Stephen Nottingham's Food Blog

The Blacksmiths Arms, Llanmaes

2012-03-02T19:24:00.001Z

One strandrunning through this blog during 2012 will be a tour of village pubs in theVale of Glamorgan. Some have become fairly well-known outside the area, forexample, The Plough and Harrow at Monknash,while others have not. There are some hidden gems.

The village of Llanmaes lies just north of LlantwitMajor (Llanilltud Fawr) in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan; it’s the otherside of the B4265 to Llantwit Major (and a footpath from that road means it is aneasy walk from Llantwit Major). Llanmaes has a 13^th Century churchdedicated to St Cattwg (St Cadoc) and a pub: The Blacksmiths Arms.

The food istraditional, with some original twists. There is an oriental influence, and acreative use of cheese and nuts.

We often skipstarters at pubs, but not here as they sounded sointriguing. The choices included Venison & Chilli Pate and BreadedCamembert Wedges.

I had the Stilton and Mushroom Knot. Crisp filopastry parcels (literally knotted) sitting in a Chinese restaurant-style sweet chilli sauce prepareyour taste buds for something oriental, but when you bite into them you get ahit of creamy Stilton with mushrooms and walnuts. The parcels shared a platewith salad leaves with a dark balsamic drizzle. This was an entertaining plate offood (in a good way), and a substantial starter.

My companion went for the Gingerand Lemongrass Chicken Sticks. These were skewered chicken breast filletsmarinated in ginger and lemongrass, served with salad leaves and a Caesar dressing.The dressing came in its own pot (there was much more than required). Theflavouring on the chicken was subtle; and apparently it could have been stronger.

Main courses on the current menu include Sirloin and RibeyeSteaks, Pork Medallions, Steak and Ale Pie, Stuffed Chicken Roulade, andStilton and Vegetable crumble. There are also fish dishes, including Piri PiriSalmon Fillet, Whole Sea Bass, and Garlic and Ginger Swordfish Steak; salads as main courses; and interesting pasta and noodle dishes, including Hoi-Sin Beef and Teriyaki Chicken.

I went for Lamb Shanks with Vegetables and Minted BraisingLiquor from the today’s Specials Board. The lamb was melt-in-your mouth.Not a youngster this time of year, but I really liked the slow-braised muttonyflavours coming through. The rich minted gravy was a dream, especiallyconcentrated on the greens under the shank (was that flipper shape deliberate,I wonder). The tomato added colour, rather than taste, while the vegetablesserved in a separate bowl – batons of carrots, peas and mange-tout - were fresh and well-cooked.

My companion had the Mushroom, Cranberry& Brie Wellington. This vegetarian wellington dishwas an original creation. The golden puff pastry contained sautéed mushrooms, spinach, cranberries and hazelnuts,topped with Brie. This was served with a bowl of chips – good crunchy pub chips - and a share of the vegetable bowl.

Desserts include Wild Fig icecreams.

There is anadmirable policy of sourcing locally and seasonally. Main courses peak inthe £8 to £12 price range.

A good rangeof beers can be found on the handpumps; The Blacksmiths Arms has an entry inthe Good Beer Guide 2012. There’s a pleasant seating area out front (the road’snot busy; it’s a quiet village). Yes: I’ve noted it as a potential summer pintstop off (handily just off the B4265)!

Theinterior has been remodelled, but with a good feel for what a traditional pubshould be. The word ‘gastropub’ is bandied about on the website (not myfavourite word; I like a pub to be a pub). However, there are locals at the barand it certainly feels like a Vale of Glamorgan village pub. It’s probablyreferring to the creative spin the kitchen puts on their dishes.

TheBlacksmiths Arms do Sunday Roasts, Tuesday is Steak Night, and Thursday is athemed night (each month food from a different country's cuisine is served). Youget the impression the chef likes his work.

Next stop:The Six Bells in Penmark.

TheBlacksmiths Arms, Llanmaes, near Llantwit Major, CF61 2XR, Vale ofGlamorgan

Tel: 01446795996

http://www.blacksmithsarmsllanmaes.co.uk/

Food and Opera

2012-02-21T17:57:00.003Z

Food and opera have always had an affinity with each other.This is especially the case for Italian food. Put some Puccini on the stereoand that spaghetti just tastes better somehow.

At the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) in Cardiff Bay,food and opera are being combined both off and on the stage.

Last October, ffresh Bar and Restaurant celebrated itssecond anniversary in the WMC and its inclusion in The Good Food Guide 2012. Thisyear, they are making the most of being under the same roof as the WelshNational Opera (WNO), with members of that resident company performing atspecial Supper and Song evenings.

On 3 February, members of the WNO chorus sang extracts fromthe company’s Spring Season (Beatrice & Benedict, Marriage of Figaro andLa Traviata), while diners ate a 3-course meal that included salmon fishcakes,roast pork belly, and chocolate fudge cheesecake. After drinks in the bar and startersin the restaurant, Laura Pooley(pictured), Sian Meinir and Meriel Andrew, dressed in evening gowns andfeather boas, performed aselection of arias, trios and duetsaccompanied by James Southall on the piano. They returned between the maincourse and dessert for a second set.

At the St David’s Day Dinner (1 March), diners will beentertained by harpist Katherine Thomas andsoprano Gwenllion Evans. They will perform popularWelsh songs and songs by the Cardiff-born composer Ivor Novello (whose statuecan be seen outside ffresh). Executive chefKurt Fleming has created a menu full of Welsh ingredients. There will be cocklesand laverbread to start, followed by roast rack and braised shoulder ofCarmarthenshire lamb with faggots, mashed potato and glazed carrots. Thedessert will be a bread and butter pudding with a Celtic twist, usingBravelli’s Brecon gin marmalade and Penderyn whisky crème anglaise. The restaurantis used to sourcing Welsh ingredients, through its pioneering Wales the TrueTaste partnership.

On May 11, the WNO Chorus returnto ffresh for Dinner with Puccini, when they will be performing highlights fromLa bohème and Madame Butterfly. As with all the Supper and Song evenings,a three-course dinner, half a bottle of wine andentertainment costs £39 per person. These evenings are planned to become aregular feature at ffresh.

Meanwhile, food often adorns the WNO stage. Acting DeputyStage Manager Katie Heath-Jones shared some secrets concerning how food isprepared for several opera productions in a recent WNO podcast. Although fakestage food is used, there’s often plenty of real food on stage too. In the caféscene in La bohème, for instance, fresh chicken breasts, fresh Frenchbaguettes, bacon, brie and grapes adorn the table. Mimi eats a crème caramel,although the red wine is actually a famous brand of blackcurrant squash.

Regular grocery shopping trips are therefore part of thestage manager’s routine. In their Richard Jones production of Hansel and Gretel,setting up the food takes around 3 to 4 hours beforehand. There is a table groaning under theweight of black forest gateaux, jelly, profiteroles and other desserts. During the show it is thrown around the stage, and so there isalso a long and messy clean-up operation afterwards.

La Traviata has a dinner party scene featuring chicken(though the oysters are fake), bowls of spaghetti are served in The Barber ofSeville (although that steam is smoke put underneath the bowls just before theycome onstage), fish was served in a previous Tosca production (actually amashed banana), and champagne flows in Die Fledermaus and, to a lesser extent,in other productions. The champagne is either a non-alcoholic champagne,selected for the satisfying pop it gives when opened, or fizzy water with a bitof food colouring.

When Elijah Moshinsky created a new production of Beatrice& Benedict in 1994 for WNO, food became a character in the opera. It wasboth cooked and consumed onstage. Thedirector’s instructions were for spaghetti andNapolitano sauce to be cooked onstage and served to the chorus and principals,while the auditorium shouldfill with the aroma of garlic. Cooking the meal was the responsibility of thestage manager.

The set features a kitchen, seen through a back window onthe terrace of an elegant Italian villa. A cooker and a hob are situated justoffstage from this. The original tomato sauce recipe was supplied by a memberof the chorus, but because it was a secret recipe from his Italian family itwas never written down and now cannot be replicated.

Beatrice and Benedict was revived a couple of times at theNew Theatre, and is now being staged at the WMC for the first time. It startswith a feast and there is plenty of food on the table, but on the first nightthe pasta did not appear: glasses of champagne were bought out for the chorusinstead. There was apparently some pasta cooked by the side of the stage, but with the much greater size of the arena and modern air extraction systems no aroma reached the audience. This is one aspect of the production that did not successfully transfer from the New Theatre.

When real food isbought onstage, each individual chorus singer has to be catered for in terms ofallergies and other needs. There are also obvious considerations concerning thebest food to eat while singing. Opera singers can get hungry while on stage: Pavarotti famously had a bowl of parmesan to hand in case of emergencies. Theleftovers, after the chorus has finished, are apparently quickly snapped up bythe crew.

Photoby Glenn Edwards, courtesy of ffresh Restaurant.

My review of Beatrice and Benedict for Buzz:

http://www.buzzmag.co.uk/music/beatrice-benedict-opera-review/

ffresh, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay:

http://www.ffresh.org.uk/

Katie Heath-Jones ‘Turning up the heat’ WNO Podcast (Jan2012):

http://www.wno.org.uk/cook

The secondanniversary celebration dinner at ffresh:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/10/ffresh-bar-and-restaurant.html

Creating a Community Garden 2

2012-02-19T12:55:00.005Z

In a previous post (14 Jan 2012), I reported on the first stages of a project to convert an abandoned children’s play area into a community garden:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/creating-community-garden.html

I will be posting regular updates on the Dinas Powys Community Growing Area, to keep residents of Dinas Powys informed and to help others seeking to transform wasteland into places where communities can grow their own food.

This project was initiated by Elizabeth Millard (Chairperson of the Dinas Powys Residents Group) and Councillor Keith Hatton (Plaid Cymru). They organized a second meeting on Saturday18 Feb at Murchfield Community Hall in Dinas Powys to discuss progress.

Rob McGhee is one of twelve Rural Regeneration Officers working for Creative Rural Communities (an initiative led by the Vale of Glamorgan council). He is in charge of Community Grown Food Projects (areas covered by other Officers include tourism, farm diversification, cycleways and footpaths). Rob was approached by Elizabeth and Keith a few months ago, and agreed that the Dinas Powys project would be ideal for Creative Rural Communities involvement. If you live outside the Vale, check to see if your local Council has an equivalent initiative.

Rob arrived at the meeting with plans he had drawn up for the site. The 940 square metres has been officially designated a ‘Community Growing Area’ on the plans and will have communal spaces and also individual plots. The larger plots will be a substantial 12 by 5 metres, while there will be a range of smaller ‘starter’ plots (with flexibility built in as larger plots can be subdivided). There will be some deep beds, which are easier for the elderly and infirm to cultivate. Wheelchair access will be provided, so slab paths will be laid at the entrance and around the site. The council agreed that an adjacent overgrown and abandoned council house garden could be incorporated, with the removal of a bramble-covered fence.

There will be one large communal storage shed for equipment (although individual lockers could be located within this shed). Keys to the double gate in the security fence will be supplied to local residents who garden plots, while a rota system will be established for caretaker keyholders to open the garden during certain hours of the day to allow access to everyone in the community.

Creative Rural Communities will supply funding to get the project started, although grants from other sources will be applied for to meet the full costs. The main source of additional funding is likely to be Tidy Towns (a Welsh Government initiative, described in the previous post). Rob will also help organize a community clean-up work party, to work alongside members of the local community in getting the site prepared.

Publicity is another area where Creative Rural Communities can provide assistance. More publicity is required in Dinas Powys, on the aims and timetable of the project, and on the specific inconvenience it may cause during the establishment phase. Due to the presence of contractor’s vehicles, for instance, the footpath between Nightingale Place and Sir Ivor Place will need to be closed for at least a month.

On the ground, three different contractors have already visited the site and given estimates for the costs of land clearance, removing the old wire fence, putting up security fencing, and supplying topsoil. Estimates of costs have been in the same ballpark, with one of the contractors having recently done a similar job in nearby St Andrews Major.

The meeting discussed a range of other issues, which may be relevant to similar projects. These including the need to cut hedges before birds start nesting, the determination of where cables lie under the soil (there is an adjacent electrical substation in this case), getting local schools involved, bringing water and electricity onto the site, and establishing a communal compost area. In the Vale of Glamorgan, compost is made from the Council’s kitchen waste roadside collection and is available for free if collected from the Cowbridge recycling plant (see link to previous post on recycling below).

Because this is a community garden and not a statutory allotment, there will be fewer restrictions on what can be done with the food (e.g., only a small proportion of food grown on an allotment can be sold). This makes for more flexibility and opens the possibility of regular produce sales, either on-site, at the Village Show, or via local shops and farmers markets, with some of the money feeding back into this project and other community activities.

At the meeting, Rob also handed out leaflets “fresh off the press” for Community Foodie: a new project (within the Creative Rural Communities sphere), that will be officially launched in March 2012, to identify, develop and support community food growing in the rural areas of Bridgend, Torfaen and the Vale of Glamorgan. I will post on that, along with further developments in the Dinas Powys Community Growing Project, at a later date.

As these photos (which I took this morning) illustrate, a community garden should greatly improve the environment in this area; turning it from an ugly space where underage drinkers and drug users hang out, into a place that brings the community together by providing a recreational meeting place and a source of locally-produced food.

The next project meeting at Murchfield Hall will be in late April or early May.

On the current schedule, Elizabeth, Keith and Rob are hopeful that the contractors can start work on the site sometime later in May.

Further information:

Creative Rural Communities is a regeneration and economic development initiative, led by the Vale of Glamorgan Council in partnership with various public, private and voluntary sector organisations.

Creative Rural Communities
The Old Hall, High Street, Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan CF71 7AH
http://www.creativeruralcommunities.co.uk/
http://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/working/regeneration/rural_regeneration.aspx

Tidy Towns:
http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/epq/cleanneighbour/tidytowns/?lang=en

Free compost from kitchen waste (and how to obtain it in the Vale of Glamorgan):
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/co-mingling-in-vale-of-glamorgan.html

Pieminister: Homity Pie

2012-02-17T16:22:00.000Z

Homity Pie is a British open vegetable pie, made with potatoes, onions and cheese. It started life during World War II, when Land Girls working under rationing restrictions made pies from vegetables that were easily available in the fields. The word ‘homity’ was made up for the pie - probably a local expression relating to rationing.

The Pieminister recipe for Homity Pie - in Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon’s Pieminister: a pie for all seasons (2011; pp. 42-43) – comes via Crank’s, who they acknowledge as “veggie pioneers”. Following Crank’s revival of this pie, there are now several variations in recent cookbooks.

Wholemeal pastry is a feature of Homity Pie recipes (including Crank’s and Pieminster’s). Some recipes suggest that you can use readymade shortcrust pastry as an alternative, but I think some of the rustic charm of this pie would be lost without wholemeal. Pieminister start the recipe with the pastry, asking you to sift the flour into a bowl. With my sieve, all the wholemeal bits stayed in the sieve, while a fine brown flour went into the bowl. So I dumped all the wholesome bits into the bowl as well (I have it on good authority that sifting also lightens the flour, so I was not wasting my time). Butter, salt, grated parmesan and an egg yolk are also added. This wholemeal pastry handles well, especially after an hour in the fridge.

The unique feature of the Pieminister Homity Pie is the addition of sweet potato (instead of the more commonly used leeks). This is sort of G.I. Joe getting it on with the Land Girls or, as the Pieminister book says, added “hippity, dippity doo dah” jazz hands. When you first mix the bright orange sweet potato flesh into the pale potato, onion and crème fraiche mixture, it looks like a component from a different recipe. However, it soon begins to make sense.

