Flour

This month I investigate flour, probably the most significant and over indulged commodity in our diet.  Modern flour frightens me to death – unless buying organic wholemeal or non-wheat flour, all supermarket flour contains chalk, iron filings, dust and preservatives, even organic white flour.  Non organic white flour has been bleached.

A ridiculous piece of Government legislation allows flour manufacturers not to list the ingredients in a bag of flour.  Only when buying organic wholemeal will you have piece of mind that the bag contains nothing but unadulterated healthy wholesome flour.

I am deeply concerned that non-organic wheat flour makes up too much of our children’s daily food intake. Cereal for breakfast, sandwiches in the lunch box and with all probability wheat will feature somewhere in the evening meal. Non organic white flour is bad for you – the growth in allergies and intolerances in Britain is hardly surprising. Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom. Two exceptional local millers have bucked the trend, offering a variety of healthy, wholesome flours; I insist you buy their produce. Give us this day our daily bread.

Our two local food heroes are Doves Farm of Hungerford and Mapledurham Watermill, who offer pure flours, additive free.  Britons consume about eight million loaves a day plus countless rolls, sandwiches, pizzas and croissants.  The baking industry is a model of industrial efficiency and British bread is amongst the lowest priced in Europe.  Britain’s tasteless ‘cotton wool’ bread is a joke.  Thanks to Mapledurham stone ground wholemeal wheat and Doves  Farm organic wheat, spelt, buckwheat and rye, we have sensational local flour to cook and bake with.  There has been a mill at Mapledurham since Saxon times, the present mill dates from the 15th Century, making it the only surviving watermill on the Thames.  You can visit the mill, seeing the traditional machinery in action is a treat.  The wholemeal wheat flour ground here and its by-products, bran and semolina can be purchased in both the Mill shop or Estate Office – 01189 723350.  Mapledurham flour is now available at most local farmers markets – find ‘crumbles’ biscuits stall for the flour.  Mapledurham house and watermill survive and exist thanks to the determination and passion of Lady Anne Eyston and her husband John.  The couple bought the derelict and dishevelled properties 40 years ago and over the decades restored them.  Proceeds from filming The Eagle has Landed at Mapledurham helped restore the mill.  Mildred Cookson has been Miller for 30 years, now ably assisted by her enthusiastic apprentice Corrie Starling.  Mildred is a highly respected member of the traditional Corn millers Guild.

I use flours from Mapledurham and Doves  Farm in all our cooking & baking at London Street Brasserie and The Crooked Billet.

Doves Farm Foods was established in 1978 in Hungerford, Berks.  Founders Michael & Clare Marriage were so concerned about food quality, sustainability and the environment that they were compelled to research, grow and market wholesome organic flour.  While converting the Hungerford family farm to organic production, Michael & Clare began to link with other farmers who also wanted to keep their organic produce special.  Doves  Farm Foods was formed to grind organic grain into strong flour for breads, self raising flour for cakes, plain flour for biscuits, pastry and sauces as well as a wide range of speciality flours including rye, buckwheat and spelt.

Like organic growers and manufacturers, Doves  Farm is inspected annually by the Soil Association, to check that the land, food processing and records comply with organic standards. 

Michael also produces a range of special dietary flours, breakfast cereals, biscuits and snack bars.  More blurb from www.Dovesfarm.co.uk.  Doves  farm flour is widely available, Tesco and many health food shops.

Wheat Free Bread

As I was on a bit of a health-bender someone suggested I get myself ‘metabolically tested’.  This process identifies foods your body needs to function properly.  The idea behind it is that, in theory, we’re all like cars – put in the wrong fuel – diesel, unleaded, leaded – and it won’t function properly.  But topped up with the right sort of fuel, you’ll be firing on all cylinders.  That’s the theory, anyway.  From this I discovered that foods I previously perceived as healthy, such as fruit juice, wholemeal bread, broccoli, jacket potatoes are apparently not doing me any good.  While some foods I would have always thought were best consumed in moderation, such as dairy produce and red meat, are what my body needs.  However, I also discovered that like many, I shouldn’t eat wheat.  Of course, the problem, especially being a chef, is that you soon discover that wheat is in everything, even things you wouldn’t naturally suspect – products such as soy sauce, yoghurt, sausages, muesli, chocolate mousse, fish fingers, the list is endless.  Wheat is such a cheap ingredient that it’s used as a bulking or thickening agent in loads of foods.  But determined to get healthy, I dug out my wheat-free bread recipe.  This is delicious, oven fresh, toasted, buttered, drizzled with honey or spread with soft goats’ cheese.
I’m using spelt, an ancient relative of modern common wheat, widely grown by the Romans.  It is produced organically and locally by Doves  Farm in Hungerford and fortunately stocked at Tesco and health food shops.

500 g Spelt flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp quick yeast
75 g chopped walnuts (optional)
275 ml tepid water
1 tbsp vegetable oil

If you have a bread machine, just bung it all in and set it.  You might need to check the instructions for your machine to ensure you have used the correct weight in flour to the amount of water – which probably needs to be from the cold tap, as most machines warm the bread mix.  Alternatively combine all the ingredients in a processor bowl using the dough hook for five minutes.  Place the dough in a non-stick, one-pound, bread tin and leave to rise in a warm place for 25 minutes under a clean t-towel or covered by some cling film.  Bake in pre-heated oven at 220°C, gas mark 7 for 35 minutes.  It couldn’t be easier.

After bread, probably the commonest way we eat flour is when it has been made into pasta.  When I was a kid, pasta was exotic, rare, and unusual.  Tinned spaghetti hoops being the height of sophistication.  Now we eat huge amounts of the stuff, almost catching up with Italy.

In the picture I’m making Buckwheat pasta at Wallingford School, it is incredibly easy to make.  The following recipe for Buckwheat tagliatella uses Doves Farm organic Buckwheat flour.

Buckwheat Tagliatelle – 4 portions

400g Doves  Farm organic Buckwheat flour plus a few shakes for working & kneading
4 large free range eggs

Sift flour into bowl, break eggs into flour, mix egg & flour together with fork, then take over mixing with (clean) hands until you have a rough dough.

Turn the mixture onto a clean work surface sprinkled with Buckwheat flour, knead the dough.  If it feels sticky, sprinkle in some extra flour; knead until the dough feels smooth and silky.  Knead for 8-10 minutes.

Wrap dough loosely in a damp tea towel and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Use a pasta machine to roll out your dough.  A good basic machine is only £25.00, a worthy investment.  Assemble the machine and turn the rollers to their widest setting.  Divide the dough into 6 even balls (keep them wrapped under the damp tea towel) feed a dough ball through the rollers.  Fold it in half, turn it and repeat.

Do this 3 times until the dough feels silky and pops as your feed it through the rollers.  Then turn the machine to the next setting so that the rollers close up a little and pass the unfolded strip of dough through.

Keep closing the rollers and passing the dough through until you get a long sheet of very thin pasta.  Cut it in half at any stage if it gets too long to handle.  Lay the sheet of pasta out flat on the tea towel while you roll out the other pieces.  A final run through the rollers with the ribbon cutters produces perfect tagliatelle.

Your pasta will keep for 3 days, but dry it out thoroughly or it will stick together.  I suggest drying tagliatelle on coat hangers.

In my tagliatelle photograph, pasta is accompanied with poached Scottish Langoustines and Chemula butter: teaspoon each, lime zest, finely chopped seedless red chilli, chopped coriander, minced garlic, 200g butter, juice of 1 lime.

Melt butter in heavy bottomed saucepan, add everything other than the juice, slowly warm through without colouring to release and infuse flavours, increase heat so mixture simmers then immediately add lime juice.  Whisk ingredients together, serve immediately.

Mapledurham Sourdough

At London Street Brasserie we include Sourdough and Polish Rye in the breadbasket.  Here’s how we make it. 

Day One

Put 3 heaped tablespoons of Mapledurham strong white flour and 1 tablespoon Mapledurham wholemeal flour into a large mixing bowl.  Add a tablespoon of organic apple juice and 1 ½ - 2 tablespoons of hot, still, mineral water.  You should have a thick, stir-able dough.  We use Mapledurham flour because it doesn’t contain chemicals in supermarket flour that prevent wild yeast breeding.  Mineral water doesn’t contain chemicals found in tap water that will kill the yeast.  Add just a scrap of fresh yeast or a pinch of dried yeast (not the fast action variety).  Whilst this is cheating slightly, it helps to attract the right sort of wild yeast.  Beat the mixture for 3 minutes with a wooden spoon then cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for 24 hours.

Day Two

The mixture has produced frothy bubbles, the wild yeast has arrived ! Beat in 3 tablespoons strong white and 1 tablespoon wholemeal flour, plus 4 tablespoons warm mineral water.  Re-cling film, leave in a warm place.

Day Three

Repeat the same flour and water quantities beat in. Cover.  Leave in a warm place

Day Four

Add 5 tablespoons strong white and 1 wholemeal, stir in, cling film and leave for 3 hours.  Take out 2 tablespoons of dough mix and reserve.
Tip 125 ml mineral water and 300g strong white flour, 2 teaspoons of salt and enough warm water to make a smooth dough.  Knead the mixture for 10 minutes until smooth, then stand the dough in a bowl, in a warm place, cover with a tea towel for 2 hours.  Then gently knead it on a work surface for 1 minute.

