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.

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

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 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.

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.

• 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!

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?

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!

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.

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.