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The Muntjak Deer

Monday, April 25th, 2005

As I said, I’m too busy to cook these days.

But needs must, so I defrosted what we had bought on the farmers’ market last weekend (in addition to another pig’s head): a Muntjak deer haunch and a packet of dry-cured streaky bacon. Oh jeez.
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Wild garlic & nettle soup

Monday, April 18th, 2005

The season of bounty is here again! I remember back in Scotland we used to pick handfuls of sorrel and large bundles of wild garlic. Right in front of our door, a large morel mushroom used to erupt from the pink gravel! —Not that anyone picked it that close to drunken folk staggering past each night, but morels can fetch £ 300 a kg in London and their season is right now, which is a very good excuse to go for a walk. Tomorrow perhaps.

Meanwhile, here is an easy recipe to ring in the bounty of spring.
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Secret Flavours

Wednesday, April 13th, 2005

Every cuisine has its secrets—often some herb or spice that is locally common-as-muck but fiendishly difficult to find back home. Sometimes it is just the way in which things are cooked. And occasionally it is something that, in one way or another, is found in different cuisines the world over. Something that different cultures have learned to appreciate quite independently from each other. Something that lends a certain flavour.

No, I’m not talking about chilli or similar common spices.
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Mutton with stuffed vine leaves

Monday, April 11th, 2005

For the past month or so I had a big chunk of shoulder from a hogget (young mutton) in the freezer; bought at the last Basingstoke Farmers’ Market and kept in anticipation for my sister’s Easter visit. Alas, she never came so I decided to cook it for just the two of us.
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An Easter Picnic Lunch

Sunday, March 27th, 2005

It is still too cold and windy for the BBQ, but yesterday’s sunny weather was ideal for a picnic lunch. It was also time to return to some traditional cooking. I still had half a pig’s head and two trotters in the freezer from last month’s Basingstoke farmers’ market and so I turned my attention to a dish that was traditionally part of the feast that followed when pigs were slaughtered on the farms from early autum to late March:
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Easter Bunny Recipe

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

(This entry will probably elicit hate mail…)

I know it’s a week early, but you don’t get a hare at the farmers’ market every day and the freezer is already packed with pigs’ heads and trotters that I have hoarded to make brawn for the long Easter weekend. And anyway, this dish is to celebrate the end of winter (the season for hare is supposed to finish in February, but they do occassionally run in front of cars) and the coming of spring: the hum of lawnmowers, daffodils flowering in ditches, trees blossoming, and the scent of tar simmering off freshly varnished fence posts under California-blue skies—that sort of thing. Anyway, that was how it was yesterday when I put the hare into the marinade. Today the skies are grey and the heating is back on. The winter aspects of the ritual, I presume, just in reverse.
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Exotic Veg

Wednesday, March 9th, 2005

Curse my curiosity, but the stall at Reading market intrigues me. It sells the most exotic vegetables I have seen anywhere in the UK, even in Deptford.
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Going the Whole Hog (1: Feijoada)

Friday, February 25th, 2005

Farmer’s markets never really took off in Stirling. In the end I gave up going to the smattering of stalls that lined the gravelly parking place on the first Saturday of every month. It may be that Stirling is actually a bit out of the way. At weekends, either Glasgow or Edinburgh are better bets for stall holders and a lot of the university professors probably buy their stuff in Perth.

But here in the South of England farmers markets are a serious movement. What they can’t provide, local farmshops take care of and since we have a freezer this means that we no longer buy meats from the supermarket (and probably not veg either, come the season).

The British farmer’s markets are not regular, twice-weekly affairs like those in continental Europe. This is because the movement insists that not only must produce be local (‘At a Hampshire Farmers’ Market all produce being sold must have been grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked, or processed within Hampshire or ten miles of the border.’) but also staffed by people normally working for the producer. This means we won’t get any Gloucester Old Spot or Devon Scrumpy here and when the farmers are busy (as in the imminent lambing season) they won’t come at all. I doubt the wisdom of all this— but when it happens, the market is quite an event.

Every two months it comes to Basingstoke.
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Round-the-World Shopping in Reading

Friday, February 18th, 2005

Farmer’s markets and local, seasonal produce are all very well, but after a while I feel like I start growing cobwebs eating English peasant food. I miss a good curry. And I miss the vibrancy and bustle of multy-cultural Deptford, the closest market to the Ghetto. But while London is close, it is just out of reach. So for my dose of bustle, it will have to be Reading.

John’s weekly visits to the university are my opportunity to mix with the city crowd. He drops me off just inside the Ring of Death of urban motorways that circle the city centre (it is the same in Basingstoke—a 60s urban planning oddity). There, within strolling distance from the station, is a tiny market. If I squint, it feels almost as if I’m back in Deptford.

In an area where so many ethnic groups collide, the idea that food should be ‘local’ soon sails out of the window. Among the cabbages and potatoes, a plethora of exotic produce is on offer: mangos from Equador, citrus fruit from the Mediterranean, curry leaves from India (yes, fresh curry leaves! 50p a bag. I put them in the freezer and they’ll last me until spring), plantains, eddies and sweet potatoes from the Carribbean, gourds and legumes from all over Asia. And in the specialist delis along the street I stock up on coconut cream from Thailand, dried cloud’s ear mushrooms from Singapore, banana sauce from the Phillipines, fish sauce from Indonesia, dried herbs from Turkey and 13 different flavours of noodles from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Korea and Malaysia. But my greatest joy was the discovery of a shop that sells sausages, pickled herring and dark, moist rye bread from Scandinavia, Poland and Germany.

There you have it—a truly global shopping trip.
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Seasonal game(3)

Monday, January 31st, 2005

This is the last of the seasonal game for now…

Mixed Game Casserole with Blueberries & mashed Root Vegetables
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