At long last there’s a film to rival Babette’s Feast in the foodie stakes.  The film in its native Japan is called Shokudo Katatsumurai, but the version with English sub-titles is known as ‘Rinco’s Restaurant’.  Rinco lives in a small rural village with her louche mother and a pig. The pig, Hermes, is the mother’s pet, is kept indoors, hogs the sofa and even shares the mother’s bed.  Rinco sets up a restaurant in a glorified shed in the garden. There is only one table in the restaurant and no menu and the food which Rinco cooks has the magical ability to transform people’s lives. In one scene, a widow dressed in black and borne down with misery,  is served course after course during which she is gradually transported out of her misery.  The scene lasts about ten minutes without any dialogue, during which all you see is Rinco preparing each course and the widow eating them. It is utterly charming.
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I’m indebted to Mark Schilling of the Japan Times for the information that there’s a thriving sub-culture in Japan of films about women in crisis who find redemption through food.  They include Seagull Restaurant, Flavour of Happiness and Nonchan Noriben.  After enjoying Rinco’s restaurant to much, I can’t wait to get hold of them.

Jasper is back and he’s on the warpath.  That evil institution known as the EU is proposing to ban the use of saltpetre in the preparation of organic cured products, thus ending 3,000 years of traditional food preparation.  Jasper is campaigning to stop the ban taking place and has come armed with letters to Catherine Gazzoli, the head of Slow Food, and HRH The Prince of Wales.  Jasper came to see us at the Damson Dene Hotel where, at a Slow Food dinner,  we tasted the cured meats which he had prepared using one our our Saddleback pigs three weeks before.  All the preparations used saltpetre, which is an essential part of the curing process of meats.  If saltpetre is banned in the curing of organic meat, that will be the end of organic bacon- which will leave us with products such as “Danepack”, which aren’t really bacon at all.
Jasper has been an inspiration to us all and has our full support in his campaign.  
The picture below is of an apple and blackberry pie, which Margaret prepared for our dinner, with a pastry “snail”, made by our daughter Joanna.