Lighter food for lighter, brighter days

Fresh and light and satisfying

With the improving weather – thank goodness we’re actually having a spring this year! – comes the desire to eat differently; lighter.

And it’s also the perfect time to try a few new things.

There have even been days, with real sun streaming down, when it was the perfect opportunity to pull out the salad spinner and rinse off some organic lettuce and winter purslane, and serve a huge plate of both, drizzled with virgin oil and a thinner balsamico, and topped with cheese.

Blue cheese suits such a dish perfectly, but in La Bouche earlier recently, I’d tried one that was new to me.

Beenliegh is an unpressed, soft blue from Devon, made from organic, unpasturised ewe’s milk. It’s creamy and moist, and beautifully fresh and subtle.

Get the right ingredients sourced and food doesn’t have to be complex to be very good.

A number of evenings recently have seen a dinner that was, if not a direct recreation, then was certainly inspired by a Jamie Oliver salmon dish that I’ve recently discovered.

He takes halved waxy potatoes and quartered fennel bulbs and boils them for six minutes, before draining and drying over the steam.

Salmon with fennel, sweet potato and herbs

Then they go in an oven-proof dish with olive oil, parsley, mint and garlic for something like half an hour, before the salmon – with more of the herby-garlicky mix on it – is placed on top and it goes back in the oven for a further 15 minutes.

It’s a lovely, easy dish, but I think a couple of tweaks help.

Set your oven to 180˚C (fan) and prep the fennel as above, not cutting off the base so that the pieces hold together. Retain the fronds.

Finely chop your mint, flat leaf parsley and garlic, and mix with plenty of olive oil.

Jamie’s version sprinkles the herbs and garlic over everything and then tops with oil, but I think that my way does two things: allows you to coat the ingredients more thoroughly and also reduces the chances of the garlic getting a tad burned.

So, pop in your fennel pieces and mix, and then add some sweet potato that has been peeled and cut into large chunks, instead of potato.

Gently stir around to coat everything. Season with good quality celery salt (my addition) and pop in the oven.

Lovely wild garlic

After 30 minutes, place your salmon fillets on top of the vegetables, scooping some of the oily, herby, garlicky mix on to the top.

And back it all goes for another 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

Serve with a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some black pepper, and topped with the chopped fennel fronds.

The advantage of swapping the potato for sweet potato is that the latter is a vegetable rather than a starchy carb, so it makes the dish a two-portion one rather than having just a single portion.

Mind, if you use lashing of garlic and herbs, those add up too.

Anyway, it’s easy. And tasty – and healthy.

A couple of stalls on Broadway Market also had wild garlic last week, so I grabbed a good handful of that while the opportunity was there.

The English asparagus is here

Later, the leaves were shredded and blitzed together with some spring onions, chives, garlic, pine nuts, a little salt and a teaspoon of sugar, with enough olive oil to give you a good pesto consistency.

You could add parmesan, but I don’t, since The Other Half doesn’t like cheese.

And an ideal way to use some of this lovely stuff – which keeps well in the fridge in a jar – is to cook some pasta, drain and return to the pan, adding some of the pesto with a little double cream and re-warming gently.

You won’t need to use a lot of the pesto – it packs a serious punch.

Serve with fresh asparagus and peas and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper, and if you want, more parmesan.

A perfect, fresh and seasonal dish for a midweek supper.

And on a final note – and a slightly different one: this is worth reading about the cost of asparagus from Peru.

Ignore the slightly puritanical tone of  “lust for this luxury vegetable” etc, but the point remains that there are severe environmental issues created by a global market for a cheap, seasonal vegetable, sent half way around the world to fill – or create – consumer demand outside our own season.

Wow – someone's discussing food security

Owen Paterson has, rather charmingly, suggested that it would be a really good thing if people bought more British-produced food.

Now it’s not often that I find myself in agreement with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – a man who infamously stated that badgers “moved the goalposts” – but on this matter I am.

Although what he’s asking is rather more difficult than Paterson bimself might realise, for a number of reasons – not least among them, cost.

At a time when increasing numbers of British households are finding it difficult to make ends meet, food is often one area where people feel that they can buy cheaper.

