The Big British Food Map lives!

Sadly this will be the last post (cue lone bugle player) for Eating Albion as this week’s seen me on the road for Channel 4 and the Big British Food Map.

You can see it in action, read all about me, and add places you think are worth visiting right now at www.channel4.com/foodmap. Go on, get stuck in.

I’d just like to thank the people who gave advice and support along the way, and to all those that commented, you know who you are. Many thanks.

An all-day breakfast

Maggie’s very strong tea

W. Somerset Maugham once said, “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.” Well, last Saturday I had three different traditional English breakfasts, all in the name of research for a German pop science show called Galileo. I wonder if Maugham ever followed his own advice to the letter, because if he had, he’d have been reaching for the Rennies by the end like I was…

Maximus Films (the production company) had originally contacted Russell via eggsbaconchipsbeans.com, but he was busy (or more likely didn’t fancy eating three cooked breakfasts in one day) and so kindly passed them onto me. A couple of phone calls and emails and we’re set. At 7:30am on Saturday morning a car pulls up outside my house. In it are production manager Katja (5′11″ of blonde Germanic beauty), cameraman Oliver (cool, calm, collected and designated driver around London streets), and presenter Harro (the joker and my brother in on-screen fry-up eating). They are all such a great bunch of guys and, though it’s a job, it turns out to be really good fun.

The Crew

The idea for the piece was to look at three different aspects of the full English, its history and how it has changed to reflect trends. I came up with the following:

Classic greasy spoon:
First we go to the fantastic Maggie’s in Lewisham. The eponymous Maggie is already dishing out strong tea from a huge pot at 7:50am, with a smile and that general laidback motherly humour that comes from mature Irish ladies. The ‘build your own’ option would have taken too long to explain on camera, so on my recommendation we opt for the bacon, egg, bubble and fried slice. For my money it’s a more traditional, pared-down version of an English breakfast, and it’s more of a British historical story to try and explain what ‘bubble and squeak’ and a ‘fried slice’ is. I’m sure most Germans are only familiar with hash browns and baked beans and other latter-day American additions to festoon the full English.

We do the interior shots first, with me talking Harro through the menu choices. Maggie then brings over a jar of something yellowish, asking “Have you tried Irish sauce?” “No,” I say, intrigued. “Well, try some of that. It’s what we put in it that makes it special,” she says, walking away. I pick up the jar, start unscrewing the lid, and am just telling the guys how it looks like mustard, when a toy snake on a spring flies out of the jar, causing all of us to jump and the other clientele to fall about laughing! We then set up and shoot the exterior shots, the gist of which is that Harro is lost and confused, and I see him and help him around London.

Lovely ladies!

We also take some time to chat to an old Irish gent. Well, actually he starts talking to us, about bacon and how back in Ireland he used to kill the winter pig. He’s that classic old milky-eyed Irish boy you very rarely see these days, except as a cliché in TV shows. Within the space of three minutes he’s rattled off two stories about potatoes, told a rude joke, flirted with Maggie as she went past with the tea and mentioned the Blarney stone. All to the complete uncomprehending bemusement of the Germans.

Cafés like Maggie’s are fantastic, and, sadly, sole-proprietor places like this are a dying breed. They’re the sorts of places that have been serving the community for years, where you’re always assured a friendly welcome and a hot debate about last night’s football with your endless supply of hot strong tea. The food is never going to win a Michelin star, but it’s cheap, filling and good, and I think all the better for it.

On to the next shoot

The organic fry-up:
Next we hop in the car and head up to Marylebone to the Natural Kitchen, with me giving a running monologue about the neighbourhoods we pass through on our way. As we hit the Old Kent Road, I say, “You have Monopoly in Germany, right?” “Yes,”, they reply. “Well, this street’s the crappy cheapest square straight after ‘Go’.”

As you’d expect, the Natural Kitchen is packed with tasty organic, wild and artisan food produce. A friend of a friend, Sander the chef is a Dutchman, and he was taking point for the breakfast prep while I talked Harro though the menu. We opt for the full organic English, which comprises one Cumberland recipe sausage made in the butcher’s downstairs, Berkshire smoked back bacon, and one perfect free-range organic fried egg. There’s also a zingy grilled tomato flavoured with a few dried herbs that give it some oomph, a hand-made hash brown potato cake and some fried mushrooms. It also comes with a nice slice of soda bread toast.

I picked the Natural Kitchen because it, along with many other such cafés and eateries, offers an organic, home- or hand-made version of the full English or classic fry-up, reflecting the change in consumer demand. It cost nearly £8, but the quality shone through in the ingredients. The sausage, for example, even impressed Harro, and the Germans are known to take their sausage very seriously. It’s a solid, meaty fella, as thick as a baby’s arm and highly spiced with seasoning as all good Cumberlands should be.

The Natural Kitchen staff were all smiles and helpful, but the same sadly could not be said about the guy at a nearby table with his yummy mummy wife and kids. He was playing ringtones to his toddler on his phone, and when Katja asked him – extremely nicely – if he could stop while we filmed he said “No. Why don’t you go and film somewhere else?”, although eventually he did shut it off. Coincidentally, I’d already forewarned the crew about the ‘Marylebone set’ – those annoyingly posh, rich, demanding types you see in Waitrose on MBH, dressing down some poor member of staff over some tiny point – and sadly this incident proved me right. The most infuriating thing was, before we’d started filming I’d seen Keith take time to speak to this toddler and give the boy a colouring book – all good customer service. The guy in question had then seen Keith talk to us and help us, so he knew we were there with the management’s full approval. Basically, he deliberately chose to be a rude, arrogant idiot rather than a nice human being. He’s obviously deeply unhappy and unsatisfied with his life despite the money, and can only play with his child by waving a phone playing ringtones at it. Do you know what, I actually felt embarrassed for him.

Anyway, I take the opportunity to do a little bit of shopping in the NK, picking up a nice rack of lamb, some new spuds, and a few baby leeks, and hastily throwing together a random cheese board with the help of Gemma, who’s worked there since day one and still loves it.

The posh fry-up:
Next up was meant to be the Worsley, but they were playing silly buggers with the PR. We thought about the Ritz, Claridges , etc., but in the end we go to Canteen for a posh-style final fry-up (they did win best breakfast 2007 in Restaurant Magazine). Also on the menu are eggs, bacon and bubble, so I suggest we go for that to contrast with Maggie’s. The first and most striking contrast is that it costs three times as much. The bubble is a little bit drier, but you could tell it was home-made, and the cabbage still had a firmish bite to it. The bacon is also different, being streaky and much more crispy.

I sum up the role of the cooked breakfast in British society, explaining that it’s a treat, a luxury, something you either take the time to make yourself or enjoy on holiday, or with a hangover. I then go on to talk about how it’s changed over time to respond to our needs and the supply chain. We end the piece with me looking a proper porker, with Harro jokingly pretending to be beaten back by the might of three full Englishes, whereas I cleared my plate(s). He then declares it a very good breakfast… in moderation.

We shoot some external shots again, and a piece with a taxi zipping us about and us legging it out of the cab — it’ll look great in the edit — and then, after putting the gear back in the car, I take the gang to the NFT bar for a swift half and a sit-down. They offer me a lift home, then they have to drive to Heathrow and catch a plane to Iceland to film the next strange food thing… rotten shark flesh!

I have to say it was the most fun I think I’ve had in ages, but for your safety please leave eating three cooked breakfasts in the space of eight hours to the professionals and possibly dead authors.

Post shoot beers, halves for the Germans, large one for me

Saf Restaurant

 
Wednesday evening saw this carnivore attending a pre-launch event for what the press release described as ‘London’s first fine-dining vegan experience‘. How could I refuse? Saf (meaning ‘pure’ in most near-east languages according to the General Manager) is situated on the faultline between the Square Mile of the city and the cool style of Shoreditch. You can see a sample menu of their Istanbul branch here.

First up, about the premises. A restaurant’s location is the one thing that you cannot change – you can tweak the menu, fire the staff and refresh the decor, but unless you’re running a mobile burger van you lie in the bed you’ve made for yourself. An open kitchen means that head Chef and evangelist for raw food Chad Sarno (also described as “the Michael Jordan of living foods” by actor Woody Harrelson and the Gordon Ramsay of raw food in this lazy snowclone) can shoot the breeze with folk, so I asked him if he thought the location was right. He said yes, explaining that it took 18 months to find the right location, and that the other serious option had been the Notting Hill area. I think the place would have a much more skinny, mumsy feel if had been in Notting Hill, while this place has a more of a health-and-wealth feel.

At the front of the restaurant is the bar, which serves organic and biodynamic wines, beers and some fantastic cocktails. Lush that I am, I like restaurants to have a bar, vegan or otherwise. It creates a more relaxed and buzzy atmosphere, and it’s also good for ‘would you like a drink at the bar while we prepare your table.’

And so to the food. Well, it was difficult to judge, as Chad was making canapés versions of some of the normal menu. But what I did taste was good; fresh and flavoursome. I asked Chad what he’s most proud of on the menu and his reply was the ‘cheeses.’ Obviously, being vegan, there’s nary a drop of moo juice in the place, so he makes the cheeses from nuts, chopped and pressed and mixed with fermenting cultures. The pine-nut parmesan fizzed on the tongue the way a good parmesan should, and had a similar hit of saltiness, yet at the same time managed to taste of nuts and nothing like cheese. Other things of note for me were the mushroom dumplings, while the cheesecake was a winner and the raw cocoa-covered cherries were fantastic.

