Put it in the Curry!

This Kent-food-lite schmozzle gets better and better. Not only are we continuing to nosh delicious, good-value local food, but curry’s back on the agenda!

Faversham has some fine curry houses, but The Raj in West Street is my all-time favourite; the town’s original curry restaurant with a classic take on Anglo-Indian cuisine and run by a lovely family.

You may think I’m heading into a serious cheating zone here – how can a Kent-produce diet tie in with eating curry? The answer is to strike the balance we’ve talked about before. The Stalin approach to the subject does indeed mean that curry, and pretty everything else with spices and herbs, has to go by the board. However, if you go with a rough 90/10 rule, where 90% of your diet is locally sourced, but you allow yourself up to 10% of out-of-the-county goodies, the oyster is your world.

Using locally sourced meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and so forth to form the bulk of the diet while occasionally preparing them with bought-in spices maintains the integrity of the diet while providing bags of variety.

It’s even better when you get to know some insider-trader curry cooking tips. By a quirk of mutually busy diaries, the family have only just enjoyed their last 2010 Christmas present, a curry master-class by Ruhul of The Raj.

Last Sunday Ruhul set himself up in Simon & Jess’s kitchen (elder son and daughter-in-law) and delivered a blast of a session. I’m not going to give away Ruhul’s secrets – you’ll have to ask him yourself – but what an eye-opener . . . when to put spices in the mix, what spices to use in what combination, marinating to fix in flavours, boiling to bring out the right mix and strength of flavours. All hugely informative.

It’s just, er, a matter of trying to put into practice what I’ve learnt . . . . I foresee the occasional trip to The Raj to keep learning will always be on the menu!

Business before pleasure

After the culinary frenzy that was Chez Young some weeks ago, with Mrs Y up to her elbows in seasonal ingredients garnered from hedgerows and shops, it seemed only right to treat ourselves to some relaxing foodie recompense, while, of course, continuing the Kent investigation.

So, we have been out and about on Sunday lunch jaunts ‑ in my case followed by a peaceful slump on the sofa with the papers. You may remember from a posting or twain ago, first off we took ourselves to the Three Mariners at Oare and splendid it was too. A menu in a Modern English idiom featuring a fine selection of Kent sourced fish, all taken with a glass or two of Sheps' finest elixirs.

Next up was The Sun in West Street. A menu out-and-proud about its Kent ingredients, explicitly telling punters the beef, lamb and fish were all from the county. Oddly enough the food here was also washed down with a glass or two of Sheps' finest ‑ is a theme beginning to emerge for you?.

The latest Sunday lunch out was at The Plough at Stalisfield, where my pork terrine starter was simply fab and we both had Seasalter salt-marsh lamb.

All three places featured an added bonus, pleasant, efficient and hard-working service from front-of-house teams mainly comprising local youngsters. Occasionally a bit ditsy I have to admit ("Excuse me, you seem to have forgotten the cheese and bix I ordered"), but totally compensated for by charm and enthusiasm.

Also, all three menus were well balanced and well-presented with clear explanations of what was what, avoiding impenetrable neo-Frenchisms. I have a lurking scepticism about English eating houses presenting their menus entirely in obtuse French. Generally speaking all it means is the bill is going to be 10% greater than if the menu had been written in English.

As the Young budget is not bottomless Sunday excursions have ended for some weeks, but if you have suggestions for other nosheries which feature local ingredients do let me know. I'll add them to my action list.

The Fat of The Land

Unexpectedly, this set of musings on local Kent produce has taken a turn for the socially relevant with the recent news that 30% of the population of north Kent from Strood to Faversham is now obese.

While this mildly whimsical experiment was never intended to address nitty-gritty medical and health problems, it seems to me there is a rather ghastly irony that while Kent, and this part of the county in particular, has a prolific supply of good, healthy foodstuffs it appears a sizeable proportion of local people (no joke intended) don’t know how to use that or even where to get it from,

As I say, not for me to come up with solutions to this problem, but part of that solution has to be to do with people understanding better the benefits of eating healthily and local produce has a big part to play in that.

At the more day-to-day level, Mrs Y and I have started grazing local restaurants to test their local foodie credentials . . .  more on that next time.

Back to basics

Here we are at the end of the Great Kent Food Caper. Three weeks is time enough to learn some lessons, so it is time to review things.

Did it work? Yes. And, surprisingly, it is perfectly possible to live mainly off produce from the Faversham area (say within a five-mile radius of the town) let alone Kent.

All those things I’ve instanced before (pork, lamb, beef, fish, seafood, vegetables, fruit, fruit-juices, beer, cheeses and eggs) can be bought locally. They can also be bought at good prices and bought conveniently.

The commercial winner has turned out to be David Simmons; Mrs Y has discovered the excellent local produce David sells from his Market Place stall and has pledged undying fealty.

Here’s a list of good Faversham produce stockists/suppliers: pork, lamb, beef (Snoad Farm); fish, seafood (Bluey Walpole); vegetables, fruit (David Simmons, Macknade); fruit-juices (Moor Organics and Pawley Farm); beer (Shepherd Neame); cheeses (Dargate Dairy); eggs (Churchman’s Farm).

The gripes still remain . . . pricing of some Kent products is ludicrous. It seems the pricing policy of some producers is just to throw very large numbers into a hat, draw out one at random and then apply it to the product.

Labelling is also pretty hopeless – vague to the point of utterly uninformative about the provenance of products. I shall be taking some retailers to task about it. Even some who profess to be fully committed to Kent produce make it extraordinarily difficult for shoppers to support their local suppliers.

