Love Cooking - new TV idea

Thought this was a fun idea picked up during a conversation with a television producer earlier today. Check it out:

'Have you and your partner always wanted to start your own restaurant but never wanted to take the gamble?

Would your cooking ‘wow’ a room full of people?

Have you ever thought about setting up a restaurant in your home?

If so the BBC want to hear from you, we’re looking for couples to take part in a brand new series.

For more information email Michelle with your contact details and tell us why you’re the perfect couple for the job.'
Michelle.Darling@zigzag.uk.com

Event report: Wild Food Forage

How much food can be gathered for free and from the wild? Can common weeds be a substitute for regular shopping? What's safe to eat? And are any of these wild plants really worth eating?
These were were some of the questions answered during Sunday's foraging expeditition around Henham Park in Suffolk. Guided by Jacky Sutton-Adam, The Wild Foodie, a 20-strong group of intrepid foragers gathered for Food Safari's first wild food event. Foraging for wild food is by its very nature an unpredictable activity, affected by changing seasons and weather conditions but the rain held off and over the course of two hours and three sites we identified and tasted a multitude of plants.

We were guests of Henham's owner Hektor Rous who kindly let us roam wild across private land. (Tip: when foraging always get the permission of the landowner). Our first spot close to Henham's luxury B&B The Stables yielded a range of wild plants some of which can found in my back garden!

• Nettles - steam like spinach
  
• Ground elder - use chopped as a herb


• Ground ivy - makes a great restorative herb tea
  
• Cleavers (aka 'Sticky Willie') - steam the stems like asparagus
  
• Elderflowers - highly scented, use in cordials on in the panna cotta


• Sea purslane - good in salads
  
• Samphire - steam like asparagus
  
• Fat hen - steam like spinach
  
• Chickweed - use tender leaves raw in salads
  
• Hop shoots - raw in salads or check out Sophie's tempura below
  

We then moved to a very different part of the estate on the beautiful River Blyth estuary. A walk along the shore revealed surprisingly succulent plants such Sea Purslane and my favourite of the day Samphire. This classic wild plant teams wonderfully with simply cooked fish and is typically available in July from fishmongers. There are some nice Samphire recipes here from Hugh Fearley-Whittingstall's Guardian food column. It's too early in the season to pick samphire but we collected plenty of Sea Purslane for lunch.

From the Henham estate we moved to the more domestic surroundings of The Anchor's allotment at Walberswick which provides a steady supply of veg to their kitchen and gathered salad ingredients including the wonderfully named fat hen and the ubiquitous chickweed.

The forage culminated with a memorable feast at The Anchor. All that foraging had made us hungry and it was fascinating to see how wild ingredients can be transformed into dishes in the hands of a professional chef. Sophie Dorber produced some amazing dishes featuring the wild plants we had gathered: samphire fritters made with gram (chickpea) flour, hop shoot tempura, a Moro-influenced carrot and ground elder salad, risotto made with a wild mushroom called Chicken of the Woods (on account of its juicy texture reminscent of chicken breast), flash-fried sea cabbage and a dreamy elderflower panna cotta. One thing that struck me was how some of the 'edgier' flavours of the raw plants were mellowed by cooking to become star ingredients

Mark Dorber served a range of beers to match the dishes starting with a thirst-quenching, elderflower scented real ale from Lowestoft's Green Jack brewery called Summer Dream and including a number of belgian gueze and lambic style beers made with wild yeasts.

By 4.30 everyone was feeling pretty sated and despite the unusually dry spring meaning we couldn't leave with basketfuls of produce, we did leave with some new skills and full stomachs! You really can eat wild!

We'll be running more Wild Food in a Day forays for mushrooms and other wild foods in the autumn. Please visit our web site for more information.

12 Ways to Eat 'Slow'

I'm a member of Slow Food UK and picked this up from their latest newsletter. It's a kind of '12 commandments' of eating well and although you could pick holes in some of these statements, they are a prompt to getting more out shopping, cooking and eating and lifting these activities above the level of chores.

1. Give yourself (some) pleasure.
Take the time to taste and pay attention to your senses: this is the best way to eat well.

2. Bring the seasons to the table.
Each season rediscover the pleasure of tastes you haven’t experienced for a year.

3. Think global, eat local.
Choose products from farmers and growers near to your home: you will help to strengthen the local economy and the links between people living in your area.

4. Eat something you have grown…
…and grow something you eat. This is the best way to get in touch with nature.

5. Meet farmers, growers, artisans and specialized sellers in person.
Buy products with a short chain (through farmer’s markets, purchasing groups) or from artisans (bakers, cured meat and cheese makers) or from specialized competent sellers.