The recipe calls for two sweet potatoes. I used two rather large sweet potatoes, and didn’t scrimp on the other ingredients either. Pieminister suggests this serves four. Well, for our family of four it did two dinners! This is a pie that can be served hot or cold, so it’s pretty versatile. Last night I served it warm (rather than hot) with a tomato salad, while tonight I’ll be serving it cold with a wider range of salad accompaniments.

The breadcrumb and cheese topping is the icing on the cake of a Homity Pie. I’m glad I got out my Ninja Express Chop (yes, another Christmas Present, just like the Pieminister book) to do the breadcrumbs properly. The chopped curly parsley in the filling also works well (other recipes specify different herbs or no herbs at all; although the canny Hairy Bikers also make their Homity Pie with parsley).

The Pieminister Homity Pie is a particularly rich take on the Homity Pie. There’s a lot of butter involved, for a start. It also takes a bit of time to construct, but is definitely worth the effort. It’s comfort food at its best.

Other Homity Pie recipes stress the easy, quick and cheap possibilities of Homity Pie. The River Cottage recipe, for example, stresses these virtues and notes that any leftover vegetables can be incorporated – in the spirit of the original Land Girl philosophy. The pie also freezes well.

Another distinctive touch occurs in the Elm Tree Foods recipe, where dried capers are added with the cheese. Some Homity Pie recipes suggest you can add meat, in particular, bacon. I am not sure you still have Homity Pie if you add meat (remember those Land Girls, vegetables and rationing). I think this is a pie that should stay veggie.

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 14 and some conclusions

2012-02-12T14:55:00.001Z

On the last day (Day 14) of my Change4Life Supermeals Challenge I cooked fabulous fish pie. I have been cooking all the recipes in the Change4Life Supermeals booklet, which is part of a Welsh Government initiative to help people prepare quick, easy and healthy meals on a limited budget.

Before my concluding thoughts, there’s the fish pie (recipe below) to consider. The recipe specifies a piece of Coley as the fish content. If money is very tight this would do, but I feel a mixture of white and oily fish is needed to make a fish pie worth the effort. Luckily, the tip for this recipe suggests you look out for fish pie mix from the fresh fish counter, which is cheap to buy. My fish pie mix came from Ashton’s fishmongers in Cardiff’s indoor market, and contained some salmon, tuna and at least three types of white fish.

I must admit I did break out the butter (for the first time during this challenge!) for the white sauce (rather than use low-fat spread), and also included a few halved hard-boiled eggs that happened to be in the fridge. We all enjoyed this one.

With the fairly large square pie dish I used, the potato amount specified was just enough to cover the fish mix, and I would usually add a bit more mash than this to make a thicker top (it’s not the most expensive component after all).

All 14 of these recipes worked for us. We preferred some more than others, obviously, and there were comments about it getting a bit samey, which was partly due to the sequence in the book (which I worked through in order).

One feature of all the recipes is that the children (aged 8 and 15) left empty plates. This is a result. In fact, the recipes are easy enough for this to also be a good recipe book to give to an older child to get them started on cooking. They could learn something about healthy food along the way.

None of the recipes lists salt as an ingredient. There should be enough salt in the food already, argues the booklet. I was surprised that I did not think any of the 14 recipes needed extra salt, and this will probably make me think more careful about the use of salt in dishes.

None of the recipes calls for sugar to be added. Only in one case - the sweet and sour sauce - did I miss any additional sweet component. I liked the way fruit was used, for flavouring and as a natural sweetness, for example, apples in the pork dish and the vegetable curry. This could have been taken further as a tip (e.g., dried apricots, pears, oranges).

We have a relatively low-fat diet normally, and therefore had no problems with the low-fat ingredients and lack of fatty foods. If I had done this challenge during the summer I am sure I would have noticeably lost weight, but the intense cold during the past fortnight had me reaching for the cake tin between meals. So, no discernible loss in weight!

Some of the recipes also lacked a bit of spice for me, but that was easily remedied, for instance, with a bit of chilli.

The recipe book has helped us keep grocery costs down over the past fortnight. This is because we have stocked up on basics for these recipes (e.g., pasta, rice, tins of tomatoes, tomato puree, tins of butter/cannellini beans, stock cubes, carrots and other standard vegetables, and cheaper cuts of meat and fish). We have not bought the more expensive ingredients that push up the grocery bill.

We (2 adults and 2 children) have been keeping scores throughout the challenge, and I can now reveal that the most popular Change4Life Supermeal recipes are, in reverse order, [dramatic Masterchef-style pause here]:

5. quick pitta pizzas (Day 2)

4. sensational spaghetti bolognese (Day 11)

3. 10-min chicken noodle dinner (Day 3)

2. hearty vegetable soup (Day 8)

1. easy vegetable curry (Day 13)

The dishes loaded with the freshest vegetables came out on top in our case. It might be worth noting that the vegetables came from our local greengrocer and a vegetable box scheme, and were quality produce (though, in line with the recipes, not breaking the bank). In comparison, the meat used in these recipes was not top quality (for cost reasons). An alternative strategy therefore would be to have meat less often, but go for something of better quality (e.g., organic free range chicken).

The Change4Life Supermeals recipe booklet aims to help you plan quick, easy meals on a limited budget. I think the booklet succeeds in this aim. It would be particularly useful for people who suddenly, for whatever reason, find they have to shop and cook for a family (or just themselves) on a reduced income.

fabulous fish pie

The ingredients: 700g potatoes peeled and diced, 425ml 1% fat milk, 25g low-fat spread, 25g plain flour, 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley (optional), 100g frozen peas, ground black pepper, 300g Coley fillet (thawed if frozen) skinned and in chunks, 25g reduced-fat mature cheese grated.

The method: Preheat oven. Boil potatoes, drain and mash with 2 tbsp milk. Use rest of milk, spread and flour into saucepan and bring to boil, stirring continuously, stir in parsley. Place chunks of fish in ovenproof dish, pour sauce over, then top with mashed potato and then cheese. Bake in oven 25-30 mins until top is brown. Serve with steamed or boiled broccoli.

319 kcals per portion.

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 13

2012-02-11T23:18:00.000Z

For the penultimate dish in my Change4Life Supermeals challenge, I am cooking easy vegetable curry. Change4Life is a Welsh Government health-promotion initiative. Their Supermeals recipe book aims to help people plan quick evening meals on a limited budget.

I left the tofu out of this recipe (see below), but added more fresh vegetables. In fact, I added the whole cauliflower. I also added some broccoli that was left-over from a previous recipe in the booklet.

The tip offered for this recipe is to use any of your favourite vegetables, for example, peppers, mushrooms, courgettes. A curry like this is a great way of using whatever vegetables you have in the fridge or vegetable rack.

This was a substantial and very tasty meal (kids portion photographed). It scored highly with the whole family. I’ll tell you our favourite Change4Life Supermeals tomorrow, when I report on the last recipe – a fish pie.

easy vegetable curry

The ingredients: 2 tsp vegetable oil, 1 large onion chopped, 1 eating apple cored and chopped, 1 garlic clove crushed, 2 tbsp Balti curry paste, 2 sliced carrots, 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 150g cauliflower or broccoli broken into florets, 200g tin chickpeas drained, 160g marinated tofu pieces, 300ml reduced-salt vegetable stock, 200g brown (or white) long grain rice, 50g frozen peas, ground black pepper.

The method: Fry onion, apple and garlic. Stir in curry paste. Add carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower/broccoli, chickpeas, tofu, peas and stock. Simmer, partially covered 30 mins, adding extra liquid if necessary. Cook rice.

453 kcals per portion.

For further information from Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 12

2012-02-10T22:38:00.001Z

It’s Day 12 of my Supermeals Challenge. I have been trying out all 14 recipes in the Change4Life Supermeals health-promotion booklet. All the recipes are quick, easy and can be made for around £1.25 a head. On the menu today: sweet and sour chicken.

A quick glance down the ingredients (see below) tells you that this isn’t strictly sweet and sour chicken, which would necessarily include vinegar. However, it is a very pleasant chicken stir fry, with a good range of textures. I liked how fresh-tasting it was, with the wedges of tomatoes and pepper working to good effect with the pineapple.

I used basmati rice (mainly because I bought a massive catering bag for £4 recently); the smell when you first open a big bag of basmati is not for everyone, but it’s definitely my rice of choice for dishes like this. I also added a combination of red and yellow pepper chunks. This is a colourful dish and you feel good just looking at it.

The tip in the Change4Life booklet suggests you could try making this recipe with turkey or lean pork instead of chicken. The emphasis is on reducing your fat intake.

The whole family enjoyed this healthy stir-fry dinner. I’m going to try the recipe again, although I will probably turn it into a tangy sweet and sour with the addition of cider vinegar, soft brown sugar, and a bit of powdered ginger in the sauce.

sweet and sour chicken
The ingredients: 150g long grain brown or white rice, 227g tinned pineapple rings in natural juice, 1 tbsp cornflour, 2 tbsp tomato puree, 1 tbsp reduced-fat soy sauce, 2 tsp vegetable oil, 300g chunks of skinless chicken, 1 thinly sliced onion, 1 red or yellow pepper chopped, 3 sliced celery sticks, 2 tomatoes sliced into wedges, ground pepper.

The method: Boil rice. Cut pineapple into chunks, mix juice from tin with cornflour and stir in tomato puree and soy sauce. Heat oil in wok or large frying pan, add chicken and stir fry. After 4 mins add onion, pepper and celery. After 4 mins add tomatoes and pineapple. Add stirred pineapple juice mixture, stirring until it goes thick and hot. Season with pepper, and serve over drained rice.

295 kcals per portion.

For further information from Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

A Supermeals poster identifying the excuses people find for not adopting a healthier diet: http://blog.workingwordpr.com/what%E2%80%99s-your-excuse-for-not-eating-healthily

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 11

2012-02-09T21:35:00.001Z

It’s taken eleven days to get to the sensational spaghetti bolognese on my Change4Life Supermeals Challenge. This is one that most people would have predicted to be among the 14 recipes, being such a popular pasta dish.

The Change4Life booklet provides a good, quick-and-easy, and health-conscious Spaghetti Bolognese recipe (see below). Everyone really enjoyed this one, which I served with a grated hard cheese and a tomato salad.

My main suggestion is that you could replace the courgette with celery, which is a more typical Bolognese ingredient. I added a chopped stick of celery (from a plentiful supply in the fridge). The courgette went in too, although I felt it worked against the richness I seek in a spaghetti sauce.

The recipe suggests a cooking time of 20 minutes, but if you have time it might benefit from a little longer. I tend to cook two versions of Spaghetti Bolognese: one along these quick, easy and inexpensive lines, and a more luxurious version using pancetta, wine and nutmeg that I let simmer for a couple of hours to enhance the texture and the blending of flavours (see link below).

The 300g of spaghetti in the recipe is exactly equivalent to a 4 person serving, according to our free Vale of Glamorgan spaghetti measure (3 + 1 through the holes).

The recipe offers as a tip (Italian food purists look away now) that you can use any pasta shapes you like and swap any of the vegetables for your favourites.

sensational spaghetti bolognese (lower case from the recipe book by the way).

The ingredients: 300g lean minced beef, 1 large onion chopped, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 400g tin tomatoes, 2 tbsp tomato puree, 2 tsp dried mixed herbs, 1 red pepper chopped, 200g mushrooms, 1 medium carrot finely chopped, 1 medium courgette chopped, 150ml reduced-salt stock, 300g dried spaghetti, ground black pepper.

The method: brown mince and add onion. After a few minutes stirring, add the rest of the ingredients (except spaghetti), boil and simmer 10 mins. Cook spaghetti and serve with the sauce.

431 kcals per portion.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

You only have one day left (Friday 10 February 2012) to register if you want a free Supermeals booklet.

Other ways of approaching spaghetti Bolognese:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-this-day-spaghetti-bolognese.html

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 10

2012-02-08T16:56:00.001Z

I am on Day 10 of my Supermeals Challenge, in which I’m cooking all 14 recipes in the new Change4Life recipe booklet. Most of the dishes have been cooked for evening meals, but I prepared the haddock with cheese and tomato topping for lunch (recipe below).

I used smoked haddock for this recipe, and served it with a bit of salad (including grapes) and buttered bread. I’ll be doing this one again.

The booklet passes on the advice that fish should be eaten twice a week. There’s a fish pie to come.

I like smoked and oily fish for lunch. Typical quick, easy, and omega-3-rich lunches for me include grilled kippers with bread and butter, and a tin of pilchards heated and served on toast. I always have a dollop of horseradish sauce with my oily fish at lunchtime, because I like the combination and it stops the fish repeating all afternoon!

The Change4Life Supermeals booklet offers some lunch tips: Why not eat leftovers from your evening meal as a lunch the following day? When making packed lunches use wholemeal, seeded or granary bread as healthier sandwich choices. When eating out look at the calories information on the menu and choose lower calorie options.

haddock with cheese and tomato topping
The ingredients: vegetable oil, haddock fillets, tomato paste, thinly sliced tomatoes, ground pepper, grated reduced-fat hard cheese.

The method: preheat grill and grease baking sheet. Arrange fish fillets on sheet. Spread on tomato puree. Top with tomatoes and ground pepper, and grated cheese. Grill 6-8 mins (until fish is flaky). Serve with green vegetables and rice or boiled potatoes.

172 kcals per portion.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

You still have a few days to register with Change4Life online, before Friday 10 February, to get your own free bilingual Supermeals booklet.

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 9

2012-02-07T23:13:00.001Z

On Day 9 of my Supermeals Challenge, I cooked the sausage and bean stew.

This recipe (below) was quick, easy and inexpensive to make; in line with the aims of this Change4Life health-promotion campaign. The result was a nutritious and satisfying meal.

I used a tin of tomatoes rather than the passata. When I added the potatoes (and they were large medium-sized ones) the mixture needed more liquid, so I added a splash of stock (made from the chicken carcass from the sunday roast for use in tomorrow’s dish). I used cannellini rather than the butter beans, thinking the smaller beans would work best in this dish.

I served the stew with plenty of freshly-made crusty bread (from our breadmaker).

The meals in the Change4Life booklet have a similar feel to them, as they use a lot of the same ingredients (e.g., tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, onions, stock) and are low on spice. However, once you’ve done them the way the book suggests, they could be repeatedly cooked with slight variations to prevent them becoming too monotonous.

To spice the sausage and bean stew, for instance, you could do a variation with spicy chorizo sausage (fry thin slices with the onions). I like adding bay leaves when I cook dishes like this – cheap if you have a bay tree in the garden or in a large pot outside. Substituting mint for the basil would give the dish a whole different complexion. Indeed, the booklet’s tip for this recipe is to try adding chopped courgettes or other vegetables with the potato (and thereby getting more of your 5 a day). Get creative!

sausage and bean stew
The ingredients: 2 reduced-fat sausages, 2 tsp olive oil, 1 large onion, 2 cloves garlic, 400g passata or a 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 410g tin of cannellini beans or butter beans, 2 medium potatoes (peeled and cut into small cubes), 2 tsp dried basil or mixed herbs, ground black pepper.

The method: preheat grill and grill sausages. Heat olive oil and fry onion and garlic. Add passata/tomatoes, beans, potatoes and herbs. Simmer 20 mins. Slice sausages and add.

