Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Osborne?

Is there anybody who doesn’t know that we are in the middle of the worst economic recession since the war?  This week UK unemployment reached its highest point in 15 years, inflation is running at 5%, real wages are falling and business confidence is being held down by the crisis in the Eurozone.  Even if all that has somehow passed you by, you could tell something big was happening just by listening to the language of our politicians.  David Cameron in his first leader’s speech as Prime Minister resurrected Lord Kitchener’s call to arms telling his party “Your country needs you”.  George Osborne, The Chancellor of the Exchequer, caught the prevailing mood and revived his own wartime slogan to tell voters “We are all in it together”, conveniently ignoring the fact that some of us are more ‘in it’ than others in the way that only a multi millionaire could.  Even the Green Party has recently called for a ‘new home front’ against climate change, Caroline Lucas, the party’s only MP comparing climate deniers to appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s.

Maybe it really is time to look to the 1940s for parallels in our present circumstances.  After all, the whole of Europe is occupied with the plight of the Euro and in thrall to the Germans. Britain alone, it seems, stands on the outside ready to fight the contagion of Eurozone uncertainty on the beaches.  For the most part, the British public has adopted austerity with the usual blend of sangfroid and chirpy resignation.  There is something in the British character that appears to make the hair shirt almost as comfortable as the ubiquitous shell suit, or in the case of George Osborne, the Barbour jacket and green wellies.

I wonder if all this wartime retrospection is having an impact on the nation’s eating habits yet.  After all the extraordinary fact is that the Second World War was the only time in modern history when the entire population of Britain has enjoyed a healthy balanced diet.  In both WWI and WWII when the UK introduced conscription they found many working class men unfit for military service because of malnourishment.  Almost immediately, as affluence returned in the 1960s, a new disease of obesity began to manifest itself, and is now running at epidemic proportions.  But for a few years in the middle of the twentieth century, government rationing ensured that everyone got a fair share and everyone had the basics for healthy living.

In 1939, (for American readers that’s when WWII started for the rest of us) Britain was completely locked in to the Empire System,  which meant we imported 75% of our food: wheat from Canada; butter, cheese and sheep meat from Australia and New Zealand; sugar from the Caribbean and so on.  Next time you hear someone talking about ‘food security’ think about that.  More than 50% of meat was imported, 70% of cheese and sugar, nearly 80% of fruits and about 70% of cereals and fats.

The Germans knew that the quickest way to force Britain to surrender was literally to starve her into submission.  That is what led to the Battle of the Atlantic where convoys of merchant ships ran the gauntlet of U Boats in order to bring basic food stuffs into the British Isles.

As the blockade began to bite, the government had no choice but to take a firm grip on food distribution and introduce rationing for all.  The minimum weekly allowance of butter per person was only 2oz (57g), cheese was even tighter at 1oz (28g) and sugar was only 8oz (57g).  Eggs were rationed at 1 per week, but only if available.  They usually weren’t.  Meat was rationed by price, but again availability governed consumption more often than the official measure.

The only things that were not rationed at any stage during the war were bread and fresh vegetables.  Ironically bread and potatoes only went on ration after the end of the war, as Britain assumed the additional responsibility for feeding liberated Europe.  In fact as members of the public were urged to ‘Dig for Victory’ the supply of home grown vegetables grew steadily.  The whole country it seems  willingly dug up their lawns and flower beds to grow spuds and leeks.  That hair shirt mentality again!  By 1943 over 1 million tons of vegetables were being produced from gardens and allotments.

The Ministry of Food then set about providing information and recipes to help people make the most of their rations.  Marguerite Patten, who later became a famous food writer, was employed to come up with nourishing recipes which she broadcast on the BBC.  Most famous of all was the vegetable pie which came to be named after the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, but which was in fact created at the Savoy Hotel in London by the head Chef, Francis Latry.

Frederick Marquis,
1st Earl of Woolton

This diet, rich in vegetables, low in meat and fats, was sufficient to “Keep Britain Fighting Fit,” in the words of yet another wartime slogan, and by the end of the war Britain produced almost 80% of its own food.  The figure today by the way, stands at around 60%.