Chad Sarno and Peter Melchett

The Soil Association was there, and Peter Melchett and the co-hosts of the event made a short speech. He was keen to stress Saf’s three-tier approach to sourcing; organic and local, then just local, then organic if possible. I quizzed Chad over this. For example, where had the seaweed in the sushi maki come from? ‘Oh, Japan,’ he said. I’m guessing there are not many commercial organic nori producers within 50 miles of EC2. 

I rather enjoyed Saf, though I’m neither veggie nor vegan. I think it’s healthy for the plurality of London’s restaurant scene, and it’ll no doubt prove popular with health-mad Hollywood A-listers jetting in after a sell-out gig at the O2. On a personal level, it was good for me to be reminded that you can do some really clever stuff with vegetables, fruits and nuts - if you know what you’re doing.  

The smartest guys in the room

Thursday saw Catherine and I host a Smörgåsbord (as well as a hastily put together cheese board*) of blogging and food-loving folk at C4. Present were Hannah from C4’s editorial partners Zone, Producer Catherine, Walid from Trusted Places, Dr Patrick Fullick, Anthony Silverbrow, Chris from Cheesenbiscuits, Ali from C4, Russell Davis, Chris Heathcote, Seb from London Review of Breakfasts, Louise from C4, Andy Pipes also from C4, and me.

The aim was to show our current thinking, tell people what we’re doing and listen to their feedback. We also wanted to have them help bake the idea a bit, and it gave us a chance to discuss the idea – amongst friends, peers and people we respect – and how we see it working. The final aim was to hear their thoughts on how best to approach other bloggers and interested people and invite them to be part of this.

The recent Next on 4 announcement had a large section devoted to new talent. So that’s not just me (blushes) but other voices being given the space to speak on C4. I think sometimes people confuse new talent with young talent, and perhaps this may be true for the likes of E4, but Channel 4’s actually quite a broad church in its output. And one desired outcome of the Big Food Map is to give space to some new regional voices after I’ve departed. We asked the question, what does that relationship and protocol look like?

So how did it go? Well, I was gulping the red down for dutch courage, and though I’d planned a loose agenda, within three minutes I’d abandoned it. I’m rubbish at presenting, great at talking, fantastic at chatting, excellent at the odd joke or funny story, but presenting… I’m crap. So I just went with the flow, and hoped I was making sense.

And the feedback I’ve had has been positive and supportive. But, and quite rightly, there have also been some thoughts on really nailing what the aims are and how to get that message across better. But that’s all to the good. I didn’t want to present a fait accompli and have it rubber-stamped by the group; I wanted their help in stripping it down, examining it, and helping me put it back together better. To go humbly asking for advice and admitting that we’ve not got all the answers takes courage, and it’s also rare in broadcasting. Finally, I just want to say publicly a big thank-you to all who attended. You’ve given me much food for thought.

*Also a thanks to Sarah B for the gift of the French cheese, which formed the bulk of the cheese board.

The Spice of my life

How was your Easter, then? Spent it with family and friends cooking up tasty dishes and watching family blockbusters from yesteryear on the TV? Well I spent three solid days cleaning, packing and sorting for my move, and, God, it was dull. Now as some of you may know I’ve ‘bet the farm’ on Eating Albion/Channel 4’s Big Food Adventure, and so this weekend I moved out. I never knew I had so much stuff. Eight bags of rubbish, six bags of recycling, and I took so much stuff to the charity shop over the weekend – Cancer Research in Crystal Palace – that the shop began to resemble my house.

Anyway, all that isn’t really about food. What is about food is the the muck-out of the cupboards I found myself doing on Saturday night. Blimey, I never thought it was possible to pack so much stuff into such a small space: vinegars, pickles, sauces, spices, ketchups, herbs. Most of the jars at the back had best-before dates of late 2007. Now, everyone knows that spices are best ground fresh or used as quickly as possible, but unless you eat a lot of curries and such it’s very hard to get through an entire packet of coriander seeds.

Other highlights included an unopened bag of paprika bought exactly two years ago in Budapest, and never used, and a tin of treacle I once bought planning on making some parkin, though I didn’t. On the tin it said discard after expiry, so I did along with all the other stuff. For one moment I contemplated doing a culinary equivalent of George’s Marvellous Medicine and pour, tip and shake everything into a massive bowl to make a ‘MEGA MARINADE’ but it probably would have tasted rank. So it all went down the sink or in the bin and the jars and tubs into the recycling.

I also cleared out the fridge and defrosted the freezer, where I found half a organic chicken I’d forgotten I put in there a few months ago along with the obligatory handful of peas. The peas went in the bin, but the chicken went on to glory as Saturday’s tea in what I’ve just christened…

‘Gipsy Hill Spicy Leftover Moving Soup’

1/2 a free-range organic chicken

1 sweet potato

1 onion

1 carrot

1 parsnip

hand full of chilli flakes and one fresh green chilli

half a star anise

clove or two of garlic

knob of ginger

handful of dried curry and or lime leaves

Method: Break down chicken into leg, breast, and wing, so that it fits in a casserole and cover in boiling water from the kettle - about a pint. Add all the other ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes. Lift out the chicken and set aside to cool. Lift out and discard lime leaves and ginger.

Shred the chicken when it’s cool enough, then blitz the remaining liquid down to a smooth soup with a hand-held blender, adding the chicken after the first couple of pulses. I like to have a smooth spicy base with tiny chunks of chicken in, but you could chop it by hand if you like bigger bits.

I found a packet of instant noodles and thought about adding that, but for me these work best in clear soups rather than opaque smooth ones like this. I was planning to dunk in the last of the sesame seed loaf I’d bought, but on closer inspection it seemed to be ‘on the turn’, so I just had two bowls of the soup instead and threw the bread out. Given that the weather was so poor this weekend, almost winterly in fact, this soup hit the spot with filling root veg and some chilli warmth.

Open letter to food bloggers, food geeks and interesting people

• Got an interest in food and blogging?

• Know clever things about the web, quality editorial, local foods, google maps and stuff?

• Want a free tour of Channel 4’s landmark building and a free beer or two?

This is a sort of open invitation to Chris Heathcote, James Bridle, Seb, (all suggested by Russell, who’s also very welcome to attend) Silverbrow, Chris, Toby, Dan (if he wants to come down to London) and any other food geeks who’d like to to come to Channel 4 and have a look at what we’re doing for when Eating Albion is reborn on to Channel4.com.

Obviously you need an interest some of the following: food, blogging, user-generated stuff, Google API, local produce, maps, etc. Present from C4 will be me, Catherine, Andy Pipes and Hannah. The agenda is pretty loose, but I’ll start by opening the beers and explaining a bit about the history of the idea and where we’re up to now, before hopefully having a lively discussion about it. There’s not a huge number of technical things we can add or develop, so this is more about how we harness the editorial and tech together to create something interesting and worthwhile that lasts beyond the seven-month first phase of this project. We think we’ve a good idea of how that will work, but we’d like to hear what you’ve got to say.

The suggested time and date for this shindig is:

5-7pm (or should we make it 6-8pm?)

on any of the following…

Thursday 27th March
Friday 28th March
Tuesday 1st April
Wednesday 2nd April

@ Channel 4, 124 Horseferry Road

To those name-checked above, please use the comments below or mail me to let me know if you can make it so I can get the best date to suit everyone. To any other interested folk who’d like to attend, mail me a link to your blog so I know you know what you’re talking about. We can only really accommodate 15 on top of the C4 people tops.

My email address is eyedropper .at. mac .dot. com.

Afterward I’ll take you on a tour of the C4 building, including a view of the glass phallus, and then maybe a snifter in the pub for those who want to carry on.

PS: I hope this open invite on the internet doesn’t turn into this. It’d be hard explaining to Uncle Andy why 200+ food bloggers smashed up his lovely TV head offices. Arf!

Eating Albion goes mainstream!

30 minutes, originally uploaded by Simon Davison.

 

A thousand pardons for the lack of updates on EA, but that’s because things are moving apace behind the scenes. I can now reveal that Channel 4 has agreed to publish the project! Suzy in our commercial team has worked hard to secure a sponsor (can’t quite say who that is yet) and the full might of Catherine and the editorial team on the Channel 4 food site has swung into action. So in April this site will pack up and decamp to the lovely shiny 4Food site, where 5 million+ people a week will look at it… gulp!

What’s more, the idea’s grown a bit. The original premise of my monologue as I travel around the UK is still there, but we’ve beefed up the dialogue element – a dialogue with you guys! We’ve been working really hard on making this a bigger proposition, so that I’m guided by the Great British Public as to what’s cool and interesting in your area. I’ve had a few ‘you must drop in on so-and-so if you’re in the area’ comments from both producers and readers, as well as emails inviting me to come and stay places. After all, you know where you live like the back of your hand, right? Well, it’s that local knowledge we’d like to share with the world. So there’ll be the obligatory Google Map mash-up, comments, recipes, stories, tips and advice, all woven into my narrative and hosted along side all the 4Food goodness.

We also want to seek out the little places – the obscure or hard to find – and maybe sometimes we shouldn’t always just go by the number of recommendations a place has. Thirty people may recommend Borough Market, but it’s not exactly terra incognito for anyone with even a passing interest in food. So it’s not just about the farms I’m planning to visit. We’re keen to explore growers, brewers, dairies, vineyards box schemes, producers, manufacturers, bakers, butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, pubs, delis, cafés, and even greasy spoons if there’s a good story there. It’s about the people as much as the food in some cases. As my recent article about my local chippy showed, there are food stories everywhere.