229 kcals per portion.

Change4Life:
www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

You still have time to register with Change4Life online, before this Friday (10 February), to get a copy of the Supermeals booklet. The booklet is bilingual (English and Welsh).

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 8

2012-02-06T14:23:00.002Z

Over the weekend I cooked two more recipes from the Change4Life Supermeals recipe booklet. These are recipes for quick, easy, inexpensive and healthy meals; I'm trying out all 14 of them. On Saturday lunchtime I cooked hearty vegetable soup and, on Sunday, the sunday roast.

I can heartily recommend the vegetable soup. It’s a recipe I will be using again. With a good combination of chopped fresh vegetables and a well-judged amount of pasta, it’s far superior to the usual standby of tinned soup.

The tip in the booklet for this recipe is that extra soup keeps in the fridge 3 days or can be frozen for 3 months. We had no left-overs.

I have been noting the calories per portion (from the recipe book) at the bottom of each recipe. This soup supplies 100 kcals a portion (compared to 2500 kcals recommended per day for a man or 2000 kcal for a woman). We had it for lunch, with seconds. It kept the cold at bay during an afternoon at the soccer.

All the recipes in the Change4Life Supermeals booklet have low calorie counts, so (if you’re not eating too much between meals) these recipes would be useful if you’re on a diet. I think I am losing weight (I’ll have the data at the end of the challenge – don't expect Supersize Me!); although I am also taking an alcohol break for a few weeks, so that will also be a factor.

We cooked the sunday roast in a similar manner to the recipe book. This is very like how we usually do our family Sunday roast (although we would usually have Yorkshire Puddings).

Roast chicken can be fed into other recipes for a couple of days, such as the chicken noodle dinner I cooked on Day 3 of this challenge.

hearty vegetable soup
The ingredients: 1 tsp vegetable oil, 1 chopped onion, 2 small chopped carrots, sliced leek, 2 sliced celery sticks, 400g tin tomatoes, 1 litre vegetable stock, 1 tbsp tomato puree, 50g sliced green beans, 50g frozen peas, 40g dried pasta shapes, 1 tsp dried mixed herbs, ground pepper.

The method: heat oil and fry onion, carrot, leek and celery for 4 mins. Add tomato, tomato puree, stock, beans and frozen peas. Bring to the boil and add pasta, herbs and pepper. Simmer 15 mins or until pasta is cooked.

Change4Life:
www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Register with Change4Life online before this Friday (10 February) and you can get your own free Supermeals booklet.

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 6

2012-02-04T20:32:00.001Z

I am cooking all 14 recipes in the Change4Life Supermeals booklet, which promotes healthy eating through quick, easy and inexpensive family meals. The sixth recipe in my challenge is pork with apples and celery.

This is very like a meal I often cook, although I would normally use a can of cider, rather than a stock and apple juice mixture, and mix in some Dijon mustard as an ingredient. However, I cooked the recipe as given (below), and it was very good. Pork with apple, sage, onion and celery is a great combination.

I served it with the mashed potatoes, as in the recipe, along with some seasonal purple-sprouting broccoli.

Additional vegetables could accompany a number of the recipes in the Supermeals booklet, if you want to ensure you get your 5 a day. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available at wholesale prices from around 300 Community Food Coops that operate on a weekly basis across Wales: http://www.ruralregeneration.org.uk/

pork with apples and celery
The ingredients: 750g potatoes (cooked and mashed), 2 tsp vegetable oil, 1 red apple (cored and sliced), ½ tsp caster sugar, 400g lean pork fillet (sliced), 2 tbsp sage, 1 onion (thinly sliced), 2 celery sticks (sliced), 150ml reduced salt chicken or vegetable stock, 150ml apple juice, ground black pepper, 4 tbsp semi-skimmed milk.

The method: roll pieces of pork in sage, fry in oil. After 3 mins add onions and celery, after 10-15 mins add apple juice and stock and simmer. Add pepper. Fry apple with sprinkling of sugar. Serve pork with the apple and the mash (total cooking time approx. 25 mins).

One portion supplies 327 kcals.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Day 1 (Introduction/tasty tuna and sweetcorn pasta)

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-1.html

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 5

2012-02-03T23:20:00.001Z

I cooked the best chilli con carne on Day 5 of my Change4Life Supermeals Challenge. Change4Life is a movement that’s aiming to help families eat better, move more and live longer. Their Supermeals booklet features 14 quick, easy and healthy recipes that can be prepared for around £1.25 a head.

The 'the best chilli con carne' recipe has rather an extensive list of ingredients (see below) compared to others in the booklet, and is not too far from how I normally cook a chilli con carne. I did add one extra ingredient: a chopped green chilli pepper. I served bowls of chilli with tortilla chips.

My tip for chilli peppers: pick them up when you see them reduced in price and put them in the freezer (where we always keep a supply) - they take up little room and thaw quickly. We also grow chilli pepper plants in pots on a windowsill during the summer, which look pretty and yield a good crop that can also be frozen.

Other home-grown ingredients I used in this dish: tomatoes (boiled down during the summer glut and frozen in tin-equivalent amounts in reused Chinese take-away containers) and the garlic.

The main way my chilli differs from today's recipe is that I prefer a drier crumblier texture and don't add stock. For me, there's too much stock added here (I usually find there’s enough liquid with the tomatoes). So, if you also like a drier chilli con carne, cut down on the stock. I also cook mine for a little longer and get a richer sauce; although the point of the Supermeals recipes, of course, are they're quick, easy and cheap.

This Chilli Con Carne tasted good and got the thumbs up (the family is scoring each of the 14 meals out of ten and I’ll let you know our favourite at the end of the challenge). The kids are enjoying these meals.

Nine out of ten kids risk growing up with dangerous levels of fat in their bodies, according to Change4Life. This can cause life-threatening diseases like cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Change4Life produce a free Action Plan for kids:
https://www.wales.change4life.com/helpthekids/en.html

the best chilli con carne
The ingredients: 300g extra lean minced beef, 1 large onion (finely chopped), 2 garlic cloves (finely chopped), 400g tin tomatoes, 2 tbsp tomato puree, 1-2 tsp chilli powder, half-tsp ground cumin, 1 red pepper (deseeded and chopped), 150g mushrooms, 410g tin kidney beans, 150ml reduced-salt vegetable or beef stock, 300g dried basmati or long-grain rice, ground black pepper.

The method: Brown mince. Add onion and garlic. Add chopped tomatoes, puree, spices, pepper, mushrooms, kidney beans and stock. Boil and simmer gently (20 mins). Cook rice.

The booklet notes that this recipe supplies you with 488 kcals a portion.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Day 1

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-1.html

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 4

2012-02-02T21:24:00.003Z

You can eat healthily on a low budget. That is the message behind the Change4Life Supermeals booklet, published as part of a Welsh Government public health initiative. I have arrived at Day 4 of my challenge to try out all 14 recipes in the booklet. It’s time for perfect pasta with tomato sauce.

I must say that pasta has probably come around again a little too quickly for our liking (although, as we discovered yesterday, the booklet is not designed as a day-to-day eating programme). However, if money was really tight, then I would probably go down the pasta route and we would be eating more pasta meals.

The recipe as written in the booklet (see below) is a basic pasta sauce, and if you were cooking this repeatedly you may want to vary it a little each time. For example, you could go to town on the fresh herbs to garnish or add an unusual seasonal ingredient. In February, fresh herbs in the garden are a little scarce (although I did harvest some potted oregano for this), so I went for the latter choice.

I added a dozen roasted chestnuts to this meal. With a slit cut in each, they were roasted in the oven for 20 minutes, shelled and halved, and added to the tomato sauce. These chestnuts were cheap, due to a shop clearing out seasonal food products. Chestnuts are more versatile than generally realised, being energy-rich and nutritious, and should not just be reserved to accompany sprouts for Christmas dinner. They work well to enrich a tomato sauce.

I served the pasta with a lettuce and tomato salad (with optional balsamic vinegar dressing).

A noticeable feature of this and all the recipes in the Change4 Life Supermeals booklet is the lack of salt added to the dishes, and the inclusion of reduced-salt ingredients (e.g., stock, soy sauce, gravy granules). This can appear almost excessive at times, but it does get the message across that you may be using too much salt when you cook at home. Excessive salt is not good for you. Raised blood pressure is just one of the undesirable outcomes.

In a panel within the booklet - Keep an eye on salt - we learn that three-quarter of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy, so you might be adding more salt than you realise. Change4Life suggest comparing the labels on different foods to help you choose those that are lower in salt. So far, I have not felt the salt missing from these dishes.

perfect pasta with tomato sauce
The ingredients: 1 tsp oil, 1 onion finely chopped, 1 garlic clove finely chopped, 400g tin tomatoes, 2 tbsp tomato puree, 2 tsp dried mixed herbs, black pepper, 350g dried spaghetti, fresh basil or chopped herbs to garnish.

The method: Fry onion and garlic. Add tomatoes, tomato puree, herbs and pepper. Simmer 15 minutes until thick. Cook spaghetti and drain, serving with sauce and fresh herbs to garnish.

The perfect pasta with tomato sauce should contain around 343 kcals a portion (if you follow the booklet recipe – more if you start adding things like chestnuts).

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Day 1 (Introduction)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-1.html

Day 2 (Pitta Pizzas)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-2.html

Day 3 (10-min chicken noodle dinner)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-3.html

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 3

2012-02-01T21:25:00.001Z

On the third day of my Supermeals Challenge I cooked the 10-minute chicken noodle dinner. The Supermeals recipe booklet is published by Change4Life, a Welsh Government public health campaign, and it aims to help people prepare quick, easy and healthy meals on a limited budget.

The recipe in the booklet (below) lists roast chicken breast. I am taking the recipes in order, but looking ahead I noticed that in the Sunday Roast recipe (which I will be cooking this Sunday), it’s suggested you use leftover roast chicken for this chicken noodle recipe.

However, with raw value-line chicken breasts to cook, I decided to take the ingredients listed in a slightly different direction. I stir-fried bite-sized pieces of chicken breast with the chopped onion in a wok (and I was happy to spend a few extra minutes doing so).

I cooked strips of red pepper, carrot and mushroom in the stock (made using a chicken stock cube). I also added an additional ingredient of my own: a finely-chopped and seeded green chilli pepper.

The cooked and drained noodles, and the vegetables and stock, were added to the wok to finish the cooking process.

My chicken noodle broth somewhat resembled a ramen (for those of you familiar with Wagamama), which is a traditional Japanese dish built around noodles, a soup base and a primary ingredient, such as chicken.

It was the best meal of the challenge so far.

The Change4Life recipe booklet is filled with useful and simple recipes, for quick and cheap dinners, but I would suggest you feel free to spice them up a bit.

10-minute chicken noodle dinner

The ingredients: 125g egg noodles, 1.2 litres reduced-salt or vegetable stock, 300g any combination of spring onions/red onions/mushrooms/carrots/pepper cut into bite-sized pieces or strips, 250g sliced roast chicken breast, ground black pepper, few drops of reduced salt soy sauce.

The method: Cook noodles. Cook vegetables in the stock. Drain noodles and add them with the chicken to the stock and vegetables. Heat for 1-2 minutes, season with pepper, and ladle into bowls. Serve each portion with a few drops of soy sauce.

The 10-minute chicken noodle dinner, according to the booklet, contains around 245 kcals a portion.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Day 1 (Introduction/tasty tuna and sweetcorn pasta)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-1.html

Day 2 (Pitta Pizzas)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeals-challenge-day-2.html

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 2

2012-01-31T23:17:00.002Z

It’s the second day of my Supermeals Challenge, in which I try out every recipe in the Change4Life recipe booklet. This booklet has been produced as part of a Welsh Government public health campaign, with the aim of helping people on low incomes eat more healthily.

A quick look through the booklet might have given the impression that today’s (Tuesday) recipe - quick pitta pizza - could have been one of the least successful. However, it proved very popular (more so than yesterday’s pasta, which the kids enjoyed but the adults thought a little bland).

I used a value-pack of pittas for this, with organic vegetables (cost remaining within the £1.25 a head budget). With freshly-sliced tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms and olives (our optional extra) on top, and a generous sprinkling of herbs, the pitta “pizzas” tasted better than most shop-bought frozen pizzas I have eaten recently.

I sliced the ingredients and let everyone assemble them how they wanted. This was a fun part of the dinner for the kids (and me), which added to the appeal. After spreading on her tomato puree, our youngest added everything but the mushrooms (substituting them with some sweetcorn left over from yesterday); while our oldest really piled everything high – and may have invented a new marketing concept in 3-dimensional pizzas (you need the cheese uppermost). If you completely cover all the top surface of the pitta, there is also less chance of the bread overcooking.

The recipe says: “Serve with salad”. Given that it has been cold, I served it up with savoury rice, containing cubes of baked paquito squash, finely-sliced fried onion and dried apricot. As a dinner, the combination worked very well.

On their own, the pitta pizzas would make good snacks, lunch or light dinner. However, served with an imaginative and tasty salad, they can be turned into a very wholesome, cheap and satisfying family dinner. The kids want pitta pizzas again, and the experimental options are endless!

quick pitta pizza
The ingredients: 4 wholemeal pitta breads, 4 tbsp sum-dried or regular tomato puree, 4 thinly sliced mushrooms, 4 thinly sliced tomatoes, 125g ball reduced-fat or light mozzarella cheese (sliced), sliced, 2 tsp dried mixed herbs, ground black pepper.

The method: Preheat oven (190°C). Put pitta breads on a baking tray and spread tomato puree on each. Top with mushroom, tomatoes and cheese. Add optional olives, peppers or onion. Sprinkle with herbs and season with pepper. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

The booklet reckons that pitta pizzas work out at around 218 kcals a portion.

Change4Life:

www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

Register with Change4Life online before Friday 10 February and you can get your own free Supermeals booklet.

Change4Life Supermeals Challenge Day 1 (Introduction)
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/change4life-supermeal-challenge-day-1.html

Change4Life Supermeal Challenge Day 1

2012-01-30T19:35:00.000Z

In the most recent Welsh Health Survey, it was found that only 51% of children eat vegetables daily and only 60% of children eat fruit daily, while a third of Welsh children are classified as overweight or obese.

Wales’ Senior Medical Officer, Dr. Sara Hayes, said: “Parents have cited expensive ingredients and a lack of planning and knowledge of wholesome meals as barriers to being able to keep their families healthy”.

As part of the Welsh Government’s Change4Life campaign, thousands of free Supermeals recipe booklets are being sent out to help people in Wales achieve a healthier diet. The booklet provides a fortnight’s worth of family recipes that are easy to prepare and cost around £1.25 per head.

To obtain your free booklet, register with Change4Life online at www.wales.gov.uk/change4life before Friday 10 February 2012.

I will be cooking all 14 Change4Life recipes for my family, on consecutive nights, as they occur in the booklet.

I started my Supermeals Challenge with the first Monday recipe: tasty tuna and sweetcorn pasta.

We got off to a good start with this. Tuna is a favourite of our youngest daughter, and she left a clean plate. Our oldest daughter also gave it the thumbs up. It provided a fine and wholesome, if unspectacular, adult meal.

This solid family dinner provided us with leftovers. The ‘super tip’ on the booklet page: “This recipe can be served cold as a salad, making it perfect for packed lunches too.” This is what we often do with pasta, and our eldest particular likes taking it to school as a packed lunch. I will microwave what’s remaining for my lunch at home tomorrow (and maybe eat it with some sourdough bread).

