Strawberries from the USA

One of the things that really annoys me is when people buy out-of-season or imported things, at a time when the English equivalent is right there in front of them. We're just going into the English Apple season which is the time when this problem most annoys me.
But right now it's strawberries. There I was in Tesco (stupid hateful shop) gazing at an array of Strawberry punnets in front of me, looking lovely and grown in Worcestershire. Excellent. Right next to them were more trays, also of equally red strawberries, apparently identical until you looked closely; but they came from the USA.
Along comes this Dad and his small daughter and looks at the US strawberries.

"Ooh these look nice and big"
"Mmm lovely. Aren't they huge! Let's have these."

And they pick up a box of American imports and continue.

Now there are several things wrong with this whole mentality, including, of course, the false idea that large strawberries are nice. (They're not. The more water they contain the more insipid the flavour).

But what puzzles me is why there should be any strawberries from America in the shop at all. Why should the public be expected to read the tiny print to see whether the produce is local. Given that strawberries are produced here and in abundance, isn't it reasonable for the shopper to assume that the seasonal produce is from Britain.

I think it's time we got some legislation that removed overseas imports altogether at times when local seasonal products are on the shelf. We shouldn't need to have labels that say it's local. It should just be local or not there at all.

Asparagus

Yesterday I discovered that you're supposed to eat your first English asparagus on St George's day. We had ours yesterday, but that probably reflects the reality of global warming, as I overheard the market stall man saying to another customer.

Pantzaria Salata

Here at last is the best beetroot recipe ever. This dish we learnt to love at the British School in Athens.

I have saved it till now because it belongs to the season when bunched beetroot are on the market, fresh with their green tops included. This time has now come, thanks to global warming.

There is a tale to the effect that it was to get beetroot with their tops on, for the purpose of this wonderful dish, that the Osborne family moved back to Cambridge. But amazingly, last time I was in Oxford I saw a bunch of beetroot on Oxford market. Wonders will never cease.

Pantzaria salata (or "Beetroots done the Greek way").

Ingredients:
1 bunch of beetroot, small and young with the tops green and fresh
olive oil (lots) and a little vinegar if desired
nutmeg

method:
Cut off the leaves, leaving about an inch of the stem on the beets. The leaves will be treated as chard (much like spinach).

Wash the leaves and the roots. Put the roots in a large pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Boil them until they are tender (about an hour at the most).

Meanwhile, put the clean wet leaves into a pan just big enough to hold them. Don't add any water (the water on the leaves will be sufficient). Wilt them over a low to medium heat with the lid on. After about 15 minutes or so they will be tender and cooked, including the long red stems.

Drain the leaves in a colander, and then using two sharp knives running in opposite directions like scissors, cut through the cooked chard, including the stems, so that it is well cut into small parts, with the pieces of the stem no more than about half an inch long.

When the roots have finished cooking, drain them and rub off the peel (if they are done the peel will come away easily). Cut off the top where the stub of the stalks is and the trailing root at the tail and cut them into slices. Arrange the slices on the centre of a platter. Spread the chopped chard round them.

Drizzle as much Greek virgin olive oil as you dare over both the roots and tops until they shine with a lovely gloss. If you like, add a very small amount of vinegar (or lemon juice) and a grating of nutmeg over the top.

Serve lukewarm or cold.

Borsch (at last)

I'm not 100% sure this is the recipe we usually use (and the professor, who might know for sure, is out as usual). But it's from a book that is 100% reliable and it's not too complicated. It also seems to me to be familiar, unlike others I found in the many useless, fussy and complicated books that clutter up the kitchen shelf.

This recipe is from Clare Walker and Gill Coleman, The Home Gardener's Cookbook, Penguin Books 1980. On matters regarding copyright see the note at the foot of this Blog.

I have adjusted the wording and provided only imperial measures (let me know if you prefer metric). The measures are British measures not American ones.

Borsch
Serves 6 to 8 people.