Fom the dough into a cushion and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet.  Sprinkle the top with a little wholemeal flour, cover with tea towel and stand in warm place for 1 hour.  Pre-heat oven 240°C.  Place sourdough in oven.  After 10 minutes reduce heat to 200°C.  After another 10 minutes remove from oven, turn upside down, return to oven and bake for another 10 minutes to brown the base.  Tap the base of the loaf, if it sounds hollow, then the bread is done; otherwise leave it a little longer.

Turn loaf onto a wire rack to cool.

The two reserved tablespoons of dough can be used to set another batch away – revert back to “day two” adding more flour and water.  You have created a breeding yeast culture that can now last forever.

London Street Brasserie Polish Rye

What an embarrassment British bread has become.  Thank God for Doves  Farm and Mapledurham for their exceptional flour that enables me to bake proper bread.  This caraway rye is not only a big hit with the restaurant guests, but also with all my superstar Polish Kitchen Porters.

Polish Rye Bread – makes 1 loaf

300 g strong white Doves  Farm flour
200 g Doves  Farm Rye flour
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp quick yeast
1 tsp Malden salt
1 tbspn olive oil
300 ml hand hot water

In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt and quick yeast.  Carefully measure the water and roughly mix into the flour.  Now add the oil and continue mixing to form a ball of dough.  Knead the dough in the bowl, or on a table, until smooth and pliable.  Leave the dough in a bowl covered with a cloth in a warm draft free place for the dough to double in size (about an hour).  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and “knock back” or knead the dough vigorously with your hands for several minutes.  Shape the dough into a pillow and place on a greased baking sheet.  Cover and leave to rise for 30 minutes in a warm place.  Bake immediately in a pre-heated 230°C over for 35-40 minutes

Pork

A Sorry State

In Britain and abroad pork is the most commonly eaten meat, also the most abused in terms of intensive farming and neglected welfare.  Even locally there are some pretty shameful intensive pig farming units.  Such is the demand for pork – particularly in its cured form, as bacon, that producing it has become a sheer numbers game.  An industry at full throttle – cheap feed producing cheap factory farmed pork.  Bland, flabby, tasteless meat, laced with chemical preservatives and flavouring E-numbers.

I don’t understand why Dutch crate reared veal is taboo, outlawed in Britain, yet Dutch & Danish intensively reared pork attracts absolutely no opposition.

Pigs have a complex set of behavioural instincts, rather like humans – they like company, they like personal space.  However, they are reared shoulder to shoulder, can’t turn round or lay down, such dreadful conditions result in fights and injuries.  Ears are torn off, the tail is so vulnerable to attack that it is routinely amputated at birth.  Teeth often pulled out to prevent attack.  Risk of infection is high – their feed is laced with a drug cocktail of antibiotics and growth-promoting antibiotics which artificially speed growth.  Factory pigs go from “weaners”, the size of a plump Jack Russell to a “porker” the size of a small hippo in 20 weeks.  We buy this chemical laced tasteless ‘sponge’ from supermarkets, Marks & Spencer was recently in the news for stocking such meat.

Local Rare Breeds

Thankfully in Berkshire and neighbouring counties there has been a massive demand for traditionally farmed, slow grown pork.  Meat with a thick fat covering, reared for flavour, pleasing pink firm meat rather than supermarkets ultra lean creamy grey pork.  We even have a couple of rare breed pigs of note, Oxford Sandy and Berkshire Black, currently enjoying a culinary resurgence, particularly in quality butchers, gastronomic circles and restaurants.

The ‘Berkshire’ is a traditional pork pig that produces some mouth watering joints and chops with crackling that is second to none.  A truly great pig, totally black with a splash of white on the snout and white socks.

The Oxford Sandy, a reddish pig, sometimes spotted black.  Deep intensively flavoursome meat with a generous fat covering, perfect for slow roasting and spit cooking.

Buying Good Pork

So where can you purchase traditionally reared pork that tastes how pork used to taste.  Find my listing of farm shops in the following paragraphs.  Buying decent pork from the supermarket is almost impossible – but look for Soil Association Organic labels, however, these pigs will probably have been produced on a large scale, so you probably won’t get the flavour benefits of small herd production.  Many High Street Butcher’s pork is also of mediocre quality, fortunately though we have some excellent pork butchers including Greens of Pangbourne (01189-842063), Vicars & Son, Reading (01189-572904) and my personal favourites – Carl Woods, Sonning Common (01189-722228) and Gabriel Machin, Henley on Thames (01491-574377).  I’m pictured with Ian from Machin's and his multi award winning sausages.

Farm Shops

Sheepdrove Organic Farms, Lambourn, just off the M4 by Newbury have done more to promote animal welfare, organic farming and public awareness towards correct animal husbandry.  Tim, Sheepdrove’s pig farmer, organises the outdoor herd carefully around their behavioural needs, a wet corner in each paddock so pigs can wallow in mud and keep cool.  Camborough sows with great mothering instincts are bred with Duroc Boar to produce great tasting meat.  Also, rare breeds including Berkshire’s and Gloucester Old Spots are reared.  Sheepdrove can organise home delivery and wholesale – www.sheepdrove.com

Laverstoke Park situated in Overton near Basingstoke farms to Soil Association organic standards, producing the best tasting, healthiest food without compromise.  An idyllic, natural healthy environment enables crops to thrive and slow growing animals to develop superb flavour.  Laverstoke Park has Saddleback, Middle White and Kune Kune pork, also Wild Boar.  The farm have also crossed their Wild Boar with Saddlebacks to create Laverstoke Blue ‘breeding backwards’ in effect, to create a flavour approaching the earliest type of non-domestic pork.  Laverstoke operate a box scheme and have a superb farm shop www.laverstokepark.co.uk.

Audrey French is a familiar face at the Thames Valley Farmers Market.  She rears traditional breeds at Ellis’s Hill Farm, Arborfield, Reading.  Her business ‘Wysipig’ sells superb pork, also an imaginative selection of cured products, bacon, hams, sausages and delicious salami – www.wysipig.com

Here follows a list of superb tasting traditionally reared pork, I have truffled out.  Apologies to those farms I have yet to discover.

Food Hero

This months Food Hero crown however, goes to Emma & Robert Jackson of ‘Blue Tin’, Ipsden near Checkendon, Oxfordshire.

Blue Tin are relatively small scale pig farmers, with and Old Spot herd of usually around 80, including eleven sows and two boars, Elvis & Lucky.  Larger & better known farms including Sheepdrove Organic & Laverstoke Park justly deserves the accolades and awards they receive, undoubtedly qualifying as Food Hero’s.  But this month I champion an unsung hero, Blue Tin is special because it is small, embracing the whole ethos of what traditionally reared pork is all about.  Simply outstanding tasting pork, pork how it used to taste sold from the farm gate virtually by word of mouth.  Testament to how utterly scrumptious Emma & Roberts Old Spot is.

Blue Tin started in 2005 producing for family and friends; word spread about the amazing pork and the Jackson’s started selling to the public.

Elvis, Lucky and the herd are reared outside, the animals have their own paddocks and are kept within their family groups with sheltered beds and straw.  No medicines need to be routinely given to Blue Tin pigs, keeping stress levels down and a healthy diet made for happy pigs.

The Jackson family have farmed in the Checkendon area for generations, despite stiff competition from other British and European specialist pig rearing farms.  Emma & Robert supply a niche market.  Native traditional breed pork raised to the highest possible welfare standards.  Blue Tin (01491-681145) bluetinproduce@btinternet.com

Sausages

This recipe will give you a Bentley of a Banger, not the mechanically recovered pork slurry sausages offered as Supermarket ‘best buy’ budget variety.  Enjoy experimenting with your recipe, approximately 50/50 shoulder and belly meat gives the perfect succulence.  You can make sausages from 100% minced pork but the addition of a little cereal to the mix helps to bind and, more importantly, soaks up the delicious fatty flavours that otherwise can escape during cooking.  My favourite binding cereals are Baby Organix range organic cereal or fine oatmeal.

Sausage casing 2-3 metres (ask your butcher)
500 g pork shoulder, roughly minced
250 g belly pork, roughly minced
25 g Baby Organix range organic cereal or fine oatmeal
1 teaspoon Malden salt
16 Sage leaves, roughly chopped
¼ tspn white pepper
¼ teaspoon ground mace

Put the end of the sausage casing under a cold tap and run water through.  Soak for 1 hour in a bowl of cold water.  Mix all ingredients together.  Take the casing out of water, using a wide nozzle funnel, slide casing onto funnel, neatly rouched, like pulling down a long sock or tights.  Tie the casing end with string.  Force the sausage meat through the funnel filling the casing.  Either leave the finished snake as a large Cumberland sausage or experiment twisting into portion sized links.  Always cook sausages slowly, on a gentle heat for at least 20 minutes, depending on their thickness.