If you wanted to spice this recipe up, a bit of Tabasco should do the trick.

The ingredients in the booklet have been selected for their cheapness and easy availability, while the meals are quick to prepare. I will stick with the spirit of this, often choosing value-line supermarket products and good value items from our local independent stores, to stay within the low budget. I have to say (given the general thrust of this blog) that although there is a widespread perception that supermarkets are cheaper (encouraged by clever marketing), this is not necessarily the case (shop around if your budget is tight; don’t assume supermarket products are cheaper).

During my Supermeals Challenge, I’ll keep you posted on how things progress recipe-by-recipe.

tasty tuna and sweetcorn pasta

The ingredients: Pasta shapes (300g), olive oil (1 tsp), red onion, garlic clove, tin tomatoes (400g), tomato puree (tbsp), tinned sweetcorn (150g), dried basil (2 tsp), and two 185g tins of tuna.

The method: pasta is boiled in water. Meanwhile, onion and garlic are fried for about 5 min, when the rest of the ingredients are added, and simmered for 5 min, except the tuna, which is stirred into the sauce just before serving over the drained pasta.

The meal is estimated to provide 406 kcals a portion.

Change4Life:
www.wales.gov.uk/change4life

The Use-by Date Mystery Solved

2012-01-24T14:38:00.000Z

We bought some Tesco Juice Drinks last weekend and, while sharing some “Apple & Raspberry Juice Drink” with my 8-year old daughter, noticed that the ‘Use by:’ date appeared to be before she was born. On further examination, it appeared that all the juice drink cartons we have purchased recently from Tesco had dates on them (2003-2011) that would mean we should probably not be drinking the contents.

The juices tasted fine, so I suspected it could be a glitch in the printing on the TetraPaks. After a couple of phone calls to Penarth Marina Tesco, however, the mystery was solved.

Tesco do not put years on their fresh produce: only days, months, hours and minutes. Therefore, the Orange Juice Drink (with Bits), for example, is Display until 8 March and Use by 10 March, and the implication is that it is March of this year. Those other numbers along the ‘Use by:’ line are in fact Batch Numbers and not years at all!

However, can I make just one suggestion? It might be clearer for dim-witted consumers like myself if numbers, say from 2002 to 2015, were excluded from the range of possible Batch Numbers printed along the ‘Use by:’ lines on food products. Thanks for reading.

The Fish on Your Plate

2012-01-23T15:41:00.001Z

The Fish on Your Plate by Paul Greenberg is a book that might change the way you look at fish.

He approaches the subject as a fisherman, and starts by recounting his own experiences of disappearing fish stocks, and how local fish on fishmonger’s slabs have been replaced by just four globally-traded species.

We have just passed the point where we now consume more farmed fish than wild fish. Soon wild fish may no longer be regarded as economically viable or, more probably, an expensive luxury that only the wealthy can afford. Fish domestication is happening now, rather than in the distant past, and is compared in the book to the domestication of animals (cows, pigs, sheep and goats) and birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese). You might think that the choice of fish to domesticate in this modern age has been governed by scientific and rational considerations. Think again, says Greenberg.

The book is structured around the big four universal fish: tuna, salmon, sea bass and cod. Tuna is described here as the last great gold rush of wild fish. One last sushi binge before wild fishing as we have known it comes to an end. Tuna is a stateless fish, travelling over long distances, and so is difficult to manage in a sustainable manner.

Salmon represents the first wave of aquaculture. The model used was taken from agriculture: industrial monoculture. Salmon farming has been commercially successful, but it has left in its wake a raft of problems. Salmon farms are environmentally polluting, high levels of disease can occur in the farmed fish, escaped fish are breeding with wild salmon to the detriment of wild populations, and high levels of PCB are found in farmed salmon (due to them being fed pellets made from small fish trawled from the sea bed). Government advice is to limit consumption of farmed salmon, for example, to once a week, because of the chemicals it contains. Greenberg suggests that a way forward with salmon, and aquaculture generally, is to move toward less-intensive polyculture farming, involving the cultivation of seaweed, mussels and other species together to strike a more ecological balance and reduce pollution and disease.

Sea Bass is a less than obvious choice for a farmed species. It was, in fact, very tricky to domesticate. Over many years, European scientists worked out that the juvenile diet of phytoplankton could be replaced by rotifers, while artemisia (sold to kids as ‘sea monkeys’) could supplement the diet of just-hatched fish and improve what is naturally a very high mortality rate. Hormone delivery and precise control of photoperiod were other necessary steps to successful domestication. Once the techniques were mastered, however, farmed sea bass quickly became a globally-traded fish. Another upside of all the scientific work done is that there is a framework in place for domesticating practically ever other fish in the seas. On the downside, like salmon farming, adult sea bass are fed pellets made from fish dredged from the oceans, with around 3lb of fish required to produce 1 lb of fish. Sea bass domestication was a great leap forward for fish farming, but Greenberg suggests greater success lies ahead with species that are easier to breed and have better food conversion efficiency.

Cod is the workaday fish that has disappeared. Because it has been so popular, efforts have been made to farm it, using the advances made for sea bass (e.g., rotifers, artemisia). However, cod takes too long to mature and proved very expensive to farm – you just don’t get meat for your money, concludes Greenberg.
Instead of choosing fish for which there is a known market, Greenburg suggests, we need to look at previously unknown species that tick all the right boxes in terms of breeding ease, food conversion efficiency, and ability to thrive in sustainable low-pollution aquaculture. Tilapia is cited as a good choice in many respects. He suggests a number of fish, including barramundi and kahala (Almaco Jack), which you may be hearing much more of in the future.

This is a well-researched (although, note to publisher, geosmin and not geosim on page 182), highly readable, and thought-provoking book. I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever thought about why we eat the particular fish species we do, and not most of the other perfectly edible species in the sea.

Greenberg, Paul (2010) The Fish on Your Plate. Penguin Books.

Another book review you might enjoy:
The Noma Cookbook:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/10/noma-cookbook.html

Taste, Cardiff

2012-01-17T18:21:00.001Z

My Rockpool was populated with prawns, crab and salmon. I must say I’ve never seen a salmon in a rockpool, but then I am talking about a sandwich here. The Rockpool is a Gourmet Sandwich that can be ordered in Taste, a new species inhabiting Cardiff’s competitive café/sandwich bar ecosystem. The question is: Will it find its own niche in this environment and thereby ensure its long-term survival?

The original Taste can be found in Romford, Essex. Taste Cardiff is an independently-run franchise, and is only the second Taste in the UK, although the franchise is set to expand further. Taste Cardiff was opened on 1 December last year and, so, is less than two months old. Owners John and Penny have, according to their website, backgrounds in airline and industrial catering, so you would expect good things of their office meeting and party platters. John’s homemade coleslaw and relishes are features of the menu.

Taste is a take-away and delivery service, targeting the office worker market (e.g., fresh and delicious lunches for office workers too busy to leave their desks!), but the café has a good number of comfortable tables at the back, some seats at the front, and a few pavement tables (that are sure to be popular in the summer on this pedestrianized stretch of the High Street near Cardiff Castle), and it seems a good place for a leisurely coffee and sandwich.

Alongside the range of 14 Classic Sandwiches, there’s 8 Gourmet Sandwiches that offer something a little different. Rockpool is basically a prawn sandwich, with crab flakes; mine could probably have been enhanced with a little more smoked salmon in the mix. The lemon mayonnaise gave it a lively flavour, while the rocket leaves were fresh and about the right amount.

The dual pricing system on all the sandwiches is not for size but for bread type. There is “traditional bread” (white, granary, wholemeal, bagel or sub) and “speciality bread” (ciabatta, panini, baguette, wrap or bloomer), with a surprisingly large price differential between the two. Each gourmet sandwich comes with a suggestion for type of bread, though they can be ordered with any bread (in fact the whole menu can be seen as a guide given that so much flexibility appears to be on offer).

My partner went with the suggested ciabatta with her Bookmaker Melt (I should probably have gone with the suggested wrap come to think of it on my Rockpool). The Bookmaker was built around a slice of tasty sliced roast beef.

The Sweet Carrot Crunch (with houmous, grated carrot and sultanas) looks the best-sounding vegetarian option (although Taste is mainly catering for the carnivores and piscivores in the food chain). Other Gourmet Sandwiches included Cwmbran Banger (“Best on bloomer!”) and Italian Job (“The ideal panini!”), while the gauntlet is laid down with "Cardiff’s Best Tuna Melt" (contains John’s homemade tomato and onion relish).

There’s homemade soup of the day, good-value breakfast options, daily sandwich specials (a chili sausage today), jacket potatoes, and a salad bar. They serve large mugs of good no-nonsense coffee (not for single estate connoisseurs, but the vanilla and spicy cinnamon flavourings could hit the spot if you’re in the mood).

The décor is relatively neutral and slightly retro (branded with chocolate brown, lime green and white). They have made good use of the long narrow space. I like the large wooden-framed mirrors.

The distinctiveness of Taste derives from it not being a big High Street chain. It’s a little different, although maybe the food is not different enough to immediately set it apart from many other cafés and sandwich shops in Cardiff. However, there is a good vibe in the place, it feels friendly and welcoming, and if the owners can build a solid and loyal customer base, then I can see it surviving in the species pool for many years to come.

Taste, Cardiff
http://www.tastesfresh.com/cardiff

15 High Street
Cardiff
CF10 1AX

Creating a Community Garden

2012-01-14T16:12:00.003Z

There is probably a small area of abandoned land near where you live. Maybe you’ve thought it could be usefully converted into a community garden or allotments for local residents. Here in Dinas Powys, we have taken the first steps toward converted an abandoned play area into a community garden. I will outline the process in a series of posts, to demonstrate one way in which it can be done.

With Council spending cuts, the maintenance of children’s play areas has been one of the first things to suffer. There must be numerous former play areas around the UK that are now neglected. Concerns were raised last year about one such former play area, between Nightingale Place and Sir Ivor Place in Dinas Powys. It has become a drinking place for young people, and the resulting antisocial behaviour has become of concern to local residents. Therefore, Elizabeth Millard, Chairperson of the Dinas Powys Residents Group, and Councillor Keith Hatton (Plaid Cymru), initiated a project to secure this area with a fence and turn it into a place where local residents could grow their own food.

The first thing to do is find out who owns the land in question and talk to the relevant people. In this case, the land is owned by the Housing Department of the Vale of Glamorgan Council. Even the footpath past the former play area is owned by Housing, rather then Highways (so Waste Management do not service it, which has exacerbated the poor appearance of the site). After talking to senior people in the Vale of Glamorgan Council, including Mike Ingram (Housing) and Clifford Parish (Waste Management), Elizabeth and Keith got an agreement with the Council for changing the use of the land. The Council will lease the land, free of charge, to the Dinas Powys Residents Group for the purpose of establishing a community garden.

Your local council might have someone employed to help you with community projects like this. Here in the Vale of Glamorgan, Elizabeth and Keith were fortunate to be able to call on Rob McGhee, who works for Creative Rural Communities: a new regeneration and economic development initiative led by the Vale of Glamorgan Council in partnership with various public, private and voluntary sector organisations. The aim of the initiative is to give the people of the rural Vale the power to control the future of their communities. They can provide some initial funding, but Rob’s main role will be to help project manage and obtain funds from Welsh Government sources.

In Wales, funding for the establishment of community gardens on waste ground can be sought from several bodies, including the Rural Development Plan for Wales (2007-2013), a joint Welsh Government and European Union strategy. Funding for the Dinas Powys project will be sought, in the first instance, through Tidy Towns Wales: an initiative launched by the Welsh Government in 2008. Tidy Towns funding is given to local authorities and the Keep Wales Tidy group to empower people to make improvements to their local environment. Projects previously funded have included graffiti and litter clean-ups, fencing, and the transformation of wasteland into community gardens and allotments. Tidy Towns also organize groups of volunteers who can help with clearing wasteland at key stages during projects like this.

In the next few weeks, contractors will be met at the site in Dinas Powys. They will provide estimates for the costs of erecting fencing and clearing the ground. This information will be fed into the grant application process.

The first things to do on the ground will be to fence off the area; take up the rubber surface (which used to be under the play equipment) and the concrete; and remove the weeds, dig up tree roots, and cut back the encroaching hedge. Later, water will be bought into the site at a stand pipe (through Welsh Water) and a communal shed erected.

A first meeting was held this morning (14 Jan) at Murchfield Community Hall, where Elizabeth and Keith informed a group of interested local residents of developments. A core group of local residents will be established as things progress to help establish the community garden.

The layout within the area (920.88 square metres) will be determined at a later date, although it was estimated that around eight plots could comfortably sit within the site. Ideally, the site will be kept flexible to meet the needs of residents. The meeting discussed the possibility of both communal areas (e.g., communal orchard and seating area) and individual plots within the site.

A project like this offers significant improvements in the environment and the quality of life for local residents, especially those living in flats without gardens and those who look to gardening for exercise, recreation, and an extension of their social life.

I will follow progress step-by-step. It may make you look at that piece of derelict land in your own neighbourhood with fresh eyes. Can you envisage beans, potatoes, tomatoes and fruit bushes, instead of those weeds and lager cans?

The next meeting here in Dinas Powys will be held on 18 February at Murchfield Community Hall. I’ll keep you posted.

Further information:
Creative Rural Communities:
http://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/working/regeneration/rural_regeneration.aspx

Tidy Towns:
http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/epq/cleanneighbour/tidytowns/?lang=en

Flannels, Cardiff

2012-01-11T20:57:00.002Z

A new café opened ten days before Christmas in an underused space on the first floor of the designer clothing store Flannels on Churchill Way in Cardiff. The Alius Modi café is on the first floor, above the in-store Tino Constantinou hair salon.

Alius Modi has been promoted as a new concept salon/café/gallery, but don’t let that put you off. It’s a relaxing place for coffee, with healthy-looking browsing and brunch menus. The coffee is free during their opening promotion offer, which runs until the end of March.

All the food is freshly prepared and reasonably priced (£2.50 to £6). The smaller portions on offer can provide for a light lunch or can be ordered in combinations. There are daily specials, such as the Moussaka on the day we our visited.

My Greek salad had some fine grilled halloumi, with feta and olives. Maybe a little too much cucumber and not enough olive oil for my liking, but it was fresh and hit the spot. My partner's maple pancakes with crispy bacon and scrambled egg proved a better choice (no surprise there) with a well-judged amount of syrup.

I like the unpredictability of the menu. The Browsing Menu ranges from fries, wild mushrooms, risotto balls and salads, to whitebait, mussels and squid; while the accompanying Brunch Menu encompasses omelettes and the AM breakfast (minute steak, wild mushrooms, potato rösti, fried egg and tomato).

The panoramic windows give views onto Churchill Way, and the Premier Inn and offices of Helmont House next door. It’s a different perspective on Cardiff. There’s an attractive wooden floor and wall space for a gallery (e.g., student design work).

Alius Modi may find it difficult attracting people to their first-floor location. However, they will soon have a drinks licence and the outside terrace looks a good place for al fresco drinking and grazing on salads during the summer. Getting people out (and noticed) on the terrace, particularly from the nearby offices, may be key to their success.

Tesco Express Dinas Powys: Day 25

2012-01-10T09:56:00.001Z

On 14 April 2011, Tesco’s Corporate Affairs Manager Sophie Akokhia attended a public meeting organized by Dinas Powys Community Council to discuss the proposed Tesco Express on Castle Drive.