Hopefully the tone will continue to be exploratory and inquisitive, and also have a sense of humour, wit, perception and insight running through it. But I’d like it to contain a few home truths and at times some stark realities. The 4Food readership is one of the most passionate, adult and intelligent out there. The Big Food Fight saw you empowered and keen to explore the issues surrounding food and its production.

It’s in no one’s interest for this to be a bucolic sojourn through a country idyll – if that was my aim, I’d have pitched it to Country Life. That’s not to say that everything has to be confrontational, and there’s definitely room for beauty in this project, but I think it important and healthy for the project to have some teeth and grit and stimulate debate. Channel 4 doesn’t shy away from the issues of the day, so let’s see what’s going on. It’s also my intention to keep in mind my job as narrator of the piece. To this end, though I may put my thoughts across, there must be room and the opportunity to allow different viewpoints, be they from interviewees, the public or users.

Above all, I just want to make something honest, interesting and genuine that I’m proud of, and I need your help to achieve that. As ever, if you’ve any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear them. The first thing we need is a new name, as Eating Albion is a little esoteric. Any suggestions?

For the cook who has everything…

From the Blurb: When all else has failed, succeed with these Onion Goggles, which have a comfortable foam seal that protects ones eyes from irritating onion vapors. Their hip design may result in a few giggles but you’ll have the last laugh. Comes with a storage case to keep goggles clean.

Now I’ve seen it all!

‘Our Daily Bread’ – a film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Last night Producer Catherine and I went to see ‘Our Daily Bread’ at the ICA. Geyrhalter has filled his 92 minutes with ‘somewhere-in-Euroland’ vignettes of food production, from the growing of crops and rearing of animals to their eventual picking, slaughter and processing.

Geyrhalter explains it thus:
“In this film a look behind the structures [of food production] is permitted, time’s provided to take in sounds and images, and it’s possible to think about the world where our basic foodstuffs are produced, which is normally ignored.”

It takes a while to get into the pace of the film, and though it’s bloody and raw in parts, it’s never gory or sensationalist. Yet neither is it a traditional documentary. It’s like a moving Andraias Gurskey or something, and like the processes it shows it’s very mediated and rhythmic in places.

What I liked about the film was that it doesn’t judge. It doesn’t judge the producers, the employees, or ultimately, us the consumers. It just shows you industrial agriculture from around Europe and lets you draw your own conclusions. I know what mine are, but the important thing is that Geyrhalter doesn’t presume to tell us his.

Setting aside ethics for a moment, the design and industrialisation is just incredible. The machine for the evisceration of the farmed salmon is amazing – slit and gutted in less than three seconds by a set of slicers and suckers that wouldn’t look out of place at the end of Edward Scissorhand’s sleeves. We also see a machine for picking up live broiler chickens and putting them into crates unharmed and alive, and who had the job of designing the apparatus for castrating piglets?! Industrialisation, after all, is nothing but the physical manifestation of the thought ‘This is boring – there must be a faster way of doing this!’

Geyrhalter says of the processes:

“Plants and animals are treated just like any other goods, and smooth functioning is extremely important. The most important thing is how the animals can be born, raised and held as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, how to treat them so they’re as fresh and undamaged as possible when they arrive at the slaughterhouse, and that the levels of medications and stress hormones in the meat are below the legal limits. No one thinks about whether they’re happy.”

In one of Geyrhalter’s trademark tracking shots, we see sows unable to stand up in their farrowing cages. They were so cramped that in some cases their swollen udders were forced between the bars of the cage. This system was banned in the UK in 1999. The EU banned tethers from the start of 2006, although stalls will remain legal until 2014. More on farrowing cages here.

Geyrhalter also addresses the workers, most of whom aren’t part of some sinister grey economy, but ordinary and in some cases highly skilled people. They don’t appear to have any issues with the tasks they perform, and to criticise them would be hypocritical. We see them having lunch, taking cigarette breaks, and chatting on the way down the salt mines. These moments come as breaks for the viewer just as much as they do for the worker on camera.

Geyrhalter doesn’t really tell us which country each segment is shot in, “It’s irrelevant for this film whether a company that produces baby chicks is located in Austria, Spain or Poland.” So seeing it from a British point of view, one could be tempted to think that these are ‘Continental’ practices, along with veal crates and foie gras. That would be a mistake on two counts. One, much of the food produced in the UK is grown or raised in the same way, and two, as we saw with the recent Bernard Matthews bird flu scare, a lot of the food we eat in this country comes from Europe.

 

 

 

If you’re interested in food mass production – and you should be because we all eat some of it, after all – try and see this film if you can. It on at the ICA until the weekend. At least watch the trailers and have a root round the website, which is very good. http://www.ourdailybread.at. Here’s the Channel4 review as well.  Also keep an eye out for this ‘Food Design’ by Martin Hablesreiter (and made by the same film Company), which is based on the book of the same name.

Footnote: The ICA was, as ever, full of white kids with wonky haircuts just like it was the first time I went there as an art student in ‘94. With my own wonky hair cut long gone, I still loved it.

Oh, Delia, what can the matter be?

All the noise about Delia Smith’s comeback extravaganza has been like when Dylan went electric – the shock, the horror! Mainstream media highlights include an interview with Lynn Barber in this month’s Observer Food Monthly, a journalist well known for being dropped deep behind ‘party lines’, and she takes no prisoners in this either. I bet you could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a butter knife. Nigel Slater, being a more effete soul, chose to sit on the fence a bit in his leader article. Also, for reasons best known to the Guardian Art Director, the Guardian decided to Photoshop Delia’s face onto Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. Eh?

Anyway, what’s interesting is that Delia’s comments have dealt food media a sucker punch – in short, I think most of them feel betrayed. It’s a case of ‘et tu Brute?’  And this recipe is bordering on food blasphemy. As with the Rt Rvd Rowan Williams’ recent controversial speech, bits of what she said have been broken off and fashioned to fit other people’s agendas and opinions. Some people see it as a voice against the ‘food fascists’, the organic lobby, global warming - such is the modern multi-strata media space.

Delia, by her own admission, says she is ignorant of the politics of food. But oh dear, Delia sweetheart, that’s where the discourse now is! A lot has changed since the late 90s. There’s now a large part of the population that actually do care about how their food is produced and want to know about that, not just how to prepare it and how it ‘looks’. Providence is as important as preparation to swathes of today’s consumers. You can do a small test of this by looking at how many supermarket higher-end brands have a picture of the farmer who (may) have produced the product on the packaging. It may be poorly cooked, but at least it’s poorly cooked Gloucestershire old spot.

David Cameron spoke rather well on the subject of food on Farming Today last week, in a piece that the Radio 4 website soundbited as ‘hug a foodie’. Listen here (towards the end). He even name-checks his local butcher Martin Slater in Chadlington. Natch, being a Westminster man he managed to cover all bases, tickling the foodie trouts, value shoppers, local businesses and supermarkets at the same time. But at least he seemed clued up on the issues and had a genuine passion for well-produced British products and an understanding of what the consumer wants and how what we buy is a statement about our beliefs. Delia, if anything, is a throwback to a time when people were more ignorant of these issues; when it was all Abigail’s Party and the home was an impenetrable fortress unaffected by the outside world.

A foodie friend who I met for dinner last week said, “Have you tried the recipes? They’re awful. It’s not cooking, it’s just assembling your own ready meal from ready-made ingredients at twice the cost of the raw ingredients,” and the shepherd’s pie recipe above bears this out. Look, everyone cheats a bit – shortcuts, tips and tricks and such have been used in cooking since day one – but follow this to the extreme and you could say that even using recipes is cheating because someone’s telling you how to do it rather than finding out for yourself. But I just can’t shake the feeling that Delia’s cheats are somehow more… well, bordering on lazy.

I’ll end with an analogy for the young ‘uns. Most computer games come with cheat codes: infinite ammo, invulnerability, the ability to skip to any level, God mode, etc. From Commodore 64 pokes to Playstation’s secret combos, you can always cheat. The point is, if you’ve ever played a computer game with all the cheats on, it’s the most boring thing in the world. I think the same applies in cooking.

Magic Beans and Hey Prezzo!

There are two snippets in this week’s Restaurant magazine business section talking about the fortunes of The Food & Drink Group and Prezzo. The former owns Henry J Bean’s and the Jamies Bar chain, and has announced a rise in turnover of 2.4% to £20.8m. In the second half of the financial year the company acquired seven properties from The Puzzle Pub Co., three of which it disposed of. The latter, on the other hand, has announced a “softening in consumer spending” in November, which it expects to result in lower-than-expected profits.

Why are these facts interesting? Well, as well as giving us a snapshot of the cut-throat nature of the casual dining sector (which is where most people in the UK eat), it also might explain the transformation last year of Crystal Palace’s very own troubled Puzzle Pub into Shecky’s Chicken Shack and then into a Prezzo. Crystal Palace already has a much-loved traditional trattoria in the form of Lorenzo’s. It also has an Il Ponte, another pizza-pasta joint, as well as a PizzaExpress. So a fourth one is asking a lot of our Italian-loving residents.

Furthermore, if indeed the old Puzzle Pub was one of those released by the Food and Drink group, I think they missed a trick. I’m sure they did their research, but there’s nothing like that in Crystal Palace. You can throw a stick and hit half a dozen Thai places, and Indian’s gone regional with Nepalese alongside more traditional Indian offerings. Joanna’s has got the classy modern European covered and there’s Mediterranean, tapas and Portuguese. It’s also worth noting that both McDonald’s and Pizza Hut both closed in CP last year.

