Newsletter 03: for fortnight beginning 1st February 2010

get cooking ...

Some of you might know already but there has been a move among the high and mighty at Riverford Organic Vegetables (ROV) to come up with a program to get people cooking. Various seminars and meetings of potential torch bearers have taken place and soon these messengers will be winging their way towards you bearing news of supper clubs, cookery lessons, ‘chop and chats’ and there are even rumours of what virtually amounts to a travelling circus moving around the farms during the summer. Please don’t get my slightly sardonic delivery wrong - I think it is a great initiative that I know has been close to Guy’s heart for a long time. For me, an interest in food is worthless unless you cook and once the most basic confidence level is reached, together with an appreciation of the results, the horizon of food broadens and, often, becomes simpler. After attending two ‘Riverford cooks’ meetings the question that doesn’t become easier is what to cook. Vegetables are wonderful things and we all know that we should be eating less, probably better, meat but it does have its place - for most of us anyway. The last Riverford Cooks meeting was a little like a rather wonderful version of ‘I’m a celebrity...’ There was no holding back in rising to the challenge of cooking the evening meal from the contents of a vegbox. I was sorry I couldn’t hang around because although my creative juices were embarrassingly absent, I would certainly like to have tasted the fruits of others. But where was the meat? For most of us supper is the main meal of the day. It shouldn’t be but it is. That is when we cook, and approximately two thirds of the time (in my house anyway), there is a meat element to the meal. I think the realistic and winnable challenge is to make this element less dominant. I’m going to get myself blackballed from the Worshipful Company of Butchers but there you go. I’ve long considered a nearly vegetarian butcher blog so maybe now is the time.

Many is the time that I have heard foodies waxing about the benefits of a Mediterranean diet. A bit of meat might brighten it up but most of the protein often comes from pulses of one sort or another. This fortnight’s Winter Warmer recipe is Spanish but originates in the north rather than south. Fabada Asturiana is as common in the north as Paella is around the Mediterranean coast. With the box containing braising steak, gammon hock and chorizo sausage and me on a ‘less meat’ kick now seems like a good time to revisit it. Navy or haricot beans are often suggested, including a recipe I seem, previously, to have provided for ROV (fabada asturiana- now on this site too!) but the Spanish know a thing or two about pulses and for them judion/butter beans are king. There are beans and beans and, frankly, many of the organic wholefood offering are poor fare compared with some of the more specialist indigenous Spanish and Italian offerings. If you are lucky enough to have access to Brindisa’s excellent and seemingly expensive dried butter beans - go for them. They are worth every penny. Most recipes call for morcilla (Spanish black pudding) but you can leave it out, or substitute another sausage. A few over ripe tomatoes are also a good addition and these runny stews can be a good use for leftover brassicas. PSB, spring greens or black cabbage are good because they keep their colour. Savoys can look a little insipid. The recipe says discard the garlic but don’t. Squeeze out the flesh and whizz it up with any beans you have leftover once the meat has been picked out and have it on toast the next day.

The taster this week is our turkey stock, made from all the wings and bones we froze down at Christmas. It will be sent out frozen so we save on ice packs. Providing it doesn’t sit around for days at room temperature it will be perfectly safe to refreeze but to be doubly sure when you come to use it make sure it comes up to 70°C for a couple of minutes (it will anyway). Turkey stock is one of my favourites because it does have that meaty, very slightly gamey flavour making it suitable for most dishes. It would certainly another layer of flavour to your Fabada Asturiana. I hate freezing water for ice packs and then hauling it around the country and back again. I can’t think of many things more inefficient. Making the ice packs out of something you can eat or drink might be the way forward.

Ben Watson