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.

Loose Ends

It’s a shame Thomas Jefferson was caught up in that unnecessary American War of Independence unpleasantness as he would doubtless have opined the price of local produce is eternal vigilance (which it does indeed appear to be) and man’s inalienable rights are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Kent Food at Reasonable Prices (the latter of which seems in some cases impossible).

Anyway, putting that gratuitous regret to one side, time to address two loose ends.

Salt . . . thanks to Suzanne Miles for putting me on to the fact the Sportsman at Seasalter make their own (apparently it was on the telly recently, how zeitgeisty am I!) I called and left a saline message on their voicemail, but, rather discourteously, haven’t rung back to follow that up. Must do some time.

However, it seems all they do is get a bucket of briny and boil it down. Something of a disappointment; we’ve used Maldon sea-salt for some time and I’d fondly imagined its production was along the lines of French vineyards, but with Essex girls wearing a lot of slap and white stilettos trampling on raw salt.

National food chains . . . .some might think it regrettable, but if one object of seeking out and using Kent produce is to support one’s local farmers, growers and foodie firms you are inexorably led to a conclusion that supermarkets have to be included in the equation.

Most of us use supermarkets at some time or another and their influence on the UK food and drink market is undeniably massive. Therefore, if one wishes to help producers one can’t pretend they don’t exist or don’t matter. So, Lesson No. 7 . . . while undoubtedly A Good Thing in a localism sort of way that we should grow our own and buy from local outfits as far as possible, supermarkets need to be brought into the mix. Over the past 10 years or so supermarkets have responded to consumer pressure by, for example, vastly increasing the proportion of free-range or organic eggs they sell. If such pressure can get a desired result, why isn’t there a Kent-wide organisation pressuring supermarkets to ensure their stores in the county are sourced from Kent farms and producers?

Next time, a bit about the delights of Damson Ice Cream – weird, but wonderful.

The Rampant Goose

The proposed follow-up foraging didn’t happen, Mrs Y having spent a good deal of time in the kitchen working on the fruits of the previous foray.

Rather, yesterday we celebrated the end of Stalin Week by taking ourselves out to lunch. Where to go, as we are still being strict, though not fanatical, about local produce consumption?

We selected the Three Mariners in Oare; the food is grand and it is a walk from where we live, also it has a good selection of dishes based on locally sourced ingredients. It didn’t let us down, the scran was smashing. And, talking to staff it was good to learn there is indeed a local sourcing policy at the pub.

Some eateries in Faversham come to mind as rightly making much of their use of local produce, such as Provenance Restaurant at the Railway Hotel and Read’s (you can’t get much more local than veg from your own garden). Out-of-town the Plough at Stalisfield comes to mind as having an emphasis on local produce.

But, other nosheries seem very opaque about where their ingredients come from. Lesson No. 6 (for local eating houses) . . . use local produce where you can ‑ and tell your customers you are doing so, they will reward you for it.

On the other side of things, good to see Sainsbury’s supporting local producers to some degree. I picked up a bottle of their own-brand Kentish Traditional Ale the other day and was pleased to see it was brewed by Shepherd Neame. The contents were very decent, but the labelling gave me pause for thought. The logo for this traditional Kent drop was an, er, rampant goose, that well-known symbol of the Garden of England. Corporate marketing departments, you do wonder.

But, having said, the involvement of national chains in the promotion of local produce can be said to be key to the whole issue, so more of that another day.

The cup that cheers

It may be because I was born and brought up in the 1950s, when the British Empire was still a going concern, though on its last knockings, that I have a soft spot for its benign image of a bumbling outfit that acquired a quarter of the globe in a prolonged fit of forgetfulness.

One of the best things its seems to me about the empire was its part in bringing to the world that most enlightened of substances, tea.

This morning I have had my 1^st cuppa for a week. Clearly Wordsworth meant to write “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a tea-drinker was very heaven” until he got carried away that all that French Revolution stuff.

Anyway, the Stalinist week of purging has come to an end and we have started the 3^rd, more pragmatic, week of the exercise; this means tea and coffee are back on the menu.

