the kitchen.

Having spent such a busy morning, I fancied dipping once more into Recipes of Lakeland as the day got progressively colder and greyer.

There are cakes and fruit breads and biscuits galore in its pages – the only shame being that all those readers who contributed recipes are not themselves credited.

Not very elegant, but plenty of taste.

In his thoroughly enjoyable Eating for England, Nigel Slater notes the extraordinary regional variety of such cakes and observes that, although English cakes lack the elegance and finesse of a Madeleine, they have “a certain wobbly charm to them” and a “lick-your-fingers stickiness”.

Dalton gingerbread seemed likely to fall into exactly that category.

Three cups plain flour,” says the recipe, to be rubbed into “¼lb lard”. This is the juncture at which I admit southern jessiedom.

Much as I have learned, in the last couple of years, to love lard – and dripping – using it in a cake is a step too far. So, butter instead.

And to translate everything into modern money, that’s 450g plain flour and 225g butter.

Once you’ve beaten those together – in a mixer in my case: all the bodybuilding of my younger years still hasn’t equipped me with a country housewife’s forearms – before adding 150g sugar (I used a soft demerara) a pinch of salt, two teaspoons of ground ginger and last, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder.

Into that, mix 150g of melted dark treacle: for some reason or other, lost in the mists of time, there was a jar of organic stuff in the cupboard, unopened.

Then, dissolve a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into 150g of boiling water – and stir that into the mixture.

Decant everything into “a deep roasting tin” and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.

The tin in my case was my largest enamel pie dish, buttered. The oven was set at 150˚C (fan).

I tested with a skewer after 30 minutes – and gave it another 10.

This is not a thing of beauty. It is not elegant. It lacks any finesse; although it came clean away from the dish easily, it crumbles even more easily.

But it is crisp on the outside, squidgy and sticky inside; dense and rich and yet not heavy; gloriously aromatic and, tasted together with a bit of Stilton (Lancashire or Cheshire would also work well) it is a thing of warming, comforting pleasure.

A pie from the past

The week just ending has, apparently, been British Pie Week. It’s difficult to know just who declares such things – whereas it’s also been National Butcher’s Week, but that’s rather clearly industry-related.

The only proper-looking website for pie week revealed that it was all the idea of Jus-rol pastry, which is one of the brands owned by General Mills, itself one of the world’s largest food companies, so on that basis, I decided against making much of it.

But then something else happened.

Some time ago, out of curiosity and a certain sentiment, I bought a copy of Recipes of Lakeland, which was complied by readers of Cumbria and published in 1966.

It’s an intriguing record in its own right, illustrated with idealised black and white photographs from the area.

It’s very easy to view Lakeland through the haze of Wordsworthian daffodils and chocolate boxes, as an eternally picturesque part of the country.

But it’s also a hard place – the fells are not the easiest farming country and the eastern fells of the Eden Valley perhaps even less so. For instance, it doesn’t get much bleaker than Shap Fell – yet my parents knew people who farmed even up there.

Browsing that booklet again a few days ago in a mood of nostalgia, I had been looking at the vast array of biscuits and breads and cakes when I spotted something called a Westmorland farmhouse pie, and the germ of an idea took root.

The recipe itself is scant in detail. Diced mutton, beef and bacon are layered in an earthenware pot on top of sliced potatoes and followed by layers of onion and carrot in between. It’s finished with a further layer of potato.

The ratio of potato to meat is approximately two to one, but it's not really the sort of dish where you need to worry about measuring things.

Water is added to cover, the lid is popped on and it goes into a slow oven for two and a quarter hours. Then a pastry top is added and it has another 45 minutes.

A pretty picture and plenty of puddings.

Voila.

The recipe doesn’t say what sort of pastry.

I don’t remember eating anything like this when we were staying on farms in later years – I have abiding memories of all the family where we stayed, plus us, sitting around the vast, old table in the dining room next to the kitchen; a room with a sort of ancient, dark wood dresser built into one entire wall, full of small, square cupboards.

And I remember having tea with cold meats and Cadbury’s miniature chocolate rolls, and I remember hams.

Nothing like the farmhouse pie features in those memories, but I had a hunch that this was a dish for the end of winter, when supplies were running thin. And a little research supported this – not with any mention of the dish itself, but noting that those meats would have been dried to preserve them through the harsh fell winter.

The right pot for the job.

There were always going to be limits to just how authentique it could be – not least because I wasn’t going to be using leftover mean that had been preserved for the winter.

Question one was the dish: I have an earthenware one – but it’s rather deep to make this for just two people and be able to put a pastry lid on.

The best option seemed to be one of my enamel pie dishes, which would then tightly ‘lidded’ with foil for the first stage of cooking.

And finally – what pastry?

The obvious would be shortcrust, but I did consider trying my hand at puff pastry before settling for a really flaky short made with lard.

It’s a dish that reminds me of Lancashire hot pot, with its layers of meat and vegetables, topped off with potato.

On Broadway Market early this morning, before many stallholders had even got their produce ready, I was delighted to find that Matthew had a little mutton – already diced: we were on.

In the end, with the amounts I had (approximately 400g beef and 200g mutton, plus two rashers of unsmoked back bacon), I plumped for that earthenware, half-glazed pot – a lovely worn, old one, made in France originally and a house-warming present from the days before I was really interested in cooking.

First layer of potato with some of the meats and thyme.

It has, in the years since, been used for more than one Lancashire hot pot, and although it made the pastry lid a tad awkward – that had to be fitted inside the pot – it was the best choice from a practical point of view because of diameter and depth, while it even leant aesthetics to the business, its very sense of age seeming perfect for this culinary dip into the past.

