Life is a beach - then you die

This baby porpoise was washed up on the beach at Westward Ho! on Friday.

One by one, people gathered, in consternation.

It was a rare sight, and, unusually early for baby porpoises (let alone dead ones).

The female passers-by were especially concerned, touched by the infant’s fate. I had a feeling of (unspoken) support passing from woman-to-woman: it is ok to feel concerned and want to do something about it.

So one of the women rung the RSPCA and the police, to report the sighting. Then she gently pulled the porpoise to the dry rocks.

I could not help wondering if you could eat it.

Everyone wandered off and a lad in chef’s trousers appeared and crouched beside the porpoise. It was like a dream - the very person I needed to discuss the eating-merits of the beach-version of road-kill.

The young chef did not think it right to eat it but he did say (when I asked him) that porpoise might taste like tuna.

(He also said it was the third dead baby porpoise he’d seen this week, which was unusual and worrying . He thought they’d been caught in the huge nets beyond Lundy island, and discarded back into the sea, victims of unsustainable fishing.)

When the woman who had rung the RSPCA returned, I tried to share my excitement of having a cheffy conversation just when I needed one.

She was shocked by my talk of eating the poor creature.

I felt I’d lost any compassion-points I’d previously gained. (Me and my big mouth. Literally).

I had intended my foodie-interest in a respectful ceremonial hunter-gatherer sort-of-way. In my ignorance, if not my defence, I thought it was a fish (it’s a mammal).

My academic question had also sprung from a climate-change apocalypse inner-drama, which the unusually early sighting of the porpoise had triggered.

I still felt the baby porpoise needed honouring.

So I suggested encircling it with stones. This would both give it protection until the police arrived, and a kind of ritual.

A pair of female walkers had now joined us, and one of them gave me confidence to carry out this concept.

“Good idea,” she said. “Do it!”

(I believe women sometimes need extra support to do female-centric acts in a world designed by men).

Thus encouraged, I set to work collecting stones. The other women, including the one whom I’d inadvertently shocked, joined in.

Mike then wrote in the sand: “Please do not touch. Police notified.”

(I observed he did not need to negotiate but just did it).

But the message interrupted the stones. Under my breath, I said: “I want to close the circle.”

The female walker overheard me. Again she encouraged me to follow my intuition. “Yes, close the circle,” she said.

When it was finished, I said: “Good team work.”

As she left, the woman who’d rung the RSPCA called over her shoulder at me:

“Don’t eat it!”

Soup with Fishworks fish

We bought fish at the Fishworks stall at the Real food festival to cook at my friend S’s that evening.

We asked for a piece of monkfish (from our shores) and nine wild prawns (from Australia). The Fishworks stall was piled high with fresh fish and shellfish (see lobsters in the pic at the end of this blog) looking fabulously fresh and real.

Back at S’s, we slithered the prawns’ coats from them, putting their shells in a pot with water to cover and some tastes like salt, parsley and the feathery bits of a fennel.

We simmered it for half-an-hour to make a speedy fish stock, which we strained through a sieve.

We discarded the shells (after a discussion about whether we could compost them).

Meanwhile I sliced fennel and leeks with my small sharp magic knife also from the Real food festival. An impulse buy I won’t regret. It cost £10 and has ergonomic holes making it cut most efficiently.

We sweated the veg in olive oil and added it to the strained fish stock.

Then we plopped in the monkfish cut in fat chunks (which performs well under pressure and doesn’t go all flaky) followed by the naked prawns. We also wilted spinach bought at the wondrous Green Lanes which has shops (even a barber) open at night, just like I like my shops.

We served the soup with organic sourdough bread from Judges Bakery (also forraged from the Real food festival).

In half-an-hour we had produced a soup to make S go mnnnn. I was so happy to cook for my dear friend and say thank you for giving us sanctuary in the capital city.

Judges Bakery - real bread

I had a glamorous moment at the Real food festival when I bought bread at the same time as Trudi Styler. She has an organic farm and had just taken part in the festival panel with Zac Goldsmith, of the Ecologist, who also chanced by.

So there I was checking out Craig’s organic bread at Judges stall and suddenly I was surrounded by celebrities.

I’ll do the goss then get on to the bread.

Judges is owned by Craig Sams and Josephine Fairley. Their relationship gave birth to Green & Black’s chocolate - it’s a great story, soon published.

Before marrying Josephine (a top editor), Craig made healthy eating accessible. You could buy wholefood peanut butter in the supermarket in the 1980s thanks to his company, Whole Earth.

My gratitude goes back to 1968. I was a teenage Londoner who went to Seed, Craig and his brother’s macrobiotic restaurant in a Paddington basement.

Later, (and living communally) I could buy brown rice from their organic and wholefood shop, Ceres, in Notting Hill Gate.

Later again (now with a child in 1978), I would buy the most delicious health-giving bread ever from the Sams’ bakery.

