A major benefit of growing your own food is that it brings you closer to natural seasonality - for me that being the sort defined by things appearing ready to eat in the kitchen garden, rather than the new series of some reality TV programme starring the tattooed brain dead, or the first fixture of a sporting calendar. It is a more nuanced seasonality than Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn (I actually prefer the more descriptive word Fall, once general in Britain).
Among the more notable dates of the produce seasons is New Potato Day, when the very first tiny new spuds are rushed from soil to pot with the minimum delay between. I've noted elsewhere here, I'm certain, that there is no comparison between such sprint-to-table potatoes and even the very best the shops or market can provide. It is - for me at least - interesting that the gardener can influence seasonality in this regard: we grew two huge black plastic potfuls (filled with our home-made compost) of spuds in a greenhouse, so that New Spud Day was at the very end of May, while the ones grown in the kitchen garden proper were only ready in the second half of June. An admission: the flavour of the ones grown in the kitchen garden was notably superior.
Other such events are First Strawberry Day, and First Courgette Day - that latter a week ago, though it was first two courgettes day, as two were ready together (used in a veggie sauce for pasta). There are less joyous seasonal dividers too, such as when we say goodbye to the last of many crops, but there again we can influence things a bit in our favour: by protecting some courgette plants we managed to have the last of them in early November one mild year, and not under glass either.
Hard though we try, however, there is much beyond our control, and that makes it all the more engrossing (again, for me). Two months ago I prepared a 1m x 1m patch to grow, fingers crossed without much hope of success, morels. A blend of sand, home-made compost, bonfire ash courtesy of a kind neighbour, decayed and decaying fragments of wood, chips of charcoal, rotting leaves, and some morel stuff bought from a reputable supplier, was mixed together and used on a square of ground beneath our oldest apple tree (morels are said to grow best in apple orchards, on ground where there has been a recent bonfire). I have kept the patch weeded if not overly so, moist to ensure the spores or seeds or whatever they be are not dessicated, and put the odd fallen young apple on there too. In May, we can but hope, we could just have our First Morel Day.
Monday, 15 July 2019
Saturday, 13 July 2019
Differences over Soup and Services, and Losing a Friend
Yesterday the Dear Leader and I attended the funeral of a very dear friend, for me of I think 38 years' standing, for the DL someone she'd known and loved since the first day of senior school. As Mary was a very devout Catholic the funeral service took the form of a requiem mass, and sadly until the eulogy by her brother-in-law it missed out almost entirely on the personal - for a convinced atheist it seemed like men in expensive dresses doing things by numbers, but I'm sure her family felt differently, and if it was a comfort to them, all to the good.
The DL was, however, so upset by how impersonal the priests made things - the brief show at the crematorium was worse still - that she refused to shake the monsignor's hand. As I say, Mary was a strong catholic, so each to their own, but she was also a force of friendship nature, something that the haughty coutured ones only really touched at a tangent. After the mass and the crematorium the family had arranged what Mary's husband Mike would disarmingly call 'a nice ham tea,' in fact a very generous and enjoyable buffet where the many different circles of her friends mixed, and we chatted with old friends and exchanged stories of meals and meetings past. That was, for me, so much closer to representing Mary and her gift of friendship.
Over the years we ate many meals together, at one another's homes and a couple of times when we holidayed as two families in France. There was a certain amount of rivalry, and all dietary health concerns were put to one side in the pursuit of flavour bonus points over the other as we took it in turns to prepare meals. As an example, I can still recall almost 20 years on one of my efforts being freshly-peeled prawns in cream flambeed in Calvados, and Mary producing pork with cream and apples cooked with cider - we were in Normandy as might be guessed from that. She beat me hands down on culinary kit kudos, bringing her own set of posh kitchen knives in a ninja-black cloth roll.