Ingredients

1 lb uncooked beetroot, leaves and stalks removed.
2 1/2 pints of stock
1 small carrot
1 medium onion
6 oz cabbage
1 bouquet garni
salt and pepper
Juice of half a lemon
sour cream (one tablespoon per person)

Wash the beetroots carefully (this time you need to get all the mud off but don't peel them yet).
Put them in a large saucepan with the stock.

Peel and dice the carrot and onion. Wash and finely shred the cabbage. Add all the vegetables to the saucepan with the bouquet garni and the salt and pepper.

Cover the pan and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for two hours until the beetroots are cooked.

Remove the beetroots from the soup and leave them to cool slightly. Remove the bouquet garni from the soup and discard it.

Top and tail the beetroot and peel off the skins. Dice the flesh and add three quarters of it to the soup. Purée the soup (e.g. in a liquidiser or through a seive).

Add the lemon juice to the puréed soup. Throw in the remaining diced beetroot.

Just before serving, bring the soup back to the boil (make sure it is well heated through if it has been left for a while). Serve hot in bowls, with a spoonful of sour cream dropped gently into the centre of each bowl.

My guilty secrets

What I bought in Tescos today and where I should have bought them...

1. Organic cider in a box (like a wine box, only cider). Not sure where you could get this: perhaps a proper wine shop.
2. Bananas, reduced for quick sale. These should have been Fairtrade but weren't. I could have got them from the market, not necessarily at reduced price. But if I hadn't bought them, probably Tescos would end up throwing them away...
3. Apples, a weird sort of green English apples that I've never seen before. They're called Greenstar, and they appeared to say they were grown in Kent. I bought them because I'm a trifle bored with coxs, and although the professor likes russets best, I'm not so very fond because they're too dry for my liking. I very much like Granny Smiths. However it irritates me that the only Granny Smiths you can get in the winter are from France (why apples from France, I ask you?). Well here are some green apples from England. I presume they ripened in the Autumn and have been waxed and kept in carbon dioxide. They may prove to be horrid. I haven't tried one yet: I'll report back. As for where else I might get them, well I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find exactly those anywhere. But the place one should buy local English fruit is the Urban Farm Shop.
   
4. White bread from the instore bakery. This I should have made at home, or failing that I should have gone to the local independent bakery baking on the premises on Norfolk Street or on Burleigh Street. But I was a bit late in the day for that.
5. Traditional chutney. This I should have made at home, or failing that I should have bought it at the Urban Farm Shop.
6. Two special treats from the Reduced for Quick Sale counter: one was some hummus and one was a kind of appetiser of mozzarella and oven-baked tomatoes. These I just wouldn't have gone anywhere to buy, because they weren't necessary.

The only reason I actually went to Tescos was to get a loaf of warm freshly baked bread in time for lunch, which I couldn't do if I made it myself. Lunch ended up a bit late, but it was yummy, and the extras I got made the day a bit more fun than it might have been.

I also earned double green clubcard points for the organic items and for the fact that I used my own shopping bag. I think Tescos should be commended for providing an incentive to encourage their customers to change their habits in both those aspects.

Beetroot in pink sauce

An old favourite from my childhood, rather less often used in our household for some years because our Elizabeth was always opposed to this kind of sauce.

Ingredients:

Beetroot, as many as you like.

Traditional white sauce, made by the roux method with butter, flour and milk, and seasoned with salt.


Method
No need to wash the beetroot unless they're thick with mud. If you do wash them don't damage the skin.

Boil the beetroot in sufficient water to cover them completely. About 45 minutes should be sufficient unless they're very large.

Towards the end of the cooking time, make the white sauce.

Drain the hot beetroot and find some way to hold them (e.g. a fork, or oven gloves, preferably some that are pink already) while you peel off the skin. If they're properly cooked this should fall away very easily with gentle rubbing. Cut off the ragged top and the long tail if there is one.

Slice the beetroot and add them to the white sauce. Warm them through, stirring until the sauce is nicely streaked with pink. Serve hot as a vegetable accompaniment.

This dish can also be made with left-over beets that have previously been boiled and peeled and stored in the fridge. In that case you'll need to warm them in the sauce for a little longer.