6. Be Inquisitive.
When in a shop, restaurant, bar or supermarket, ask questions about product quality.

7. Choose products of animal origin with particular care.
When you eat meat, always choose grass pasture products (veal, lamb) or free range products (pork, poultry).

8. Vary your diet to defend agricultural biodiversity.
Try rare and unusual varieties of potatoes, cereals, fruit and vegetables.

9. Eat natural wholefoods, choose non-processed products.
Processed ready-to-eat foods contain many modified food products and fats of low nutritional value.

10. Cook!
This is the best way to save money and know exactly what you are eating. It is a daily pleasure you can give yourself and those you love.

11. Spend better, spend less.
Eating better does not necessarily mean spending more, don’t cut down on quality.

12. Become a taste explorer.
Educate children, friends and acquaintances about the true pleasure of eating.

Event report: Free Range Pig in a Day

Can free range pork reared on a commercial scale taste as good as rare breed or organic? Suffolk pig farmer Alastair Butler certainly thinks so and runs a successful business at Blythburgh Pork producing top quality pork through a system of true free range farming where piglets are born in snug sheds in the outdoors and then reared outdoors until they are ready for slaughter. The approach championed by Butler and his father Jimmy is one of which they are so proud that they are one of the few pig farmers in the UK who will let the public visit their farm to see the high welfare stanards.

Food Safari's Pig in a Day was a chance to see the real story behind pork. The first part of the day was a visit to the farm on the sandy heathlands of the Suffolk Coast, an Area of Outstantding Natural Beauty. Alastair described how 'free range' is still not established as a label but can sit happily (and tastily) alongside organic and rare breed.


Blythburgh Free Range Pork hope to get an average of 11 piglets per litter (more than the 4-8 a rare breed farmer might expect but fewer than the 16 or so expected from an intensive European pig farming operation). Seeing a group of piglets thundering across a field is like watching a group of over-excited school children charging around a playground. These pigs clearly enjoy an excellent quality of life. Butler argues that the main drivers of taste in pork are the right breed (in his case a four-way cross), a longer life than an intensive system offers and the optimum amount of fat.

Asked how quality producers are working with leading restaurateurs to promote pork Butler enthused about serving pork pink (rather than rare) instead of the traditionally acceptable well done. Eaten this way the meat is juicy and as long as it comes from a trusted source, perfectly safe.

So how does Blythburgh pork perform in the kitchen? Back at the Anchor, butcher Ray Kent proceeded to deftly tackle half a pig revealing the various joints: collar, shoulder, tenderloin, loin, chops, leg and favourite of Chinese cooks and cheap but outstanding belly. We explored how to use each cut in the kitchen and were inspired to buy pork from butchers rather than picking up a packet in the supermarket - for example why ask your butcher for chops with the tenderloin attached - exactly the same concept as a T-bone steak - and something you won't find in a supermarket.Ray is a traditional family butcher and a great Suffolk character - with a fabulously strong Suffolk accent he pronounced it a particularly 'noy-uss' (nice) side of pork.

After the butchery demonstration Mike Keen, head chef challenged three groups to prepare a winning sausage mix. With powerful flavours such as chili, ginger, garlic, stilton and pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) on offer it was an exercise in restraint as much as unbridled creativity to see which sausage would pass the Food Safari taste test. Not only did the teams prepare the mixes but Ray and Mike soon got them making and tying the sausages like professionals.

The climax of Pig in a Day is a porky feast which celebrates the glories of this most succulent meat. With the sun shining we ate a long table outside. Spare ribs marinated in an intriguing mix of banana blitzed with chilli and then roasted with the marinade; light asian-style pork balls; a perfect roast loin with a deeply flavoured nettle sauce (currently abundant - why not learn more on Food Safari's upcoming Wild Food Forage on 6 June?).

Each dish was well matched with a different beer by beer guru and Anchor proprietor Mark Dorber. Dorber argues that beers can work more interestingly than wine since they have 'flavour hooks' that really bring out the taste of both the food and the beers. Beers included the complex and exotic Sierra Nevada Pale Ale with its fragrant 'cascade hops' as an aperitif, a German Schneider-Weisse wheat beer (with banana and bubblegum notes) to match the ribs and Adnams' well hopped new brew Innovation from just up the road in Southwold alongside the loin. The highlight of the feast was a taste-off between the sausages made earlier. All were excellent but for me, the stilton had the most intensely savoury, mellow and juicy quality.