Perfect Crispy Crackling

Roast loin of Pork, Bramley and Roots – serves 6

3 kg pork loin boned – keep the bones
250 g table salt
3 Bramley apples
1 head celeriac
12 small parsnips
12 small carrots
3 red onions
6 leeks
12 Jerusalem artichokes
Leaves from 6 sprigs of Thyme
Malden salt, freshly ground pepper

Prepare the vegetables, cut the celeriac into battons about the same size as the carrots, I prefer to leave the skin on with vegetables in this dish.  The parsnips may need cutting down a little, wash and cut the leeks so they remain chunky, I’d leave the carrots whole.  Core the apples, leave their skin on, cut into quarters.  Pre-heat oven to 230°C.  For really crispy crackling, make sure the butcher well scores the pork rind, in 1 cm strips, this will also help when carving.  The night before, massage 250g of table salt into the pork skin, rub it really well, leave overnight.  The next morning, rinse of this salt and pat completely dry with kitchen paper.  Sprinkle a handful of Malden salt over the skin, massage half the thyme into the pork skin.  Make a bed with the reserved pork bones in a suitable large roasting tin and sit the joint on top.  Place in the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes to give it an initial sizzle up, colour and caramelise the skin, drop the temperature down to 160°C and roast for a further 60 minutes.  About 50 minutes before the joint is cooked, put all the prepared vegetables around the joint, with the exception of the apple, which will only take 15 minutes.  When the pork is cooked, remove and rest for 30 minutes before carving.  In the photo I’ve carved it into good thick steaks, incidentally, I’ve accompanied my pork with crab apple jelly and a light jus made from the cooking juices.

Milk

Those skinny arsed, black and white cows, massive pink udders, are responsible for producing most of the milk in Berkshire, indeed in Britain.  Holstein Friesian being the correct vernacular.  Great for milk production, up to 40 litres a day, rubbish for roast beef – their energies go into making milk, not putting on weight.  They need to calve every year to keep the milk flowing.

After the war we needed a plentiful supply of cheap food so the government set up marketing boards – milk, potatoes, sheep etc.  All farmers had to do was produce and sell unlimited quotas at a fair price to the marketing board.  In 1983 the government abolished the milk marketing board, overnight dairy farmers had to become entrepreneurs with marketing and business skills.

Economics in dairy farming are tighter than two coats of paint.  Increased fuel, feed and labour costs, heavily regulated paper work and costly responsibilities towards environmental land management have forced some producers to bow out.  The figures don’t stack up.  Until last year Red Kite Farm, Henley on Thames supplied Waitrose with soil association organic milk.  Tragically Red Kite and Waitrose couldn’t shake hands on a viable litre price and the relationship ended.  Red Kite diversified and now specialise in rare breed beef.  Brian Goodenough of Eling Farm near Newbury still produces organic milk.

The opportunity to diversify is limited and difficult.  Adrian Camp of Stoke Row Farm sold his dairy herd when milk production cost 2 p a litre more than he could sell it for; he introduced water buffalo.

I had assumed until researching this article that farmers lived off hand outs and subsidies.  Absolutely not.  Farmers only get European subsidies if the grant is beneficial to the environment.

Farmers get about 17 ½ p per litre for milk from processors such as Dairy Crest, Wiseman, Arla and Dairy Farmers of Great Britain who act as middlemen.  Product is then sold on to retailers including supermarkets.  Tesco will make £1 billion this year; an extra 1p per pint would make an enormous difference to our dairy farmers.

Britain produces 14 billion litres of milk annually, 50% of which is liquid, 50% processed into powder, butter, cheese, chocolate etc.  Here’s the sting – our dairy industry could collapse by 50% without us noticing, we’d still have pints of the white stuff, but all the processed stuff would be imported.  A famous brand of chocolate manufactured in Britain made out of milk solids from Russia !  (Britain the only country in the world to ban the use of animal derivatives in cattle feed). British food labelling doesn’t specify country of origin.

Some good news.  In Berkshire we have some of the world’s best dairy farms.  Bowden’s Farm near Henley on Thames rear pedigree Guernsey cattle.  Some of their milk goes to Village Maid Cheese at Spencers Wood, Reading where Anne Wigmore produces three sensational award winning cheeses – Spenwood, Waterloo and Wigmore.

Chefs can’t put a menu together without goats cheese – up there with steak & chips, crème brulee and the balsamic drizzle.  Paul & Mandy Hodges have been producing goats milk and cheese at Rowan Tree Farm, Chesham, Bucks for six years.  I use this excellent cheese at my restaurants, find Paul Hodges at all the local farmers markets.  Another local cheese of note is Berkham Blue and Berkham Vale, available from County Delicacies, St Mary’s Butts, Reading.

This months Food Hero however, is Robert Wytchard, farm estate manager at Mapledurham.  A dairy farm of perfection established 16 years ago where supporting the countryside and improving the environment is as important as producing quality milk.  Marks & Spencer were so impressed that Mapledurham supply their milk.  Rob, with five staff, milk 500 pedigree homebred Holstein Friesian three times daily: 5.00 am, 1.00 pm and 8.00 pm.  The cattle graze 700 acres of lush Berkshire pasture and produce nearly 5 million litres of milk annually.  Forty of Britain’s very best dairy herds provide Marks & Spencer with 66 million litres of milk via Dairy Crest (the ‘middle man’ processor).  Meeting Robert was inspiring, highly regarded in the industry with an insatiable passion for our countryside and environment.

Mapledurham Estate is owned by John Eyston and his wife Lady Anne, who adopted the role ‘guardians of the countryside’ rather than ‘gentry of the manor’.  Like farmers have been doing for generations, the Eyston’s preserve the environment.  Mapledurham farming methods and revenue from the dairy business help enhance Berkshire’s countryside, owl boxes have been installed, picturesque fields, pasture, hedges and trees.  Robert Wytchard and John Eyston are the most environmentally conscientious chaps you will meet.  Visitors are welcome, call the Estate Office for details (01189-723350).

Dairy farming is no longer a way of life, the farm must be run as a business.  We don’t appreciate how agriculture controls the countryside, we take the countryside for granted and expect it free – no charge.  There is an environmental cost to farmers for maintaining our countryside that should be met through fair pricing, not government and European subsidy.

We think nothing of paying to park in a Reading multi-storey, yet don’t understand our responsibility to support the countryside financially.  The stupid irony being that nobody would begrudge paying a little more for a pint of milk.

Rowan Tree Farm Goats Cheese Soufflé, Caponata

For the soufflé – serves 4

250 ml milk
2 cloves
1 onion, halved
1 bay leaf
3 black peppercorns
60g butter
30g self raising flour
2 eggs, separated
125 g goat cheese
250 ml cream
50g grated parmesan

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease four 125 ml ramekins, or use teacups.  Heat the milk, clove-studded onion, bay leaf and peppercorns until about to boil.  Remove from heat and leave for 10 minutes, then strain.
Melt butter, add flour and cook over medium heat for one minute.  Remove from heat and stir in the milk, then return to heat and stir until mixture boils and thickens.  Transfer the mixture to a bowl, add egg yolks and goat cheese and mix together.  Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks, then fold into the mixture.  Divide among the ramekins and place in a roasting tin with enough boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the dishes.  Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffed.  Cool, then chill for up to two days.
To serve, preheat the oven to 200°C.  Remove the soufflés from the ramekins and place them in one large oven-proof dish.  Pour the cream over the top, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

For the caponata – serves 4

2 onions, chopped
150 ml extra virgin olive oil
2 celery sticks cut into 1-2 cm pieces
400 g skinned, chopped plum tomatoes
75 g green olives
2 tbspn capers
20g caster sugar
3 tbspn white wine vinegar
2 aubergines cut into 1-2 cm cubes
Malden salt and freshly ground black pepper

Season the chopped onions and fry them gently in three tbspn olive oil until soft.  Add the celery and cook for three minutes.  Increase the heat, add the tomatoes and simmer until reduced to a thick consistency.  Add the olives, capers, sugar and vinegar and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time.  Heat the remaining olive oil in a large frying pan.  Season the aubergines and sauté them in the oil over a medium heat until they are lightly browned and cooked through.  Lift out with a slotted spoon and add to the other vegetables.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Serve at room temperature.

Milk Pudding

Iced Caramelised Whisky Rice Pudding

We had to read The Mayor of Casterbridge, which for a bunch of acne ridden, testosterone driven 15 year old Deep Purple fans was about as riveting as the dentist.  Thomas Hardy’s literary classic being part of the 1976 O-level syllabus, therefore compulsory reading – 325 agonising pages of tedium, but made very bearable by a vivacious piece of eye candy that was Miss English – an appropriately name English Lit teacher, fresh out of teacher training college and very, very, very sexy.
All I can remember about the novel is ‘flummery’ although in 1976 we hadn’t the faintest what ‘flummery’ actually was.  Thankfully my career took a culinary rather than literary path and I can enlighten you, flummery is like Atholl Brose and Llymru.
In Thomas Hardy’s day the ordinary village folk would boil up rice, oats and grains, the resulting ‘porridge’ was flummery (England), Atholl Brose the oat based Scottish version, Llymru in Wales.
Victorians fine tuned and developed these recipes adding cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, honey and sugar giving us the comfort food milk puddings such as rice, sago, tapioca and semolina.
All thanks to The Major of Casterbridge and the sensual allure of Miss English for this weeks recipe.

I’ve taken the basic rice pudding method, scented it with malt whisky and made it very rich by using double cream.  Served cold – or condé, in chef talk, I’ve caramelised the top, crème brulee style with crunchy burnt sugar.

Iced caramelised whisky rice pudding – serves 6

100 g short grain pudding rice
400 ml milk
450 ml double cream
50 g caster sugar
Zest of ½ lemon
75 ml malt whisky
25 g unsalted butter
Freshly grated nutmeg
Caster sugar for burnt sugar crust

Pre-heat oven to 180°C.  Butter a 1.5 litre pudding basin or casserole dish.  Place rice in the basin.  Warm the milk, cream and 2/3 of whisky together with lemon zest and 50g caster sugar, pour over the rice.  Grate fresh nutmeg over the top.  Bake for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes reduce oven temperature to 150°C, give the pudding a stir and bake for a further 1 hour 20 minutes.