Roast beetroot and potatoes with rosemary and garlic

Here is one of my favourite recipes for Beetroot. This is probably enough for about two people.

Ingredients:
Two or three medium sized beetroot
Two or three medium sized potatoes
A sprig of fresh rosemary
Two cloves of garlic
A generous tablespoonful of goose fat or olive oil.

Method:
Preheat the oven to a fairly hot temperature. A conventional oven is best. If using a fan oven, you may want to use an enamel roasting tin with a lid, or perhaps a terracotta brick, to prevent the vegetables from drying up.

Put the goose fat (or olive oil) in the bottom of a roasting tin, and heat it in the oven for a bit.

Scrub the mud off the beetroot but do not peel them. Do the same to the potatoes. Cut off the scabby top and the tail of the beetroot. Cut the vegetables into portions, about the normal size for roast potatoes or a bit smaller.

Peel the garlic cloves and cut them in thin slices. Rinse the rosemary.

Take the tin of hot fat out of the oven and put the vegetables in it, turning them over to coat them with grease on all sides. Scatter the rosemary leaves around and drop the garlic slices in between the vegetable pieces.

Put the tin in the oven and roast them for about 45 minutes or a little longer depending on the size. It is best to turn them again in the fat part way through the cooking. Make sure the potatoes are quite tender before serving. Just before serving grind some sea salt over the roast vegetables.

Serve piping hot, with anything you like. Yummy.

PS you can do the beetroot without the potatoes, but I quite like the way the edges of the potatoes get coloured pink by bumping into the beetroot in the pan.

The experience is completely different if done with olive oil instead of dripping, but both are yummy.

What does it mean to be green?

It means eating beetroot.

Hot house peppers

Have you noticed that all the salad vegetables that are in the shops, especially in the winter, are always from Holland (except when they're from Spain)?

Last Spring I went to the Green Grocers in Norwich, which prides itself on supplying local produce, and was distressed to discover that it was stocking virtually nothing from Norfolk, or even from the UK. But there was plenty of produce from Holland.

So I asked the man in the shop why it was that we could only get tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers and peppers from Holland, given that the weather in Holland is no warmer than here or, if anything, less warm. The answer was interesting: it's because Holland has virtually unlimited supplies of cheap natural gas with which they heat their greenhouses and thereby produce bland tasteless salad vegetables throughout the year, which still cost not very much even after they've been shipped over by sea and distributed by road transport. So even if we went in for growing stuff under glass in the UK, we'd struggle to compete with their prices, because the cost of the heating would be too high. It's not surprising that Norfolk growers don't offer produce grown in artificially heated conditions.

The carbon footprint you make by buying such produce is far from small, evidently. But for some reason the price does not reflect the huge quantity of fossil fuel that is being consumed to provide it at the wrong seasons of the year, and to distribute it to places miles away across the North Sea. Why is that?

Presumably the answer is that whereas we in the UK have already squandered all our North Sea oil and gas by distributing it at prices that were unrealistically low, Holland is still living in that profligate era. They are burning up their legacy, and producing tomatoes for which we are paying not nearly enough—nothing like what that fuel is really costing us and the world So we eat them carelessly, winter and summer alike, even though they are produced by burning up what small amount remains of the North Sea's gas and oil supplies. It doesn't strike us that they are costing the earth.

It seems to me that the squandering of scarce fossil fuel resources should be taxed to give some real sense of the cost of such produce. Because, once we've used up that fuel then not only are the wars for control of the oil fields in other parts of the world going to get worse, but we're all going to be at the mercy of that European gas pipeline from Russia. And it's fairly pointless worrying about global warming, and polishing your halo by offsetting the carbon emissions, if before global warming has a chance to get a hold we've all killed each other in the competition for possession of ever scarcer oil and gas supplies.

It's a bit like being under siege, with enough food and fuel for two weeks, but then feasting recklessly for ten days. Then, on the eleventh day, finding there's nothing left we shall fight each other to death over two mouldy crusts.