Mary was an absolute original, enormously generous of her time and her table - the meals she served to a huge circle of friends over the years would have paid for several ridiculous Italian sports cars, though she would never have wanted one. We differed on quite a few things - not least the spelling of the word grey/gray in this blog - some of them culinary: she didn't, for example, see the point in soup; she called beetroot 'the devil's vegetable,' and she rarely made pudding, but then her guests (expected to bring dessert if they wanted it) would be so full with starter, main, salad and cheese that it was superfluous.
The first time I met Mary was when she visited the DL (merely then an object of unspoken admiration on my part) at university. Mary enjoyed enough Guinness for two that evening, and we had innumerable convivial soirees in the following years. For about 25 years the DL and I were members of an exclusive wine society she formed, those wishing to join having to prove their knowledge by identifying red wine from white by sight alone. Doubtless the visually impaired would have been given several guesses. The DL and I will have a particularly good meal tonight in her honour, and open the best bottle to hand (with the proviso that the sluicing must fit the browsing, as it always did with Mary and Mike's events) to toast a special person, and an unsurpassed hostess.
The DL was, however, so upset by how impersonal the priests made things - the brief show at the crematorium was worse still - that she refused to shake the monsignor's hand. As I say, Mary was a strong catholic, so each to their own, but she was also a force of friendship nature, something that the haughty coutured ones only really touched at a tangent. After the mass and the crematorium the family had arranged what Mary's husband Mike would disarmingly call 'a nice ham tea,' in fact a very generous and enjoyable buffet where the many different circles of her friends mixed, and we chatted with old friends and exchanged stories of meals and meetings past. That was, for me, so much closer to representing Mary and her gift of friendship.
Over the years we ate many meals together, at one another's homes and a couple of times when we holidayed as two families in France. There was a certain amount of rivalry, and all dietary health concerns were put to one side in the pursuit of flavour bonus points over the other as we took it in turns to prepare meals. As an example, I can still recall almost 20 years on one of my efforts being freshly-peeled prawns in cream flambeed in Calvados, and Mary producing pork with cream and apples cooked with cider - we were in Normandy as might be guessed from that. She beat me hands down on culinary kit kudos, bringing her own set of posh kitchen knives in a ninja-black cloth roll.
Mary was an absolute original, enormously generous of her time and her table - the meals she served to a huge circle of friends over the years would have paid for several ridiculous Italian sports cars, though she would never have wanted one. We differed on quite a few things - not least the spelling of the word grey/gray in this blog - some of them culinary: she didn't, for example, see the point in soup; she called beetroot 'the devil's vegetable,' and she rarely made pudding, but then her guests (expected to bring dessert if they wanted it) would be so full with starter, main, salad and cheese that it was superfluous.
The first time I met Mary was when she visited the DL (merely then an object of unspoken admiration on my part) at university. Mary enjoyed enough Guinness for two that evening, and we had innumerable convivial soirees in the following years. For about 25 years the DL and I were members of an exclusive wine society she formed, those wishing to join having to prove their knowledge by identifying red wine from white by sight alone. Doubtless the visually impaired would have been given several guesses. The DL and I will have a particularly good meal tonight in her honour, and open the best bottle to hand (with the proviso that the sluicing must fit the browsing, as it always did with Mary and Mike's events) to toast a special person, and an unsurpassed hostess.
Monday, 24 June 2019
Original Sin - Pasta Caring
As anyone who has read a few of these posts will have gathered, I may not be hidebound, but I'm packing for the journey as it were. My preference has always been in food terms for the authentic, so what was a passing fad a few years back - fusion cuisine - didn't really work for me. Which is not to say that I won't try new things, or enjoy tweaks to recipes and dishes that don't rip the heart out of the original.
The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.
I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.
In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.
The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.
I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.
In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Is It My Imagination, or...
Two weeks ago we ate our first home-grown new potatoes of the year, rushed from the pot in the greenhouse that had protected and warmed them to the pot in the kitchen where they were simply boiled. Some things need nothing fancy doing to them, indeed are better off served as simply as possible. Yesterday we ate our first new potatoes fresh from the kitchen garden, same speed of processing. Unless my taste-memory is playing tricks, or I'm simply imagining it, yesterday's were vastly superior in flavour.