In an introduction by Sophie Akokhia, she said that the store would help regenerate the former Castle Oak Pub building and surrounding area, the parking area would be resurfaced with no time limit for all shoppers, the store would offer a top-up shopping destination and cut down visits to larger supermarkets, and that at least 20 jobs would be created. Some research from Southampton University was also quoted that showed the potential for more people to visit nearby stores.

In this post, I will just focus on the car park. This is where the most immediate discrepancy between the reassurances given by Tesco and the reality of the store opening occurred (although I plan to touch on other issues in later posts).

Tesco have certainly smartened up the area, especially the area behind the back of The Parade shops, where there has always been an infrequently-used free communal parking area. However, Tesco promptly handed over the running of this car park to Euro Car Parks Ltd and draconian parking restrictions were imposed (see photo), which were totally at odds with what was suggested at the April meeting. The new notices proclaimed a 20 minute limit for shopping in Tesco with fines of £70 for overstaying this short time. The wording was particularly galling, as it suggested residents wanted this because of difficulty in finding a parking place (and would even welcome the £70 fines!). In fact, no one in Dinas Powys wanted this car park privatized (this is a village where no one ever pays to park a car) and it is never full. For several weeks only the manager and staff of Tesco Express have parked in the resurfaced car park.

I pointed out the disparity between the assurance and the reality on a social networking site on 5 January and made sure my comments found their way into Sophie Akokhia’s inbox.

This morning (10 January) the car parking signs were gone and a notice in the shop says: Please note we have a FREE 22 spaced car park at the rear of the store. There is no time limitation at present.

The car park situation most probably arose through a misunderstanding between Tesco and their contractors.

I’ll be posting further on developments, particularly on how Tesco and local businesses are co-existing in Dinas Powys (as lessons learned here are relevant to villages and small towns throughout the UK).

Previous post:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/12/tesco-express-dinas-powys-day-1.html

Co-mingling in the Vale of Glamorgan

2012-01-09T16:42:00.000Z

I put a boxful of empty Tetra Paks out in the kerbside recycling collection this morning for the first time, thereby reducing the rubbish in our landfill-bound black bin bags (mainly apple and orange juice cartons in our case).

Towards the end of last year (week commencing 19 Sept), the Vale of Glamorgan Council introduced co-mingling. It sounds a little tautological and slightly suggestive, but actually involves the mixing of dry household waste for recycling. The decision at first sounded like it might be a step backwards, especially to those who are in the habit of separating recycling (and have the luxury of enough space to do so). However, the decision to opt for co-mingling was the correct way forward. There was a 43% increase in household waste being recycled in the first seven weeks of co-mingling being introduced in the Vale of Glamorgan.

More waste is being put out by existing recyclers (a relatively high 76% of Vale residents were already recycling when co-mingling was introduced), while more people now recycle because it is easier to do so. Instead of alternate weeks for, say, plastics and newspaper, everything is now collected every week.

Co-mingling has also opened the way for further products to be added to recycling boxes. In addition to Tetra Paks (e.g., fruit juice, soup, milk and other waxed cartons), drained aerosols and clean aluminium foil are now also collected weekly in the kerbside collection, along with plastic, glass, food and drink cans, paper and cardboard. This material is sorted by staff at Biffa’s materials recycling facility in Cardiff, so make sure your recycling is washed before it is put out for collection to make their job more pleasant.

Kitchen waste is collected weekly in the Vale from special lidded green food-waste bins. The bio-degradable bags to use in the associated kitchen caddies are available in libraries and other Council buildings. The food waste we would rather not compost ourselves goes into our kitchen caddie. The success of the kitchen waste scheme, which was introduced last year, has led to the company responsible, Cowbridge Compost Ltd, announcing that it will be starting a free compost scheme from April 2012. Compost made from the Vale’s recycled kitchen waste will be free to those who show up at their Cowbridge depot with their own shovels and containers.

Garden refuse is collected fortnightly for most of the year (by request from December to April), on alternate weeks to the black bin bag collection.

The co-mingling of dry household waste is helping the Vale Council meet ambitious Welsh Government recycling targets, which form part of Wales’ Toward Zero Waste strategy. It is also helping the Council reduce its considerable long-term landfill costs.

An indication of how high landfill costs have become can be gleaned from Cardiff Council’s decision to photograph the number plates of all the cars using their main recycling facility. If your number plate does not match the Cardiff resident's database then you will be fined (worth bearing in mind if you live in the Vale and are planning on helping someone from Cardiff move stuff to their local recycling centre). In the Vale, a brand-new Household Waste Recycling Facility opened in autumn 2011 on the Atlantic Trading Estate in Barry.

So, "well done” to the Vale of Glamorgan Council for being on the ball when it comes to household waste management.

Further information:
http://www.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/recycle

Lakeside Coffee Shop, Cosmeston County Park

2012-01-08T18:10:00.004Z

Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, to the west of Penarth in the Vale of Glamorgan, is a great place for a Sunday walk. I frequently walk or cycle around the park, and use it as a through route to Penarth and the coast at Swanbridge. Today, I stopped off for a hot chocolate in the Lakeside Coffee Shop.

I had previously considered the Cosmeston Café a bit of a lost opportunity, as it used to be somewhat shabby, and had a very limited hot food menu. However, I was pleasantly surprised today. It has been smartened up since I was in last, and it’s rebranding as the Lakeside Coffee Shop is to be welcomed. They do breakfasts, lunches and sandwiches, and cake throughout the day. In summer, they have always shifted a lot of ice creams, but it's good to see more food on offer.

The menu today featured numerous combinations of sausage, ham, egg, chips, beans, jacket potatoes and toast. Today's soup option was Tomato and Basil. Kids are well catered for with an extensive children’s menu. There was a choice of two cakes with the hot drinks today. I had the last apple from the fruit bowl. All the food was very reasonably priced.

Cosmeston Lakes Country Park comprises 110 hectares of woodland, meadow, wetland and lakes, in an area of reclaimed quarry workings. It is a haven for wildlife, especially birds. There’s a network of paths around the park. On a Sunday, the dog walkers, horse riders and parents with pushchairs are out in force. It’s a great facility for local residents and well worth a visit if you live in the Cardiff area and have not already discovered it.

Within the park is the reconstructed 14th-century Medieval Village (a location in BBC’s Merlin); a fee is charged for entry to the village. The best time to visit the village is on special day (e.g., Easter, battle re-enactment days) when the full cast of Medieval villagers are present to talk you through their various occupations (the gruesome medieval medic is particularly good value).

The main news from the park at the moment concerns a herd of at least 40 horses that have appeared in one of the fields. The Vale of Glamorgan Council, who own Cosmeston, wants them gone within two weeks or they are threatening to remove them and sell them. They have put up signs warning of Wild Horses and notices quoting the relevant section of the Animals Act 1971.

Coffee at Nash Point

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/04/coffee-at-nash-point.html

Forest Café, Porthkerry

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/07/forest-cafe-porthkerry-country-park.html

Pieminister: Where’s the Lard?

2012-01-03T21:10:00.002Z

The cookbook under the Christmas tree for me this year was pieminister: a pie for all seasons (2011) by Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon, who started making pies together in the early 1990s. They opened the first Pieminister shop in Bristol in 2004. They also traded from a van at Glastonbury 2004, and their pies have been available at all good music festivals (e.g., Green Man) ever since.

The book is full of good pie-making ideas and, as the title suggests, is divided up seasonally. It starts with Spring, which includes Posh Paddy’s Pie, Homity Pie, Rhubard and Custard Pie, and St Valentine’s Day Pie. Summer includes Jerk Chicken Pie, The Screaming Desperado, Surfers’ Pie, Pietanic, and Courgette and Chickpea Filo Pie. Among the Autumn selection is Pulled Pork, Cider and Sage Pies, Pheasant and Bath Chaps Pie, Wabbit Roll, Chicken and Butternut Squash Curry Pie, and Blackberry and Apple Pie. Winter includes Stargazing Quail Pie, Rabbit and Chorizo Pork Pie, and The Hedonist Pie.

There is therefore a mix of everyday and more specialist pies. And it’s not just pies; there are recipes for a pan-fried breakfast, smoked aubergines and olive strudel, and other quirky inclusions. There is an appealing home-made, community-based ethos behind Pieminister. The book captures this through sections on foraging, seasonal vegetable patch gardening, music festivals, and throwing a street party.

However, you should not buy this book and expect to turn out pies that taste just like those from the Pieminister van. Firstly, these are not necessarily the commercial recipes. The recipe given for the Pieminister Moo Pie (on page 80), for instance, states: “Sorry, we can’t give the exact Pieminister recipe for this steak and ale favourite (it’s a closely guarded secret), so this one’s a slight variation.”

Secondly, there’s the pastry. The shortcrust pastry recipe in the book (page 10) is made using butter as the only fat source (as is the rough puff pastry). It’s very short, very rich, and not quite the texture or taste of a commercial pie.

Traditionally, shortcrust pie pastry has been made using lard. The recipe for shortcrust pastry in The Good Housekeeping Cookery Book (first published 1944; page 351), for example, specifies half lard and half margarine or butter, while lard is also included in recipes for flaky, flan and rough puff pastry. The book stresses that good results are achieved with a mixture of fats.

Delia Smith in her Complete Cookery Course (1978) uses half lard and half margarine in her basic shortcrust pastry recipe (page 548). She notes that half lard to butter or margarine mixes are easier to rub in and handle, and have the best texture and flavour.

However, in more-recent cookbooks you are much less likely to see lard listed as a pastry ingredient. Lard is just not fashionable. Natural fats have generally been unfairly maligned, and lard especially so (artificial trans fats and hydrogenated fats are another matter, and richly deserve their maligning).

One almost imagines a manuscript arriving at a publishers, with the first recipe calling for half a block or (god forbid) a tub of lard. Alarm bells ring in the poor editor’s head (lard=loss of sales!). The publisher promptly calls the food writer asking whether it’s possible to loose the lard, or maybe loose all that nasty fat altogether. The food writer insists that fat is essential to pastry making, but is talked into replacing the lard with butter or margarine (or anything with a better image than lard). I am not saying that this was the case during the making of this particular book (lard is listed as an ingredient in the hot water crust pastry and there’s plenty of sound pastry-making advice), but I suspect such considerations are a factor in the production of today’s glossy lifestyle, celebrity chef cookbooks.

Our initial experiences with the Pieminister cookbook suggest it may become one of the more well-used volumes in our kitchen library. The Fan-Taffy Pie (page 136) was a big hit with the guests we served it to over the Christmas period. The photo depicts our Leftovers Pie (note to self: don’t do half measures, make full pastry amounts!).

Food Bloggers Unplugged

2011-12-21T21:14:00.001Z

There’s a challenge called Food Bloggers Unplugged doing the rounds (via Twitter). I was invited to do this by Rebecca who blogs as Fasting Foodie (The Tales of a Penarth/Cardiff-based Foodie on a Diet). Here’s her post:
http://fastingfoodie.blogspot.com/2011/12/food-bloggers-unplugged.html
Therefore, I’ll wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and finish my first year’s food blogging with this post. I shall then proceed to unplug.

What, or who inspired you to start a blog?
The original idea behind the blog was that it would be a type of diary, which I would keep for one year. I have always kept a diary, which has taken various forms. In 2010, for example, it was a photo-a-day project. Being a Welsh learner, it was in Welsh for a while (though with my limited vocabulary this soon became very repetitive: Dechreuais i fy mlog bwyd. Wedyn, es i i Gaerdydd. Wedyn…). A food diary has an appealing Proustian ring; recalling a taste can lead to associated memories unfurling in the mind. However, as I’m mainly slaving in the kitchen fueling the kids with pasta, pizza, chicken and chips etc such poetic ideas didn’t last long. The food blog took on a life of its own. It’s no longer a diary, but a chronicle of the exciting food scene in the Cardiff area, where good restaurants seem to be opening on a weekly basis, and the dynamic local food movement in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. I can’t see myself tiring of food blogging any time soon.

Who is your foodie inspiration?
I have followed Heston Blumenthal’s progress with great interest for many years. I find his willingness to experiment very inspiring, although I don’t aspire to cook like him at home.

Your greasiest, batter-splattered food/drink book is?
I’ll be honest; it’s an old edition of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course. Over the years it has been the most used book in the kitchen (and looks it). Other frequently referenced tomes are by Rick Stein, Jane Grigson, Sophie Grigson, Nigel Slater, Gary Rhodes and Madhur Jaffrey; while the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book (1978) is constantly referenced for cakes, chutneys, marmalade etc.

Tell us all about the best thing you have ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?
This is a difficult one. Food always tastes better when you’re relaxing on holiday and the sun is shining. I can’t remember the names of restaurants but most memorable meals include extremely fresh seafood in a waterside shack in South Carolina (holes in the middle of the round tables to chuck the shells), gumbo in New Orleans, a richly-sauced chicken in a small restaurant near Aix en Provence, grilled fish on a beach in Greece, my first pizza from a proper pizza oven in Italy, and a Portuguese stew in a mountain village in the Algarve.

Another food blogger’s table you’d like to eat at is?
I would be happy to eat at any Cardiff food blogger’s table, although having just read Rebecca’s Food Blogger Unplugged post I would certainly be up for Drunken Lamb or Thai Roast Duck!

What is the one kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year (money no object of course)?
I nearly asked Santa for this, but instead picked one up in Kitchen earlier this week: a digital timer. Compact, it sticks magnetically to the fridge or clips to clothing if you leave the kitchen, and it sounds just like my alarm-clock. I no longer have any excuse for burning the cakes! If money no object, then I would like to have some serious Sous Vide gadgetry to play around with.

Who taught you how to cook?
Watching my mother cook taught me a great deal, especially during the time when part of our family house was used as student accommodation. The students used to join our large family for evening meals, and it was always at least two courses of fabulous food. At University myself, I learned a lot through trial and error (actually, more error than trial - this was a time when the congealed lard in the chip pan, used daily in the communal kitchen, was only changed at the start of each term).

I’m coming to you for dinner. What’s your signature dish?
When I cook for larger gatherings, I tend to make my chili con carne (it’s almost expected). I like cooking risotto (e.g., butternut squash, mushroom) and I cook it often; it'll be served with a tomato salad. Braised red cabbage (from my mum’s recipe) was one of the first recipes I posted online (my first website had a recipe section), and it’s the recipe I recently contributed to the Murch Munchies Recipe Book (a PTA Christmas fundraiser), so that’s definitely a signature dish. For pudding, it’ll probably be an apple or rhubarb crumble with ice cream.

What is your guilty food pleasure?
It has to be doughnuts; Krispy Kreme, of course, but also old-fashioned bakery doughnuts oozing jam.

Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn?
I worked as a research entomologist for a year at the University of Georgia and conducted experiments that helped to identify the chemical in sweet potato tubers that induce the female sweet potato weevil to lay eggs (oviposition stimulant). It was here that I got a taste for sweet potato (that most underrated of vegetables), but it was eating the ripe peaches straight off the trees that was the real revelation at the UGA farm.