And did we cheat when denying ourselves out-of-Kent goodies? Only twice. Once was with salt, when the gravy for the Sunday roast just didn’t get out of the starting blocks without a pinch of it and the second was when I accepted a piece of a friend’s birthday cake, it seemed churlish and ill-mannered not to (also it was delicious).

Which brings me to Lesson No 5, which is . . . to be a full on fanatic for this cause is very limiting. Not only does it mean you have to be very careful at home about what’s in the cupboard and it also means you can’t socialise without turning into one of those grisly types who is constantly asking what’s in the sandwiches (think ultra-vegan). But, a slightly more toned-down approach looks OK.

I’ll come back to salt and, thinking about socialising, beer another day, but it being Sunday, the day of rest n all, I’m off to get the papers.

The best things in life are free . . .

I may have said it before, but the best local food is the free kind and it’s that time of the year for making the most of what is on offer gratis.

Yesterday Karen and I took a trip to just outside Faversham and scoured some hedgerows. Just 20 minutes’ work yielded more than 5lbs of damsons and jam-making will soon be under way.

We’ll probably get out again today to another hedgerow location which last year had a super-abundance of damsons, plums and cherry plums. Blackberries are in the offing too, so there will be forays for those.

Thanks to Teddy Kempster for the mint tea idea. We made some from mint from the back garden and it was yummy, far better than the decidedly dodgy sage version!

Nathalie Banaigs made the pertinent point that this full-on local food shtick seems to take up a lot of time and she is right, it does . . . 

Lesson No. 4 – being totally purist about local food is not practical in the long-term for Mr or Mrs Average; it takes too much time and overall costs too much money. But, there are many local foodstuffs readily available of good quality and good value, so it is possible to change one’s foodie habits to a much more local orientation without being inconvenienced or out-of-pocket.

Having said that, we’ve decided to extend the experiment. While the original two weeks comes to an end today, we’ve decided to do another week, but allowing ourselves a few non-Kent basics such as tea and coffee (the headache’s gone, but the yearning’s still there!). That feels closer to a sustainable, long-term way of operating, so it will interesting to see if that does indeed turn out to be the case.

Where are the bits on the side?

Lush pasture, cows lowing through a summer sunset as they amble to the farm to be milked. A quintessentially Kent scene? That’s what I thought too until I had a conversation with Jane at Dargate cheesemakers about Kent butter.

Following tips from emailers, etc, I phoned Jane and subsequently picked up some locally made, delicious, unsalted and hugely buttery butter from Dargate. The phone call was fascinating, Jane giving me a low-down on why she thinks there isn’t a supply of Kent butter, despite her believing there is a demand for it.

Essentially, the problem is . . .  not enough cows! The number of dairy herds in the county has declined and this means there isn’t a steady supply of cream for butter-making - there is a strong, summertime seasonal demand for cream and this diverts off supplies that could otherwise be used for butter.

As supply is intermittent it isn’t a viable proposition to buy automated butter-making kit, so any made is produced by hand, hence supply is small, occasional and relatively expensive.

So, don’t all rush to the dairy!

Lesson No. 3 – while it is becoming evident that buying day-to-day Kent products is fairly easy, often good quality and often good value for money, it’s the bits around the subject, and, indeed, on the side of the plate, that are tricky to find and expensive, for example, have you ever come across Kent mustard?

I’m adding Shepherd Neame (I had one of their enticing elixirs last night, bliss), Quex Farm (rape-seed oil, good for cooking), Perry Court Farm (Kent flour) and Barkaway’s (Kent bacon, amongst other things) to my list of those on the side of the food angels.

Coming out of the Kentish closet

When a week or two ago I ran the living off Kent produce idea past Stefano Cuomo at Macknade, he said he thought it was very achievable, but to succeed you would have to adapt. How right he was.

Doing this, you can't expect to walk into a shop, pick up oodles of goodies, go home, bung it in the oven and pop out a corker of a meal. This stuff needs thinking about and working at. It also takes up a lot of time.