Also, there seems a lack of entrepreneurial spirit among producers and suppliers. Kent is one of the strongest identities/brands in the UK. Do producers make the most of that huge advantage to promote their products? Hell they do. In the past few weeks between us we’ve identified all sorts of products which Kent can and does produce, but which producers seem intent on hiding away in a dusty, unlit PR corner.

One more side-shoot emerges from this, which is . . . Lesson No. 9, if you can, grow some of your own fruit and veg do so. It’s a cheap, satisfying hobby that will do you good in numerous ways.

I have an allotment and have planted fruit trees in the garden. But, through a combination of circumstances I won’t bore you with, I haven’t really been on the veg case this year. Next year is going to be a year of maxing on home-grown, which means I’ll be starting to dig over the allotment and so forth from next month.

Talking of doing you good, this experiment had been good for the Young household. I drink less tea and coffee (that headache is something I don’t want to repeat), but still enjoy them, we eat better and I, for one, certainly feel a good deal better.

One loose end is Kent Salt, which I never got around to pinning down, despite tips from Claire and Suzanne. But, thinking about opportunities, I can see the label now ‑ Miles and Slater, Purveyors of Fine Kent Sea-Salt. Go to it, girls.

I will being posting to the blog every now and then, but won’t be doing so daily. If anything crops up you think is of interest and relevant let me know, I can it include as and when. I’ll also write a round-up of this in a couple of weeks’ time for the Faversham News.

Lastly then, Lesson No. 10 . . . . there is no lesson No. 10 at the moment, but when I think of it you’ll be the first to know.

Now let us praise famous kebabs

Enough of foraging, let’s get back to the main event foodie event.

Looking through the posts I’ve put up, I detect a bit of a negative theme, which is it is diffult to find some local products and they are expensive when you do get them. But, let’s look at  positives.

The big one is that it is perfectly possible to buy from sources within five miles of Faversham a large proportion of all the ingredients of a good, varied diet, eg, pork, lamb, beef, fish (of many kinds), seafood, vegetables, fruit, juices, beer and cheeses, and, thus, it is perfectly possible to live well while adopting a fairly full-on, though not exclusively, local food policy.

It is also perfectly possible to buy these things easily. No, you can’t expect to whiz into a supermarket, whiz round the aisles and whiz out again loaded with a cornucopia of local products, but it is perfectly possible to buy a large proportion of your food from local producers, it just takes a little adaptation.

Also, and just as importantly, much of this local produce is offered at a good price.

I’ll expand on this tomorrow, in the meantime . . .

My intimates, per the comment from Lucy the other day, know I am partial to a kebab or twain. This may sound bonkers for a man professing to be getting into local produce. But, if you haven’t tried Faversham Kebab House, may I commend it to you. What many don’t realise (“doner, it’s grease on a pole”) is that pretty much everything served there is made on the premises, unlike many bog-standard kebab houses – and that includes the doner! I’ve had a tour of the kitchens and the cheffing going on was v impressive.

So, kebabs remain my guilty pleasure, a phrase Cheryl Cole seems to be incapable of going five minutes without uttering.

A good walk ruined

To continue the foraging theme for a tad, the next goodies on the agenda are sloes. Now, I have to confess to some ambivalence about sloes. Received wisdom is they are the bees-knees for sticking in a good gin, and whisky come to that, in order to make a warming, wintertime slurp.

However, for me sloe gin is somewhat akin to alcopops on speed. Hugely sweet, sometimes treacly, verging on sickly and always way too fruity. I may be doing the stuff a disservice, but I have tried quite a few recipes over the years and, for me, they have all been uniformly yuck.

Odd really, because I’m partial to a cherry brandy on a chilly evening.

A plea. Julie Davies having kindly let me in on her secret sloe picking location, what do you do with sloes if you don’t make an alcoholic fruit juice out of them?

Change of subject . . . reflecting on the very scrummy Sunday lunch at the Three Mariners, I realised one of the things that made it a treat was the enthusiastic, friendly, but unobtrusive service from the young team on front of house duty. A busy August Bank Holiday Sunday and they coped superbly.

We will freeze them on the beaches . . .

At the beginning of this excursion around Kent foodieness, not to mention my waistline, I paid tribute to the noble culinary efforts of Mrs Y. Well, she has gone from strength to strength and has surpassed even her own high cuisine standards; the kitchen at home having been a whirling blur of high-speed activity.

As a result the freezer is full of seasonal fruit goodies awaiting their designation as winter pud fillers and the kitchen cupboards are laden with chutneys, jams and sauces.

It’s been Runner Bean Syndrome Plus Plus – you know the thing, you plant a row or two of runner beans with an inner vision of melting butter, new potatoes, divinely grilled fresh fish and a shimmering green helping of gorgeous beans, then, about two weeks after you’ve started picking, you’re heartily fed up with eating the damn things with every meal and desperately offloading them on your friends under the guise of seasonal generosity.

Multiply Runner Bean Syndrome by damsons, plums, apples, sloes, blackberries, pears and all the rest and you have a month of preserving overdrive of gargantuan proportions.

And that is where Damson Ice Cream came in. In an heroic effort to beat down an overwhelming tide of fruit Mrs Y worked her magic and came up with the aforementioned dessert. And splendid it was, too. Think of the intense raspberry flavour kick you get from home made jam, this was the damson equivalent.

Lesson No 8 – if you are going to get into this local produce thing in any serious way you need to buy a whopping great big freezer.