My five nominees to further the Food Blogging Unplugged chain:

1. Nicki @UrLastMouthful: http://yourlastmouthful-blog.com/

2. @Gourmetgorro: http://gourmetgorro.blogspot.com/

3. @FoodFilm. Janneke Berkelbach (Memorable Food Scenes Combined with Recipes): http://www.filmfood.nl/

4. @wanttobakefree. David’s blog about opening a teahouse in Cardiff: http://iwanttobakefree.blogspot.com/

5. @gomezadams, blogging as Corpulent Capers: http://www.corpulentcapers.com/

Nicki @cardiffbites has already done her Food Blogger Unplugged post: http://cardiffbites.blogspot.com/

Greenwood & Brown, Cardiff

2011-12-20T15:52:00.004Z

Brains are diversifying. The Cardiff-based brewery recently bought the Coffee #1 chain and is now branching out into restaurants. Greenwood & Brown on Quay Street is a bold statement of intent.

At this week’s Greenwood & Brown bar grill preview tasting evenings they’re serving up seafood platters followed by two different steak cuts.

The seafood sampler comprised large meaty shrimp (crevettes), prawn cocktail, peppered mackerel pate, oak smoked salmon and a horseradish and dill sauce. The smoked salmon and the shrimp, in particular, impressed. I like horseradish with my oily fish, so the sauce was a little milder than I would make it. On the full menu, you’ll also find calamari, a kilo of Welsh mussels (with a choice of two sauces, £12), seafood chowder, sea bass and other fish specials at market prices. A fish platter appetiser will cost £16. If you really want to sail the boat out, the Fruits de Mer (for two people) is £58.00 (pre-order 12 hours notice required).

The steaks, served with green beans and steak chips, were tender and tasted like they had come from animals that had been well looked after. I thought the sirloin was really good, but the comparison showed why the ribeye costs that little more, as it was even better. The green beans and thick steak chips were very moreish, partly because there’s a fair bit of salt on them. On the full menu there’s a choice of rump, sirloin and ribeye (£12, £15 and £19, respectively, which includes one side dish), while there will be steak cut specials. If you’re a couple and want to go for it, the Chateaubriand steak with Béarnaise sauce might be for you (£48 for two people). Our preview steaks definitely left us wanting more.

The menu is limited in extent. However, it includes dishes such as the chowder and steak cuts that mark it out as unique. The philosophy is: simple cooking done well. Don’t expect fancy plating or extraneous ingredients. It’s not necessarily cheap, though lunches come in at a competitive fixed price of £7, but if you want steak or seafood off the grill then it should certainly hit the spot.

Greenwood and Brown will probably appeal to a fairly select clientele. The nature of the menu and the high tables will exclude children and families. There is little for vegetarians (apart from the risotto of the day and a falafel burger). My partner thought the atmosphere (meaty menu options, masculine décor etc) would make it a good place to entertain male business clients. It will certainly attract the discerning rugby fan (being only a penalty kick away from the Millennium Stadium).

The desserts are suitably grown up and there’s Costa coffee. The wine list features nine reds and nine whites, with a few roses, with additional choices on a wine specials board. Bottled beers, spirits, champagne and classic cocktails are featured.

It’s good to see an emphasis on Welsh products and local food sourcing. Welsh beef comes from Celtic Pride, free range eggs from Birchgrove Eggs, seafood from Swansea Fish in Swansea Marina, cheeses from Caws Cenarth, Abergavenny Fine Foods and Carmarthenshire Creameries, deli products from Capital Cuisine Caerphilly, and ice cream from Mario Dallavalle of Carmarthenshire.

Greenwood & Brown is located on the site of The Model Inn, one of Cardiff’s oldest pubs (On a 1600 map it’s called The Ship on Launch; it may have been renamed The Model Inn after a visit by Cromwell’s New Model Army). It was purchased by Brains in 1956 and renamed after the wine merchants who they bought it off. The major internal and external refurbishment means there is little evidence of the building’s history to be seen (though some of the metal columns look old). The modern décor centres on high chairs and marble counters/tables (a bit of communal dining maybe), bare brick and butcher’s tiles, with some chandeliers that don’t look quite right. The kitchen area is fashionably visible.

Music can complement the dining experience. In Cardiff, for example, the classical music in Wally’s Kaffeehaus and the classic rock in the New York Deli perfectly chime with the décor and food. At Greenwood & Brown, the overloud early-evening dance music did nothing to enhance my dining experience.

I had a pint of the Rev in the City Arms beforehand, a pub owned by Brains and one of the best traditional-style drinking venues in the city centre. The City Arms is practically next door to Greenwood & Brown (Casanova’s Italian Restaurant is sandwiched between them) and this was a key factor in the decision to convert the Model Inn into a restaurant rather than another pub. I suspect there will be a fair amount of traffic between the two Brain’s establishments.

Other Brains pubs in Cardiff city centre: Goat Major, Dempsey’s, Old Arcade, Cardiff Cottage, Barocco, Yard Bar and Kitchen, Kitty Flynn’s, Duke of Wellington, Westgate, Cardiff Arts Institute, 33 Windsor Place.

Greenwood & Brown:
http://www.greenwoodandbrowncardiff.co.uk/

Pub conversion reference:
http://beerbrewer.blogspot.com/2011/12/model-inn-reopens-as-restaurant.html

Brains Brewery:
http://www.sabrain.com/index

Arth Wines, Penarth

2011-12-18T14:21:00.000Z

Stocking up on drink for the festive season? Don’t forget your independent off-licences and wine merchants.

Arth Wine Store in Penarth is one such place. This independent wine merchant, owned by Richard Silk, moved to its present location near Penarth Station in March 2010. You are sure to get a warm welcome. Richard is very knowledgeable, and happy to chat with customers: the sort of personal service you don’t get in a major retail chain.

The shop is situated in the Old Masonic Buildings (the more-recent Masonic Hall on Stanwell Road is now a restaurant and party venue). The modern restoration is sympathetic to the old building and provides a dramatic backdrop for the displays of wine, beer, ciders and soft drinks. The theatricality is completed by having a glass-fronted room within the room: a cooler space where much of the white wine and beer is kept.

Richard imports wine directly from smaller independent vineyards, which helps keep prices down and enables him to offer a different selection to other wine-selling outlets. The shop, in particular, is known for its selection of organic wines. It’s also the place to go for bio-dynamic wine, wine for vegans, and other alternative wine options.

Independent shops like Arth Wines are good when you’re looking for something a little different to serve guests, especially guests who look at wines and tell you what supermarkets they came from (do you know people like this?). Keep them guessing this Christmas. Good to see Arth wines stock Cock Hill, for instance, our local white wine made from grapes grown on a hillside in Leckwith, between Cardiff and Dinas Powys.

However, I went to Arth Wines last week to stock up on some local microbrewery beers.

I selected three Celt beers, from the Celtic Experience brewery in Caerphilly (est. 2007). The Bronze (4.5%), named after Bronze Age Celts, although it’s also a bronze colour; the Golden (4.2%), named after the Golden Age of the Celtic People, although it’s also a golden colour; and Bleddyn 1075 (5.6%), named after a Celtic ruler who died in 1075. Celt beers are made using organic ingredients. The Head Brewer is Tom Newman who, according to their website, is Caerphilly-born and West Country-raised, and likes drinking, rugby, learning Welsh and prawn racing.

My other selections were from Cardiff’s Untapped Brewery and the Vale of Glamorgan Brewery in Barry. They also stock beers from the Rhymney Brewery of Dowlais, near Merthyr Tydfil. The Otley Brewery in Pontypridd is having temporary bottling difficulties (Richard has a letter explaining the situation displayed by the beer section) and so their bottled brews are currently out of stock.

I’ll post some more on our local beers next year.

Arth Wines, Old Masonic Buildings, Station Approach, Penarth CF64 3EE

A previous post on Cock Hill wine:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/01/winde-from-dinas-powys-cock-hill.html

Celtic beers:
http://www.theceltexperience.co.uk/

Untapped Brewing Co:
http://www.untappedbrew.com/

Vale of Glamorgan Brewery:
http://www.vogbrewery.co.uk/

Rhymney Brewery:
http://www.rhymneybreweryltd.com/

Tesco Express Dinas Powys: Day 1

2011-12-16T10:42:00.001Z

The Tesco Express on The Parade, Castle Drive, Dinas Powys opened for business at 8am this morning, when it was full of school kids and men in suits (Tesco employees). The shop is well-stocked. The focus is on sandwich deals, ready meals and convenience foods; although there is a wide range of items on the shelves.

Tesco took over a former pub, which could have remained derelict, and have improved the surrounding environment by paving the car park at the back and putting up extra lighting. They have created around 25 jobs. Although they are not selling anything (I could see) that is not already available elsewhere in the village, the shopping choice in the village has increased and the profile of Dinas Powys enhanced as a shopping destination. The main concern with Tesco Express, which is one of the fastest expanding chains in the UK, is that is that it will lead to the closure of locally-owned shops, thereby reducing shopping options in the long-term while taking retail profits out of the community.

The other shops along The Parade are Martins’ newsagent, Hung House Chinese and Thai Takeaway, Paul’s Chippy, Valley View Fruit Stores (run by Jan and Tony Mapstone for 14 years), A Class Apart (children’s school uniforms) and Spar. The nearby shops at Camms Corner include Murch Pharmacy (run by Linda Jones for over 20 years), Murch Post Office, TC Ellis Guitars Ltd (Tim makes guitars for Mötorhead), Biz Hairdressers and Mark Griffiths Family Butcher (Mark has worked in the village for 34 years). The range sold by Tesco overlaps with that of Spar, the newsagent, the fruit and vegetable store, the pharmacy, the butcher, and to a lesser extent, the post office and take-aways (although Tesco might also be making electric guitars out back by now, possibly for Coldplay).

Near the locally-operated Budgens on Cardiff Road are the Bank of Flowers florists, and a convenience store attached to the Texaco garage. The other main shopping hub in the village is around the green, where you can find, among other shops, the Village Stores (selling fruit and veg) and The Wild Blackberry (deli).

There are plenty of community blogs out there recording local shop closures after the opening of a Tesco in a village or small town. The arrival of competition from Tesco, for example, may be the last straw for struggling independent businesses. In the UK there is an alarming rate of shop closures: 25,000 closed shops since the start of the Millennium, with more than one in seven high street units standing empty, according to press reports this week that focussed on an independent review chaired by Mary Portas (see below).

The large village of Dinas Powys (population around 9,000) is bucking the trend for UK-wide shop closures. As of today (16 Dec 2011), there has been only one recent closure (Lifestyle Furniture & Kitchens on Cardiff Road). The small shops in Dinas Powys have loyal customers, who can recall how shopkeepers have operated beyond the call of duty (e.g., during adverse winter weather) to help their customers. If customers keep supporting these local shops they can co-exist with a major retail chain. Valley View Fruit Stores, and other locally-owned stores in the village, also use local suppliers, so by supporting local stores you’re also supporting the local farmers, bakers, pie-makers and so on, who supply the shops. Profits are retained in the area. Tesco’s shelves are notable for their absence of locally-sourced products.

A Tesco opening need not have an adverse impact on local shops. In nearby Penarth, a Tesco Express opened last year and appears to have had minimum impact; though Penarth does have a vibrant local food scene. This revolves around independent stores, like Foxy’s Deli, David Lush Butchers, Arth Wines, restaurants (e.g., The Fig Tree), and local community group Gwyrddio Penarth Greening. A local traders’ discount scheme and several food co-op schemes have been established, in addition to a food festival that celebrates local businesses.

The protests in Dinas Powys have finished (there were no protestors this morning). Few planning objections were upheld (one being the proposed sign on the green by the oak tree, but Tesco appear to be occupying this space with their flags and banners regardless). Tesco Express is now part of Dinas Powys’ retail community. Tesco is the UK’s top supermarket and this is because it is popular, therefore it will be widely welcomed within the village for bringing the best of convenience shopping to Dinas Powys. It may mean more people shop in Dinas (rather than go to, say, Penarth). However, if the long-established local shops at the heart of the village’s community start to close, then Tesco will have helped to “rip the heart out of the village” as protestors predicted.

How will things work out in Dinas Powys? I’ll keep you posted.

Notes:

The Portas review (commissioned by David Cameron) stressed the importance of local shops within the heart of communities, and acknowledged that the expansion of major supermarkets has been a factor in the decline of traditional high streets. It made 28 recommendations designed to benefit entrepreneurial traders and maintain the diversity of shops:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/13/mary-portas-rescue-plan-shops?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/13/high-street-christmas-shopping-editorial?INTCMP=SRCH

Siop y Bobl, Cardiff

2011-12-12T13:55:00.001Z

Siop y Bobl (The People’s Supermarket) held their latest meeting at the Festive Food Fair in Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, on Saturday (10 Dec 2011). The members of the Core Team introduced themselves and unveiled their plans for the coming year.

A People’s Supermarket has been operating successfully in London for a couple of years, but Siop y Bobl will be a unique venture in Cardiff. It will run as a local co-operative and open for business toward the end of 2012.

The key stages that need to be achieved in the coming months are, firstly, the completion of the Business Plan, and then the opening of a business bank account. Grants and funding will then be applied for. Suitable premises will be sought, while publicity and marketing will be taken up a gear. People with the necessary skills will be bought on board, while existing members will undergo training in appropriate areas (e.g., through Welsh Government and co-operative movement training schemes). Finally, potential suppliers will be assessed, using the ethical, environmental and local community values that are at the heart of the business.

Gwion acted as spokesperson and outlined the plans, values, and the necessary steps needed to achieve their goal. The other Core Team members - Kate, Andrew, Becca, Richard and Graham – noted their particular interests within the project. These included environmental issues and the benefits of local food production, keeping profits within the community, the value of involving local people as members, and enhancing food security and reducing food wastage. All agreed that Siop y Bobl will provide an ethical and sustainable convenience shopping alternative for Cardiff.

Public Relations and publicity will be increasing important next year. A website is under construction (on-line shopping is under discussion). James from BBC Radio Wales was recording proceedings on Saturday and, as an observer, will be following Siop y Bobl until its opening. His reports will use Siop y Bobl as an example of an ongoing community project. Needless to say, I’ll also be following progress on this blog.

After the meeting itself, Richard organized the Cook Up competition. Two teams of three were chosen from the audience and asked to cook items selected from a “supermarket shelf” within 30 minutes. The items were not labeled by price, however, but by carbon ratings (an estimate of how food production adversely contributes to climate change). Such are the ethical decisions that will be made when it comes to stock Siop y Bobl.

Team B (there was no team A) cooked Chestnut, mushroom and tomato rigatoni, while Team C made a Butternut squash, spinach and lentil curry. I was honoured to be on the judging panel. It was a close call, but we awarded the prize to the rigatoni (the meaty chesnuts being an inspired touch that really worked).

This will be the website (it’s still early days):
http://siopybobl.co.uk/

The People’s Supermarket in London (Siop y Bobl hopes to emulate its success):
http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/

Festive Food Fair, Chapter, Cardiff

2011-12-10T21:02:00.001Z

Today’s Festive Food Fair at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff was a great success. There was a sizeable crowd and most of the stallholders were generally doing very good business.

I Want to Bake Free was selling, among other things, Victorian sponge cakes, gingerbread houses, loose tea and peppermint creams. The stall raised around £100 for the LATCH charity. The traditional tearoom will be opening, somewhere in Cardiff, next year. If David's stall at Chapter is anything to go by, it will be an interesting prospect.

Mark’s Bread had an eye-catching display. Although Bristol-based, Mark Newman sets up a stall every Wednesday afternoon at Chapter. Today we came home with Pan au Chocolate and a Malthouse loaf. Artisan slow-fermented sourdough bread was also available from Cardiff’s Hungry Planet and Bridgend-based Tortoise Bakery.