So far we have been able to source a variety of meats, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, milk, fish, soft drinks, wine and eggs from just the local area, say within five miles of Faversham. But shopkeepers themselves don't make it easy, often it can really be a case of hunt the Kent item. Even some of the most hallowed of local produce food halls seem diffident about saying their products are from Kent. Rather, the weasly word “local” is ubiquitously sprayed across everything. Given local in the hands of some retailers is about as meaningful as “fresh” that really isn’t at all helpful

So, Lesson No. 2 - it’s high time good quality retailers came out of the Kentish closet and started labelling the produce clearly; if your goods are allegedly “local” why not say where it’s from more?

Thumbs ups all round so far to Macknade Fine Foods, Snoad Farm Meats, David Simmons and Bluey Walpole, who have come up with the goods, literally, in their respective fields.

Off today to resolve the Great Kent Butter Mystery, more on that tomorrow.

The devil's in the detail

Thanks to those who emailed with suggestions for making locally sourced hot drinks. The biggest taste-bud teaser turned out to be a tip that a firm called Tregothnan based in Cornwall and Kent grew tea . . .  they do indeed, but it's only grown in Cornwall! The Kent arm specializes in coppicing and charcoal making. After an agonizing web wait (they have possibly the world's worst website after Swale council's) I tasted the caffeine turn to dust in my mouth.

I resisted the idea of nettle tea (ha ha, Lucy, very funny), but did go for sage tea, snipping tenders shoots from the sage bush by the back door at home and making a delicate hot water infusion. It's decades since I had done that and I immediately remembered why I had stopped - it's appalling! Back to water and juices.

However, with some splendid meals of purely Kent produce under my belt I'm beginning to think this local foodie malarkey isn't too bad after all.

Last week we got into the swing by majoring on Kent produce, but we've been using only Kent foodstuffs since Sunday and a paean of praise is due to Mrs Y. Karen has taken the local food thing to heart and hunted down local goodies in the shops, dived into the kitchen and come up with some cracking meals.

So, Lesson No 1 - if a local produce experiment or way of life is going to succeed there has to be someone on board who's a good cook, who enjoys exercising their culinary skills and has time for the job. Happily Karen is on holiday and has been able to throw herself into it! A succession of Kent only roast dinners, flans, puds, chutneys, jams and cakes have made a very welcome appearance.

But, it seems the devil is in the cooking detail . . . where, please, can you buy Kent salt? Where can you buy Kent stock cubes?

Kent yoghurt, butter and cream also seem elusive. I've left a voicemail with Dargate Dairy to ask for butter - a mole tells they make small quantities –and I'm waiting for reply. More anon.

What a headache!

One thing I didn't foresee was the headache!

 

But, I suppose once we had decided to give tea and coffee the elbow symptoms of Caffeine Withdrawal Syndrome were going to hit some time or other. Mrs Y and I are suffering in proportion to our use, I'm a real tea toper and still have a throbbing headache 48 hours after the last cuppa, whereas Karen is more abstemious and came out of it after 24. Having said that, cynics might think that sounds suspiciously like man-flu.

 

Tea and coffee were all part of the difficulty of defining what actually is "local" or "Kent". In the end we decided that, as we were doing this for just a week or so, we had to be purist about it. Even buying, as we do, tea and coffee from the estimable Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Company based at Pluckley didn't cut the mustard, the raw materials are from out of the county and had to go.

 

Thank the Lord that alongside Moor's and Pawley Farm juices, Shepherd Neame beer and Throwley, Tenterden and Biddenden wines aren't off limits.

 

After a few days limbering with the occasional all-Kent meal we are now fully local and in the next epistle I'll give the low-down on what form that is taking.

Grown in Kent

I've opened my mouth once too often and this time local produce has been stuffed in it.

It seems an obvious proposition - of course you can live on just local Kent produce if you live in the Garden of England in harvest time. And you can eat and drink well to boot.

But when I started banging on about it I was told the proof of this particular pudding was literally going to be in the eating. So, for the next couple of weeks my ever-forbearing wife and I will be subsisting on local goodies.

The Faversham News is setting out the score on 25th August; we'll be fully under way by then. Feast or famine, gourmet grub or garbage grits; I'll let you know.