When rich politicians decide to preach to the public, or when they urge people to tighten their belts while standing in front of their chauffeur driven Jaguars, it naturally falls on deaf ears.  The public simply does not believe that they are all in it together while they see bankers receiving huge and unjustifiable bonuses, or MPs fiddling their expenses.  But anyone who is nervously watching inflation erode their savings, or struggling to survive on Job Seekers Allowance could do a lot worse than taking up gardening.  Digging is therapeutic and fresh vegetables are delicious.  You will also find that growing and eating your own vegetables is good for your health, good for your wallet and good for the planet.

Recipe – Lord Woolton’s Pie

Ingredients:

1lb diced potatoes
1lb cauliflower
1lb diced carrots
1lb diced swede
3 spring onions
1 teaspoon vegetable extract
1 tablespoon oatmeal

Salt and pepper to taste
A little chopped parsley

Method:

 Cook everything together with just enough water to cover, stirring often to prevent it sticking to the pan. Let the mixture cool. Spoon into a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Cover with a crust of potatoes or whole meal pastry. Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown. Serve hot with gravy.

Wooltons Pie with potato crust

Notes:  I’m not sure what was meant by ‘vegetable extract’ in the 1940s, but I used Marmite.  Also the original recipe suggests varying the selection of vegetables according to season and availability.  Although I have a long standing love affair with swede we are currently not on talking terms, so I substituted some butternut squash.   I didn’t have spring onions so in the interest of austerity I substituted a small red onion.  I’ve also read comments that the pie could be a bit bland, so I added a chopped leek and used a cheese mash for the crust.  I probably blew my ration for the month!

Verdict:  Using a mashed potato topping made this into a kind of vegetarian shepherd’s pie and it had the same comforting, homely feel.  The taste was evocative of my childhood somehow and I thoroughly enjoyed it, which is just as well because even though I halved the quantities there’s enough for two more main meals.  Quite acceptable as a filling, midweek dinner and economical too.

Coriander Seed

This bizarre autumn weather is causing various problems for the wildlife around my Suffolk home.  Butterflies such as the comma, which had disappeared two or three weeks ago, have been making a surprise return to hedgerows, and the neighbours’ apple tree has returned to blossom.  On the other hand the sunshine is rewarding my faith by finally ripening my outdoor tomatoes, and a few days of genuine heat have dried off the coriander or cilantro if you prefer, which I let run to seed way back in July.


Coriander seed

Now that the entire plant is brown and brittle, harvesting the seeds could hardly be easier.  I simply pulled up the whole plant and carefully pushed the seed heads down into a large paper bag.  Plastic bags are not suitable as they can cause the plants to sweat and rot rather than dry out.  Also, most plastic bags these days have ventilation holes for safety reasons and these are a perfect size for little coriander seeds to escape.

I could hear seeds been brushed off and falling in to the bottom of the bag even as I was bagging it. Now I have hung the whole bag in the garage where I will give it a couple more weeks to finish drying. 

After that simply bashing the bag should be all it takes to dislodge the remaining seed, which I will store in jars ready to be used as needed in Indian or Mexican dishes, or even in carrot and coriander soup.

Green Tomatoes

Green Tomatoes

I heard on the evening weather bulletin that this has been the coldest summer in the UK since 1993.  Now I have no reason to disbelieve the man from the Met but I can’t say that I have any meteorological recollections of that year. You see my second child came in to the world in April 1993 literally kicking and screaming, and if memory serves me right, she didn’t stop either activity until well in to the autumn.  That summer, if I wasn’t driving her round the neighbourhood in my Renault Chamade at all hours, ostensibly to induce sleep, but actually to give the neighbours a break and share the pain equally between all the denizens of west Kent, then I was probably comatose while ‘her-indoors’ took a turn at the wheel.  However one thing I am sure of, I was not attempting to grow tomatoes.

If I had been, I might have been better prepared for the more or less total failure of my tomato crop this summer.

When I arrived here back in April, a couple of tomato plants were among the first things I bought. Moneymaker is a variety I have grown under glass several times before with great success.  It is a high yielding plant bearing good tasting, mid-sized fruits on fast growing vines.   In my old greenhouse I produced literally pounds and pounds of tomatoes and filled the chest freezer with bags of delicious salsa pomodoro.

As is often the way of things, shortly after I bought these plants a friend gave me some more, although these were different.  In addition to my Moneymaker I now had a couple of Big Boys, which again is a variety I have grown before, and a single plant of Sun Gold which was entirely new to me.