That brings me to the present. The Sams’ bread today is just as bread should be. Real, substantial, and tempting.

No wonder it has flavour and texture. Judges’ organic loaves rise slowly overnight before being baked.

(Most commercial bread is whipped into a frenzy with air and additives).

Slow dough breads are easier on the digestion too. During the slow rising, enzymes have a chance to start breaking the bread down.

The pic below is of two Judges’ loaves from the Real food festival at my friend’s breakfast table.

It reminds me how at home I felt there. (We go back to the 1970s too.)

Fay’s pavlova and the Real food festival

Fay’s pavlova is legendary. How does she get the meringue so light on the inside yet crispy on the outside?

Piled high with strawberries (out-of-season but hey, only g-d is perfect), imbedded in whipped organic double cream, the delectable concoction is hard to resist.

Fay and I both rely on the late Evelyn Rose’s recipe for a perfect pavlova. It’s worth buying her book just for that, although (I promise), you will find a ton of other indispensable recipes there too.

Whip four egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold in double the amounts of caster sugar (that makes eight ounces. Sorry, I am so unmetric when it comes to cooking although I am trying, I really am). Fay uses half of white caster sugar and the other half golden caster sugar.

The secret Evelyn Rose ingredient is one teaspoon of vinegar (plus one teaspoon of vanilla). The vinegar seems to ensure that crispy outside and unsticky inside although I am not sure how it works scientifically.

Then spread the mixture on a greased baking sheet and bake in a low oven for two hours.

Being such a purist, my mum (for that is who Fay is) is no freezer-cook but she does (to my surprise) freeze egg whites.

I want to take my mum to the Real food festival on Thursday 24 April as she so appreciates fine raw ingredients.

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” she says. You have to buy the best (be it organic, free-range, fresh, seasonal, local and/or artisan) to make a good meal, she says.

If the ingredients are good, no need for complicated recipes (as her mother said before her).

Ingredients, ingredients, ingredients. The only three words you need to know when it comes to cooking.

Real food festival - what a buzz

As you can imagine, as soon as I got wind of the Real food festival, I knew I had to go.

Opening this Thursday 24 April at 10 am in Earl’s Court, this is London’s foodie festival of the year.

With about 500 small producers under one roof, including Blur musician and cheese maker Alex James, it must be one of the the biggest farmers’ market in the world.

(Thus meriting a picture of my esteemed mother’s borscht. She strains the cooked beetroots, adds lemon juice to the liquid and beats in an egg. See pic from Saturday lunchtime, above.)

The Real food festival ends at 6 pm on Sunday 27 April. Here’s how to get tickets.

There’s a real buzz going on in the food world about this festival. Everyone I speak to is on their way.

I will be going on Thursday. My first stop, Nichola Fletcher’s stall (P648).

Nichola is a deer farmer from Auchtermuchty, Scotland. I just read on her website how the deer in her care are slaughtered. Sentient beings, they die instantly with no stress - it is awesome.

Deer are well-real because they have not been so intensively-farmed or bred (unlike those poor chickens).

Nichola is also an award-winning author. I know Nichola from the Guild of Food Writers. Fellow members, we have ‘met’ online.

I am looking forward to meeting Nichola in real (my favourite word again!) life.

And tasting her compassionately-killed venison.

Turmeric salmon in coconut milk with lentils

I have a lot of time for turmeric. A healing spice, it boosts immune systems and soothes digestion. Sometimes my constitution wails: “Give me live plain yogurt mixed with a teaspoon of turmeric!” Once obeyed, it calms down, immediately.

The other morning for breakfast, I sprinkled turmeric on organic eggs fried in olive oil. Clearly there is no end of uses for this spice that grants dramatic orangy-yellow to all it touches yet remains pleasant and mild to taste.

The above dish was inspired by the marinade in Mallika’s recipe for fish curry. As instructed by that knowledgeable gal, I basked the fish (in this case a big fat fillet of organic salmon) for several hours in turmeric with some salt and slivers of fresh chilli. (Or sprinkle chilli powder).

I then riffed by cooking the turmeric-coated fillet in a saucepan of simmering (tinned) coconut milk. I let it bubble gently for five minutes (it was a thick fillet) then turned off the light. It can carry on cooking in the heat of the milk.

Luckily I had soaked and cooked organic green lentils and mung beans. The fish went splendidly on a bed made of these gorgeous soft nutritious things.

I felt a bit wicked because I could hear my mama’s voice in my head saying: “You should not disguise the taste of good ingredients with sauces.”

True. Fishiness disappeared in the coconut…

Yet it tasted so aromatic and smooth, I had to forgive myself.

Soil Association on Facebook for dandelions

The new me is eating bits of nature in the raw. Last week I was on nettles and gorse. Now it’s dandelion.

I taste its sweet petals. Mnnn. I am a dandelion fan.