I guess the difference is the growing medium. The ones grown under glass (well, polycarbonate) were in compost with a tiny bit of soil, the ones in the kitchen garden enjoyed a richer environment with plenty of manure and topsoil. When we buy lettuce (not from the start of May to late October) it is stuff raised in industrial polytunnels, in industrial growing media, and while welcome then it cannot hold a candle to our own for crispness and taste.
Some crops, however hard we try are not actually as good as the best (generally organic) locally grown stuff, tomatoes a case in point. But for the majority of things we can grow without major problems the effort is repaid on the plate, if not always in the purse. Too often, however, what is grown for its shelf-life and yield, and how it performs under glass and in compost, is third rate.
Along with the small picking of spuds yesterday we had our first broad beans of the year, pods no thicker than my middle finger, and only an inch or so longer. Too good to cook, the minute beans were eaten raw, with all that's best and sweetest about them to the fore, and almost none of the bitterness that like the rest of us they'd inevitably succumb to when more mature.
A cook's daily task is helped enormously by having even a few freshly dug/picked/cut veg to hand every evening - choose what is at its best and prepare it in a way that plonks its charms front and centre. It can only be a week or two before the first tiny courgettes are begging to be eaten. And they, more than anything else, prove that home-grown in good rich soil outdoors, and on the table within an hour of being harvested, is so much better in most cases than the supermarket can ever provide. These days you can, sometimes, find small courgettes in the supermarket, worth it if you don't have your own. Forget their swollen, watery, leather-skinned brethren, however. At least you would if you had ever tasted how good a small courgette, cooked within minutes of being cut, actually can be. Sad that only a small percentage of the population will ever know that pleasure.
I guess the difference is the growing medium. The ones grown under glass (well, polycarbonate) were in compost with a tiny bit of soil, the ones in the kitchen garden enjoyed a richer environment with plenty of manure and topsoil. When we buy lettuce (not from the start of May to late October) it is stuff raised in industrial polytunnels, in industrial growing media, and while welcome then it cannot hold a candle to our own for crispness and taste.
Some crops, however hard we try are not actually as good as the best (generally organic) locally grown stuff, tomatoes a case in point. But for the majority of things we can grow without major problems the effort is repaid on the plate, if not always in the purse. Too often, however, what is grown for its shelf-life and yield, and how it performs under glass and in compost, is third rate.
Along with the small picking of spuds yesterday we had our first broad beans of the year, pods no thicker than my middle finger, and only an inch or so longer. Too good to cook, the minute beans were eaten raw, with all that's best and sweetest about them to the fore, and almost none of the bitterness that like the rest of us they'd inevitably succumb to when more mature.
A cook's daily task is helped enormously by having even a few freshly dug/picked/cut veg to hand every evening - choose what is at its best and prepare it in a way that plonks its charms front and centre. It can only be a week or two before the first tiny courgettes are begging to be eaten. And they, more than anything else, prove that home-grown in good rich soil outdoors, and on the table within an hour of being harvested, is so much better in most cases than the supermarket can ever provide. These days you can, sometimes, find small courgettes in the supermarket, worth it if you don't have your own. Forget their swollen, watery, leather-skinned brethren, however. At least you would if you had ever tasted how good a small courgette, cooked within minutes of being cut, actually can be. Sad that only a small percentage of the population will ever know that pleasure.
Monday, 29 April 2019
Veggie Barbies
The title is in fact a lie, if only partially, given that at both of our recent barbecues we ate meat, but we did manage to enjoy loads of vegetables done over the coals, and indeed in them.
I'm taking a wild guess that this is not news to those of a true vegetarian persuasion, but vegetables respond as well to the BBQ treatment as meats do. The best veggie thing we did - both times as the first was so enjoyable - was sweet potatoes, double wrapped in foil and buried in the very white hot ashes. The best results were with medium sized tubers, cooked in that way for a good 45 minutes. The skin was somewhere between burned and caramelised, but once cut into the flesh, with a bit of butter and salt, was totally delicious.