Big Boy is one of the most popular tomatoes in Britain.  With sweet, red, smooth-skinned fruit that can weigh up to a pound or more, they are strong growing plants with good disease resistance, and they have never been out of fashion since their introduction 60 years ago.

Sun Gold is listed as an orange coloured cherry tomato, exceptionally sweet and adaptable to most climates or soil types.

All the plants grew well and produced reasonable amounts of fruit, but the ensuing weeks just didn’t bring enough sunshine to ripen them.  I hung on all through the summer, keeping them watered, snipping off lateral trusses, pinching out growing tips and tying the plants in to the fence.  Above all I kept repairing them through some unseasonably windy weather. But for all my efforts, all I got was more and more green tomatoes, with one exception, the Sun Gold.

Sun Gold

This variety, that I had never heard of, has produced good quantities of the sweetest cherry tomatoes I’ve ever tasted.  They never turn red, just a beautiful orange colour, but don’t have any concerns that they aren’t ripe because they certainly pack taste.  It was also a nice compact plant which could easily be grown indoors on a window cill.  I will definitely seek out this variety in future.

For the rest however I was faced with a couple of kilos of green tomatoes, and with the weather starting to feel more autumnal every day I lost faith that they would ever ripen.  The other issue that I was facing was a quantity of fairly skanky apples slowly rotting in the box where they are stored.  These are mainly windfalls from a neighbour’s tree plus a few ‘wild’ apples that I found growing on the edge of a local wood.

So, reluctant to waste anything, I searched out the following recipe and yesterday I picked my green tomatoes and spent a couple of hours making a vat of green tomato chutney.

Recipe

Green Tomato & Apple Chutney

Ingredients:

1 kg green tomatoes, chopped
250g apples, cored, peeled & chopped
125g raisins, chopped
320g onions, peeled and chopped
20g root ginger, peeled and chopped
2 fresh chilies, chopped
1tsp salt
1/4 tsp allspice
250g brown sugar
300 ml vinegar (I used cider vinegar)

Method:

Simply place all the ingredients in a large pot or preserving pan and bring to the boil. Don’t worry that there isn’t enough liquid at the start. More will come out of the fruit as it cooks. Stir well until all the sugar has dissolved, then turn down the heat and let it simmer slowly for about one and a half hours.  This is important to make sure that the fruit softens properly and that all the flavours run together. The finished chutney should be a rich dark mixture with the consistency of thick jam.

Chutney has the consistency of thick jam

I’ve never used this recipe before but early tastings were encouraging.  A good chutney should be a complex mixture of flavours, sweet, sour, fruity and spicy all at the same time.

This is now packed away in sterilised jars to improve with age.  I won’t even think about them again for three months, when I will broach one for Christmas and hopefully I’ll have something tasty to go with the cold cuts on Boxing Day.  I would like to think that something special might come out of all my love and hard work in the early part of the summer, just as it did eighteen years ago.

One potato, two potatoes...

When I said I enjoyed growing food I suppose what I really meant was that I enjoy the way food grows itself.  When I grew a lot of flowers I always favoured natural looking gardens in the Gertrude Jekyll style, but if I’m honest that is at least partly because I have a limited tolerance for continual weeding, trimming and dead-heading etc.  So it is with vegetables.  I am unlikely to start growing leeks anytime soon.  All that transplanting, hoeing and earthing-up sounds too much like hard work.  Potatoes on the other hand are my kind of crop. 

It was late in the season when I arrived back in this country in mid April, and frankly I would not have thought about growing much in the way of vegetables had I not been given a bag of seed potatoes by a friend’s dad.  This bag, which was surplus to requirements in his own garden, was not entirely promising.  All the potatoes were sprouting vigourously and the skins were soft and wrinkled.  By the time I had let them lie around in my kitchen for a couple of weeks they were even worse.

Nevertheless I didn’t want to look ungrateful, so eventually I prepared some ground and got around to planting the seed potatoes, more in hope than expectation.  First I cut off all the shoots leaving only one on each potato. Then I planted them with the remaining shoot facing upwards, in rows about 18 inches apart.  The only other thing I did for them was to keep them watered during the driest weeks of the summer.