Pork is perhaps underappreciated in Britain compared with beef and lamb - it's somehow not always the obvious choice. We learned on Food Safari that there's much more to pork than chops and that treated simply and boldly, it is peerlessly good. As the old saying goes, you can eat every bit of a pig, bar the squeak.

Real Food Festival - Suffolk producers where were you?

I made a rare trip to London at the weekend to visit the Real Food Festival at Earls Court. I love going back to London. It was home for over 10 years and I miss it more than I admit!

Bizarrely almost the first person I saw outside Earls Court was someone I'm more likely to see at Suffolk farmers' markets, Ian Whitehead from the Suffolk Salami Company. We're fans of their sausages and bacon (branded as Lane Farm) but I was pleased to try their chorizo which was delicious and my first purchase of the day.

Suffolk Salami was one of the few Suffolk food producers represented at the Festival, others were Munchy Seeds, Casa del Oli (olive oil) and Stark Naked Foods (pestos made with herbs grown on the family's 150 year old farm) and the big boys, Aspalls. I was disappointed not to see a stronger representation of Suffolk food and drink producers there and, with the exception of Aspalls, there was nothing there that was unique to Suffolk. Where were our micro-brewers, cheese-makers, beef or pork farmers?

Other regions were represented by their Regional Food Groups and clustered together - Wales had a very strong presence. Rumour has it that Tastes of Anglia, our own Food Group, didn't get the funding they needed to be there; but with stands costing as little as £200 each, I think that's a poor result. My friends at Grain Brewery sold so much beer they had to drive back to the Norfolk to get more to sell on the Sunday. Watch this space - next year Food Safari will be there and I'll bring as many of my friendly producers with me as I can to show the rest of the country what great foodie things are coming out of Suffolk.

In the meantime for a true taste of what Suffolk has to offer come to the fourth Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival on September 26-27, 2009. I'm going to be organising the programme of fringe events with producers, farm shops, delis, pubs and restaurants running September 26-October 4th.

Wild food foraging - research trip

I spent a fascinating couple of hours today up at Henham Park, 3800 acres of parkland best known as the setting for the Latitude Festival, Suffolk's answer to Glastonbury and home of the charming and laid back Hektor Rous. But there's more to Henham than music and comedy - it's a wild food forager's paradise.

I was with Jacky Sutton-Adam, wild foraging expert (and fellow food blogger) to survey the best spots for Food Safari's upcoming Wild Food in a Day on 6 June which she will be leading. Jacky has been foraging seriously since 2004 and as we walked through the fields and woods, we talked about the role wild food can play in a healthy diet but also in bringing a whole new level of interest to simply being outdoors.

As we approached the lake Jacky enthused about what she sees as the 'premier league' of wild foods which are great to eat, good for you and by a stroke of natural fortune, abundant in Britain. These include nettles and dandelions which have outstanding antioxidant qualities and but also fat hen - a delicious alternative to spinach and chickweed.

Finding the perfect spot for a Food Safari's foray is harder than I'd expected - we were looking for a concentration of lots of interesting edible plants in a compact area to allow maximum gathering time. Finally close to The Stables, Henham's luxury b&b, Jacky spotted a particularly promising looking area of meadow. With a triumphant "I'll get my shears" Jacky headed off.

She identified at least 10 edible plants within about 15 minutes, some of which we tasted although Jacky advocated that in most cases it's better to take things home and cook with them than eat them raw. I can testify to this! We've been experimenting with some wild foraging of our own this spring around Framlingham, including alexanders which are related to celery and lovage. My husband enjoys eating the stems raw but the rest of us are more sceptical - apparently they are good cooked like asparagus. Jacky explained that by late summer the dry black seeds can also be used as a seasoning.

Later, over lunch with Mark Dorber at the Anchor in Walberswick we discussed the wild food menu to be served after the forage. There were lots of ideas including teaming mackerel with alexanders, making a fresh pasta dough with cooked nettles to add colour and flavour and elderflower panna cotta. There was real excitement about the possibilities especially because the nature of wild foraging is that what we find on the 6th June will be unpredictable!

BBC Radio Suffolk Interview

Yesterday I made a rare trip to Ipswich to pay a visit to the studios of BBC Radio Suffolk. I was 'on the sofa' doing an interivew about Food Safari and all the great local food producers we have in Suffolk.

You can listen my interview with Georgina Wroe (standing in for Lesley Dolphin here.
Scroll 2 hours and 23 minutes into the programme to hear my bit.