Shop bought tomatoes are usually vile. “Vine tomatoes” are even viler because insult is added to injury by being charged double for the same tasteless product with a piece of stalk attached.
The only tomatoes worth eating in this country are those you grow yourself. We are picking ours now and they have a deep intense flavour which I find irresistible and so tomatoes are dominating my eating right now.
Here’s my recipe for a simple tomato sauce to go with pasta:
Pick 8 good sized tomatoes. They must be dark red in colour. The redder and squishier the better. When tomatoes are used in a sauce they must be skinned, but nothing could be easier. Bring a pan of water to the boil, drop in the tomatoes, count to ten and remove them. The skins will slip off. Chop up the tomatoes, removing any bits which are green or hard. Then put some olive oil into a frying pan and slowly cook one large chopped onion and one chopped clove of garlic. When they are soft throw in the tomatoes. After a couple of minutes of fairly fierce cooking add a large piece of salted butter . Let it all bubble away while the spaghetti is being cooked. The salt in the butter and the salt in the spaghetti water is all the seasoning you’ll need. I always add a knob of butter to the spaghetti after it has been drained. Don’t worry if you’ve run out of parmesan- it doesn’t need it.
This dish is simplicity itself, and is the epitome of Slow Food, even though the preparation and cooking time is only a quarter of an hour.
If you don’t fancy spaghetti, the sauce is delicious as a topping on thick toast- I think the Italians call it crostini
On the day that Slow Food finally reached the Oxford English Dictionary (definition- “food that is carefully produced or prepared in accordance with local traditions”) it’s time to celebrate the slowest of slow foods: Miso paste. Miso paste is a staple of Japanese cooking- it’s the basis for Miso soup, which most Japanese have for breakfast every morning, and many other dishes. Every Japanese household will have some Miso paste at hand, and yet it takes between six months and a year to prepare. When I was told this I googled “Miso paste recipe” and was surprised to find that Google was completely useless- there were plenty of recipes using miso paste but none which showed you how to make the paste itself- they all assumed that you bought it ready made from the supermarket. So I emailed my friend Makiko in Tokyo who, as it happened, was just in the process of making a batch. She kindly sent me her recipe, here it is:
Ingredients
1kg whole soybeans
3ltr water
1kg dried rice koji
400g Salt
Method
Rinse the whole soybeans with water then soak them in 3litres of water overnight.
The next day, boil the soaked beans with the soaking water. Remove scum.
You need to boil them for about 4 hours to obtain soft soybeans.
Crumble the koji, then add salt and mix them well.
Mash the soft beans while they are hot (about 35-40 degrees, any higher will deactivate the koji culture), using a potato masher.
Add malt with salt into the mashed beans. Shape the mixture into balls, then throw them into the container. This process prevents the mashed beans from containing air.
Level the surface and sprinkle 2 teaspoons of salt over the top to prevent mould growth. Cover the surface of the mashed beans with cling film and put a weight (about 3kg) on top.
The fermentation will start immediately. The container should be place in a clean room with moderate temperatures (15°C – 25°C). The miso will be ready after 6 to 12 months fermentation. During the fermentation some liquid (=tamari) will rise to the surface. If no liquid tamari is seen on the surface then the pressing weight must be increased.
Each time you want to inspect the fermentation process you will lose quality, so only do it when necessary and no more than once every 2 months. This miso can be kept in the container for a few years.
As a foodie film Patisserie Coin de rue will never rival Babette’s Feast, not least because the main character is an annoyingly petulant teenager, but it’s a feast for the eyes nevertheless. The film is centred on a patisserie in a Tokyo suburb, which specialises in making lovely cakes and pastries. It’s a Japanese film, made for a Japanese audience, although it will be seen in the west after winning the “Best East Meets West” prize at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year. The film is completely absorbing because of the glimpse which it gives into the way the Japanese treat food as art. It’s about creating food which looks beautiful and tastes exquisite. They won’t accept any compromise; they are entirely devoted to perfection.The art which they are practising may have its origins in France but it’s raised to a completely different level in Japan.
There’s one thing which will strike any westerner watching this film as odd- the fact that although everyone in it spends their life making and tasting pastries, not a single person carries an ounce of surplus fat. Very Japanese.
Artichokes, like asparagus, sweetcorn and crumpets are one of those glorious foods which are perfect with butter- just butter and nothing else. We are now enjoying our first artichoke crop for two years, after missing out last year when the plants were cut back by the winter frosts. Why they escaped the cold this winter is a mystery.
Our enjoyment is all the more intense because of the enforced abstinence. One artichoke makes a satisfying main course. They couldn’t be easier to prepare- the heads just need to be dropped into boiling water and left to cook for 40 minutes. You need to melt plenty of butter because there needs to be enough to give the hearts a good dunk at the end. I’m a bit of a chav where butter is concerned and always use salted butter- for the simple reason that it’s tastier. One tip, which I always forget at the beginning of the season- always allow a minute or two for the artichoke and the butter to cool down before you start eating- otherwise you’ll burn the roof of your mouth.
Soft fruit needs lots and lots of rain and this year we’ve got it. The rain has already given us bumper crops of black currants and gooseberries- now its the turn of the raspberries. But we’ve had difficulty harvesting the crop because it’s no good trying to pick raspberries when it’s wet and there have been precious few dry spells. Margaret has borne the brunt of the picking because I tend to be out at work. Today the weather cleared just before lunch and Margaret ventured into the raspberry patch with her basket. Although the rain had stopped it was wet underfoot. There are four rows of raspberries in the fruit cage, each row separated by stone flags, which were put down to keep off the weeds. Because they are on a slope the paths can be treacherous in the wet. And so it proved- Margaret lost her footing, falling heavily and hurting her wrist. At first, it didn’t seem so bad and she carried on picking, but before long the pain hit home and she realised that something was seriously wrong. Ten hours and two hospitals later she returned home with her arm in plaster. She had broken three bones in her hand and two in her wrist. She said that the pain was the worst she had ever experienced, which is something coming from someone who has given birth to 6 children.