I always enjoy looking at The Parsnipship for their creative Vegetarian dishes, which today included a seasonal Roast Chestnut and Jerusalem Artichoke Dauphinoise. We went for the Lapsang-Souchong Smoked Butternut Lasagne, the Glamorgan Crumble, and a Stilton and Spinach Cake, which we heated up and had for dinner tonight.

Box vegetable schemes were being promoted by Riverside Market Garden (Cardiff) and Riverford Organic Veg (Devon). The other stallholders included Gwatkin Cider and Gwynt y Draig Cider, Llanfaes Dairy Ice Cream, The Nut Hut, Welsh Brew Tea, and Hipo Hyfryd.

There was also a range of workshops (gingerbread decoration, pottery, mosaics and more) and a raffle (I won a bottle of perry). Carols were performed under the Christmas tree by jazz singer Brigida Melly. The jazz arrangements fooled my daughter for a while, until she heard the words.

Outside the arts centre, there was a demonstration of a rocket jet-stove. This sealed unit can be used to cook potatoes (or chestnuts, as it did today). It is a very efficient way of burning wood, as it burns to a combustible gas that does the cooking. Biochar is producing as a by-product, which can be mixed with manure to make a great fertilizer.

A key part of proceedings was a meeting of Siop y Pobl (The People’s Supermarket), with the Core Group of this initiative updating us on progress, followed by a cooking competition. Siop y Pobl will be the subject of a longer blog post next week.

The Festive Fair was one of those events that exceeded expectations. Well done Chapter, Green City and Hedfan Arts for making it happen.

http://iwanttobakefree.blogspot.com/

http://www.marksbread.co.uk/

http://www.theparsnipship.co.uk/

Steve Garrett on Local Food in Cardiff

2011-12-09T12:42:00.004Z

Earlier this week, Steve Garrett (Founding Director and Special Projects Manager for Riverside Community Market Association [RCMA] Social Enterprise Ltd) gave a public lecture in the ornate Glamorgan Building Committee Rooms of Cardiff University’s School of City and Regional Planning. He talked about his experiences with local food and Farmers’ Markets, lessons from which could help Cardiff achieve its 'Sustainable City' planning vision. A key challenge is to develop a more sustainable food system with increased consumption of locally-produced food.

Steve established the Riverside Farmers’ Market in 1998, based on markets he had seen in Canada. Riverside was to become the first of a new wave of street markets in the UK where local farmers and artisan producers sold directly to the public.

However, it soon became apparent that most of the people shopping at the Riverside Farmers’ Market were not from the local area; they were coming from more affluent areas, such as Pontcanna. RCMA subsequently established Farmers’ Markets in Roath, Rhiwbina and Llandaff North. These attracted more people from their immediate localities. Nevertheless, overall, there remains a sense that Farmers’ Markets are catering for a certain type of person (like the stereotypical affluent, middle-class “foodie”).

People who regard themselves as “non-Farmers’ Market people” have said that they do not necessarily feel comfortable shopping at them. Steve contrasted this with the situation in France, where everyone shops at markets regardless of their class. High footfall therefore does not necessarily equate with successful markets. The Farmers’ Market in Newport’s John Frost Square, for example, closed after three years. This is also the case when markets are located where people are not expecting to buy food (IKEA and The Red Dragon Centre being recent examples); although cakes always sell well, apparently.

There is also a perception that Farmers’ Markets are more expensive than supermarkets. Although this is true for some value-added or artisan products, it is not necessarily the case for fruit and vegetables. Value for money and quality also need to be taken into account. An artificially pumped-up frozen supermarket chicken may be cheaper, but an equivalently-sized organic Farmers’ Market chicken is likely to taste better and go further when feeding a family.

To broaden the customer base for local food, therefore, perceptions and attitudes must be changed. New approaches include greater community involvement, changing people’s views on quality and cost, and to establish a greater range of appropriate outlets to make locally-produced food more accessible.

Food systems are more than just about retail: they are also about culture and community. The mainstream supermarket sector will always have a bigger retail advertising budget, but local food schemes are more community-oriented. RCMA Social Enterprise Ltd found that a good place to start is schools. Children are taken on farm-trips, where they get to eat fresh vegetables (a novelty for many kids). Meanwhile, role models, such as Olympic-medal winning athletes from south Wales, visit schools to promote Real Food (with an emphasis on fresh local produce) and its importance to health. This provides an important alternative to the mainstream message, epitomized for Steve by the insanity of having McDonalds as a lead sponsor of the Olympics.

There is a potential problem with supply. If local food markets become more successful, then more food needs to be grown locally. To this end RCMA has established the Riverside Community Garden in Cardiff, and the 10-acre Riverside Market Garden close to Cardiff that will supply Farmers’ Markets stalls and their Vegetable Box scheme.

Much more food could be grown within Cardiff. Steve cites the WW2 Dig for Victory campaign, when Roath Park was ploughed and turned into productive allotments that enhanced the city’s food security. For a modern response to food production in the coming post-oil age, Cuba is the place to look. After Russia turned off its oil supply, the country turned to intensive, urban, organic agriculture with great success. Around 80% of Havana’s vegetables and salads, for example, are grown in organic urban agricultural redevelopment schemes.

In Britain, communities like Todmorden in West Yorkshire are leading the way. They are planning to become self-sufficient in food by 2018. Community Gardens have proliferated (along with “help yourself” signs). The community has been drawn together, so everyone feels part of this local food scheme. It has been made possible through the political will of the local Council. Steve contrasted this with the current situation in Cardiff, where there is a long waiting lists for allotments.

Steve believes Community Food Security should incorporate the concept of Food Sovereignty, whereby food is produced locally and the means of producing that food are put into the hands of the people themselves. Community Gardens also provide education and training opportunities, so local food-producing expertise grows. The Riverside Market Garden is a community-owned social enterprise.

To make local food more accessible, a range of means can be employed to move the food closer to people’s homes. Vegetable Box schemes are proving popular, while RCMA will soon be selling from a mobile shop that can take local food into new areas of the city. A People’s Supermarket (Siop y Bobl) is planning to open in late 2012 in Cardiff, which instead of being owned by a multinational corporation will be owned by its local community. This will stock local food, along with a full range of convenience food and also non-food items. Projects like these should show people that high-quality locally-produced food is not more expensive and it is for everyone.

Riverside Market Garden:
http://www.riversidemarketgarden.co.uk/
Future Cardiff University City and Regional Planning events:
http://www.cplan.cf.ac.uk/events/

The Corner House, Cardiff

2011-12-07T16:23:00.008Z

A pyramid of thickly-sliced lamb rump, cooked to order, on a base of roasted baby potatoes mingled with pancetta and shallots, with a dollop of soubise (béchamel-based onion sauce) and topped by two asparagus spears. Juicy and flavoursome, everything on this plate was working for the greater good. It was accompanied by a seasonal (optional) redcurrant jelly with nutmeg.

This was my main course yesterday lunchtime at The Corner House Bar & Dining Rooms, which opens for business this Friday. It’s on the sharp corner of Caroline Street (the postal address) and Mill Lane (the front door) in Cardiff city centre’s self-styled Café Quarter. Operating under the Mitchell and Butler umbrella, The Corner House is the start of a new venture. It’s the first, and therefore flagship, Maybury Pub (“Maybury at The Corner House”): a planned new chain of gastropubs.

My partner decided to go for something a little different for her main course, and ordered the Salmon and Caper Fishcakes. Two thick fishcakes, each topped with a poached egg and chive hollandaise sauce, stood sentinel over a small mound of spinach. Intriguingly-spiced, they were pronounced a little salty in their cumulative effect. The saltiness was nicely counterbalanced by the poached egg, although the balance would have been better with smaller fishcakes. So (for a change): best menu choice to me! Prices for main courses range from the £10.95 Classic Burger to the £16.95 Lamb Rump.

We had gone for Scallops and Lamb Koftas, respectively, for starters. My trio of large scallops, griddled for the bare-minimum time, were mouth-meltingly light and succulent; the best scallops I’ve tasted for years. Between them lay a mound of very thin noodles, where intense ginger and soy flavours lurked. This was offset by cubes of refreshing watermelon. I liked the way these three components were arranged and could be tasted individually, but I was less sure about the handful of cress on top (maybe a case of less is more).

The Moroccan-style lamb koftas were served with a fattoush salad (crispy grilled pieces of pita bread, feta cheese, radish, cucumber, salad leaves, mint, olive oil and lemon juice) and a tzatziki dip. This was a very pleasing mixture of textures and flavours, which could also have been made into a good main course.

The wine menu offered plenty of choice, even for wine ordered by the glass. I had a glass of Rioja, while my partner ordered an Aspall’s cider (dwarfed in an oversized glass). Our friendly waiter Adam seemed representative of the experienced and enthusiastic staff at The Corner House.

The key material in the upstairs dining room is wood: wooden benches, chairs, tables and floor. Quirky touches are thankfully kept to a minimum. The animal skins slung over the chairs are, in fact, reindeer (you can buy one for yourself in the nearby Cardiff Christmas Market!). Sitting on a reindeer is a nice seasonal touch.

The redevelopment of The Corner House was not without controversy. This pub has had a colourful 137-year old history. Previously, as the Kings Cross, it was for many years one of Wales’ best-known gay bars and a focus for the capital’s gay community. A petition signed by more than 2,000 people, demanding the venue keep its gay identity, was presented to M&B’s directors. There was a sense that something important was being lost. The company said the decision was inevitable for economic reasons, as this prime site could no longer support a late-night drinking venue, and needed to become a pub and restaurant catering for customers throughout the daytime and evening (The Corner House indeed covers all the bases: doing breakfast, lunch, after-school pizza deals and so on, through to evening meals in the restaurant).

The Corner House happily describes itself as a Gastropub, but what does that mean? The term “gastropub” was first coined in the early 1990s in London, when pubs started to move away from traditional “pub grub” to offer a wider range of classier food (a novelty at the time). I have an outdated and overly-romantic picture of a Free House pub in an old building, with a traditional bar full of regulars and a dining room next door, where a renowned chef serves up high-quality food that is more affordable and less pretentious than in a typical top-end restaurant.

However, the recent Oxford English Dictionary definition of “gastropub” is: A public house which specializes in serving high-quality food. What constitutes high-quality food is a matter of debate and most dining pubs in the UK could therefore claim to be gastropubs, if they so wished. The Corner House certainly qualifies. However, the other essential feature is that you can go in and feel comfortable just ordering a drink from the bar. The downstairs area at The Corner House looks the part, but a pub needs people. Only time will tell whether this pub becomes merely a pre-dining waiting area or whether it will again attract a loyal customer-base and become an important meeting place for this community of regulars.

The Corner House
Caroline Street, Cardiff CF10 1FF
http://cornerhousecardiff.co.uk/

Previous posts on Mill Lane and Caroline Street:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/09/mill-lane-cardiff.html

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/03/caroline-street-chippy-lane-cardiff.html

Mitchells & Butlers (who also own O’Neill’s, Browns and the new Harvester in Cardiff city centre):
http://www.mbplc.com/

Reference for the Save the Kings Cross Campaign:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/02/23/bid-to-save-gay-cardiff-pub-is-defeated-91466-28216627/

Oriental Diner, Barry

2011-12-04T20:40:00.000Z

The Oriental Diner in Barry laid on an impressive spread for the Dinas Powys Wolves Football Club last night. Actually, the footballers were with “babysitters” and hopefully heading for early nights, because this was the coaches and parents’ Christmas gathering.

After a few drinks in The Sir Samuel Romilly (Wetherspoons), we took the hundred yard walk along Broad Street to the Oriental Diner. Here, we were shown to the party room (upstairs at the back) and settled down around three large tables. The food bought out, onto the large Lazy Susans on each table, featured Peking, Cantonese and Thai dishes.

Following the obligatory prawn crackers (thick ones), the Hor’s d’Oeuvre included Satay Chicken, Sesame Prawn Toast and Spring Rolls. The Crispy Fried Seaweed was popular (I didn’t have the heart to tell anyone it was actually deep-fried cabbage).

There followed a duck course: Crispy Aromatic Duck Served with Spring Onion, Cucumber, Hoi Sin Sauce and Pancakes. There was also some chicken, as an alternative to duck. Assembling the crispy duck pancakes is always fun. The cooking at the Oriental Diner has an authenticity lacking in too many Chinese restaurants, and the duck in particular reminded me of a restaurant in China (that served nothing else but crispy duck pancakes).

There were vegetarian options throughout the meal, as we had a vegetarian on the table. Actually, I would suggest, if you’re in a big group, someone is designated as vegetarian (even if they are not), because these dishes were very good (e.g., tofu with cashew nuts in yellow bean sauce) and added to the variety of food doing the rounds.

The main courses, served with rice, included Chow Mein, Thai-style Chicken Curry, Sweet and Sour Pork, Spare Ribs, Beef in Black Bean Sauce, Spicy King Prawns, and more besides. The beef and prawn, along with a rice and cashew vegetarian dish were my pick of the excellent food.

I drank draft Sun Lik Beer. It is brewed in the San Miguel brewery in Hong Kong, and is imported into the UK by Shepherd Neame. My problem with lager is usually that it is too fizzy, tastes too ‘tinny’, and is served over-cold. Draft Sun Lik is none of these, and has some subtle fruity and floral notes. I recommend it to accompany Chinese food.

The service was spot on, and the staff at Oriental Diner are clearly used to dealing with parties. The karaoke started as soon as the last of the food was cleared. As this is a food blog, I will refrain from describing the scenes that followed.

Oriental Diner
10 Broad Street Barry CF62 7AA
http://www.orientaldiner.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.sunlikbeer.co.uk/

Dickensian Fayre, Dinas Powys

2011-12-03T12:43:00.000Z

Last night (2 Dec), the Twyn (village square) in Dinas Powys was the setting for the annual Dickensian Fayre, organized by The Rotary Club of Dinas Powis to raise money for local charities.

After the freeze and torrential downpours of previous years, the constant rain and above-freezing temperature almost felt like decent weather. However, The Vale of Glamorgan Brass Band were rained off, and so didn’t perform their annual selection of carols. This diminished the Fayre’s pre-Christmas atmosphere considerably, although there was still a reasonable queue of small children and their parents outside Santa’s Grotto.

Plaid Cymru’s soup offering this year was Tomato and Vegetable (with the weather and economic climate there was something of the soup kitchen about their stall). Meanwhile, the Conservatives were doing their usual mulled wine. I have never tasted their mulled wine (as a matter of principle), but fortunately the Rotary Club were also serving it and this was strong, fruity and warming. They were also selling stollen cake and large gingerbread men, while Rotary Club members were busy on the nearby BBQs cooking hot dogs and burgers.

Anne’s owls4u were raising money for rescued owls and other birds by selling cakes and other items. The beautiful owls being walked around were taking everything in. The coconut shy opposite was a popular attraction.

Dinas Powys Infants School were raising money selling drinks, crisps and sweets. Dinas Powys and Llandough Guides were selling their usual chocolate brownies, while the Scouts had Welsh cakes and snacks for sale. We won a Billie Holiday CD box set on the Scouts’ tombola, but had less success on the Cricket Club’s drinks tombola. The W.I., as you would expect, had an attractive range of cakes for sale.

Geraint Roberts set up his bread stall at the Fayre for the first time. Geraint has started a bread subscription scheme in the village, where artisan sourdough loaves can be ordered on a weekly basis. Panettone, the sweet Milanese Christmas bread, was the seasonal special on offer.