So Crystal Palace has a thriving restaurant scene that punches well above its weight for the size of the area it covers. Yet the burger/diner market remains unchallenged. Granted, the trappings of Uncle Sam aren’t now considered as cool as they were in 1985 when Henry J Bean’s started on the Kings Road, but everyone at some point fancies a decent burger, right? Especially post-Maccy D’s generation 17-25-year-olds with cash to spend and no babysitter to arrange. All they’d have to do was turn down the Americana and big up the burgers, as Gourmet Burger Kitchen and new boy Byron’s have done. For a lot of people the burger remains a popular mid-week treat food format, so Lord knows why Prezzo went ahead last year with a massive refit to Italian when they knew they’d be up against three well-established competitors. Mind you, the page on their website that lists the company’s directors does a 404, which speaks volumes.

62 days to go…

Just worked out that there’s only 62 days to go until I hit the road… gulp! 

From and including: Sunday, February 17, 2008To, but not including : Saturday, April 19, 2008

Or 2 months, 2 days

• 5,356,800 seconds
• 89,280 minutes
• 1488 hours
• 8 weeks (rounded down)

 

the size and shape of this project.

With apologies to Max Gogarty, medialand’s most short lived and most despised blogger – poor chap.

Hello. I’m Andrew Webb, I’m 32 and live on top of a hill in south London.

At the minute, I occasionally eat in restaurants with other hungry time poor people, I’m writing a book, and doing images for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and comfortable practical jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted six-month trip to.. Britain.

I’m kinda sh**ting myself about travelling. Well, not so much the travelling part. It’s Ipswich that scares me. The cold, the roads, the snakebite and black, Australian bar staff. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited. And I just know when I get out of the car and into the maelstrom that is Macclesfield – well, actually, I don’t know how I’ll react.

etc. etc…

So Max got his fingers burned, and the Guardian should know better, but all of this raises the question about just how do you write a successful travel blog? Well you pick something that’s not dishwater dull and write about it in an interesting way for a start.

And how should this project work? I’ve now a sponsor on board – more on that soon – how much of an impact is that going to have?  All I know is I don’t want to make anything like this pile of doggy doo, the Mercedes 2000 project. Hey, where’s the content? Wait, there it is, on a sub page squished right down the bottom.  As for the design, the layout and quality – urgh! I have it on good authority that the people behind this had the audacity to submit it for a new media award.  No what I want this project to be is somthing more like openroad.tv blogs, maps, photos, video, user submissions. wooo moma!  I think Eating Albion is a fantastic idea and I’ve spent months planning and working on. It has cost me a great deal both emotionally and financially and all I want from this project is to produce something of quality that I can be proud of, and enjoy the experience of doing it.   I wonder if Max started out with the same aspirations?

What a tea/dinner/supper*

*delete as appropriate, depending on perceived class status. For me it’s tea.

I’d never boiled a chicken until yesterday. I’d fried, sautéed, wrapped in parma ham and made soups from leftovers, but why boil a whole bird when you can roast it, right? Wrong. I’d got a chicken in for the weekend, but as you found out in yesterday’s post, I ended up having a Christmas Sunday lunch. So, having got home at around 8ish on Monday night with the chicken still in the fridge, I was hungry and wanted something fast. Boiling rather than roasting is quicker due to the direct contact of the hot water. It also gives you a ready-made stock, and that means soup.

Here’s what I did. Kettle on, and whole chicken into my largest stockpot with chunkily chopped-up carrot, celery, and parsnip. To that I added a bay leaf, four cloves of garlic, one segment of star anise, and a few sprigs of parsley, plus a peppercorn. The chicken was cooked in about 30 mins. Just like with roasting, use the juices from around the thigh as a guide to whether it’s cooked through. A word of warning here, though – take great care when lifting it out of the boiling water as it can drop back into the pot easily and splash hot stock everywhere. You might be better chopping it up raw and cooking in sections (this improves speed, too). You can go anywhere from this basic recipe. Add fresh chopped chillies and udon noodles and you’re in the Orient, a handful of pasta takes you to Italy, and the addition of leeks sets you on the high road to Cock-a-leekie.

I added cubed potato chunks to thicken the base, and after the chicken was cooked I let it cool before shredding the breast meat and straining off the root veg. I ate this too, but you can chuck it if you like. Into the still-hot broth I threw the shredded chicken meat and some very finely shredded pointed cabbage and put it back on the boil. Mmmm.

So that was yesterday, and today was the left-over soup. I also had an English Camembert that needed eating up (I ‘ve spoken about the joy that is hot cheese before). So far, so naughty, but the addition of half a head of raw broccoli ought to bump up the goodness value…

This is good for me… honest.

Christmas dinner in February

A last-minute invitation to a Christmas Sunday lunch at the weekend was too intriguing to turn down. Drew and Maggie are friends of my friends Sarah and Thad, and because they were both working over Christmas they missed out on the proper dinner. And so they decided to upgrade their Sunday lunch to a full-on Christmas affair: turkey and all the trimmings, crackers, roasties, Christmas pudding with brandy butter, Stilton, and some nice wines. And here’s the thing… I really enjoyed it. Eating a Christmas dinner without Slade running through your head and on top of the other excesses of the season was an really interesting food experience. When the first mouthful of a boozy Harrods Christmas pudding went in, my taste buds didn’t know what was going on: ‘What? That time of year already?!‘ It helped that it was on a cold Sunday in February, however. I’m not sure it would have worked in August. 

Even when you don’t book, there’s always hope

By rights you shouldn’t be reading this. Because instead of writing this, I should have been snowboarding at Milton Keynes snowdome on Friday afternoon was snowboarding at Milton Keynes snowdome with three friends from work.  We hadn’t booked far enough in advance, so instead Paddy, Lisa, Sarah and I spent the afternoon strolling along the Southbank ticking off all the usual suspects - Borough Market (now as busy on a Friday as on a Saturday), Tate Modern, NFT and so on.  It was dry and sunny but still cold, and the wind didn’t help. We soon needed somewhere warm and cosy, and that means a pub. ‘I know a little place,’ I said, and duly led everyone to the King’s Arms on Roupell Street, where they even had the fire on. Perfect! Can there be anything more decadently satisfying than a nice pint in a proper old pub in the still of the mid-afternoon – well, there probably is, but it would either be illegal or frowned upon by upstanding members of society.After a couple of beers we were hungry, and I suggested the Anchor and Hope – much beloved by London foodistas. It’s infamous for not taking bookings, bedecked with second-hand furniture and known for being a champion of proper British cooking. I’ve been before and love it. It’s exactly my sort of eaterie; chatty, informal, honest.  And they’ve enlarged the kitchen slightly since my last visit so it’s no longer the size of the jail square on a Monopoly board. 

We got there at 5:30pm and it was already packed. You give your name to a guy and get put on a list – that’s as close to booking as they come. Some advice: get there early, and get there all at the same time. Waltz up at 8ish after a few with friends and you’ll be lucky to be taking your first bite as Sir Trevor McDonald is reading the ‘And finally…’ story.  You’ll notice a lot of the reviews on the likes of Urban Path, London Eating, etc., centre around problems with this approach, the authors of which have clearly forgotten that this is a pub – and a small and insanely popular one at that – not a restaurant. Try going in a Wetherspoons and asking for a table for four at 8pm. Actually, you’d probably get one, but you won’t in the Anchor and Hope because its food is why people come.  As this reviewer says on London Eating: “A rather abrupt word of warning to those of you who don’t like the idea of waiting, like faffy over-attentive table service and pristeen [sic] plates of vertically constructed food on white linen: don’t even bother, you won’t like here.”

Amen. It’s now 5:50pm and the air’s thick with not only the fantastic smells coming from the kitchen, but also a whiff of anticipation. There are a couple of other parties jostling for position near the entrance to the restaurant half of the pub. It’s like the build-up to the start of some gastronomic Grand National, with each diner circling nervously around before the tape goes up. 5:59pm… And they’re off! 6:02pm and every cover is taken.

We were served by a bright young thing called Liz, and also by a nice older American (I think) lady, who asked if we’re going to the theatre later. We answered no, thinking ’Oh God, our food’s going to take ages to arrive now’, but in the end it didn’t. But enough of that, and on to said food.

Gratis bread and butter to start. Nice. There was an article in Restaurant magazine a few weeks ago highlighting just how important the bread in a restaurant is. It’s your first impression; the first thing you put in your mouth. Up until this point you’re judging the place on decor, service or in the case of the A&H, smells, but the bread is the first mouthful of the whole reason you’re there – the food.  As soon as that’s brought there’s the offer of a free jug of tap water. Nice x 2. The UK has some of the cleanest tap water in the world, and places that get arsey about giving you free tap water because they’d rather sell you a marked-up bottle of water from Fiji wind me up no end.

Now my knowledge of all things enological is small, so I’ve no real idea if the wine list was any cop. What I can say is that it’s mainly European, and prices start at £15 and don’t get above £50, with loads around the £20 mark.  We ask Mrs USA for a recommendation; something red, rich and chewy. She plumps for a 1998 Languedoc for £19. It turned out to be full-bodied and smoky, and just what me and Sarah were after. Lisa fancied white, however, as she went for fish as her main, and opted for a carafe of a Cab Sav. Paddy was content to drink red with his fish, for which James Bond once shot a man dead in From Russia With Love. All three reds and three whites come by the glass, carafe and bottle.