Remove from oven, stir in remaining whisky, then divide the pudding between six ramekins, tea cups or soufflé dishes, cool then refrigerate to chill and set.

To serve, pre-heat grill to maximum temperature, sprinkle each individual pot evenly with caster sugar and grill until the sugar turns deep amber and caramelises – like the lid of a crème brulee.  Serve.

Healthy Quick Shake

Take a 1 pint tetra pack of cold milk, pour off a little so the milk has space to shake in the carton.  Add 2 teaspoons of runny honey and 3 drops of vanilla essence, shake vigorously. Drink.

Beer

Water so foul and septic that Reading folk drank beer instead.  Purely for medicinal purposes as the beer wasn’t contaminated.  Even the kids, all be it a pretty modest brew of barley and hops, which incidentally is a cousin of cannabis.  That was back in the 14th Century, nobody brewed a pot of tea in those days.  Tea didn’t happen until the 17th Century, the term “brewing up” relates originally to beer.

Funny how things don’t change.  Reading 2007; kids, cannabis and beer !

Thames water almost handing out the beer to Englefield (Theale) residents earlier this year when their water supply became polluted.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) bottled water was made available, not beer.

Reading enjoys a rich brewing history and a flourishing current brewing industry.  Indeed Courage down in Madejskishire by the M4 is Europe’s largest brewery, fizzing up such brands as Fosters, Kronenbourg and John Smiths.

Records of brewing beer in Berkshire date back to the 11th Century, home brewed in farms and cottages.  The King’s Chancellor grew wise to tax opportunities and the home brewers became pubs.

Beer’s strength or ‘gravity’ originally measured by its stickiness.  Considering beer is 99.9% water, somebody’s onto a nice little earner, probably Gordon Brown.

Reading has some fascinating old pubs – The Sun in Castle Street was a hostelry as far back as the 13th Century, a popular coaching inn.  The under croft could house fifty horses and prisoners awaiting execution from the jail next door.  Sadly, this underground room collapsed in 1947 after being damaged by Circus elephants tethered down there.

We will explore Reading’s pubs in a future edition of Food Monthly.  This month I investigate our regions brewers.  Craftsmen and women brewers, helping to preserve a heritage worthy of conservation.

In 1900 Britain had 6500 breweries, by the mid 1970’s there were only 100, dominated by “The Big Six”; Bass-Charringtons, Allied Breweries, Watney, Whitbread, Courage, Scottish & Newcastle.

Small independent breweries which had been in decline suddenly began to enjoy resurgence in popularity and growth.  A backlash against brands dictated by The Big Six – ‘Red Barrel’, ‘Double Diamond’, ‘Tavern’, and ‘Tartan’.  Bland tasting, mass marketed, nasty beer – sealed in carbonated kegs.  Drinkers wanted ‘real’ ale, so successful was the Campaign for Real Ale that every major brewery reviewed its Keg Beer policy and since the late 1970’s new one-man/woman breweries began to appear all over Berks, Bucks, Hants and Oxon.  A renaissance that we must continue to encourage and support. 

Locally produced beer, kept traditionally, delivered to Reading pub cellars unpasteurised, unfiltered and not quite mature, so that it can be brought to the peak of condition on the premises, as it would have been if it were brewed there in the past.  A pure natural product with a “live” palate, a natural sparkle without the assistance of CO2 and a hop bitterness unblunted by pasteurisation.

Brewing is a great art.  Appreciate it !  The complicated chemistry of processing hops and barley with our regional chalky water is one of Berkshires natural organic miracles.

I relish the variety and idiosyncrasy of the regions bitters, the surprises and pleasures on my tour around the areas independent brewers certainly surpasses a ramble around Bordeaux or Burgundy.

It was impossible to select a favourite local brew.  I enlisted Women’s Institute assistance: Nora, Daphne & Gladys.  We sampled over 30 of the regions bitters.  Supping and sipping the likes of Appleford Breweries Power Station, 4.2% ABV, a light copper coloured beer, malty bitterness. Village Idiot from White Horse Brewery, a distinctive, smooth golden beer using local hops balanced with the finest Yorkshire Malt.  Rebellion Breweries fabulous award winning IPA.  West Berkshire Breweries ‘Good Old Boy’.  But there could only be one winner.

This months Food Hero goes to Chris Hearn of Loddon Brewery, Dunsden Green, a real local brewery between Henley and Reading.  The Hearns are a local family, Chris’s brother Andy, until recently, ran The Horns Pub, Crazies Hill near Wargrave.

Our judging panel particularly enjoyed Hoppit Classic Bitter, moderate in strength (3.5% ABV) but packed with flavour.  Smooth malty body, quite bitter with the aroma and taste of East Kent Golding hops.

Established by Chris and Vanessa Hearn in a two hundred year old brick and flint barn, their showpiece brewery is already highly acclaimed for quality and consistency.  Loddon started in 2002, the same year Brakspear closed their Henley Brewery, Chris taking the initiative to brew a quality pint within easy reach of Henley after the demise of Brakspear, which is now produced in Witney by Wychwood Brewery.

Loddon produces beers to suit all tastes, ranging from Hoppit, which won our taste test, a traditional well hopped ale, to Hullabaloo, a copper coloured Best Bitter with a rich nutty malt balanced by the dry herby flavour of English Fuggle hops.

Chris recently beat off stiff competition from 250 breweries winning Tesco’s Drinks Awards.  The aim was to find a bottled beer intended to be drunk straight from the fridge.  Loddon’s prized brew is now available from Tesco.

Steak & Ale Pie, Kidney & Oysters

I recently cooked this delicious combination of braising steak and beer for Billy Connolly, Bob Geldof, Neil Kinnock and Sir John Mortimer receiving a great thumbs up.

The mistake many make when preparing steak & kidney is to kill the slow cooked beef flavour with the addition of overpowering ingredients such as tomato paste or Worcestershire sauce.

The trick is to buy best quality braising beef and cook it slowly and simply to emphasize its inherent flavour, select a strong full bodied beer, Luxter’s Barn Ale (Chiltern Valley Brewery) or Theakston’s Old Peculiar.

The first recorded steak & kidney pie recipe appeared in Mrs Beeton’s Household Management of 1859. 

Tip:  to check the size of your pie dish is suitable, pile in the raw meat.  It should mound a good inch or so above the top of the dish.  Always be slightly over-generous.

Steak & Kidney Pie – serves 4

Filling

1 kg braising steak
500g veal or ox kidney
2 tbsp seasoned flour
1 large onion, chopped
90g butter
600 ml strong beer
250 g mushrooms sliced
Bouquet garni
(Mrs Beeton also suggests an optional 24 oysters)

Pastry

600 g puff, flaky or shortcrust pastry

Cut steak into 2 cm cubes, slice kidney, discard fat and skin from both meats.  Sprinkle with seasoned flour.  Cook onion until lightly browned in two-thirds of the butter, add meat, colour rapidly.  When browned transfer meat to oven proof casserole.  Pour the beer into the frying pan and simmer for a minute, scrape all the tasty brown bits and pieces.  Pour this over the meat.  Fry the mushrooms in the remaining butter and add them with the bouquet to casserole.  Cover with lid and simmer in pre-heated 160°C oven for 1 ½ hours – until just cooked, but still with a slightly tough bite.  Allow to cool.  If your casserole has yielded too much liquid, drain off and reduce.

Roll out the pastry.  Cut strips wide enough to cover the rim of the pie dish and hang down a little inside it.  Before securing the strips in place, brush the rim with water.  Next put the cold filling into the dish.  Brush water lightly over the pastry rim and cover the pie over with the remaining pastry.  Mrs Beeton suggests a pie funnel, not strictly necessary but a good idea.  Set it in the pie centre, it will let steam escape and keep your crust up.  Press the edges of the pastry firmly together, nicking at regular intervals.  Make a hole in the centre to let your steam escape.  Brush with beaten egg. Bake in pre-heated 200°C oven for 45 minutes.

Sticky Toffee pudding with Brown Ale – serves 4

Sticky toffee pudding, the Black Forest Gateau of recent times.  Who cares!  We all love it.  It’s popular, indeed one of the biggest selling puds at London Street Brasserie.

I reluctantly pass on the secrets of my prized recipe, it’s the tea-infused beer that gives the brasserie’s STP the edge.

Stick Toffee Pudding

½ pint Brown Ale
1 tea bag
100g dried figs
110g butter
110g caster sugar
3 eggs
225 g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g dates, chopped
50g walnuts, chopped

Begin by warming the ale in a pan (or microwave).  Add the tea bag and figs and allow it to stand for 20 minutes.  Next cream the butter and sugar together and gradually beat in the eggs before folding in the self raising flour.  Remove the tea bag from the ale and add the bicarbonate of soda and the vanilla essence to the ale mixture now.

Fold the cake mixture into the ale mix, adding the dates and walnuts and pour the mixture into an oiled and greaseproof paper-lined cake tin and bake in the centre of a pre-heated oven at 180°C / 350°F / Gas 4 for one hour, 15 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.  Serve immediately hot from the oven.  I like to serve this moreish  pud with a toffee sauce.