It’s nearly a year ago that the horsemeat scandal broke and one of the points that emerged with some clarity was that the cheaper the meat product, the more likely it was to have been adulterated with something that was never listed on any label.

The consumer needs cheep food and, in order to continue to make profits, the company needs to cut costs as well as the price. Given that there were extensive chains of companies involved in the production of these products – all of whom needed to turn a profit – it can hardly be much of a surprise that someone in that chain decided to cheat.

In early autumn 2012, I spent a day with trading standards in Northamptonshire.

This was an area where the (Conservative) council valued the service provided and was trying to protect it against cuts, but it had already been reduced to a point where much work was being done by phone instead of visits – the logistics of a semi-rural county made many visits too time-consuming.

I was shown around the store of contraband merchandise that had been intercepted and impounded. There was no shortage of tobacco – mostly produced, it was explained to me, in China, and containing … well, just about anything, including floor sweepings.

There’s not a world of difference between that and the horsemeat fiasco.

The level of tax on legal goods such as tobacco is an issue – not least for those on low incomes.

But in the case of fresh food, tax should not have an impact.

There is a culture in the UK of believing that food should be cheap. How anyone expects quality to come at the least possible cost is an interesting question – food viewed simply as fuel, again –  but increasing poverty means that increasing numbers of people have little realistic choice in the matter.

There are also plenty of cases of people who need convenience food because they have no facilities to cook – and of those visiting foodbanks for help who can’t afford the money to fuel a cooker.

In none of these cases is it remotely an option to tell people to ‘buy British’, unless you’re going to be able to guarantee that the Brit option is the cheapest and most readily available.

Then there’s the rise of supermarkets – to the point where they now have 80% plus of the UK grocery retail trade – which is also part of the problem.

The knowledgeable butcher who would supply cheap cuts as well as prime ones, the corner shops and the independent general stores that would stock local produce have, if not entirely disappeared, been hammered into endangered species status.

Many people have also lost the skills required to cook from scratch and therefore the chance to control more of what they eat – and then there’s the related attitude toward shopping; that it’s best avoided as much as possible excepting the once-a-week stock up at some tin box you need a car to visit.

Add to that the damage that has been done to UK farmers and producers by the same supermarket behemoths slashing prices and forcing the cost of those cuts on to farmers and producers.

Joanna Blythman has written much on the subject. If you choose just one of her books to read, then pick Shopped: The shocking power of Britain’s supermarkets.

As I’ve illustrated a few times on here, supermarkets are not as cheap as they might seem – and this is particularly true when it comes to processed foods and ready meals.

Another related problem is the cultural shift in the UK away from seasonality. Both as individual and commercial customers, many Britons now expect strawberries and asparagus in December, for instance.

And the supermarkets, with their global reach and massive financial clout, are only too happy to oblige.

So we have a world in which asparagus sprouts in Peru, where it is draining the water supplies of local communities, and where carnations are grown in Africa and flown to places where people will die without a water-guzzling bloom grown out of its natural season and habitat.

Quinoa, that most hip of foods, grows only in the Andean nations, but export is forcing up the price of what is a staple crop for local people. The export price had risen from $0.80 per kg in 1970 to $3.029 per kg in 2011, according to the UN.

And the UN designated 2013 as International Year of Quinoa in recognition of the Andean peoples that have grown the crop in the past and the present, through “knowledge and practices of living in harmony with nature”, and as an attempt to draw attention to food security issues.

Blythman also puts the sword to the wishy-washy idea that non-indigenous foods grown in the developing world for export is massively good for people in those parts of the world and therefore A Nice Thing.

No – you don’t get to justify munching Peruvian asparagus in January with any such patronising twaddle.

There are things we can’t grow in the UK – cocoa, coffee, lemons for instance. But in the case of the first two, they don’t need to be flown around the world as soon as possible after harvest. And lemons can be imported from our own home continent.

But much of what we import is in order to maintain all-year-round availability of seasonal produce.

On food security, it was also only last year that the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) warned that Britain produces less than two-thirds (62%) of the food that the country consumes, down from 75% in 1991. It called on the government, public and food industry to help.