Starters were skipped – to leave room for dessert, apparently – so it’s straight on to the mains. I went for slow roast middlewhite with bacon, parsnips and quince. Paddy and Lisa chose the roasted sea bass, fennel, blood orange and olives, while Sarah went for the soft polenta, pumpkin, chestnut kale and Ogleshield. We got a side of potatoes, a salad and greens, too.  My pork was two lovely thick quivering slabs of pig draped over the veg. The veg had been shown some winter spicing, tasting as they did of nutmeg and such. I was, however, robbed of some decent crackling, as there was only a small piece and wasn’t that crunchy. Everyone reported their choices to be delicious. I’m rubbish at sharing food, because though I want to taste everything I dread the ‘wish I’d gone for that now’ syndrome.  For dessert I went for the custard tart, which was excellent. The others went for chocolate pots.

  
At the end I chatted to a waiter about what another table was eating. ‘Oh, they’ve got a special for three,’ he said. It was a pot-roasted duck that the chef had just happened to make, in a Le Cruset dish. So another tip: ask about the specials. There are also a few ‘for two’ and ‘for four’ dishes at the Anchor and Hope and its sister restaurant. I think they’re a great idea, as it means chefs can use larger and more interesting cuts of meat, and you get a carving knife and serving spoon with which to carve it up with yourself – excellent.A bottle and a half of wine, four mains, three sides, three desserts and a coffee came to £104, which I thought was a bargain.  I know I’ll be back to the Anchor and Hope, and I also know to get there at 5:30…

Scottish beef videos

There are some great instructional videos on how to butcher the main meat breeds on Quality Meat Scotland. Getting up there in the summer and getting my hands on some of the beef there will be great… apart from the midges, perhaps.

In the beef one he describes the carcass as an ‘R4L’. Yeah - had me stumped too. It’s explained on this page and is to do with the conformation (as in chunky or more scrawny) and the fat content; L meaning leaner. A bit more Googling turns up this PDF (HTML version here - go to page 7) that goes on to talk about costs and how different markets (supermarkets, traditional butcher and catering suppliers) require different types.

The preferred classification for different markets is highlighted in red. For example, an R4L carcass would attract the supermarket base price and would be acceptable for all three markets illustrated.

I could sit and watch these for hours. OK, so you’re probably never going to butcher down an entire side of beef, but there’s still useful stuff like how to make a French trim rack of lamb.

The future – why aren’t we eating soya on the moon?

The future seen from now…

I’ve had this post on a slow boil since New Year, and as we’ve (just) seen the end of January, it’s sort of topical. It’s about the future. When the calendar clicks over another year, most of the media do a review of the past 12 months. Occasionally a few periodicals, particularly in America, ask a selection of laymen, pundits and thought-shapers to speculate what the future might look like 50 or a 100 years from now. The writers often focus on physical things like technology, transport, medicine, and sometimes diet and food.

Jim Rasenberger of the New York Times did just such a piece at the end of December, in which he consulted a broad range of people from schoolchildren to scientists. Here’s what chef Daniel Boulud had to say:

‘I think the children of today will have a big challenge persuading their children to take time to enjoy food. But restaurants will always be important in New York. People will see restaurants as a home away from home, where they feel secure…Genetically engineered food is something I don’t think anyone can escape, but the great chefs will still want a product that is natural… More food will be grown locally.’

They’re fairly conservative predictions – in fact I’d say they’re almost being met right now. Futurology is now a fully-fledged discipline, but nowadays future predictions tend to be more anti-Utopian and cautious. Why? Well, I think Leo McGarry summed it up best in the West Wing when he said:

Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised… Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh: The personal computer…
Leo: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the moon?

The future seen from 1900…

Rasenberger is by no means the first to solicit opinions from people about the future. This excerpt from The Ladies Home Journal did the rounds at Christmas last year, in which the author asked ‘most learned and conservative minds in America’ what the year 2000 would be like. You can read it in full here, but it’s worth pulling out the ones related to food, farming and nature:

“Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Prediction #12: Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does… Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.

Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.

Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

Prediction #23: Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance.

Prediction #24: Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.

Prediction #25: Oranges will grow in Philadelphia. Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. The farmers of South America, South Africa, Australia and the South Sea Islands, whose seasons are directly opposite to ours, will thus supply us in winter with fresh summer foods, which cannot be grown here. Scientists will have discovered how to raise here many fruits now confined to much hotter or colder climates. Delicious oranges will be grown in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Cantaloupes and other summer fruits will be of such a hardy nature that they can be stored through the winter as potatoes are now.

Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.”

Some of this sounds like hell, and some of it sounds scarily like now. There are two things to take from this. Firstly, the assumption that the extermination of wild species seems to be a given – especially insects. If you look at the world now, important pollinating species like bees are under threat from loss of habitat, colony collapse disorder and suchlike, while flies and mosquitos are having a whale of a time living in our filth and killing millions worldwide.

The second point worth noting is that the food described in the excerpt is all massive. Farm animals are hornless and grotesquely deformed to produce more meat. Vegetables are all gigantic and climate-resistant. The prediction ‘Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence’ is like some unseasonal Alice in Wonderland image. Until you realise it’s actually very nearly true. The Dutch Elsanta strawberry is a whopper, grown more for its shelf-life than its flavour, and is available 365 days of the year in most supermarkets.

Prediction 15 has also very nearly come true , as a large amount of food today is shrink-wrapped and sealed. Think about walking round your average supermarket - vegetables and fruit are the only things that you can pick up and sniff. And Prediction 25 is bang-on in describing the concept of food miles.

The future seen from the 70s…

Fast-forward now to the late 70s. I’ve got a book called Future World, by Peter Goodwin. It’s the sort of annual young boys up and down the land got for Christmas along with an eagle-eyed Action Man, a selection box and a new bike.

It’s split into sections like space travel, communications, medicine and food. Here are some pages from the food section, the title being ‘Food – the quest for abundance’. It talks about the hazards of mono-culture environments and a return to some older mixed farming techniques, as well as the latest cutting-edge application of science to create fertilisers that are ‘a by-product’ from the oil industry’.

And take this example.

‘This deep-fried breaded chicken is in fact made from mycoprotein, a fibrous substance produced from mycrofungi’. Mmmm, perhaps it’s a case of just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

It’s also illustrated with those wonderful Syd Mead-style drawings, in which beautiful young people step from air-cars into trans-continental shuttle tubes, while a spacecraft roars upward in the background. In the one below a diver returns fish samples from a giant sea-fish farm. Like Leo, this was the future I wanted as a child.

So where now for the future of food? Locally grown fruits as big as your head, all year round? Or economic collapse and species extinction? Well, maybe both. Scientists at the University of Warwick have a selection of podcasts looking at producing better tomatoes and broccoli (actually the tomato one is really interesting), while other scientists are looking at species decline in everything from cod to bees. If all the apples in the UK disappeared overnight there would be outrage, yet slow losses of species and gradual price rises over decades mean people forget, lose interest or stop caring. Food still comes way down the list in a lot of people’s lists of things that ‘are important’ – that is until we all start to get a little hungry.

Kit: Mobile broadband

Wales – an area of outstandingly bad mobile reception, originally uploaded by locus_imagination.

With January almost over, and only two months left before my ‘grand tour’ kicks off, it’s time to talk kit. And the first of the areas I need your help on is technology. Most of the places I’ll be staying at have an internet connection and a PC, but what about when I’m out and about? Also, I don’t want to be writing, video editing, and Photoshopping on my Mac, then have to transfer it over to my host’s PC to upload it.

So with that in mind I’ve been looking at mobile broadband options. Things to consider are upload limits, download limits, cost and coverage. Oh, and it has to work on a Mac.

Here are my options:

Option 1. Use my current Sony Ericsson K800i as a Bluetooth modem and do it that way.

Option 2. T-Mobile mobile broadband dongle

Option 3. 3’s mobile broadband dongle

Option 4. Vodafone’s mobile dongle

Hardware-wise, my Powerbook has the old-school large PCMCIA slot. So taking one of those plug-in cards is OK.

So, I’ve rooted around the internet and found a few reviews, including this from the Guardian. If anyone has any experiences they’d like to share, please do.

Like this!

Seen taped to a bus shelter, originally uploaded by bbcbob.

 

Lasagne, a British classic

Last Wednesday I met up with Toby, aka Gastropunk, to talk food, blogging and coding, and a very enjoyable evening it was too. His CSS skills might well be improving the layout of this very page soon.

Over a couple of pints of Spitfire, we chatted about this project, memorable restaurants, our attitude to food, favourite dishes, working at the Beeb, and other such things. We also touched on lasagne – one of my favourite dishes. It was a great, cheap, crowd-pleaser in my student days, and my mum would always make it for when I arrived home for the holidays, as it could sit in a warm oven and wait for the extra hour for my inevitably delayed train.

Last year, The Money Programme compared the true cost (in pence, flavour and health) of ready-meals - particularly lasagne – to home-made versions. The reporter followed a family who microwaved pasta meals for their two kids, which they took and ate in their rooms, and their own two lasagnes, eaten in front of the TV with a bottle of wine. The following week he asked them to make it from scratch, including shopping for the ingredients. Needless to say, with quite a lengthy preparation time, they didn’t sit down to eat till after 8.30pm, but their son did say it tasted nicer.

You’ve really got to want to make a lasagne, as you’re essentially making three different dishes. First the bolognese sauce, then the béchamel, then there’s the time taken to assemble it, then cook it again for a short while. Because of this, it’s not the sort of thing you’d be wise attempting from scratch at 7pm on a weeknight after struggling home on the Northern line. Well, you could, but it’d be rushed. No, like a nice long soak in the bath, I think making a good lasagne is all about taking the time to enjoy each stage. It’s a three-act comedy; a journey, the result only improving when time is a key ingredient.