To make this, put 110g butter, three tablespoons of double cream, 60 g of Demerara sugar in a pan and heat until melted.  Bring it all to simmer and allow to thicken before serving.

Nuts & Bolts

Beer divides into many definitive styles.  The most important distinction is based on the method of fermentation, during which some species of yeast rise to the top of the brew, some to the bottom.  Top & bottom fermentation are two distinct techniques.  Bottom fermented brews are together know as lagers after the German word meaning ‘store’ – ideally left to mature very slowly.  Top fermented brews are the manifestation of traditional British beers.

The basic British beer is cask conditioned ordinary draught bitter, usually with a modest alcohol by volume content (ABV). Bitter varies from brewery to brewery and can be known as ‘pale’ – with distinct copper colour.  ‘Mild’ – dark brown, coloured and sweetened with caramel.  ‘Ordinary’ – opaque golden, sweet in palate, low in alcohol content.  ‘Special’ – fuller bodied maltier, often greater than 4% ABV.  ‘IPA’ – Indian Pale Ale in remembrance of the days when we exported to the empires. ‘Old’, ‘Strong’ or ‘Winter Brew’ – stronger darker beers, 5-6% ABV e.g Theakston’s Old Peculiar.  ‘Barley Wine’ – very strong, very sweet e.g Whitbread Gold label at 10.6% ABV.  ‘Porter’ one of Britain’s earliest top-fermented beers, dark colouring and medium strength. ‘60’, ‘70’ & ‘80’ shillings refers to long ago the price per barrel.  ‘Stout’ associated with Ireland, made with highly roasted barley.  Imperial Russian stout was once brewed in Reading for Catherine the Great, with an ABV of 10.5%.

The Market Gardener

This months Food Hero is a market gardener who cares, cultivates and cajoles her crops almost magically out of soil and earth without chemicals and pesticides.  Organic growing techniques bonded with what Mother Nature and the season dictates, results in healthy nutritious fruit and vegetables exploding with flavour.  Fruit and veg that put supermarkets to shame.  Sun warmed strawberries, oozing with cordial sweet juice that make you smile.  Herbs and salad leaves that haven’t been sprayed with insect killer.  Fruit and veg that won’t give your kids allergies – who knows, even cancer.

After the Second World War, there was a huge change in how land was farmed in Britain.  A shift from market gardeners and small farms who adopted organic growing techniques, crop rotation and who utilized the cheap, clean and limitless energy of the sun.  1960’s Britain and onwards we adopted a more industrial approach to farming.  Massive use of chemical fertilisers to offset the destruction of topsoil and the depletion of natural fertility.  Dependency on expensive fossil fuels, their associated carbon emissions and limited supply.  Farming by machine and toxic chemicals ultimately resulted in the displacement of nearly the entire farming population and their good farming practices.

Land was being wasted, small holders and market gardeners were finding times exceptionally hard and rural communities were breaking up through lack of employment; only suppliers of fuel, agricultural machinery and chemicals benefited.

This month we investigate our local market gardeners who use their own muscle, labour, sweat and toil with sound organic farming techniques, sun power and poly tunnels to produce exceptional, healthy fruit and veg, absolutely bursting with mouthfuls of explosive flavour.

Thankfully there is a resurgence of small growers, allotment holders and market gardeners locally.  Just in the nick of time.  If farmers don’t change their ways and learn again how to farm sustainably, the world will run out of fuel and choke to death on its chemical drenched earth.

If chefs, restaurateurs and the public support local market gardeners, a co-operation between local farmers and local consumers; we will enjoy fresher, better quality, healthier chemical free fruit and veg.  We would help ensure a sustainable, dependable supply of food.  We would reduce some of the associated costs in long supermarket food supply chains such as packaging, transportation and advertising.

This would reduce the cost of food and increase the income of growers.  Reduce the number of large intensive farms, increase the number of small farmer / owners and market gardeners.

I feel guilty with the enormous amount of packaging that accompanies my supermarket shop.  Why do four apples have to sit in a polystyrene tray and be plastic shrink wrapped.  A weekly supermarket shop can generate a good dustbin full of packaging, I’ll guess little of it is recycled.

Another benefit of our market gardeners being that selling their goods near their source of origin, benefiting the local economy by keeping money circulating within the community, benefiting the local environment by encouraging small-scale, less intensive production, thereby reducing the toll on the land, reducing the effects of the long distance transport of food and the need for packaging.  Via farmers markets they benefit producers and consumers by providing a social meeting point, giving them direct contact with each other and a little education in seasonal availability and a broader and more local representation of fruit and veg than offered in the supermarket chill cabinets.

On the point of farmers markets, traditionally market gardeners and farmers haven’t been brilliant about marketing (excuse the pun) themselves.  Growers have to make that leap of faith and go out and sell to the public; something which historically they have been reluctant to do and a shift in attitude from consumers toward farmers markets – a danger of becoming a little too twee and trendy.  Let’s give the supermarkets a run for their money and support out local producers and growers.  Consumers have to change their shopping patterns, they must go to market and accept that in buying local produce their choice may be restricted because of course the supermarket offers most of the staple items of fruit and veg 24/7, week in, week out regardless of season.

There is, of course, a counter argument to this conscientious line of thought.  As a nation we have imported and exported goods for centuries.  Many foreign goods are staples of the British diet.  Tea, coffee, spices and chocolate for example (see my article….Are chefs getting silly about local seasonal produce? In this month’s food monthly). Common sense should prevail – use local and seasonal produce when it’s good, support local business, producers and growers, but don’t spoil your egg custard for the sake of a little nutmeg.

On an environmental note, we need to control the use of fossil fuels and the uncontrolled growth of greenhouse gas emissions from international freight.  What’s the point of importing South African apples rather than using locally grown.

Flying 1 kg of asparagus from California uses 4 kg of aviation fuel.  Flying 1 kg of Kiwi fruit from New Zealand produces 5 kg of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere.  Let common sense prevail, we have to return to a scale of organic farming and market gardening that is humanly and environmentally sustainable, but continue to import and export goods to support the economy and to continue enjoying our mixed and varied world food shopping list.  Send a boat to Asia filled with British goods – malt, barley, beer and spirits, beef and dairy – returning laidened with sugar and spice, tea and coffee.  But for Gods sake stop flying apples around the world.

Our local market gardeners alleviate that ridiculous supermarket predicament of produce being grown in an area, then sent by freight hundreds of miles away to a distribution centre, wrapped in plastic, only to be sent back to be sold in the very same area from which it originally came.  Support your local market gardener – it makes sense.

This months Food Hero trophy goes to Tamsin Borlase of The Patch, Swiss Farm between Henley and Marlow (01491 410985).  The Patch grows not only their personal favourites, but fruit and veg they know through testing the local market – is popular and sells well.  The Patch is a text book example of the perfect market garden, practicing organic farming techniques, rotating their planting schedules with vegetation that gives and takes different nitrates and trace elements from the naturally fertilized earth.

A family run operation, The Patch provides a genuinely local box scheme, selling only what is grown through the season.  Boxes are all picked to order and can be delivered to your door, depending on location.  No chemicals or pesticides are used and soil fertility is maintained using composts, manures and by growing fertility building crops.

Tamsin is a passionate environmentalist, deeply committed market gardener and obsessive foodie.   Her amazing food career and adventures in food started in London, a Muslim butchers in West Kensington before joining Baker & Spice.  She ran The Fine Cheese Company in Bath.  In 1999 Tamsin joined The Soil Association HQ in Bath.  A dream job, becoming Director of Agricultural Certification.  Tamsin and husband Mark started supplying from The Patch in 2005; needless to say her knowledge of Soil Association Organic growing practices is absolute.

Asparagus with Cumbrian air dried ham & hollandaise

Perfect Hollandaise

175 g unsalted butter
4 free range egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Freshly ground white pepper, salt

Melt the butter in a saucepan, skin any froth off the top.  Cool the butter a little.  Combine the egg yolks and 2 tablespoons of water in a heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water making sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water.  Using a wire whisk, beat for about 3 minutes or until the mixture is thick and foamy.  Make sure the bowl does not get too hot or you will end up with scrambled eggs.  Add the butter slowly, a little at a time at first, whisking well between each addition.  Keep adding the butter in a thin stream, whisking continually until all used up.  Stir in the lemon juice, season with salt and white pepper.

Cooking asparagus, see instructions within my market garden crudities recipe.  I’ve wrapped and baked the asparagus with English cured ham, use Parma ham if you like.  It took 4 minutes to bake in a hot oven 190°C / 395°F.  Accompanied in the photo with roquette and poached egg.

Market Garden Crudities, summer dressing

Summer dressing

1 clove garlic, finely chopped
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon French mustard
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs e.g dill, chervil, coriander
Malden sea salt – good pinch

Crush the garlic in a bowl with sugar and mustard.  Add pepper, mix to paste with lime juice.  Whisk olive oil in, add herbs.  Season with sea salt.

I have used a selection of vegetables from The Patch – carrot, radish, celery, asparagus, fennel, beetroot.  Fill a large bowl with plenty of iced water and set it aside.  Bring a large saucepan of water to boil and blanch the asparagus for 30 seconds, remove with slotted spoon and cool immediately in the iced water.  I’ve served the rest of my veggies raw.  Remember there’s lots of goodness and flavour in the skins – so a good scrub a dub dub rather than peeling.

