A selection of articles about local food producers, retailers, chefs and those supporting the local food and farming industry.
Nominated for another BAFTA for his documentary, Coppers, Simon Ford turns his attention to our daily bread. We are undergoing a quiet revolution in our bread eating habits. Some of us are beginning to cast off the tyranny of the Read more »
I hadn’t bargained for the reaction I had when I spoke to Sheila Dillon to arrange a meeting; I almost dropped the phone. Presenting Radio 4’s The Food Programme, Sheila’s voice has been the kitchen companion to the preparation of Read more »
“Apparently the Chinese invented sweet and sour cooking for the English dockers because they liked their food really sweet and chicken tikka masala was invented when someone poured a can of tomato soup over some curried chicken. Billy Bragg’s song Read more »
Big things come in small packages, an aphorism as true for gifts as it is for the diminutive Polish Delicatessen in Weymouth. Located opposite the train station, the Tardis-like shop sells thousands of Polish foods and drinks in an area the size of a large living room, and though a visit to the shop may not be the same as going to Poland, it is certainly the next best thing.
In mid December I made the fatal claim, quietly and only to myself but still a dangerous articulation, ‘this is going to be the best Christmas ever.’ I know when Foodie says ‘this horse cannot lose’ to distract myself, leave him to his delusional compulsion, ultimately secure in the knowledge that after all these ‘life changing’ bets he comes out even – else over the cumulative years we would have become destitute or loaded. But I really did think I couldn’t stumble.
“I’ve spent over half my life in America. When I was a student, I had no money whatsoever and would always go to this shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and buy stuff that was way out of date. I spent an enormous amount of time eating things out of packets. Cottage cheese with pineapple was an obsession. Peanuts are a hugely positive form of food. Travelling around the Deep South it was so much easier to stop at a petrol station and buy a bag of peanuts than to go into some awful fast food place. American fast food is disgusting – the very notion of fast food is an anathema. The point of food is to enjoy company and so if you need fast food, you just buy some peanuts. But if you’re sharing food you take a good long time over it, that’s the point.
Fairtrade, Organic, Dolphin Friendly, Rain Forest Alliance – these have all become familiar labels on our food, but back in the early Eighties, they were rare enough to be almost non-existent. It is thanks to the vision of a few Read more »
The game is over. Country-dwellers will not mourn the loss from their plates, they are attuned to the gentle music of the seasons’ rhythms, the onward march of nature and March’s early, hesitant notes of spring. If city dwellers realized that cutting country corners involves, at the season’s end, untrained surgery, nipping and tugging out game birds breasts, discarding legs and wings to avoid the misery of flying feathers and torn skin, and wrenching out clusters of guts high with hanging, they’d doubtless be shocked. But that is the way with farmers whose braces of birds have already graced the table to the point at which a delicacy has lost its cache and the deep-freeze is still stocked with a flock. The skinless breast which I have abjured for ever as the root of much lazy cooking evil is upon us.
Tracking down photographer Christian Barnett is no simple task. As a food photographer he is much in demand, however his love of travel is as likely to keep him on the move as much as his love of photography. When Read more »
Tim’s choice of venue for lunch is The Farmer’s Kitchen at Washingpool Farm and when I arrive he’s already there, chatting easily with owner and farmer Simon Holland in the busy farm shop. What strikes me immediately is the genuine Read more »