So, the base was lined with a sliced potato, followed by a layer of mixed, diced meats, then onion, carrot and celery (another slight change) and more meats, before the final potato.

Seasoning was salt, plenty of ground black pepper and dried thyme, added as the dish was built up.

Water was added – but not to cover, only up about three quarters of the way; also reminiscent of how I've learnt to cook a hot pot.

The oven was heated to 140˚C (fan) and the lidded pot placed inside.

It got two and a half hours to start before I added a shortcrust top – 150g plain flour mixed with 75g lard, a pinch of salt and cold water to bring it together.

The temperature of the oven was raised to 180˚C (fan) for a final half an hour with the pastry but no lid.

It could have done with more salt – I’d been particularly cautious about that, given the bacon – but let's face it, it's easier to add salt than take away.

Otherwise it was a success, with enough to feed two of us twice – it'll be reheated tomorrow for lunch, with a fresh pastry top made from the remaining dough.

This is the sort of food that wins brownie points just for the glorious smells that gently fill the house as its cooking; the sort of smell that makes a house a home.

And if the combination of meats and vegetables seems a little clichéd, that’s because it works well.

This was hearty food – and is very much a dish that, having been discovered, will be made again.

How much horse would you like with that, Sir?

They didn't really do that, did they?

If it seems as though the horsemeat farce has been shunted onto the back boiler in recent days, don’t worry – this really is a gift horse that keeps on giving.

The latest presents come in the form of two quite extraordinary developments involving the Food Standards Agency (FSA), and seem to have largely slipped under the radar.

I attempt to correct that here – a bit at least.

If we examine these gifts, they appear to suggest that we should not expect very high standards in the food industry.

Let's have a look.

First, public service trade union UNISON (which organises in the meat hygiene sector) spotted that the FSA was involved in a presentation to explore ways to ‘tackle the burden’ of EU legislation.

Because the problem is regulatory legislation. Obviously.

February’s presentation, on ‘how to get what you want in EU negotiations’, from the Better Regulation Executive Europe Team, was set up to address the FSA on ‘how departments can influence EU legislation’, and discuss how they can ‘support the FSA to minimise the burdens of EU legislation’.

As UNISON national officer Ben Priestley put it: “Regulation is not a burden – it is there to protect the consumer, and to keep the public safe.”

A few months ago, while spending a day with trading standards officers in Northampton, a local businessman (who is also a local Conservative councillor) told me in completely uncertain terms that trading standards is a valuable service in protecting both customer and business.

In other words, regulation is beneficial – not a 'burden'.

However, as UNISON points out, in terms of the food industry, light-touch regulation has persisted since the mid-2000s and is a substantial part of the problem.

The union wants to see:

• the reintroduction of daily official inspections of all licensed meat cutting plants and cold storage;

• the testing of horses killed in the UK for the drug Bute, and for the parasite Trichinella Spiralis, which can cause problems for humans;

• a permanent move away from ‘light-touch regulation’, including the inspection of food manufacturing premises.

The next gem from the FSA was revealed in the Telegraph, which noted that the agency is preparing to ask consumers how much horse is acceptable in their spag bol.

FSA chief executive Catherine Brown reported that the agency had found 20 UK food products that were affected by “gross contamination” with horse.

However, she also told the Telegraph that there were lots of other examples of “trace contamination”, where very small amounts of horse or pork have been found in beef products.

She went on to say that such contaminations can occur in a processing plant dealing with more than one species, even if there is “thorough cleaning and good hygiene practice”.

On the surface, this is a classic facepalm moment. The answer surely has to be that 0% horse (or any other meat) is acceptable in a product that is supposed to be, for instance, 100% beef.

It seems batty to even consider asking such a question.

But what it’s actually admitting is that because big food has been caught out with the horsemeat scandal, it's now having to 'fess up to the fact that contamination at a low level is unavoidable simply because of the processes and scale involved in the industrial production of food products.

How many times have you seen, on packaging, warnings along the lines that ‘this product may contain traces of nuts’?

Now, let's say it’s a ham sandwich with some spread and a sprig or two of rocket, all jammed between two slices of white bread. Where would the nut feature?

The cross contamination occurs because foods like this are made in such vast factories, which make such a large range of products, with such a large range of ingredients, that it is impossible to ensure that there is no contamination.

And that is what the FSA is acknowledging.

Now in the case of contamination by nuts (or a variety of other items) the package declares, this both as a warning to anyone with a nut allergy – and also, therefore, as cover for the manufacturer.

Yet it’s taken until now for it to become so clear that even if you thoroughly read the list of ingredients on a packet, that doesn’t mean that you can consider that you know everything that is in that product.

And the fact that this involves horse (and pork in beef products) gives it the added dimension of offending cultural sensibilities – horses as pets – and also religious ones.

What the FSA is now doing, though, is fighting not for the consumer, but for Big Food: on the one hand, creating space for a dialogue about how regulation can be mitigated and, on the other, trying to convince the public – in a massively cack-handed manner – that it cannot expect to buy processed food where it is 100% sure of the content.

It’s the same in other areas of life too (see the pharmaceutical industry), but this is just one more illustration of how we need regulation that, when it says it is 100% independent doesn't turn out to be contaminated by even 1% of conflicting interests.

And it's also yet another illustration – were one actually necessary – of why, if you can, shopping from proper, local, independent shops or from farmers, gives you a far greater chance of not getting some unexpected extra ingredients in your food.