Summer Fruits

Big fat juicy Strawberries, like bright gems peeping out from underneath their leafy foliage – daring you, begging you to eat them.  Unfortunately, their charms have a similar effect on many other creatures – especially birds.  If you want to eat them, you’ll have to get there first.

This month’s Food Hero is Harry Hall, whose family have provided Britain with the juiciest summer berries for decades.  The Hall Hunter Partnership with Heathlands Farm – Wokingham, Tuesley Farm – Milford and Sheeplands Farm – Wargrave, produce strawberries bursting with intense cordial flavour with natural sugars that give energy, vitamins, minerals and enzymes.  Harry’s soft fruits are proudly supplied to Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.  Until 1998, Harry’s strawberries and raspberries were available mainly in June and July.  For the rest of the year imported fruit was flown in at considerable expense and damage to the environment.  Today, modern production methods have extended the season from April to late autumn.  Over the last ten years Harry has produced increasingly successful crops.  Heavy rain in May, which could have destroyed up to 40% of the crop, overcome by the use of polytunnels, which have also extended the season.

Harry’s strawberries are the best, because like the Man from Delmonte – he says “yes” at precisely the right moment; that window of opportunity when combination of sweetness, flavour, aroma, juiciness and texture in fruit is ‘just right’ – ripe.  If the fruit is grown locally it can be picked ripe.

One of Harry’s biggest headaches is picking the fruit, timing is crucial.  Traditionally, students on summer holiday would help out; despite paying well in excess of minimum wage and over 20% more than the going agricultural rate, getting sufficient fruit pickers is a challenge.  We have to thank East European and Russian fruit pickers for harvesting most of Britain’s soft summer fruits.  Harry’s pickers return every year to help out, proof of how well the Hall Hunter Partnership cares for their staff.

I can’t begin to recollect the number of weddings I’ve sat through, crunching my way through a bowl of not quite ripe strawberries.  That delicate line when picking strawberries between nasty or nice.  Horrid or delicious.

Once fully ripe they need to get from the plant to your mouth quickly – before becoming overripe and mushy, which creates a big problem for those in the business of growing, transporting and selling these fruits. Harry Hall works to an incredibly short ‘turnaround’ time of 2 days.

Strawberries often taste disappointing – they look beautiful, but only have a faint strawberry flavour and they just aren’t sweet.  This is because they are picked just before they are ripe.

A strawberry picked in Spain, when truly ripe, is going to be past its best by the time its travelled on tractors, lorries, aeroplanes and more lorries, thousand of miles to reach a British shop – so it has to be picked a little too early to travel well.

The most English of summer fruits is synonymous with Wimbledon.  Wimbledon, strawberries and cream go hand in hand.  Wimbledon tennis club held its first championship in 1877 where only a few hundred spectators gorged on strawberries.  Today, the championships are attended by more than 500,000 people munching their way through 25 tons of strawberries and 7000 litres of cream.  Incidentally a Wimbledon strawberry must be between 25 mm and 40 mm. The size of their order is hugely affected by the length of play.  If people are staying late on Henman Hill for a nail biting match, good weather and if a British player is doing well, then strawberry sales go up.

Strawberries are, in fact, a variety of the rose family called fragaria, they wear their seeds on the outside.  Traditionally, they were enjoyed out of season in compotes and jam.  In 1874 sugar tax was abolished and consequently sugar became cheaper, this saw a huge increase in boiling strawberries with sugar to make jam.

You will be hard pushed to find a fresher, riper strawberry than Harry Hall’s.  However, for the ultimate field to fork experience there can be nothing better than Pick Your Own berries;  I’ve listed some local ones.  Get your strawberries from the farm where they’re grown – forget the plastic shrink wrapped punnet or unripe, unsweet Spanish berries, pick your own big fat ripe red and juicy ones.

Better still, grow them yourself.  Strawberries grow well in hanging baskets and window boxes.  Nothing compares with a perfectly ripe, still warm, sun kissed berry, juicy-oozing explosions of summer sunshine.  Eat them with a cloud of whipped cream and gritty sugar, pulped and blended into icecream or sorbet or sandwiched with whipped cream in the middle of a fat sponge cake – try my strawberry sponge recipe.

June Food Hero – Harry Hall – www.hallhunter.co.uk

Champagne Berry Jelly – makes 4 x 200 ml moulds

5 gelatine leaves
500 ml local sparkling white wine or champagne
200 g caster sugar
1 star anise
Almond oil for greasing
140 g raspberries
175 g strawberries, hulled, sliced
140 g redcurrants, picked from stalks

Soak gelatine leaves until soft.  Simmer champagne, sugar, star anise until sugar dissolves.  Remove from heat.  Squeeze excess water from gelatine leaves then stir into warm champagne syrup, leave to cool.  But not set.  Remove star anise.

Take 4 dariole moulds, large ramekins, individual jelly moulds or tea cups 7oz / 200 ml each.  Lightly grease with almond oil.  Arrange raspberry layer on bottom.  Carefully pour over a little champagne syrup to cover fruit, refrigerate 3 or 4 minutes to slightly set.  Arrange strawberry layer, pour a little syrup to cover, set in fridge for a few more minutes.  Repeat the process with redcurrants.  Allow to set in fridge for 2 hours.

To turn the jellies out, dip them briefly in hot water, lay a serving plate on top of each, turn it over, give the mould a short sharp shake and the jelly pops out.

Paul’s Strawberry Sandwich Cake

Oil for greasing
110 g butter
2 free range eggs
110 g caster sugar
110 g self raising flour, sifted
Water
500 ml whipping cream
500 g ripe strawberries, hulled, halved
Icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 190°C.  Line bottoms of 2 x 15 cm cake tins with greaseproof paper circles, lightly brush each tin with oil.  Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Beat eggs in separate bowl then gradually beat in creamed butter and sugar.  Fold flour in adding enough water to bring mixture to a dropping consistency (thick batter).  Divide mixture between the tins, smoothing top with spatula.  Bake in pre-heated oven for 20 minutes – it should be well risen, golden and spongy.  Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tins before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.  Peel off the greaseproof.  Whip cream to firm peaks.  Spread each half with cream.  Sandwich the strawberries, reserving a few to decorate the top.  Dust with icing sugar.

Top Tip

• When mixing creamed butter/sugar to beaten egg;  if it curdles add a little flour
• Always eat strawberries at room temperature, never straight from the fridge

Honey

Sweet Tooth

Incredible to think that in 1642 when they built my pub – the Crooked Billet – that sugar had yet to be imported to Britain.  Our insatiable sugary appetite fulfilled by honey and fruits natural sweetness.

Honey was used in baking, country wine making, mead and beer.

I’ve kept bees since buying the Crooked Billet in 1989.  Nice to think there may have been hives here since 1642 when it was built.  All credit goes to Doug, the pub beekeeper who does all the clever thinking and hard work to keep me in good supply.

Sugar processed from beet & cane had been eaten in Asia for thousands of years, however, didn’t arrive on British shores until the late 17th Century.

We (The British) established plantations in the West Indies, sugar production became a massive, highly profitable industry.  Demand outweighed supply, harvesting and processing the sugar cane crop was massively labour intensive.  Our solution to this short fall in labour being slavery.  We captured hundreds of thousands of Africans and transported them in famously dreadful conditions to the West Indies and other colonies to work as slaves on sugar plantations. A travesty beyond comprehension that Britain’s greed for sugar resulted in humanity’s greatest scandals.  Our appetite for sugar resulted in slavery.

We’ve known for centuries that those fine white sugary crystals, refined and processed are bad for us. Victorians called it ‘white death’.  It has found its way into more or less every element of the food chain.  Sugar is too accessible, playing a wholly unnecessary role in our diet.  The ideal quantity of refined sugar in our diet is nil. 

A little honey on the other hand is good.  Containing protein, vitamins and minerals, it has antibacterial and antiseptic properties.  Honey is a monosacharin and goes straight into the blood stream.  Sucrose has a double molecule structure which the metabolism has to split and process before we can digest it.   That’s why you get that sudden hit when eating processed sugar where as honey provides a long slow burn of energy

Honey provides a healthier way of getting energy to sustain our active hunter/gatherer wandering lives.  Problem is we sit on our arse watching the telly and don’t need all that sugary energy. 

I sell a lot of Crooked Billet honey to hay fever sufferers in the village who swear by its remedial qualities.  Rather like penicillin where ailments are treated by introducing a similar culture to fight the infection, local pollen in a local honey is said to help hay fever sufferers.

Bees make the honey

Neolithic man would shin up a tree, brave a few stings to find honey.  By medieval times we’d developed a way of ‘farming’ honey, a conical spiral of rope was wound into something resembling an upturned laundry basket stuck together with mud and clay – the sort of thing Winnie the Pooh has.  Bees crawled in and made honey.  Medieval man wafted a bundle of smouldering leaves to make the bees drowsy before plundering the sticky harvest.

A colony of honey bees is made up of one queen, a few hundred male drones and up to 40,000 female workers – who run the hive in a way not dissimilar to a sugar processing refinery.

Bees collect sugary water from flowers - that is the nectar.  The nectar is secreted into waxy hexagon shaped cells in the hive.  At this stage the nectar is very runny, the bees fan the liquid dry with their wings.  Finally the cells are sealed up with a capping of beeswax secreted by the bees.  The sealed honey cell providing energy for the bees during winter months.

