A selection of articles about local food producers, retailers, chefs and those supporting the local food and farming industry.
“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.
June is the start of it. That endless blue sky, long-light, lazy-lunch feel that carries us through the summer and the holidays and puts us in mind of al fresco picnics, garden lunches, rugs and showers and easy food where the temperature of the food is less important and critical than the temperature outside. That peculiarly British thing of braving the breeze and the cloud on the horizon and taking food outside no matter what.
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 »
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.
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 »
Viewed from the front, the terraced house of Goyas and Safna Miah in Dorchester looks ordinary enough: car in the drive, neatly-trimmed grass and pots of flowers for decoration. But looks can be deceiving, and a check around the back Read more »
As a youngster Simon Ford launched a campaign called ‘Operation Save the Eel’ to stop his Grandad from eating eels. Today he delights in the ‘wonders of jellied eels’, but are they sustainable? In the cold spring waters of the Read more »
“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 »