Perhaps Paterson’s comments are that help?

A couple of years before the last general election, David Cameron told the NFU conference that any future Tory government would help farmers – by advising them on how to set up co-ops.

I don’t know whether this has been forthcoming, but this does seem to be one industry that – badger culling aside – the government is not realistically interested in helping, which is move away from traditional Conservative policy anyway.

Which point leads us to another interesting issue.

One cannot help but wonder how increased farming is going to be affected by the planned opening up much of the British Isles to fracking.

Surveys have shown, for instance, that much of east Lancashire is sitting on huge reserves of underground gas. It’s also farming country, and fracking has form when it comes to problems.

In just the last few days, four states in the US have confirmed water pollution from oil or gas drilling, while increased radiation has also been found in water and blamed on fracking.

This is in direct opposition to the claims of industry and some politicians that there are no dangers and problems hardly ever happen.

Story

Story

Fracking in the Ribble Valley seems like rather risky business – for the environment and for domestic food production. And obviously east Lancashire is not the only area that could be affected.

It’s hardly the actions of a government that is being friendly or helpful to its traditional allies in the rural communities.

So while it’s good to see people actually acknowledging that food security is important and needs tackling, however nice the sentiment, simply asking people to ‘buy British’ is not going to change a single thing – and most certainly not while the issue of low and lowering incomes, and the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ are such major problems for so many.

The offal truth

Lambs' kidneys, cored

With winter coming on, warm, comforting food is a must, and with everyone watching the pennies, anything that helps to keep the bills down is also a bonus.

In which case, it’s well worth considering – or reconsidering – offal.

Cheap, tasty and healthy – what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, offal is one of those things that’s got a bad rap in the last couple of decades or so.

People shrink from the idea of organ meat or don’t know what to do with it.

Well, it’s not that difficult – and it’s not all the stringy liver you might remember from school.

Kidney has a lovely, firm, velvet texture and is wonderful for enriching gravies and sauces. It’s also quite easy to serve dishes whereby you can give the kidney lovers some, bit not anyone who doesn’t like it.

That’s how we do it at Voluptuous Villa, where The Other Half won’t eat offal (unless it’s in haggis), but appreciates the richness that it can add.

And it should go without saying that, in terms of a sustainable philosophy toward farming and eating meat, this is an essential part of the nose-to-tail approach.

So just in time for the weekend, here are a couple of dishes that use kidneys and are prefect for the darkening, cooling days.

First, a couple of notes:

Generally – and particularly if you’re not used to kidney – I’d suggest using lamb’s kidneys, as they’re milder. But it’s up to you.

You’ll possibly need to source them from a proper butcher – supermarkets cannot be relied on to supply them. Some will, some of the time. But in general, they want to sell you prime cuts – not cheap ones.

Now, how it’s done.

You’ll rarely get kidneys covered in fat, but if you do, just peel it off carefully – if you have the time or inclination, you can render that. Waste not and so forth.

Check that the fine membrane covering the kidney is gone – it’s easy to peel off if not.

Then cut the kidney lengthways through the centre – see the picture – with the hole at the top.

From here – providing you’ve got a decent pair of sharp kitchen scissors – it’s plain sailing. With the scissor blades at an angle, gently snip out the ‘core’.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now, the recipes.

Turbigo

Turbigo

Take some lamb’s kidneys and some straightforward pork sausages. I do this for two, with four sausages for The Other Half and two for me, plus four kidneys for me.

Gently melt some butter in a large sauté pan and brown both meats. You don’t want to burn the butter, but don’t worry about the juices coming out of the kidneys. They’re precious.

When the meats are browned, remove to a plate.

If there’s not much butter left, you may need to add some.

Then you want to add some baby onions (peeled) and brown them too.

When they’re brown, add some button mushrooms or, if you can’t get button ones, just halve or quarter some white mushrooms.

Continue the gentle cooking with these.

In the meantime, spoon about a dessertspoon of plain flour into a jug and whisk it into approximately the same amount of sherry.

This is the sort of moment that cheap, sweet sherry was made for.

Add a really generous squeeze of tomato purée and then some stock – beef is probably best, but don’t panic if you only have chicken or vegetable available.