Bee keeping is really a way of getting something for nothing.  Sugary liquid is taken from a naturally sweet plant, the liquid is filtered and purified and the water evaporated from that liquid to make it thicker, sweeter and more concentrated. This sounds pretty much like sugar manufacture from cane, but in fact its honey production with bees, not people doing the work.

Beekeepers harvest their honey May – August, leaving sufficient in the hive late summer to sustain the colony until the next spring.  I rob bees from my hives up to three times during the summer, about 30 lb of honey per hive.  Crooked Billet honey is derived from the nectar of blackberries, hedgerows, lime trees, borage, chestnut, field bean and clover.  Sometimes English honey isn’t that great, usually because of Rape nectar which produces oil rock hard honey.

Honeycomb frames are removed from the hive, I cut the wax cappings from the comb with a hot knife, place the frame in an extractor which spins very fast, centrifugal force pulls honey from the frame, which is strained, filtered and poured into jars.

The raw honey sets hard, cloudy white with a granular texture which although not universally popular, I prefer.  I could heat and further filter it which would render it golden opaque and runny.  I like it ‘set’, besides heat treating breaks down the enzymes the bees produce for breaking down sucrose, which are of particular health benefit.

The wax cappings I cut off the combs are pure beeswax, great for polish, waxing leather and candles.  Monks of the Middle Ages were such a jolly drunken lot because they needed a lot of bees to provide wax for the ecclesiastical candles – what else could they do with the honey except make mead from it.

You can buy beekeepers honey from farm shops, farmers markets, the Crooked Billet or directly from the beekeeper.  Alternatively, beekeepers sell their honey to manufacturers such as Meil, Gales, Capilano & Rowse who blend, process, package and distribute.

The latter of these companies, Rowse (as in house or mouse) is based locally in Wallingford, whilst I am in serious danger of being severely stung by a swarm of furious local beekeepers, I crown Stuart Bailey, MD at Rowse, Food Hero this month.

Rowse, until recently was a family business – all starting with their hobby of beekeeping.  Over the years the hobby evolved into a large and successful concern.

Established in 1954 by Tony Rowse with over 1000 hives in Oxfordshire.  The business quickly grew and by the 1960’s demand for honey exceeded the quantity of English honey available.  Rowse began importing honey from countries including Mexico and Australia, where climates are ideal for beekeeping.  With increased availability of honey from around the world, Rowse could offer consumers a wide range of honeys, each with its own distinctive flavour and characteristics.  Including Manuka honey from New Zealand, recognised for its medicinal qualities containing phytochemicals which provide the highest natural antibacterial property of all commercially produced honeys.  Good for stomach disorders, gastroenteritis, ulcers.  Good for general well-being and combating colds.  It is used in medical dressings in certain instances and is claimed to help combat the super bug MRSA.  It is also delicious!

A taste of honey

A honey tasting invitation at Rowse landed on the door mat.  I RSPV’d and found myself sitting with Stuart Bailey in the boardroom surrounded with every conceivable, clarity, runniness and nationality of honey.

With all the revere, godliness, intensity, concentration and flared nostrils of a sommelier sampling Raymond Blanc’s private cellar, the tasting commenced.  We sampled every Rowse honey.

Australian Eucalyptus honey with its smooth buttery taste, hints of toffee and raisins.  Clear Brazilian honey from the Araripe Plateau and its deliciously smooth barley sugar taste.  Creamy butterscotch from New Zealand clover honey.  Rowse Italian chestnut honey – rich & nutty.  Rosemary honey from Spain, light and fragrant, delicate and herby.  Leatherwood honey from Tasmania was strong, perfumed and herby.  Pure English honey gathered from hives across our countryside with its delicious barley sugar flavour.  Liquorice, vanilla, caramel – I never appreciated the complexity and depths of honey.

Rowse produce several organic honeys, from bees which forage only in approved organic areas.  All Rowse organic honeys are fully certified by the Soil Association.  Whilst Rowse buy from many corners of the world, they take much British stock via the British honey co-operative of beekeepers.

A couple of factors have recently made Rowse the busiest bee in British honey production.  In 2002 the food standards agency found chlorine phenicol antibiotics in honey imported from China, enormous stocks were destroyed.  Because Rowse imported from Mexico, Caribbean, Australia, Spain and many other territories they were able to keep supermarket shelves full and consequently became market leaders.

Stuart Bailey and Rowse are also the brains behind squeezable honey which has revolutionised the industry.  What could be easier than drizzling the runny stuff on your porridge, breakfast cereal or toast.  Drizzle into dressing or marinade, no mess, it is so convenient it is making honey more popular.

Honey is a humectant – it tenderises meat, see my pork chop marinade.  I’ve included the Crooked Billet’s top secret honey fudge recipe and also my favourite ‘sugar’ free honey ice cream recipe.  Honey is great for keeping cakes moist so check out my honey drizzle cake recipe.

Honey Drizzle Cake

250g plain flour
50g ground almonds
Pinch of salt
1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch ground cloves
1 lemon
125g soft brown sugar
100 g butter
4 heaped tablespoons set honey
100 g preserved ginger, finely chopped
3 tablespoons black treacle
2 eggs
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 180°C.  Line 22 cm square shallow cake tin with foil.  Put flour, almonds, salt, ground ginger, cloves into mixing bowl, zest lemon and put zest in bowl.

Put soft brown sugar and butter into saucepan, add honey, preserved ginger, treacle and juice from lemon.  Warm saucepan on low heat to dissolve sugar.  Remove from heat.

Pour honey mixture into flour bowl, stir well.  Beat in eggs with wooden spoon.

Spoon the bicarb into a cup, add milk, stir well to dissolve, add mixture to bowl and beat in.

Pour mixture into cake tin.  Put in pre-heated oven for 35 minutes.  Test to see if cake is ready by sticking a knife into the centre.  It should come out clean.

Remove from oven.  Cool in tin for 5 minutes, remove from tin in its foil wrapper and cool on wire rack.

In the photo my frosted topping is made from 250g cream cheese and 2 heaped tablespoons of set honey beaten together; topped with a toasted walnut.

Honey Marinade

Honey is a humectant, meaning it breaks down the fibrous quality of meat, making it more tender.  So apart from helping to make chicken and chops delicious, it will enhance their texture.  The other obvious attribute to honey being that it will stick to whatever you’re marinading.  The following quantities are sufficient for 4 large pork chops, or 8 spare ribs or 8 drumsticks.

4 heaped dessert spoons runny honey (or warmed set honey)
1 thumb ginger finely chopped
1 medium red chilli pepper, de-seeded, finely chopped
2 spring onions chopped
Leaves from 4 rosemary sprigs

Place all ingredients in a sufficiently large marinading bowl and leave to infuse for a couple of hours.  Place meat in marinade and cling film bowl.  Refridgerate for 24 hours.  Remove from fridge.  Using a knife, scrape majority of marinade from meat.

You’re ready to grill, pan fry or roast.  Be aware if you barbecue this marinade, us a low heat or the sugary fructose from the honey will burn.

Honey Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
2 heaped teaspoons set honey
Vanilla pod or essence
375 ml full fat milk
125 ml double cream
¼ ltr double cream

Now for that ice-cream.  Whisk the honey and yolks in a bowl until almost white.  Boil the vanilla pod or essence in the milk in a thick bottomed pan.  Whisk this mixture into the egg yolks and sugar mix.

Return the lot to a clean saucepan, place on a low heat.  Stir continuously until the mixture coats the back of the wooden spoon. 

Pass the custard – as it is at this stage – through a fine strainer into a bowl.  All the mixture to get completely cool before stirring in the double cream.  Place the bowl in deep freeze and leave 30 minutes, check it every half hour to give it a good stir, for up to two hours and your ice-cream is made.

September Lamb

This months Food Hero, we take a look at Berkshire and surrounding counties sheep.  I quite fancied awarding myself the September Food Hero crown – all the lamb, hogget and mutton used at the Crooked Billet and London Street Brasserie comes from my farm.  However, with  the current nightmare of foot and mouth disease, back in our countryside, I award the Food Hero trophy to all cattle farmers in our region.

Regulars to my weekly Evening Post column will doubtlessly be aware of my passion for mutton and my frustration that we celebrate and eat lamb in the wrong season.  I have over 100 head of sheep on my farm – so have first hand knowledge of when lamb is ready for mint sauce (see picture of Paul shearing his flock).

The trouble with British Lamb is that chefs cook it and butchers promote it at the wrong time of the year.  As soon as the clocks go forward, daffodils make an appearance and spring is in the air, we want to be eating new season lamb on Easter Sunday luncheon.

If you think about this, it’s rather out of kilter with what Mother Nature had intended.  Sheep would, if left to their own devices start lambing at Easter time.  Just like pork and beef, new born lamb is not slaughtered for 6 months.  Obviously – we’re not eating the new borns, which suckle and graze, ready for the table around now, precisely why I wanted to champion the merits of our wonderful local lamb in September.

“Spring Lamb”, is actually a marketing ploy, originally dreamt up by butchers and supermarkets to promote New Zealand lamb – out of season.  We became used to eating New Zealand lamb in spring, British farmers began to compete by producing it in the wrong season.  Now farmers, foodies and TV chefs sing the merits of British spring lamb.  So next April, when you see a chef in the entertainment business telling you how good British New Season lamb is – remember – he’s talking out of his arse.