What a bright-looking flower. Dandelions are medicinal. If you can’t get to pick it, try this organic herb tea.

Dandelions are also a good sign real food is growing organically. There are more wild flowers on organic farms than soil deadened by farm chemicals.

God bless the Soil Association - it fights off threats to dandelions.

Protecting dandelions from toxic chemicals is good news for organic food, keeping it real and more nutritious.

I love a good ban. The Soil Association’s pioneering standards (and here) say no to weed-killing chemicals and GM technology. Thus the dandelion lives free.

It’s exciting to help nature (that’s farm animals too. And human ones).

So do connect with the Soil Association on Facebook and join like-minded fans.

Together we can build a healthy, tasty, real food-loving future.

PS Check out those cute dandelions growing in the same fields as my local organic veg. Good sign, eh?

Icing on the cake

As a mama of three grown-up darlings, I have made my fair share of birthday cakes. However I have only just discovered this most splendifirous way to ice them.

The icing is melted chocolate with extra lubrication, so it spreads like a dream.

I baked three cakes. One was dry, another crumbled.

But this marvellous icing rescued them from oblivion and gave them star status. Thanks to the icing, people raved about its chocolateness and were coming back for more.

So praise be to Lulu Grimes for her magic recipe in a back issue of Olive magazine.

The amounts were 400g of chocolate (I used Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate - 150g each bar - for a profound chocolate experience), 25g of butter and 284ml of single cream. Plus 200g icing sugar.

However after baking cakes (one for the office and two for our Five Rhythms dance class), I was bored of weighing.

When I get bored, watch out.

I feverishly broke up three (yes, three) bars of Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate into a non-stick pan, melted in slices of (organic) butter and slugged in double cream. It took minutes to become liquidy-enough to spread easily.

I split the cakes, sandwiched in the soft warm icing with the flat of a knife and smoothed more over the top of the whole. (Do this before the icing gets cold and hardens).

I pressed white chocolate buttons into the (still) soft icing to spell M. (How easy was that? Wish I had thought of this when I was a maternal cake-industry).

A kind Five Rhythms dancer helped to cut cake (see pic below). Happy birthday, Maude!

Black bream roasted

Look at this fine fish, called black bream. What an intelligent look in its eye.

Non-flesh eaters may want to stop reading now.

Mike cut slits in the fish’s sides, right down to the bone. I then inserted dried thyme and fresh parley into the slits and its gutted cavity.

I placed it on an oiled baking sheet in a cold oven then whacked up the heat to its max. About 10-15 minutes later, it was sizzling and I turned it over to roast the other side for a few minutes.

We ate it with organically-grown potatoes from Marshford.

For some unfathomable reason, black bream is not considered trendy.

Yet black bream has a firm white sweet flesh comparable to its more expensive cousin, sea bass (but a fraction of the price).

“How much did it cost?” asked Mike, as we dined like kings in the back garden.

“Pennies,” I said.

I had bought it at the Beach House Wet Fish at Widemouth Bay for something like two pounds sterling (and it fed three of us).

I sing the shop’s praises here.

Kamut risotto with nettles and gorse flowers

This dish is a bit like an Oscar-award winning ceremony so bear with me while I thank a few people.

Firstly Elena Renier for inspiring me to use nettle tops in a risotto. Secondly Chloë for telling me on a walk over the cliff path at Cockington in north Devon that gorse flowers are both edible - and nature’s cure for depression.

I have always loved the spiky gorse bushes’ bright yellow flowers but when I found out I could eat them - and have a mood-change into the bargain - I was ecstatic! (Or was it the gorse petals I was munching en route?).

So, back in the kitchen, I fried a sliced onion and added a mug of kamut grain (instead of rice) to the hot olive oil. Then I poured in two mugs of water, added a pinch of rock salt and let it all simmer for 30 minutes.

I washed the nettle tops that Mike had kindly helped me pick (another Oscar thank you to him) and snipped the plentiful dark green leaves (six ounces in weight) with scissors so they fitted in the pan. They took about ten minutes to wilt and add their wonderful creamy spinach-y taste.

I love nettles! I cannot believe that eight days ago I was a nettle-picking virgin. My first use in nettle soup is here.

It’s Be Nice to Nettles Week soon (14 - 25 May 200 when we stop thinking of them as nasty weeds and realise how wonderful they are.

I know nettles sting if you forget your gloves or do not use the proper ‘folding’ procedure but I do not care. The sting is not dangerous and may even be good for me.

The world faces a rice shortage so can I do my bit by eating kamut grain instead? I have selfish reasons too for I have come to love this bursting-with-health grain.

So, oscar-thanks to the universe for providing good things to eat.

Oh, and universe, while I am in prayerful mode, please knock sense into the powers-that-be to ensure food is shared more fairly and no one goes starving.

Thank you (she says, waving her metaphorical statuette in the air and leaving the stage).