After about 10 days they started to show above ground. Fourteen spuds came out of that bag and all fourteen plants came up.  After 8 weeks they flowered.  This is the point at which the tubers really start to swell and ideally you should start administering a liquid feed. I didn't have any available and my nearest garden centre is about 12 miles away, so I didn't bother. You can start to harvest the potatoes from this point on, but they do continue to grow for some weeks depending on conditions. I generally wait until the leaves begin to turn yellow.

The only reason to lift potatoes is if you are worried about slugs or disease.  My soil is exceptionally quick draining alluvial sand.  Digging is a joy and slugs are not a problem, so I left them underground for a couple more weeks. I finally harvested them yesterday.

Simply stick a garden fork in to the ground a few inches to the side of the plant and prise the soil and the plant up and over to reveal the potatoes lying in the loose earth.  It still seems like magic to see beautifully formed potatoes lying where there were none a few weeks before.  Make sure you get all of the tubers out, even small ones, or they will rot and may encourage blight which would infect future plantings.  I used to get the children to rummage in the earth looking for them.  Their excitement at upturning a straggler was every bit as intense as my own when I was their age and helped my own father on his allotment.

I think my potatoes are Cara, which is a popular maincrop variety noted for being blight resistant and storing well.  I have grown them before.  They are a very versatile potato tending towards the waxy end of the spectrum and with a rich savoury taste.  I harvested 10lbs which is a decent return from my 14 seeds considering I didn't feed them.  I put them in a hessian sack in the garage where they will be both dark and cool and they should last me well in to the autumn and maybe beyond.

Now I’m not suggesting that this is the best way to grow potatoes. I am led to believe that I may have been quite lucky in avoiding pests or disease, and perhaps by feeding and earthing-up I could have improved the crop, but it does show how you should never let ignorance or fear put you off getting stuck in to the garden. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen?

Top 10 Herbs for Growing and Eating

There is no more local food than that which you produce yourself in your own home.  If you really want to live the good life and go for self-sufficiency you will need a fair bit of space. Some people estimate around one acre of fertile land is enough to grow food for a family of 4 or 5 for a year.  But even if you only have a window box there are things you can do to save money and start producing tasty produce.

The most obvious starting point, both from a horticultural viewpoint and also in culinary terms, is of course herbs.  They are easy to grow, essential in any style of cookery and expensive to buy.  Also, fresh herbs taste so much better than the dried ones.

Since I tearfully waved goodbye to my parents’ house and set off to make my own way in the world, I have lived in at least ten different homes, and in most of them my legacy has been a well stocked herb garden.  In some cases bushy shrubs were interspersed with hardy perennials in the herbaceous borders.  On the other hand, in some of the more modest establishments that I have called home it amounted to little more than a crowded tub outside the back door.  But whatever the possibilities, I always start by getting some culinary herbs established as a top priority.

If you peruse the garden centres there is a seemingly limitless number of herbs available for planting.  Many are used in herbal remedies or simply to provide colour and fragrance to your garden, but for a basic guide to the most useful herbs for the kitchen, read on.

I always start with the magnificent seven easy to grow herbs that figure prominently in my own cooking.

The first three are shrubs or small trees, although they can be grown in pots they are likely to want to grow quite big and may need to be repotted from time to time.

Bay leaf

Bay  (Laurus nobilis) grows in any type of soil in full sun.  Pick the leaves as you need them. The taste is unique and quite delicate, sweeter than most herbs.  It’s a core ingredient in any bouquet garni and I use it in most braised dishes or whenever I make stock for soups or gravy, or other bouillons.

Rosemary

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is another strong growing bush.  The leaves resemble pine needles and provide a pungent coniferous taste which should be used sparingly.  It is best used on strong meats like mutton or lamb but also goes well with poultry.  Add it to roast potatoes or other roast vegetables. It can also be added as a flavouring to homemade bread.

Purple Sage

 Sage (Salvia officinalis) is actually a large family of plants ranging from small trees to leafy perennials but most usually as a woody shrub.  It has many medicinal properties but its culinary use is mainly as a key ingredient in sage and onion stuffing, which in our house is an essential accompaniment to roast chicken or pork. The leaves can also be strewn over roasts or added to homemade bread.

After these space hogs come four smaller perennials.