Now, September and October is when you should be enjoying Spring lamb.  But I want to let you into a secret – there is an age of sheep meat even more delicious than lamb, I favour Hogget.

Hogget is lamb born at Easter, suckling outdoors with her mum (they’re all girls – boys get the snip – or rubber band – rams are too promiscuous) grazing, enjoying some sunshine and quality of life, then benefiting from a 2nd year of grazing before being taken to market.  Without doubt the best sheep meat I have tasted comes from animals over a year old.  If you like, this meat has both experience and youth on its side.

Mutton is Hogget going into its 3rd year.  Although Mutton doesn’t appear in any supermarket chiller cabinet, the word is starting to ‘get out’ about Mutton, people becoming aware of how quite superb it is.

Far from requiring lots of marinating and slow roasting, it can be served pink like the best cuts of prime beef.  Mutton is to lamb, what beef is to veal.  Assume lamb and spring go hand in hand.

Earlier this year, I inadvertently humiliated and embarrassed an extremely famous French TV Chef who was on stage before me at a cooking demo.  He waxed lyrical about the virtues of Easter British New Season lamb.  I followed him – my demo about the virtues of Mutton in spring and how very wrong ‘spring lamb’ is.

Sheep meat we eat at Easter has been specially bred, born in November.  The problem with November, being there is no grazing, also the weather is too severe for lambing.  With no grazing, mothers can’t produce milk.  So mum and baby are brought into sheds, mum is fed high protein soy cereal pellets laced with a chemical cocktail of growth promoting hormones and antibiotics which effects the milk quality.  Poor little lamb never tastes grass, exercises or sees day light before being slaughtered.  The resulting meat is pale – like veal, tastes mediocre and unhappy, without the full grassy flavour that makes good lamb distinct.

Incidentally, the high protein cereal diet is derived from Soya; we’re cutting down rainforests to grow the stuff.

I’m always amazed how many people won’t eat veal, “because it’s cruel”, but have no issue with eating British Easter Lamb, which has spent its short unhappy life in pretty miserable conditions (crate veal should be banned, boycott it, never eat it.  It represents intensive factory farming at its very worst.  Look out for British Rosé Veal which has suckled and grazed outdoors, certainly getting a big thumbs up from me in terms of flavour, texture and animal welfare).

Many enlightened butchers now offer hogget and mutton.  Jennings of Caversham – 01189 471528, Carl Woods of Sonning Common – 01189 722228, Gabriel Machins of Henley – 01491 574377.

To demonstrate how versatile Hogget is, I’ve included three recipes using different cuts from the sheep.  Shoulder, which I slow cooked, fillet or boned rack which I’ve quick cooked and a burger made from rump which you can cook to whichever degree you prefer – I like pink and juicy.

All the recipes will work whether using lamb, hogget or mutton.

Boned shoulder of Hogget, Mint & Caper Stuffing

My Grandma taught me this recipe, she was a butcher in Leeds.  I grew up on this dish.  Use lamb if you like, but Hogget is better, benefiting from that second year at grass grazing giving depth and maturity of flavour.  I’m passionate about traditional British dishes and cookery; the purists will notice there’s nothing British about lemon capers and anchovies.  The Romans introduced us to these ingredients and I wouldn’t want to be without them.  The mature flavour of the Hogget works perfectly with this piquant stuffing.

Boned shoulder of Hogget stuffed with mint & capers

Shoulder of Hogget boned
100 g salted capers
100 g anchovies in oil
Handful picked mint leaves
Handful picked flat leaf parsley
6 cloves garlic
Teaspoon English mustard
Juice of 1 lemon

The Hogget shoulder will weigh about 2 kg before your butcher bones the joint.

Rinse salt from capers, pat dry with kitchen paper.  Reserve oil from anchovies.  Chop the capers, anchovies, mint, parsley and garlic together until you have a reasonably fine consistency.  If using a food processor, carefully pulse blitz the ingredients – you don’t want a paste.  Transfer to a bowl & mix in the mustard, a tablespoon of the reserved anchovy oil and lemon juice.

Lay the shoulder skin-side down and spread the stuffing on the meat and in the bone cavity.  Roll up the joint and tie with string.  Wrap extremely tightly with cling film, rolling the joint into an even cylinder and refrigerate allowing the stuffing to marinade the meat for 12 hours.

Pre-heat oven to 230°C / Gas 7.  Remove cling film from Hogget, place in a roasting tin and put in the centre of hot oven.  After about 40 minutes when the fat has started to caramelise, reduce oven temperature to 160°C / Gas 3 and cook for a further 60 minutes.  Remove from oven and rest for 30 minutes before carving.

I like to serve with roast roots and green sauce.  Celeriac, turnip, onions and carrots work particularly well; peel, chunk and roast for about 50 minutes under the boned shoulder.  Green sauce – use the quantities and ingredients from the stuffing adding a little more olive or anchovy oil, this time blitz in a processor to a smooth puree.

Harissa Hogget, Quinoa and Mint Pesto

This beautiful lean fillet of meat comes from the rack, ask your butcher to bone it.  Chillies release endorphins, the brain’s natural opiates.  When we eat fiery fresh chillies they can have an amazing effect, so go mad.
I love the marriage of ‘hogget and spicy’.  A lot of the better Indian Restaurants use hogget and mutton for their ‘meat’ curries for it’s developed deeper flavour that works so well with aromatic spices.

6 x 180g-200g fillets of hogget
30 g each, coriander, cumin and fennel seeds
200 ml olive oil
3 red onions, finely chopped
8 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
4 red peppers, deseeded and chopped
20 red chilli’s, deseeded and chopped

Quinoa:

½ litre stock, your choice
200g quinoa
12 x 0.5 cm thick slices of lotus root (available from the Oriental supermarket in Watlington Street)
3 Okra fingers, thinly sliced
3 green chillies, de-seeded and thinly sliced
50 g sunflower seeds
50 g pumpkin seeds
50 g hazelnuts, bashed up
2 tomatoes, de-seeded and diced

Mint Pesto:

75 g picked mint leaves
75 g flat parsley leaves
125 g pine nuts
3 garlic cloves, chopped
500 ml extra virgin olive oil
125 g grated Parmesan
Malden salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Begin by roasting the coriander, cumin and fennel seeds together in an extremely hot frying pan, with NO oil, until the spices colour.  Next, grind them in a pestle and mortar until fine.  Heat 200 ml olive oil in a heavy bottom pan, add the onions and garlic and sweat until soft, add the ground spices and peppers and cook for 10 minutes.  Blitz in a processor to form a paste, return to the stove and cook slowly, on a low heat for an hour.

Allow the paste to cool before spreading over the lamb fillets.  Set aside in the fridge for three days.  Next pan fry the lotus roots and okra, but keep it crunchy and golden.  Toast the seeds for a couple of minutes to colour and allow these ingredients to cool.  In a large pan bring the stock to the boil, add the quinoa and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon.  Check it after four minutes, it has a translucent shell that should have a slight crunch, the centre should be soft like cous cous.  When cooked (usually about six minutes) strain through a sieve and allow to cool before adding the remaining ingredients.  For the mint pesto, put all the ingredients into a food processor and blitz.

Finally, heat a little olive oil in a large oven proof frying pan.  Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.  Wipe off the excess harissa marinade from the lamb before turning them over in a hot pan to seal.  Then place them in a pre-heated oven and cook for 15 minutes.  Slice the lamb and serve as below.

Hogget Burgers

One of the worlds favourite meals is burger and chips, whilst most of the High Street burger restaurants deservedly receive a pretty bad press, a good homemade burger is fantastic, tasty and healthy – unlike the High Street variety, about as nutritionally beneficial as a packet of Monster Munch (taste pretty similar as well).

One of the best selling dishes at Britain’s favourite restaurants and celebrity hang out, The Ivy, is a burger; chef Mark Hicks has featured The Ivy Hamburger with dill pickle and club sauce for years.

Incidentally, the reason we call them hamburgers when they’re made out of beef is because they originated in Hamburg.

Making your own burger gives you the chance to season and cook it exactly how you like it. I’m using rump of hogget.  Never buy ready minced meat, besides you don’t know what’s in it, it is too fine and will give you a pâté texture.  A good butcher will mince it coarse for you, but it’s best to take it home and DIY.  Some food processors have mincing attachments that you can use but a simple, old fashioned meat mincer with a handle you crank round is much more fun.

Hogget Burger – serves 4

500g coarsely minced rump of Hogget
½ small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic minced
Small bunch chopped coriander
½ green chilli pepper, de-seeded, finely chopped
Malden salt, freshly ground black pepper
Small bunch dill, finely chopped
A little oil for frying

Put the minced lamb, onion, coriander, garlic and chilli in a bowl, lightly season, mix all ingredients thoroughly.  Divide the mix into 4 equal balls then flatten out by hand, pressing to compact, aim for 2 cm thickness.  Finally, press the burger in the finely chopped dill, evenly covering.  Heat a little oil in a frying pan over a medium heat.  Place the burgers in the pan.  They should sizzle, but not fiercely.  Cook them for a couple of minutes, then turn them over and cook for a couple more.  Keep turning every minute or so, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper each time until you reach the required degree of pinkness.

I’ve served my Hogget burger with roast peppers, aubergines and bok choi – equally delicious in a whole meal bap with spicy ketchup or minted yoghurt.