When the vegetables have browned – the butter needs to still be unburnt – pour in the flour-purée-sherry-stock mixture and deglaze.

It will thicken quickly. If it thickens too much, add a little boiling water, but you do not want it watery.

Now season – black pepper only.

At this point, it’s worth tasting, simply to illustrate how bland and boring it is. What’s going to happen is pure culinary alchemy alchemy. The kidney changes everything.

Pop the meats back in – and every last drop of liquid that’s on the plate they’ve been resting on – make sure it’s bubbling, lid and turn down the heat to a gentle simmer.

Now, leave for a good 50 minutes.

After that, smell and then taste. What a difference! Rich and velvety now. You may need to add a pinch of salt – this is the moment.

And when you’ve done that, pop a pan of rice on to boil – it’s the perfect compliment to mop up every last bit of the juices.

Lancashire hot pot

Veg ready for the pot

I’ve been told off including kidneys in this elsewhere, but there are probably as many versions of this classic as there are people who ever cooked it – and while historically it sometimes contained oysters, mine includes kidneys.

Like the turbigo, they add a great deal of richness to a dish that could otherwise be quite bland.

Pre-heat your oven to 160˚C (150˚C for a fan oven).

I tend to use three almost boneless ‘chops’ for two of us, trimming most of the back fat off, but you can also use some neck of lamb (another cheap cut) if you have a friendly butcher who’ll bone it for you.

Take a couple of medium onions, peel and slice. Peel and thickly slice a large carrot.

Melt some lard in a casserole and brown the meats. Remove to a plate.

Add the onion and carrot and soften for a few minutes.

Pop in a bouquet garni (made or the ‘tea bag’ variety), plus the meats and a little seasoning, and gently mix everything together.

Add a small amount of chicken stock – it only needs to come up about a third of the contents.

Peel and thinly slice enough potatoes to cover the dish. Season and dot with butter.

Put in the oven and leave for two hours. Take the lid off and pop it back into the oven for a further 20 minutes or until the potatoes have browned and crisped up.

Serve – with pickled red cabbage, if you want to be really traditional.

The smell as it cooks is divine. The contrasts in textures and the combination of flavours is wonderful. And as with the turbigo, the kidney turns what would otherwise be a fairly generic and light jus to something a lot more special.

Food finds for hot days

Tuna griddled, with salad, samphire and aïoli

Sitting in a cupboard in the kitchen, buried under various odds and ends – including the vast fork and tongs and stuff for outdoor cooking – is a cast iron Typhoon griddle pan.

I can’t remember exactly when we bought it, but it was one of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time purchases from one of the housing stores on Tottenham Court Road.

It was also, as well as my memory is able to recall, either early in my cooking days – or maybe even before them.

You’re not supposed to wash it, but merely to wipe it out and, if necessary, re-season with a dab of oil.

I have rarely used it. In fact, I certainly haven’t used it since we finally got the ceramic hob installed to replace the rusting old ones.

And to be frank, I don’t think I really I’d quite ‘got it’ before then.

So it’s been filling space and gathering dust.

But on Tuesday, a stroll up Broadway Market had produced two small tuna steaks – ideal for this weather – and as I contemplated exactly what I was going to do with them, the griddle pan sprang to mind.

One of the differences, since we bought it, is that I’ve got a little more used to cooking with cast iron – the increase of Le Creuset pots and pans bears testimony to this.

So I knew rather more about what it means to get the thing hot – not rapidly, but over a decent time – and then how it will hold the heat.

So, once heated, the tuna was placed on it for a minute, rotated 90˚ for a further minute and then turned over, and the same process applied.

While the lines were nicely symmetrical, they weren’t perhaps as dark as I’d have hoped for, but the fish itself was beautifully cooked; still moist, which is the difficult bit with tuna; it’s easy to dry out.

It was served with a salad of orange segments and pickled beetroot, a garnish of samphire, and some aïoli – the sort made of just garlic and salt.

You don’t need much salt – that’s the easiest mistake to make. I took a few cloves of quite fresh garlic, minced them and then used the mortar and pestle to blend in a little salt and mix to a paste.