Thyme and Marjoram are pretty flowering plants and if grown in their preferred thin, chalky soils will stay reasonably compact.

Thyme

Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) is one of the most widely used herbs in the world.  I add it to stocks, soups and casseroles of all kinds.  It goes particularly well with chicken, and it’s another key ingredient in bouquet garni.  I used to grow it between slabs in the garden path.  On a warm sunny day walking on the path would release the aroma to flood the garden with beautiful Mediterranean smells.

Marjoram

Sweet Marjoram (Origanum majorana) is a variety of Oregano more suited to British climates than its Mediterranean cousins.  Too much water makes the plants leggy but then again if you crop it as regularly as I do you can keep it in check.  Use it in any Italian cooking, especially tomato sauces, pizzas or whenever the recipe calls for mixed herbs.

Mint

Mint (Mentha) is the terror of the herb garden.  It grows strongly and spreads by way of underground runners sent out from the roots.  For this reason it is best planted in a small pot which you then bury in the herb bed.  This prevents the runners from spreading.  There are numerous types of mint; peppermint and spearmint are probably most popular.  For some people it is the taste of summer, an essential flavouring for new potatoes or fresh peas.  Personally I find it rude and overpowering when used that way.  However I do make mint sauce to accompany lamb dishes, and I add it to yoghurt to make cooling raitas whenever I cook curries.  I use the leaves as garnish on Summer Puddings or other fruit creations, and a few sprigs are crucial for making jugs of Pimms or homemade Mohitos on a hot summer evening.

The last of my magnificent seven is Chives.  Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are strictly speaking not a herb at all, rather they are the smallest member of the onion family.  The bulbs grow quietly in any soil and propagate by division. They come up year after year and the subtly flavoured leaves make a perfect addition to salads, potatoes, omelettes and other eggs dishes.  The flowers are edible too and look pretty in the salad bowl.

All of these seven herbs are no-nonsense, low maintenance plants.  Position them in full sun and you can pretty well leave them to get on with the job of growing.  The essential oils protect them against most predators; it’s why many of them have reputed qualities as antiseptics or insect repellents.  You will only need to water them in the driest spells.  An annual feed will keep the lush green foliage coming instead of hard woody growth, and an occasional trim to keep the shape is all they will ever ask for.  The final three must-have herbs are altogether different.

Basil and Coriander are annuals.  They are best grown in containers so you can keep them out of rain and wind and away from pests.  Basil in particular is a magnet for snails and slugs and other leaf eating predators, and you won’t want to share these precious leaves with anything. To keep a supply coming all summer you will need to sow at regular intervals.   Both are prone to bolting so pinch out the tips after they reach a certain height.  Although with Coriander you will probably want to let it flower and set seed in the end.  This may then be harvested and stored for use as a spice.

Sweet Basil

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is the herb of love and it’s easy to see why.  It is utterly seductive in Italian or Indian dishes.  An essential ingredient in most pasta recipes it is also delicious tossed straight in to a salad.

Coriander

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is used in huge quantities in Indian and Mexican cooking, where it is often called by its Spanish name, cilantro.  Nothing else comes close to the rich, sweet flavour of fresh coriander, and again it is a delightful addition to a summer salad. Coriander roots are more strongly flavoured than the leaves and feature in Asian cooking, particularly Thai recipes.

 Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is not so demanding, but it is a biennial plant.  That means it completes its lifecycle in two years and then dies.  Many people simply grow it as an annual and sow fresh plants every year, but if you leave it alone in the herb garden it will self seed at the end of year two.  If you are not too worried about order in the garden, and for me the effect of herbs all jostling and tumbling over each other is part of the pleasure, then this is an easy way to keep a constant supply.  Parsley requires no extra protection or care.

The commonest form of parsley grown in Britain is the curly leaved variety mainly because of its decorative quality.  Italian, or Flat Leaved, Parsley tastes very similar, is reputedly more tolerant of both rain and heat, and probably has a somewhat classier image these days.

Whichever one you choose, parsley is maybe the most widely used herb of all.  Add it to fish, meat or chicken. Put it in rice dishes, on potatoes, or in pasta sauces.  It’s another key component of a bouquet garni and essential in bouillon and many stews and casseroles.  It is also widely used as a garnish.