Those sweet spuds however, didn't benefit from the smoke and grill elements of the process, which mushroom kebabs (brown shrooms with garlic cloves between them) did, likewise courgette kebabs done with bay-leaves as separators.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd like a totally veggie BBQ, but neither these days would I fancy one of the total meat-fests of the not too distant past. Another veggie winner was whole medium-large onions left in their skins and slotted on a metal skewer to help the heat get to the middle. The skin was charred, the next layer overdone and not worth eating, but the rest was - again - sweet and delicious. I tried white onions and red, and the latter was the tastier.
We love garlic, and had a head each done in foil on the grill, with a few herbs and a bit of oil to keep them company. The cloves could be squeezed onto the meaty bits for an instant sauce, and the second time I did enough to have some left over to make a sauce - with leftover onions too - that two days post-BBQ went with some roast chicken. Magnificent, but one of the most fart-inducing concoctions known to man.
Even Swiss chard, one of those things that we kitchen gardeners grow and end up not using all of, was a winner, cooked in foil with some butter and crushed garlic - I said we like it - leaf and stem.
We owe some vegan friends - health rather than conviction I think - a BBQ, so with a little tweaking I'm confident we can feed them well without too much need for bought-in veggieburgers. Up the mushroom quotient, and with a few more different varieties added, and it should be proof positive that Fascinating Aida were wrong with their classic lines 'Inviting a vegetarian to a barbecue, it's taboo, it's taboo, it's taboo.'
I'm taking a wild guess that this is not news to those of a true vegetarian persuasion, but vegetables respond as well to the BBQ treatment as meats do. The best veggie thing we did - both times as the first was so enjoyable - was sweet potatoes, double wrapped in foil and buried in the very white hot ashes. The best results were with medium sized tubers, cooked in that way for a good 45 minutes. The skin was somewhere between burned and caramelised, but once cut into the flesh, with a bit of butter and salt, was totally delicious.
Those sweet spuds however, didn't benefit from the smoke and grill elements of the process, which mushroom kebabs (brown shrooms with garlic cloves between them) did, likewise courgette kebabs done with bay-leaves as separators.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd like a totally veggie BBQ, but neither these days would I fancy one of the total meat-fests of the not too distant past. Another veggie winner was whole medium-large onions left in their skins and slotted on a metal skewer to help the heat get to the middle. The skin was charred, the next layer overdone and not worth eating, but the rest was - again - sweet and delicious. I tried white onions and red, and the latter was the tastier.
We love garlic, and had a head each done in foil on the grill, with a few herbs and a bit of oil to keep them company. The cloves could be squeezed onto the meaty bits for an instant sauce, and the second time I did enough to have some left over to make a sauce - with leftover onions too - that two days post-BBQ went with some roast chicken. Magnificent, but one of the most fart-inducing concoctions known to man.
Even Swiss chard, one of those things that we kitchen gardeners grow and end up not using all of, was a winner, cooked in foil with some butter and crushed garlic - I said we like it - leaf and stem.
We owe some vegan friends - health rather than conviction I think - a BBQ, so with a little tweaking I'm confident we can feed them well without too much need for bought-in veggieburgers. Up the mushroom quotient, and with a few more different varieties added, and it should be proof positive that Fascinating Aida were wrong with their classic lines 'Inviting a vegetarian to a barbecue, it's taboo, it's taboo, it's taboo.'
Tuesday, 16 April 2019
Breaking My Fast
As these days the Dear Leader and I undertake a 600 calorie fast every Monday we actually do break a more meaningful fast than normal on a Tuesday morning. Strangely we neither of us wake up ravenous, nor horribly early, on the morning after the slight deprivation before. In fact what we have on the Tuesday is only a variation on the Monday fast breakfast (and yes, it is fast to do as well) of a boiled egg and a bowl of fruit.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Lest this all begin to be too too virtuous, I am looking forward to a short holiday in Scotland in not many weeks' time, where I hazard a guess there may not be bowls of fruit available on the hotel breakfast menu. With luck there will be black pudding, and I am certain sure bacon and sausages will feature, things reserved now for high days and holidays. For the sake of my - love that euphemism - digestive transit - I hope they will have given in to brown bread as an option.