So, coming back to my conversation with Toby. He confessed to liking a drier lasagne, with not much sauce, while I professed a love of a sloppy one. I’ve had lasagne in your average high street Italian that’s a sort of loose assemblage of the key ingredients - more a pile of loose leaves of pasta with alternate meat and cheese layers finished under a red-hot salamander. Anyway, home ones don’t turn out like that. They fill a large tray.

And why is it a British classic? Well, a few years ago this story surfaced concerning a recipe for Richard III’s court,  called Loseyns. Anyway, here’s how I do it, and if you’ve any other additions or tips for improvements, please do let me know.

1 stick of celery, 1 carrot, 1 onion, and 3 cloves of garlic, all finely chopped and sweated in a knob of butter and a glug of oil. Then add one pack (500g) of organic beef mince, and brown. Don’t just chuck it in, mind - break it up with your hand into strands and keep stirring once it’s in so that it doesn’t clump together. Once that’s nicely browned, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, 300ml of passata and some chopped basil. (As an aside, if you really want to make a proper old-fashioned (i.e pre-Columbian) Italian one, leave out the tomatoes and just use red wine and milk and cook it for a whole day!) The sauce can sit on the back burner at its lowest setting,  slowly getting darker and more… broody. It’ll happily sit there all afternoon until you need it, slowly hissing and bubbling like the crater of Mount Etna.

Sometime in the afternoon, do the béchamel. Dead easy. Very forgiving, is a béchamel, as long as you keep stirring. Melt the butter, add the flour in small amounts, and ensure the roux is cooked through. Add the warm milk, stirring all the time, and then put in some grated parmesan.

A word about the lasagne itself, or, as Americans call them, ‘lasagna noodles’. There are three types, but which one is authentic and does it matter? Well, the organic one is made in Italy, but I favour the opaque one because it swells up a lot more and takes the sauce better due to its rough texture.

Construction depends on how big your dish is, and the higher the better. I start with pasta, then meat, sauce, pasta, meat, sauce, pasta again, which is about all my lasagne dish can take. End with a final load of sauce, a few shreds of mozzarella, and a pair of basil leaves. You can keep it like this for a while, even overnight. Just pop it in the oven for 25 minutes until the top goes brown and tasty.

And that’s how I like it.

There are food stories everywhere…

… even at 11:30pm on Gipsy Hill.

Last Thursday, after beers and tequilas with Sarah, I found HMS me moored on the tall quay-like counter of the Express Fast Food fish and chip shop on Gipsy Hill. Being after 11, there were slim (and not very appealing) pickings on offer – see below – but the guy behind the counter kindly offered to cook me a piece of haddock fresh from scratch. It was going to be 5-6 minutes, so I waited.

This used to be a regular (and a bit shabby) chippy run by an old guy and his wife, but after something like 30 years, they sold up and some enterprising young Turkish guys took over. They added chicken and kebabs to the menu for the yoot, and spruced the place up a bit. While it’s never going to make the shortlist for the UK’s best chip shop, it’s not too bad when you’re a bit drunk and hungry. It’s like a million other chip shops and kebab shops throughout the land.
Waiting for my haddock, I took the time to read the old framed poster that hangs on the wall - the sciencey sort the newspapers all had a small arms race about last year – depicting different species of edible sea fish. You only see a handful of these in any shops nowadays. Chip shops mainly deal in the traditional species of fish that make up British fish and chips: cod, haddock, and occasionally rock salmon and skate. The Sea Cow in Dulwich have tried to update the fish and chip formula in a gastro-Dulwich way, but the reviews seem to be getting unkinder.

Anyway, what I found interesting about the poster is that each species had its Latin name, and then its name in a variety of European languages (well, languages from countries with a fishing fleet, anyway). At the top of the poster was Zeus Faber, which is called John Dory in English-speaking countries, but St Peter or St Peter’s fish everywhere else (apart from in France, where they also call it the chicken of the sea, bizarrely). I then tried to explain to the Turkish guy behind the counter about the whole ‘St Peter picking it out of the water‘ thing, which totally confused him.

Me: ‘… so some people think it’s called John Dory here because it’s a corruption of the French jaune and d’or - yellow and gold – but it’s called St Peter everywhere else.’

Him (bemused): ‘So what is called in Turkish?’

Me: ‘Er, it doesn’t say.’

He probably just wanted to close up and go home, not talk about the nomenclature of edible deep-sea fish. A guy wearing tracksuit bottoms, two earrings and a baseball cap came in with his girlfriend and ordered chips in pitta for her and saveloy and chips for him. Have a look at them saveloys, man! I’ve never liked saveloys – I had one once in the mid-90s when Blur released Park Life and everyone went through that weird southern-mockney phase, but I only did it to blend in. Never again… corned beef in a condom, deep-fried. Urgh. Mind you, I’ve had many a battered jumbo in my youth.

After Mr & Mrs Saveloy left, the guy behind the counter starts talking to me about other types of Turkish fish, and how when he was back home he’d often go fishing for skate. He does the ‘it was this big’ hand gesture thing, which I’m glad to see is universal. When I asked him how he eats it, he said pan-fried with a little oil, served with some vegetables. I told him about caper sauce and a bit of butter, which is a traditional way of serving it here.

By then my haddock was ready, and we both snapped back to the here-and-now of a late-night chippy in South London in January. I paid up and set off home.

Incidentally, according the the very good Chow.com, it’s called dülger baligi in Turkish.

Being Gordon Ramsay

Last night was Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong Live, which brought Channel 4’s Big Food Fight season to a culinary close. (If you missed it, it’s on again this Sunday at 8pm.) It was a great way to round off a successful season, mainly due to TV, online, and marketing all working beautifully together.

To encourage user feedback and to create a buzz, we set up a Flickr group and a Facebook event for people to contribute to, and this was the most interesting aspect for me. 1,192 guests, 439 wall posts and 253 photos on the Facebook page, and 65 members and 339 images in the Flickr group. Bags of online content, downloadable instructions, tool tips, counting down print ad campaign, and even some handy advice from me on how to take better pictures.

The above numbers might not seem huge compared to the TV audience (and we’ll have to wait till Monday for that figure 4.2 million people watched it), but let’s just think about what’s happened here. All those people bothered to spend their hard-earned money on the ingredients, invite friends round, do the cooking, and take time to photograph and comment about it. That’s a massive ask and a brilliant bit of viewer and TV event interactivity. Also, as of yesterday afternoon, 3,500+ people had signed up to the Cookalong map, including one guy in Denmark.

Some other things of interest are the discussions and comments. Some people found it went too fast, some wanted fewer film bits in between and a recap on what they’d just done, and others wanted a more complex menu. Channel 4/Optomen and Gordon would be mad not to make it an annual event.

Finally, Ross Anderson in The Times said:

‘It’s reprehensible enough that hardly anyone these days can cook without a recipe book, but Gord’s Cookalong heralds an Orwellian culinary dystopia…’

Hmmm, are those grapes sour, Sir? Anyway, below are some of my favourites pulled in from Flickr and Facebook. And just you try telling the lady with the rolling pin she’s part of an Orwellian culinary dystopia!

Forkd – you know, it’s the Flickr of food

My Forkd ‘feta’ invite finally arrived the other day, and I’ve been checking it out. Obviously it’s early days yet, with a fair few features still ‘coming soon’, but that’s OK. I made risotto for tea tonight, with the weekend’s lef-over chicken, and thought ‘I’ll add that as my first recipe’. However, Jared’s already done it. OK, slightly different technique and type of ingredients, but essentially the same dish. It kind of knocks the wind out of your ‘I want to contribute too’ sails.

And, while 1,692,254 people have uploaded a photo-tagged sunset onto Flickr at the time of writing, will that many upload risotto recipes to Forkd? Every photo is unique, although recipes aren’t supposed to be unique - they’re supposed to be an authoritative guide to how to do it, right? Having said that, the BBC has 13 mushroom risotto recipes, all different.

Also, there are 971 groups about food recipes on Flickr already, but what’s interesting about Forkd is the ability to alter recipes, thus creating descendants of that recipe. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. I guess the Flickr equivalent would be allowing people to recrop and colour-correct your pictures, then add them to their own Flickr stream (which I suppose they could already do under certain Creative Commons licencing, which is what Forkd is using).

Mind you, when I first started using Flickr it was an instant messaging photo-swapping site, and look where that is now. It’s evolved faster than Spock in Star Trek III. I remember Cal coming to do a talk at the BBC years ago, where he said after six months they’d thrown the whole thing away and started again. I hope Forkd’s got a similarly rapid evolution planned, because like the mammal in the world of the large content dinosaurs, it could become something fantastic.

Anyway, with chicken and mushroom risotto (though mine had peas) covered on Forkd, I thought I’d add my linguini with vlams recipe from a while back, and here it is.

Some chicken leftovers

A few final thoughts, facts and tips concerning chickens. In Channel 4’s chicken-related schedule last week, Hugh’s Chicken Run got 3.5m viewers three nights running, Thursday’s Dispatches on food labelling got 3m and Jamie’s Fowl Dinners got 4m. With such good figures, it’s clear that food provenance is something the public is desperate to find out more about – which is good news for Eating Albion and this whole project. To put those figures in some sort of context, around 800,000 tuned in to see Jade’s eviction on Big Brother’s Celebrity Hijack (anything BB is seen as ‘an earner’ for the channel).

