Wood - and More - from the Trees

Last week I read what was an eminently sensible suggestion from a green lobby group, namely that in Britain we should produce less meat and use the land freed from sheep and cattle to grow more trees.


The idea was rooted (hmm) in thinking on greenhouse gases, animal farts being a significant contributor of unwelcome emissions, as it were. Trees take in carbon dioxide, and produce oxygen, so it's win-win. And win again, if the trees planted on the land in question were to be food producing species.


I'm not suggesting a vegetarian future, indeed for culinary, nutritional and other reasons I want to see us continue to farm land that's most suited to meat to produce - meat. There are plenty of upland areas in the UK where trees struggle, but make great grazing for sheep. But we've moved on, or should have, from every meal being a big lump of meat and two veg. Growing very productive trees like chestnuts - good protein and carbs - apples and pears, all suited to our climate, makes sense - I don't have the figures to hand, but I've read several times that in broad terms such husbandry produces a multiple of what meat farming can.


Walking the Dear Leader's domain* recently I counted up what we, in a very small way, had done along those lines. We have 18 trees in the ground that provide us with nuts and fruit, and a further 10 smaller ones in pots likewise giving us some return now, with the promise of more to come. There's (continued) austerity sense in investing in these plants, though we are now reaching peak tree at Pilkington Palace. About 15 years ago we spent maybe £15 then on what was a small quince tree, and after a decade of generally small harvests it is these days well established, and 2018 has seen it yield a perfumed glut. The walnut tree planted soon after our arrival here has similarly started to produce greater numbers of nuts, more to the benefit of the squirrels than us, but we have some jet black nocino maturing that we'd not have enjoyed without our own crop of green nuts. We have more cooking apples than we and several friends can cope with. We've enjoyed lemons and apricots, pears and plums, our bay tree is a cook's joy, and we hope one day soon to see cherries, mulberries, figs - even olives, who knows? There's a cobnut offshoot taken from the soon-to-be-quit allotment already doing well at the bottom of the garden.


This is the sort of action that many of us can take independently in our gardens. There are community orchards springing up in more enlightened towns and villages. But it's also the sort of thing the government should be getting behind. The cynic in me says that the meat processors and feed makers have more financial clout than the plant nurseries, well able to top up political coffers mightily meatily, and to wine and dine ministers and officials royally, so such thinking won't get much further in that direction than having a parliamentary committee established to study the broad range of possibilities - with deputations sent on fact-finding missions to... I don't know, Portugal, California, Australia, and anywhere else nice and warm.


Meantime we continue to lurch towards ever more calamitous results of climate change - the extreme events now coming thick and fast, though across the pond the Donald is keeping his piggy eyes shut to them - and a time when it won't be only distant foreign lands but our own struggling to feed itself. Planting productive trees, and beyond that permaculture, at least where it works best, is a proven solution.


*and mine

The Ham Diet

The Dear Leader and I have just returned from Bologna, where we spent a long weekend being a bit cultural and very greedy. Given that ham, mortadella and salami nearly always featured at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and watching the Bolognese themselves consume vast platters of ham in the restaurants we used, I am struggling to understand how so few people we saw were fat.


It may be that such meat feasts are for dining outside the home, while vegetable-rich meals are enjoyed in the home. There were more grocers than butchers to be seen as regards shops, and the former had fantastic variety on display, not least the radicchio that seems to have gone out of favour with our  supermarkets (so we are growing plenty to make up for it).


Another theory is that they walk so damn much, as we did, though we had the excuse of being visitors intent on seeing the sights (again in some cases, given we made a similar trip last November). All Saturday and Sunday the streets in the centre were thronged with families and groups of friends just strolling about, working up an appetite (or indeed an appetito).


The culinary highlight of the weekend, for me at least, was tripe in the Parma style, which was tripe stewed with tomato and a rich stock. I am a massive fan of tripe, both for its flavour and its texture. Interestingly (well, for me) that tripe dish was, in comparison to my own standby of tripe and onions, on the underdone side; just so the various pastas we had over the four days of dining, all of them done very much al dente. I will learn from that and not always think 'I'll just give it another minute.'