That bowl of fruit is a major pleasure, but given my constant wish to have diversity in our diet it is something of a challenge too. It's April, so imported strawberries make the grade occasionally now, along with blueberries. Citrus is a must for some sharpness (but as per my previous post, not as sharp in the case of grapefruit as was once the case), kiwi for the beautiful green and the eye-beneficial compounds signaled by that colour, and plums for some crunch and their purple or yellow skins. Pomegranate seeds (the trick is to bash the back of the halved fruit over a bowl with a heavy wooden spoon) strewn over the lot once or twice a week bring a touch of Aladdin - it takes little imagination to see them as drifts of rubies in a bandit's treasure chest. But back to my less camp self now.
The rather limited fruit range offered by my local supermarkets is bolstered by visits to the excellent Asian shop we use more or less weekly. Today I bought dragon fruit, golden plums, guavas and a bright yellow-skinned mango (along with a load of non-fruit items). The white with black dots of the dragon fruit, cut in elegant dice, and even the light-green-beige of the guavas, will add to the richness of the breakfast palette. It is not too long too until we will have our own rhubarb, gooseberries, greengages, mirabelles, pears, apples, quince, blackcurrants and even with luck apricots to add to the mix.
I will enjoy the contrast of hotel bacon and eggs for a few days (they can keep any hash browns on offer, I'm yet to encounter one anywhere that's not oily and badly cooked), but at the same time will miss the burst of colour (and flavour) that breakfast at home brings.
Wednesday, 3 April 2019
Changing Tastes
Now in my very, extremely, exceptionally late thirties I find that my tastes have changed. Or has the taste of the things I taste changed?
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Two specific examples. First, chicory/endive. A few days ago I cooked an Italian-ish dish as a starter, the basis of which was purple-tinged chicory picked fresh from the garden. It was served with griddled bacon and mozzarella, but that's not to the point. A good thirty or forty years ago when I first encountered chicory (not something that featured in my 1960s and 1970s Norfolk childhood and youth) it was so much bitterer. Before ours was usable I bought something very similar from Waitrose, and regularly purchase the version with yellow highlights from a variety of sources. They all taste sweeter than they once did.
That could be my taste buds becoming less sensitive - certainly children have far more discerning TBs than adults - but I think it is the bitter quality being bred out of the shop stuff and the seed stock alike.
Same thing with grapefruit, that even ten years ago was sharper and again bitterer. Sadly, though ten years ago I may have been childish I was not a child.
Given that the bitter quality of chicory, and the mouth-puckering sharpness of grapefruit were their defining virtues this is rather sad. To suit palates perhaps trained by the processed and fast food industries to like sugary sweetness in all things we are losing - we are being robbed of - character in our food, or some of the ingredients at least.
I am not a complete Luddite as regards changes to the stuff we grow and eat. Apples have definitely been bred to brown more slowly when cut into. That's fine by me. But I also think that along with breeding nearly tasteless varieties like Golden Delicious, the ultimate misnomer as they're light green and lack flavour, growers have reduced the sharpness in many (but not all, so it's not my taste buds) apple varieties found in the supermarket.
Sadly my usual remedy - grow it ourselves - does not fully resolve this problem. Apples perhaps, as we have established trees whose fruits remain sharp and tasty, with their own individual character, not just a vague apple-ness and different colours. But not chicory, as the experience recounted above demonstrates. Except - maybe this is pushing me to rejoin (again) Doubleday Research, or Garden Organic, or whatever they are called now. The joy of membership there is that once a year you get a small selection of 'heritage' seeds, chosen from a fairly long list. Part of the value of that is retaining bio-diversity; part that the vegetables grown from the seeds have individual character. Yes, I have to rejoin, on both counts.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)