I’d like to end this chicken escapade (for now) with a recipe and how I cooked the chicken from my weekend ordeal. To recap, I had one chicken, some carrots, leeks, onions, tarragon, thyme, and potatoes. I stuffed the chicken with half a lemon, some tarragon and thyme, and four crushed garlic cloves, and rested it on a base of the chopped vegetables. I tried Toby’s ex-girlfriend’s sister’s French boyfriend’s tip (phew!) of popping a crust of bread in the bird’s rear. You can’t use any old ‘coggy-ender’* of Mother’s Pride, however – it’s got to be something like the end of a baguette, something with a crust that can take it. I had a small walnut and onion loaf from the Blackbird bakery, so used the domed end of that.

I roast my chickens upside down for the first 30 minutes, then flip them over. It’s then that I up-end them and drain off a little of the garlicky-lemony-fatty-herby goodness from inside the cavity into the gravy tray. With this particular chicken, the bread crust acted like a bath sponge at this point, letting the juices through, but taking them on as well. But because the end stuck out for the rest of the cooking time, it crisped up too. I pulled it out while the bird rested and ate it with the carrots and parsnips the bird was roasted on. Oh my god, it was good! Good interesting bread, augmented by all the juices. I think out of the whole meal, I enjoyed shoving hot, gooey-yet-crunchy, chickeny, nutty bread in my mouth with some caramelised parsnips the most. It was a great appetiser, in the sense that it stimulated my appetite – a lot.

The second off-the-internet tip I tried was dusting my parboiled roasties with polenta. This tip came from the BBC food message boards. They turned out OK, but tasted a little like those frozen McCain home-style roast potatoes. They did crunch up my poor-quality spuds from Berwick Street Market, but I should have just bought better spuds. Having said that, I think they’d be really popular with kids. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.

Anyway, here’s the finished result – and yes, I did overcook the leeks. Below is the other meat and 1.5 litres of stock that I got from the rest of the bird. Enough for tea on Sunday, sandwiches for Monday, two tubs for the freezer, and stock for risotto and something else. That’s not bad from a £10 bird.

* This is what my mother and grandmother called each end of a loaf of bread. Apparently the official name is the heel, but I like coggy-ender better.

One of those days…

At Channel 4 I work nine-day fortnights, which gives me every other Friday off. Last Friday was just such an occasion, and I had a busy, enjoyable day planned. Sadly, it didn’t quite end as expected. After a lovely lunch (cheese and pickle sandwich on their own bread, and a gorgonzola and mushroom quiche – see, I do veggie sometimes!) from the Blackbird bakery here in the lofty eyrie that is Crystal Palace, I set off into town.

Firstly, I wanted a new kitchen knife. The knives I own are all still good, bar some battle scars and chips, but what with my new project and the January sales, I thought it was time to treat myself. I also wanted to visit the Selfridges’ food hall and meet a pal to take delivery of a new lens and flashgun for my camera, and finish with a few drinks. What could be more fun than a Friday afternoon spent foodie shopping and bar-hopping around London town?

At Selfridges, a quick nose around the cookware section reveals some rather nice Henkel knives in the sale, but I leave them and head to the food hall. At the butcher’s counter, I get two lamb shanks on a whim, because they looked nice, then get talking to the butcher about chickens and all the stuff we’ve been doing at Channel 4 this week. Selfridges, rather unsurprisingly, boasts a large selection of quality chicken from England and France. There are two Poulet de Bresse, and when he weighs one up for me, it comes in at £24, head on, giblets in! This is the champagne of chickens, with protected regional status. But, unlike champagne, it just hasn’t achieved that aura of exclusivity in the minds of the British public – no one ever launched a ship by slamming a Poulet de Bresse against it, and Formula 1 drivers don’t throw them at each other on the winner’s podium. I chicken out of buying one, proving that, although on a different economic scale, I too suffer from ‘chicken can be expensive’ conditioning. Besides, it looks a little… well, scrawny?

Instead, I enquire about one of the Duc de Mayenne birds next to them, which the butcher tells me are his favourite. It’s a bigger bird at 1.6kg, and and I buy one at £10.30p. From what I can read of the label (my French being utter merde), this little fella has had 89 days outdoors and was fed on a natural diet of vegetables and minerals. I think that’s pretty good value, especially for Selfridges Food Hall. (More on French Chicken here.) There’s talk on the BBC Food message boards of the supermarkets charging £10 for free-range and organic chicken this week, and still running out. In telly production land that’s called ‘doing a Delia’, in honour of the time the nation had a run on eggs after she showed us how to boil one in the late 90s – oh, how far we’ve come! Now if the supermarkets were really as omnipotent and evil as we all say they are, they would have quietly raised the price of organic and free-range chicken before the Big Food Fight season. Unlike bread, milk, and tea, free-range chicken isn’t a KVI – a known value item – meaning that most people don’t really know how much it costs. Add to this the influx of new converts to free-range chicken – who are expecting to pay more and who want to pay more – and the supermarkets could really have pulled a fast one if they wanted to. It’s all supply and demand. I just hope whoever is supplying the multiples with free-range or organic birds has doubled their prices, too!

I digress. Chicken bagged, I meet Andy in the Spice of Life, and after a quick one we hit catering trade shops Pages, Leon’s and Denny’s – where this chopping board made me laugh. Denny’s also has a broader range of knives, including Wushtof, but, like the Poulet de Bresse, they’re a little out of my budget for today. They also have some Henkel knives on sale, but not as cheap as the ones in Selfridges! So it’s back there we go (via Berwick street market for some veg for the chicken) to pick up these two beauties.

All ‘jobs’ being done and a thirst coming on, we march double time to The Grenadier. This pub is hidden somewhere between Victoria and Hyde Park Corner, down a mews that was once for the stable boys and horses but is now for city boys and Lexuses. It’s tiny, but busy, and we squeeze in at the bar with all our stuff and I set about making a dent in the Timothy Taylor. Although it probably offers the usual crisps and nuts, it also offers – at a pound each – wonderful hot, thick pork sausages with a dollop of mustard and ketchup, from an electric casserole on the back of the bar. A few months ago I bemoaned the lack of decent ‘bar food’, and this is what I was talking about: hot, tasty, and cheap. It’s the fantastic combo of a great English beer and English sausage in a proper English pub. Heaven.

We then head to the Nag’s Head in Knightsbridge (I know, it sounds like an oxymoron!) which is another great little pub, although being where it is, the Hugo-and-Saffy count is rather high. We end the night here, and having had a lovely relaxing day bodding about town I head home content… Which is when things start to go wrong.

I get to the front door at 11:45pm, to find I’ve lost my keys. I’m locked out. Bear in mind I’m carrying a Nikon 200mm AF Lens and SB-600 flashgun (boxed), my Nikon D70 camera, a book, two kitchen knives, three potatoes, a bunch of carrots, some tarragon, two onions and a large French chicken. Worse, my phone is flat and it’s starting to rain. All the warmth and colour of the evening drain out of me.

I walk round to a friend’s house, but there’s no one home. On the way back, I pass a closed Lorenzo’s – Crystal Palace’s much-loved traditional trattoria, which has seen the likes of Kelly Brook and Billy Zane grace its tables, and where nothing is too much for the customers. Finishing up for the night, Fabio, the owner, gives me a wave. My frantic gesturing brings him to the door. I’m convinced I’ve left the locking latch of one of my windows and that if I just had a ladder I could get in. There’s a viewing from the estate agent at 11am the next day, and I need to give the place a spit and a polish before then.

‘Sure, I’ve got a ladder,’ he says, and very kindly lends me his 30ft extendable ladder. (How many other restaurant managers would lend you a ladder?) I then spend 45 minutes trying to break in to my own flat. By now it’s starting to look like the start of a Casualty episode – the bit just before the ‘injury’ is sustained. When I realise I’m 14ft up a wet slippery ladder trying to jemmy open a window with a screwdriver, I have a ‘What the hell are you doing?’ moment. At 1am I give up. Cold and wet, I walk back to Lorenzo’s with the ladder, where he gives me a beer – what a guy – and the use of the phone. But my mobile is flat, and nowadays no one knows anyone’s number, do they, apart from your parents’ landline. Then I remember my iPod, which has my contacts synced to it. I’m saved! I ring the friends whose door I buzzed, but although they’re away, I’m friends with their parents, too, who happen to run a B&B in Crystal Palace. Being parents, they’re the sort of people who answer landlines when they ring at 1:30am in the morning, so I turn up at Sue and Tim’s looking like a drowned, muddy rat (with chicken et al). They very kindly grant me the use of their sofa.

In the morning, I collect a set of keys from the estate agent, get a new set cut, then run around manically tidying up for the 11am viewing. At 10:40, they cancel the viewing – bastards! Furthermore, all the window locks were fully locked and I wouldn’t have been able to get in anyway. Thus ended ‘one of those days’ that the Gods see fit to send us once in a while for their sport, and remind you that, in the end, at least you didn’t die. I’ll tell you what I did with the chicken in the next post.

Hugh part II

Lots more talk about part II of Hugh’s Chicken Run… with the final part coming tonight. There’s a fair amount of debate on the C4 message boards, Hugh’s own site and the BBC Food Message boards.

There was a lot of praise in emails to the channel too:

“Last night’s Chicken Run was superb – a very worthy subject and a very compelling TV programme. Please let me know where to send my licence fee money – you deserve it more than the BBC! “

“Thank you for bringing the plight of the chicken to the homes of millions in the UK.”

“Superb thought-provoking documentary.”

