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 2008) 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).

Fish from Widemouth Bay

On Sunday I crossed counties from Devon to Cornwall. My mission: to buy fish. On a Sunday.

As I drove westward, on my right was the grey/green Atlantic ocean. But I knew its proximity did not guarantee I could buy fish landed from its waters.

We have lost the art of buying fresh fish caught locally. Most fish nowadays is sold in supermarkets. Much comes from far away and has probably been frozen.

This is the tragedy of (so-called) developed countries. The only thing which has developed is mass industrialisation. Thus fishmongers are in danger of becoming an extinct species, swallowed up in the jaws of the supermarket.

But not in Widemouth Bay. Perched above its windswept beach is Beach House Wet Fish , probably one of the best wet fish shops around. And it’s open on a Sunday (until 5.30pm).

The lovely fish lady was apologetic the local boats were not out yet this year. So, my fish came from Looe, a bit further down the coast.

All the fish and shellfish in the bowl (pic above) was bought at Widemouth Bay: the scallops, the mussels, the little red mullets perched atop (which I roasted quickly in a hot oven and added with the fried scallops right at the end of the mussels cooking in the water flavoured with a fillet of ling, fried onion and fennel, and fresh parsley and tarragon).

Here is more detail on an earlier fish soup.

The black and white bits in the above pic are actually pasta, farfalle zebra, coloured with black squid juice (the packet has not been opened for a year but this soup was the right occasion).

I am only sorry I had to drive to get there and back (one hour and a half in total) because I consider cars to be cold mean death machines that are bad for the planet as well as my soul.

Two soups – beetroot and pea

This two-soup soup was unplanned, a happy result of making pea soup one day, and beetroot soup the next.

Full of fibre and nutrients, it has (unusual for me) no oil or butter. Here is how I did it, food fans.

First, the pea soup. I took 200g of dried split organic peas and covered them with twice their volume with water. Then I added an onion pierced with a few cloves (thank you, queen of vegetarian cooking, Rose Elliot).

Then I cooked it for 40 minutes with a level teaspoon of untreated rock salt. And that’s it! I did not even need to blend because the obedient peas went mushy all by themselves.

As for the beetroot soup, I peeled two of the violent purple things and cut them into cubes (be careful of staining!). Thinks: as the beetroot were organic, did I need to peel? Must experiment with unpeeled next time as do not wish to shortchange myself of extra vitamins oft found in the skin.

Then I added a handful of split red lentils to thicken the soup in an innocuous way. Water to cover (about two mugsful). Plus one level teaspoon of rock salt (Do see the comments here where medical herbalist Elena Renier and I talk salt).

Still on the subject of salt: who needs a silly stock cube? Its main taste comes from salt. So why not bypass the unecessary cube – with all its weird additives – and just add a level teaspoon of sea salt instead?

The lentils and beetroot took half-an-hour to become tender to my teeth. I gave them a helping hand with my power tool, the hand-held blender. This is one kitchen device I would not be without.

Thank you, universe, for letting me have easy access to electricity, unlike the global majority. I am sure there is enough to go round if we could share resources more equally. More fairness please!