I've made a resolution to make use of my pasta machine again, the particular aim being to make some ravioli (tortelli etc look far too complex for my folding skills to manage). What I have in mind are some very large ravioli, stuffed with things like ricotta and parmesan, but also I am keen to try pumpkin - though not flavoured with crushed amaretti biscuits. I had that combination in one restaurant, and it was intriguing - a traditional dish of the Veneto apparently - but however interesting and (to me) new, a little went a long way.

Healthy Fast Food?

We rarely eat fast food in this house. Put that down to meanness, not liking the smell of the places that serve it, and preferring healthier options. That's not to say that I despise the foods that fall under the fast food umbrella (a brolly made of burgers then?). 

When the Dear Leader was in the Great Wen recently I took the opportunity of making myself some relatively healthy hot dogs with all the fixin's, as we say in deepest Fulwood. Of late I've been baking a lot of bread, so in that day's run I included two torpedo rolls that were still warm from the oven when the meal hit the table. They were adorned by a pile of fried red onions, made with a minimum of oil; a massive bowl of fresh-made coleslaw; and some very spicy chili beans. All told at least four of my 387 a day. Even the hot dogs were relatively healthy, some proper German frankfurters with 70% pork, bought from Waitrose (I am a great label reader - the best ones I could find in Sainsbury's last time there were less than half that meat content). 

It should have been a nicer meal than it was. That sort of food - for filling up and pigging out - needs to be eaten with friends or family, partly to slow down the gorging process with conversation. Cooking for yourself can be pleasure, but not that sort of cooking, if that makes sense. It ended up feeling rather sad, and I ended up feeling very bloated. Contrast that to a meal served up some time back (that I may have mentioned previously), made for the Dear Leader (may her foes writhe in torment) and Sternest Critic. 

The focal point of that meal was chicken not a million miles away from the KFC style, though mine was baked or roasted, depending on how you look at it. The breadcrumb coating mimicked the Colonel's formula (you can't go far wrong with lots of ground fennel seed, clearly the dominant flavour in the big-o-bucket). If memory serves it was also accompanied by lots of coleslaw, not one of those micro-containers you get with KFC. I will recall that meal with great pleasure; maybe it is the approval thing; maybe just sociability. The hot dogs, however accomplished in their way, were missing the ingredient of company; perhaps I felt guilty getting outside such a hefty feast. The next time the DL is absent I'll keep it a bit more sophisticated.

Mrs Lenin and I

My brain tends to retain the oddest facts. In the late 1830s I studied Russian language, literature and history at university, and plenty of it stuck. As I was cooking last night a strange thing came back to me. I once read that when the Lenins were living in Switzerland Vladimir Ilyich was driven from their block of flats by the smell of his wife's cabbage soup, the beleaguered beardo rushing off to do revolutionary plotting with the blokes down the pub. After a few pints I likewise tend to think I have the solutions to the world's problems, but that's by the by. Mine, in case it's of interest, don't involve the deaths of millions.


That detail was meant to illustrate what a poverty stricken and miserable life the exiles had. But had the book from which the anecdote came been written by someone with more culinary experience they may have put a different slant on it. Last night's main course, soft food again given that the Dear Leader (a great dictator in her own right) is still suffering with her jaw, was a version of cabbage soup. And it was utterly delicious, though I say it as shouldn't.


There is no reason why relatively mean ingredients should not result in something wonderful, and in this case they did. Half a white cabbage shredded, a carrot, two small potatoes, and two onions chopped, plus the magic ingredient of half a small pack of smoked pancetta cubes (Aldi's, and so much better than the pasty-faced efforts from Sainsbury's). A bit of butter and oil to lubricate them as they cooked gently before the cheating chicken stock was added, and then the pot left to simmer for half an hour. Though it was unnecessary a final flourish did lift the soup further - a few tablespoonfuls of cream, added just before serving.


The pre-cream soup was carefully liquidised (rather than liquidated, like the Mensheviks), and actually tasted more like split pea than cabbage (traditional Russian cabbage soup is called Shchee by the way), with a gorgeous smoky background from the posh bacon. The lot cost by my estimate less than £1.50. It was a very cheap great leap forward in culinary terms, though only altered a little from a Lindsey Bareham idea.