“I would just like to take this opportunity to congratulate Channel 4 for commissioning an excellent and important piece of television programming in the shape of Hugh’s Chicken Run and the Channel Four Food Fight season.”

And finally this, which I think is really fantastic:

“I don’t know if you could show this to Hugh but I would love you to, I have just started watching this program tonight an I am a single mum of 2 and I have to say I would go in my supermarket tomorrow and buy a free range chicken and eggs never again will I buy caged. I also have made my mind up of converting part of my garden for chicken run, I just have to save up 2 get it done. But thank you Hugh and Channel 4 for opening my eyes for me and my kids. WE WOULDN’T TREAT A DOG LIKE THIS SO WHAT’S SO DIFFERENT FROM A CHICKEN. We kill chickens so the least we can do is treat them a lot kinder before we eat them let them feel the breeze and be free NO MORE CAGES!”

You can’t argue with that! There’s been plenty of argument and some good counter viewpoints and supplementary facts provided by Farming Today on Radio 4, however. Anna Hill spoke to various farmers and industry experts about some of the practicalities of various production methods. You can listen to them via iTunes here, here and here.

Nigel Joyce, a large-scale producer of 800,000 birds in Norfolk, vents spleen. Whereas NFU poultry spokesman Charles Bourns thinks the programme will stimulate the industry. Paul Waddington talks about broiler hens actually having a smaller carbon footprint due to their short miserable lives. Mark Williams from the British Egg Industry council points out that if the 18 million hens in cages were switched to free range, we’d need 18 million hectares of land for them to be free range, which is coincidentally the amount of land Argentina used to grow GM crops last year.

The ‘poor’ argument doesn’t hold much water in my book. Like others I think it is possible to shop and eat well on a tight budget in this country, but like everything it takes effort and planning. And isn’t the amount of disposable income spent on food way less than it was in the 50s anyway? According to the Telegraph/uSwitch, the cost of food has risen by 22% in the last ten years, while the gross household income has risen by 55%. Besides, we’re not really talking here about the most vunerable in society, but your average B, C1 and C2 families (to use that awful grading system) that make up a lot of this country. As David Hurst puts it, ‘[Supermarkets] claim they are simply catering for a low-budget market, but I have to dispute this. I cannot afford to dine on fillet steak frequently. I do not have some divine right to dine on fillet steak, so I do not expect to dine on fillet steak. I do not need to eat fillet steak. The same is true of chicken.’

It’s all food for thought. I think people’s habits can change, and quickly too, but they need the right information to make an educated choice along with the right involvement from Government and business. Look at free-range eggs, smoking in public or wearing seat belts – these all changed in a generation. A better informed consumer is a better consumer all round. But at the till people will (quite rightly) vote with their wallets, for better or for worse.

Finally, I rather like this ‘tale of a chicken‘… and the tip of a bit of bread up the jacksy is very interesting. I’ve never seen that before.

Channel 4’s Food Fight…

…“Contains images of animal slaughter that some viewers may find disturbing,” says the announcer. “That’s rather the point,” I say.

When it’s farming bears for bile in China it’s cruel…

When it’s chickens in the UK, it’s just food.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall kicked off the Food Fight season tonight with Chicken Run and I have to say I rather enjoyed it (though it’s still TV, so can we really trust it or was the whole thing planned out, shot, and edited months ago? – of course it was, mwhahahah!).

For me the interesting part wasn’t the intensive vs free-range experiment, as we probably all know how that’ll turn out, but the ‘rough side of town’ experiment as Hugh described it. Now, my old man lives in the West Country, as did I for some of my childhood years. That’s how I know that, unlike the North, it’s not a region normally associated with making-ends-meet poverty. Devon, Dorset and Cornwall are all about the English Riviera, tourism and summer holidays, so I found it interesting that Hugh went to Axminster’s Millwey Estate to see the very sort of people who buy Tesco’s 2-for-£5 chickens.

Furthermore, letting Haley and the other single parent families say ‘I’d like to see him live on my budget’ to camera was an interesting move. And a valid one, as telling ‘the poor’ what and how they should eat has always been a middle-class preoccupation. When Alexis Soyer went to Ireland during the potato famine to set up soup kitchens, can you imagine how the rural Irish peasantry received this Frenchman from London lecturing them on how to cook and eat? Do-er of good deeds or do-gooder?

Of course, the residents of the Millwey estate aren’t that kind of poor. They all have homes and clothes, and Haley doesn’t look like she’s ever gone to bed hungry. But what they do have is a different set of priorities. She summed it up perfectly, however, when she said, “I know they’re raised in sheds and they’ve not much room, but at the end of the day they’re cheap and they taste nice.” Will Hugh succeed in changing their minds? We’ll have to wait till part two tomorrow.

As an aside, it seems Hugh’s thunder has been somewhat stolen today by the Jamie vs Sainsbury’s spat that was on the front page of The Mirror. Despite its outrage, however, the tabloid was quite happy to join forces with Sainsbury’s – the official supermarket of the World Cup – for the redeeming of collected tokens to get a free World Cup video…

People have criticised Jamie in the past for taking King’s shilling, myself included back in the School Dinners days. But Oliver, like many others, probably wants to try and work with big businesses to change them from within. (And let’s face it, the food industry isn’t as evil as, say, the arms industry…) Mind you, he did say in the Grocer in 2003: ‘Working with Sainsbury’s has given me the opportunity to influence the food choices of millions of peoples.” Hmmm.

Like many other TV personalities, Jamie Oliver is a businessman now. The multiples now stock his products, along with Ainsley’s cous-cous and, um, Barry Norman’s pickled onions, and that’s in addition to the products that celebrity chefs endorse. Ramsay does Gordon’s Gin, and Rhodes, Harriott and Worrall Thompson do Fairy. Now there’s nothing wrong with endorsing products or trying to flog them; that’s capitalism, right? It’s fair game, as long as it’s not greenwashing, where big business tries to look all cozy and homely. In this murky corner of the food industry, Green and Blacks was sold to Cadbury’s, Seeds of Change was bought by Mars, and McDonald’s bought a stake in Pret a Manger. The list goes on. Are these companies really trying to evolve their businesses away from what society now considers somehow wrong, or are they just hedging their bets? I guess the answer depends on which side of the fence you’re on. For me, perhaps one of the best insights on the subject is on the UK DVD extras for Morgan Spurlock’s ‘Super Size Me’, where says of the fast-food industry, “These aren’t bad men. They’re businessmen’, in that they give us what we say we want. If enough people demand change, we’ll get it.

But back to the Food Fight season. I’m looking forward to Jamie’s Fowl Dinners. If this season achieves anything, it’s moving food TV away from ‘cooking as the new rock-n-roll celebrity chef lifestyle crap’ of the late 1990s and more towards food reportage. Which is one of the aims of this very project… Hiya, fellas!

Here’s some I made earlier…

Hello food fans. For those of you who’ve found this site first, or via Russell, or not via eyedropper.co.uk, I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a ‘greatest hits’ of some of my previous food related adventures and investigations. This’ll hopefully give you a flavour of what posts on this blog might be like.. or you’ll scream and run a mile at my eclectic punctuation and spelling. Actually, you’ll be please to hear that I’ve engaged the services or a sub-editor for this blog, once it’s up to speed.

Anyway, in no particular order.
Priory Free Range Foods
An afternoon visiting Mrs Beeton
The tale of the Manchester sausage
Power to the Prostate!
Sushi Masterclass at Billingsgate Fish Market
Food Writers Guild talk on Blogging
Ratatouille – The movie and the dish
Olives, slugs and lettuces
Hot cheese = Instant comfort
Scouse for tea

and there’s plenty more here.

ta

A Better Map – I know where I’m going!

Today I spent the afternoon making beef stew, and updating and making public my intended route on Google maps. You can see the map here. Each pushpin marks a host I’ve spoken to and intend to visit, and then each shaded area tells you the time I’ll be there and, very roughly, my area of exploration.

If you know of anything that’s no more than a couple of hours drive from each host that’s interesting, foodie and off the beaten track, please get in touch. Or if you’d just like to have me in for a cup of tea and a slice of cake that’s fine too! After all, for this project to really I’m going to need some local knowledge.

There are sooo many places I’ve had to leave out, but I think it’s better to concentrate of doing a few well, and spending two weeks with each host, than trying to cover half a dozen in each region like some organic cannonball run! Roll on April…

Restaurant Magazine Publish my ‘letter’

Bit of a silly one this. The other day I popped in to William Henry Smith’s at Victoria station for my weekly copy of Restaurant Magazine, alas none was to be found! I sent a photo to the mag registering my frustration, and they’ve printed it, bless. Like my other fave, the British Journal of Photography, Restaurant Magazine is technically a trade publication, but one I love despite not working in or owning a restaurant. As the subhead says, it’s ‘for the professional and the passionate’. It’s not soft-focus lifestyle. It’s honesty, it looks at the business of food, It’s… meaty. They often have articles and tips that the home chef can use as well as in-depth reviews of products. (the best black pudding or tomato sauce anyone?)

In an issue before Christmas there was an excellent feature of knives and the contrast between western and Japanese ones. (it’s all in the angle of the blade). They’ve also done features on plating up the same meal of different styles of plate and bowl, and how it changes the presentation and composition. Stuff like this I love. Other features that have caught my eye are an article of podcasting for your restaurant, and even taking it into second life. The departure of Joe Warwick as Editor and the appointment of Paul Wootton appeared on the surface to be a smooth transition of power.

Bravo to them! However to take their advice and get a subscription might prove tricky when I’m on ‘the road’. I’ll try and pick it up where ever I can.