It seems astonishing to realise just how much we are trapped culturally in ways of cooking and eating. As an aside, I’m not sure why it should be so surprising, but it remains so.

It’s obvious that there are reasons that certain types of diet grow up in any country/culture – largely because of climate ands, from that, what grows locally.

But globalisation has had a massive impact on this in the UK, where we no longer have to think just in terms of what is available at any given time of the year.

That, however, has downsides. First, the flavour is never as good if something is flown half way around the world after being picked.

And second, there are a variety of environmental consequences – and this is without mentioning food miles.

Take just three products.

Asparagus grown in Peru for export is using so much water that it is draining wells that are used by local people.

Fine beans grown in Kenya take a staggering four litres of potable water to produce a single fine bean in Kenya, which is quite some cost. Thanks to John Walker for his excellent work on this.

And then there’s quinoa, the ‘miracle grain’ so beloved of trendy eaters. Grown in Peru and Bolivia (experiments to grow it have have, thus far, failed), Joanna Blythman reports that export has pushed up domestic prices to customers in those countries for whom it is a staple of their diet.

None of these are what ‘the global market’ is supposed to do, and all illustrate unintended consequences.

Given the general state of British food, it’s perhaps hardly surprising that:

a) people are out of touch with seasonal eating in this part of the world; and are

b) so ready to look elsewhere.

Add to this, of course, the rise to high levels of dominance of the food chain and grocery retail by a remarkably small number of big businesses, and you have a situation where it can feel difficult to take back control.

Sussex Fish

It’s easier if you have some space to grow some of your own food – even just a few herbs in a window box can make a difference.

It’s easier if you have local, independent shops that sell a variety of quality produce – and it’s helped if those are open at hours that fit in with the standard working day.

This is happening increasingly in the UK, as it does in France – particularly among younger businesses.

It does mean effort on our part – and an element of that comes in investing in the time to think about what we want to eat, and to plan.

But it is also becoming easier as more people create more young food businesses, producing more quality produce, and more markets appear to sell it.

At Borough Market the other day, I found a ‘new’ fish stall – Sussex Fish. They’ve been moved around quite a bit over the three years they’ve been at the market, which is why, on the rare occasions I’m down there, I’ve missed them.

Fresh, lovely fish – and the provenance is clear too. So for instance, the cod that I bought is sustainable, since it comes from the Channel.

This offered a delightful range of fresh fish, but also something as quirky as smoked bass. And why not, indeed?

Discovery of the trip, however, was Cannon & Cannon Fine Foods, with produce artisan British charcuterie, ethically and sustainably produced. Now this is seriously classy food.

Cod, Dorset coppa, lettuce, asparagus and dressing

Some Dorset coppa I bought as part of a three-for-a-tenner deal was utterly delightful, the air-dried pork loin is a joy and there’s still some air-dried venison to come. The company hopes to be launching an online shop soon.

I was served by a charming young man called Fabio, who observed that, as an Italian, he’d been skeptical at first, but was now a firm believer in this excellent British produce.

We’ve always been able to produce good meat; what’s been added in recent years are the skills to make that into fine charcuterie.

One of the specific things that I’d been on the lookout for was late-season asparagus and, sure enough, I found some.

And before leaving the flat, I’d pulled a small jar of chicken stock out of the freezer to defrost.

What I had in mind was a version of a French dish from Rick Stein’s Seafood Odyssey.

First, salt your cod fillet and leave for 20-30 minutes.

Take your stock, add a clove or two of garlic and some tarragon, and reduce.

Strain and allow to cool a little before whisking in olive oil and wine vinegar to taste.

Then pre-heat your grill to high.

Rinse your cod and pat dry. Place on a lightly oiled baking tray and lightly brush the fish with oil. Pop under the grill for approximately 10-12 minutes, until it's golden.

Top the fish with some prosciutto – or in this case, Dorset coppa – and give it another couple of minutes under the grill.

In the meantime, boil some asparagus spears and quarter some lettuces.

Serve the fish, topped with charcuterie, alongside lettuce and asparagus, drizzled with the dressing.

Simple and zingy and fresh. Perfect for these sweltering days.