The day wasn’t entirely wasted- she managed not to spill the raspberries when she fell.
It’s almost Midsummer’s Day and a time of glut in the garden. Or do I mean gluttony. At last we have an abundance of choice- as much choice as in any supermarket, except that ours is fresh and wholesome.
The fruit harvest has been helped along by the abundant rain, especially the gooseberries, which are bigger and sweeter than we have ever known. The only crop which has disappointed is the cherries, which have split- apparently the splitting is caused by too much rain, but I’m happy to leave them to the birds.
There was a most entertaining discussion on a Radio 4 programme called Terrible Food in which Jonathan McGowan, an amateur taxidermist, described how he fed his (unsuspecting) guests a meal of spaghetti bolognese which he had made from owl meat. The owls were a Tawny and a Barn which he had found as road kill. Unfortunately, he didn’t include a recipe, but he might have enjoyed the following:
How to Cook a Chub:
“There is only one way to cook a chub and that is to lay him on a board and scale and gut him. Then carefully bury the body and cook the board”.
From “With Rod and Line in and Around Gloucestershire” by ‘Tight Lines’ 1937
or
How to Cook a Cormorant
“After dousing the bird in petrol and setting it on fire, burying it for a fortnight, then boiling in salt water, applying a paste of methylated spirit and curry powder and roasting in a hot oven for three hours, throw it away and then not even a starving vulture would eat it”
From “Countryman’s Cooking”, W.M.W. Fowler 1965
During the winter my Wagyu cattle were allowed to roam wild on the fells with the Galloways. The conditions were rougher than expected and they were a little bedraggled when we brought them to their new home in January. They have now swapped the rough fells of the west coast overlooking the Irish Sea for the more benign conditions of Grange-over-Sands, and the three mature bullocks have spent the last three months living a life of luxury indoors on a diet of grain getting into condition for the fateful day which awaits all beef cattle. The photo shows the eldest, Paul, who is now in perfect condition and will meet his fate in about two weeks time. It’s now nearly four years since we started the embryo programme to raise the first pure-bred Wagyus in this part of the world. We will soon see whether bringing up the Wagyus in English conditions outside, with a diet mainly of grass will produce the same excellence as the cattle in Japan, which are raised indoors on a diet of grain. My theory is that the excellence is in the genes and that the diet should be irrelevant, but we’ll see.
So many gardeners date their love of gardening from the sense of wonder which they felt as a child when they watched seeds which they had planted grow into plants. That sense of wonder never goes, and is still with me as I grow trays of seedlings in my potting shed. Nor does the sense of annoyance when the newly emerged seeds are nibbled overnight by mice.
For the last few weeks nearly all my meals, main course and dessert, have been from what we have grown in the kitchen garden. Without realising it, I have practically become vegetarian. If the mice are so kind as to allow some of my seedlings to grow, I should be able to keep this up well into the autumn.
First they deceive, then they destroy. Not so long ago the supermarkets looked with envy at the thousands of independent bakers on the High St. The supermarkets, with their factory produced sliced wrapped loaves, had no chance of competing against bread which was freshly baked by a master baker who worked through the night to make the real thing. Then someone at head office had a bright idea. Why not create in-house bakeries to make fresh bread right there in the store? The accountants pointed out that this was a complete non-starter as it would mean employing skilled craftsmen to work unsocial hours. But what, said the bright spark, if we continue to make the bread in factories, but give the impression that we are making it on the premises? All we have to do, they said, is bring it in frozen, dress up some assistants as pretend bakers, and re-bake it in our own ovens.
This brilliant idea caught on. Soon they were all at it and soon thousands of independent bakeries up and down the country were forced out of business. The only ones who managed to survive were in places like here in Grange, where the supermarket hasn’t yet arrived.
This week, the sham bakeries have been exposed because of a proposed new rule, which will force the supermarkets to own up when bread has been re-heated from frozen. We had the ludicrous spectacle of one of their PR people saying that the proposed rule will harm the environment because the customer will throw away unused bread rather than freezing it if he has been made aware that it was previously frozen. Of course, what he is really frightened of is the possibility that the cusomer might not want to buy his rubbish in the first place if he is told the truth about how it is made. Then, perhaps, we might get some of our artisan bakers back.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials Thoreau
The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food and extend them to life in general. Here in the Lake District where I live with my wife and three daughters, we have a garden where we grow our own food. We know full well that this is an inefficient and expensive way of organising our lives but we do it because we enjoy it and because it forces us to eat healthily and in season. It is slow, because gardening is all about patience.
The principles of Slow Food are "good, clean and fair" - 'good' means that the food should be of good quality, 'clean' means that it should be free of pesticides or harmful chemicals, 'fair' means that when you buy from a farmer, you pay him a decent price. Supermarkets and the large chain stores routinely break all these principles, which is why we, as a family, don't use them. Slow food means also taking the time and trouble to cook the food yourself and to take pleasure in eating it with your family and friends. I like the idea of extending the principles of Slow Food to life in general with the aim of achieving a good work/life balance.
This blog of my Slow Life is mainly about my garden in the Lake District, but also about my hotels, where I earn my living, and about the occasional forays, which my Slow Life allows, into the worlds of design, music and local affairs.
There's also quite a lot in this blog about Japan and the Japanese. This is because I admire their way of life and the fact that the Japanese, more than any other nation, are trying to embrace the Slow Life, even to the extent of having Slow Cities.