There was the odd Top Hat, but little dressing up this year. I believe this event started in the 1980s [correct me if I’m wrong] and, while the connection with Dickens is a bit tenuous (he wrote Christmas stories), it has become an important date in the calendar for Dinas Powys residents.

The event ended before 8.30pm, by which time the wet crowd was either drying out at home or in one of the village’s remaining pubs (The Star, The Three Horseshoes or The Cross Keys), which are all clustered around The Twyn.

Incidentally, the two spellings in the opening sentence are both correct (‘Powis’ is the now less-frequently used English version of the original 'Powys').

Four Uses For a Rather Large Pumpkin

2011-11-22T22:04:00.000Z

We had visitors soon after Halloween who arrived with a monster pumpkin, grown on a Manchester allotment. The 5.24 kg (11 lb 6oz) squash had served its decorative function, and last Sunday I rather belatedly started to cook it.

When you cut up a vegetable of this size, you need to have a number of uses planned for it. So, I cut the surprisingly thin-skinned pumpkin into four and it went its separate ways.

The first quarter was soon being made into a risotto, following the method I frequently use for butternut squash risotto. Cubed pumpkin was roasted with butter, salt and pepper; meanwhile chopped onions and bacon were fried in a risotto pan. Arborio rice was stirred in and hot home-made chicken stock gradually added, with some thyme. The cooked buttery squash was stirred in toward the end; grated cheese optional.

My partner took the second quarter and made chutney, following the recipe in The Complete Book of Preserves and Pickles for Butternut, Apricot and Almond Chutney (pumpkin instead of butternut squash). The other ingredients included onion, coriander seeds, cider vinegar and orange juice. As there were less apricots and almonds in the cupboard than the recipe suggested, the jars were just labelled ‘Pumpkin Chutney’. This turned out to be a golden-coloured, sharp-tasting chutney, with the almonds giving it plenty of crunch and the coriander rounding out the flavour. It will mature for a month or so before we start eating it.

I made a soup with the third quarter. Looking through the Riverford autumn magazine and recipe files from vegetable box deliveries, I found a couple of promising ideas. The Dev-Mex Pumpkin Soup looked good (pumpkin or squash, onion, garlic, paprika, chillies, tomato, kidney beans, lime juice etc) - that’s Devon-Mexican, by the way. However, I decided to do that another day and go for the Spiced Pumpkin Soup. I roasted pumpkin cubes and fried onions, then simmered both in chicken stock with cumin, coriander, grated nutmeg and a little chilli sauce. The soup was liquidized and a dollop of sour cream was mixed in to serve.

With the last chunk of pumpkin I was tempted by some recipes in Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, which has a particularly good selected of pumpkin recipes. I liked the sound of Toulouse Lautrec’s Gratin of Pumpkin (Gratin de Potiron), for instance, taken from the French artist’s collected recipes. However, on reflection, I decided to complete a sort of three-course pumpkin meal with an American-style Pumpkin Pie for dessert.

A look through some US recipe books, collected while touring the States, suggested that all those Halloween pumpkins probably end up in the bin, because most recipes seemed to use canned pumpkin. I decided to go with a custard-style pie based on a recipe in a regional home cooking book (see below), but using fresh pumpkin. I filled a pastry casing with a mixture of mashed pumpkin, canned condensed milk (omitting the canned evaporated milk), beaten eggs, ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, vanilla essence and rum. Not bad, but next year I’ll stick to Jane Grigson’s Pumpkin Pie!

Cook books referred to:
The Complete Book of Preserves and Pickles, Catherine Atkinson and Maggie Mayhew, Anness Publishing Ltd, 2004. Page 186.
Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, Penguin Books, 1978. Pages 417-429.
Riverford Recipe Files (in Vegetable Box), 24 Oct 2011 & The Riverford Farm Cookbook, Jane Baxter, 2011.
Our US cookbooks include small press and amateur publications, which collect people’s regional home recipes and gave an insight into what people really cook (e.g., A Taste of New Mexico from the Junior League of Albuquerque; Best of the Best from Florida Cookbook etc). The Florida cookbook has plenty of microwave recipes and includes unusual dishes such as Coca-Cola Chicken: “mix ketchup, Coca-Cola and Worcestershire sauce and pour over chicken”. Sometimes, you get handy hints along the bottom of each recipe page in this type of book (e.g., Household borax dissolved in water removes stains and smells after your child has been sick”). We also have similar cookbooks, sold for charity, from regions around the UK, which must look equally strange to people from out of town.

Great British Food Revival: Beetroot

2011-11-17T18:00:00.003Z

One of the best things on TV recently has been the second series of Great British Food Revival (BBC2). The series aims to promote underappreciated British vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and shellfish, in order to try and change the public’s perception of these foods. This is needed to reverse often alarming declines in their production, with serious implications for British farming and food culture.

Different chefs have championed different foods. Highlights of the series so far have included John Torode on beef from heritage breeds, Valentine Warner on cockles and mussels, Raymond Blanc on plums, Richard Corrigan on mackerel, Michael Roux Jr on bread and on pears, and the Hairy Bikers (yes, really) enthusing about cauliflowers. With its farm-to-fork emphasis on seasonality, local produce and traditional cooking, this is my kind of cookery show.

Last night, Antonio Carluccio was promoting beetroot. I had been aware of this program since July when I briefly corresponded with Assistant Producer Isaure de Pontbriand, who was using my e-book Beetroot (2004) for research. We agreed that getting production statistics for this crop is very difficult. I think more is probably grown on allotments and in gardens than is produced commercially. They reckoned that beetroot accounts for just 1% of vegetables grown in Britain.

For those who missed it (or saw it and would welcome a summary), Antonio Carluccio started by roasting a large beetroot in embers and relating the type of statistics that have become all-to-familiar during this series. Half of all British beetroot fields have been lost in the past 30 years. In the case of beetroot, the post-war trend to preserve it in cheap heavy vinegar has seriously damaged the crop’s reputation.

Antonio talked to beetroot supplier Graham Forber and the general farm manager of Riverford Organics James McGregor, who both agreed that beetroot still has an image problem to overcome. At the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, Head Gardener Nicola Bradley introduced us to some heritage varieties, showing the diversity of beetroot. They can be cylindrical or globular, and range in colour from purple to red, orange and white.

The health benefits of beetroot were illustrated using recent research at Exeter University showing that beetroot juice significantly enhanced exercise performance. This research is new to me, and I would like to read a bit more about it. I know that discussing the health benefits was the hardest part of writing Beetroot, because there is so much flaky stuff out there. The general health benefits of consuming beetroot are not in doubt, however. If Team Britain does consume concentrated shots of beetroot juice as a “secret weapon” (oops!), then they should probably be warned about beeturia (that’s red pee, to you and me).

Interspersed with his peripatetic wanderings, Carluccio cooked a three-course meal using beetroot: A Beetroot Soufflé with Anchovy Sauce, a Timbale of Beetroot (white sauce, ham, leeks and cheese), and a Panna Cotta Dessert with lime syrup and beetroot.

Simon Hulstone, the Michelin-starred head chef at The Elephant in Torquay, likes to cook with beetroot. His Beets and Curds features a range of heritage beetroot varieties, including Chioggia (white with red stripes), Golden, a white variety (possibly Albina Vereduna), and a dusting of red beetroot powder. The heritage varieties are all grown especially for him by a local farmer. The dish looks great and I’ll certainly be ordering it if I ever find myself in Torquay.

This was another excellent edition of Great British Food Revival.

I am currently harvesting beetroot from a deep bed in my Welsh garden. My personal preference is for the cylindrical varieties (which actually predate the globe ones), with Forono being my favourite. At the time of writing Beetroot (2004), I had an allotment in Stevenage, England, where I grew a range of modern and heritage varieties. You can see photos of them in the final section of the e-book, which comprises a dictionary of cultivated varieties (The photos included here are of the heritage variety Bull’s Blood).

Beetroot (2004):
http://www.stephennottingham.co.uk/beetroot.htm

Dictionary of Beetroot Varieties:
http://www.stephennottingham.co.uk/beetroot8.htm

Family Dining at the Red Hot World Buffet

2011-11-14T15:51:00.002Z

The opening night showed that the Red Hot World Buffet and Bar in Cardiff is a fun place for adults, with plenty of great food on offer, but what would children make of it? To find out, I made a return trip with my daughters (aged 8 and 15) and partner to see how it rates as a family dining experience.

Our oldest daughter has developed a taste for sushi, so Red Hot World Buffet appeared to be a winner even before we entered. The display of sushi and seafood looked very inviting through the window. The younger daughter spotted the pizzas being prepared nearby and was similarly impressed.

To start our meal, I joined our oldest in assembling a starter plate of sushi and other seafood. I can’t get as excited as her about sushi generally (too much sticky rice for me), but the shrimps and the New Zealand mussels at Red Hot are a real treat (don’t miss the little trays of mussels with buerre blanc in the European section).

After her pizza slices fresh from the pizza oven, which proved a hit, the youngest (who is also into noodles) joined me at the Teppanyaki and Noodles section, one of ten live cooking stations around the buffet. We selected, from containers in front of us, the type of noodles we wanted, then the meat and vegetables. We passed these to the chef who stir-fried them on a hot plate with our choice of sauces. As throughout the buffet, most of the counters are low so that children have no problem seeing the food. The element of theatre and having food cooked while you watch is one of the best things about this buffet experience.

Both girls also took a liking to the adjacent Tex Mex and Louisiana sections, and corn-on-the-cob, nachos, quesadillas, olives and potato wedges were all sampled approvingly (although the youngest found the Taco tray filled with chilli and sour cream a bit hot for her taste). There are also beef burgers and BBQ chicken on offer in these sections, which I recommend as a diversion for dessert-fixated kids.

My partner was keen on the salads. I had overlooked them on my previous visit, but investigation revealed a wide range of interesting salad options around the buffet. There is also a vegetarian section that is worth sampling.

I helped my eldest daughter sample a couple of flavours of small pancake hot off the griddle, although even better were the Belgian waffles on sticks - dripping with the maple syrup she had spooned on. The ice creams and sorbets did not disappoint. My favourite was the kulfi.

For her final visit to the buffet, our youngest returned with a plate of sweets. She seemed to be finding her way around, or at least finding items on the buffet invisible to adults. Apart from the plate of sweets, and one rather overloaded dessert plate, both girls made sensible choices in taste combinations (unlike some food bloggers at the opening night party!).

We were given a tour of the buffet by Saurabh Khare, who had previously worked at the Liverpool branch. The chain was started in Nottingham in 2004 by Helen and Parmjit Dhaliwal, although Saurabh reckons it was in Liverpool that things really took off. Cardiff is the seventh Red Hot Buffet and Bar to open; in three year’s time they hope to have a total of 25 restaurants like this in the UK.

Cardiff has 35 highly-qualified chefs cooking up some 300 dishes. They specialize in particular cuisines, as Saurabh points out, so chefs from Chinese backgrounds are more likely to be cooking Chinese food, and so on. Additional buffet areas have been created in Cardiff, most notably the central live dessert station where six pastry chefs work. There are some beautifully-crafted confections on show, behind the display of over thirty tempting desserts. Saurabh admiringly admits one of the chefs is a bit of an artist. Looking up, we see previously unseen chefs on a mezzanine floor preparing salads.

Saurabh says that lunchtimes and afternoons (12pm-4pm Mon-Sat) are the main times for children in the restaurant. He indicates the area where a line of pushchairs can usually be found. They have 40 highchairs stacked somewhere to cater for a rush of younger children. Families are seated downstairs, so the upper floor remains a child-free dining zone.

The buffet opens at 5pm in the evenings, and it was already packed by 5.15pm when we arrived last Friday. There were a fair number of children downstairs and red balloons were being handed out. Around the buffet, children of all ages seemed to be mainly encountered around the ice creams (15 flavours). There was a lull around 7.30pm, and then it filled up again quickly but without children. We took our well-fed offspring home soon after, planning another trip over the Christmas holidays (note: they are getting heavily booked).

I don’t want to give the impression that this is a children’s restaurant. It might not be the best place for a children’s party, for instance, whereas the place is made for office parties (all tastes and cultures catered for). Younger children also need close supervision around the buffet due to the hot food. However, children are made very welcome at Red Hot World Buffet and it provides a unique family dining experience. Best of all, it’s a great place for children to try out new types of food, which they might not have tasted before.

Red Hot World Buffet and Bar
3-6 Hills Street, St David’s Dewi Sant
Cardiff CF10 2LE

Set prices (Children under 10 eat for half price)
Lunch: Adults from £7.99 (rising to £12.99 on Sundays when they are open all day)
Dinner: Adults from £12.99 (rising to £14.99 on Friday and Saturday evenings)
You can book online:
http://www.redhot-worldbuffet.com/redhot_cardiff.html
Opening night at Red Hot World Buffet Cardiff:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/10/red-hot-world-buffet-cardiff.html

Farm to Fork: The Pork at St Fagans

2011-11-07T10:31:00.004Z

We took visitors to St Fagans National History Museum yesterday and had Sunday lunch in the museum’s Vale Restaurant.

The open air museum, on the edge of Cardiff, is Wales’ most popular heritage attraction. The large site contains over 40 historic buildings from all around Wales, which have been moved and rebuilt. They show how people have lived in Wales over the ages. Our visitors are never disappointed by St Fagans.

I had the roast pork for lunch, which came with boiled and roast potatoes, cabbage, fluffy mashed Swede that had an unexpected hotness, some parsnip and stuffing, gravy and apple sauce. The meat was delightfully tender.

All the pork served in the restaurant is from pigs reared at St Fagans: at the Llwyn-yr–Eos Farm just a few hundred yards from the restaurant. The farm is in its original site, with the farmhouse preserved as it would have been at the end of the First World War. The pigs are traditional Welsh pigs, kept in traditional sties. The larger pigs have access to a field. You can see that the pigs and other animals are well-cared for.

I approve of the trend for suppliers to be listed on restaurant boards and in menus. I think that knowing more about how your dinner has travelled from farm to fork really adds to the dining experience.

In addition to the home-reared pork, St Fagans sources ham and potatoes from Pembrokeshire, butter from Swansea, and cheese from south Wales: Smoked Caerphilly, Welsh cheddar and Perl Lâs. The latter is described by its makers, Caws Cenarth of Carmarthenshire, as a mature Caerphilly cheese that has become naturally blue.

St Fagans: National History Museum, Cardiff CF5 6XB

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/

Wally's Kaffeehaus

2011-11-04T09:14:00.000Z

For lunch on Wednesday at Wally’s Kaffeehaus, in Cardiff’s Royal Arcade, we went for Open Sandwiches.

I had the Tyrol, which consisted of Roast Chicken breast, sweet Spanish chorizo and shaved manchego cheese, with Piquillo peppers, garlic mayonnaise and rocket, topped with black olives and served on toasted artisan sourdough.

My partner (the one who always chooses best) had the Baden, comprising German dark smoked black ham, Hereford Hop cheese and ploughman’s chutney with green salad, chopped balsamic onions and sliced pear, served on wholegrain seeded bread.

Although I really enjoyed my Tyrol, the Baden seemed to have more going for it, with a wider variety of flavours and textures, especially the tangy balsamic pickled onion and the full-flavoured cheese. The bread was also tastier and there was more of it. I know it’s an open sandwich, but I felt I wanted an extra bit of sourdough, that wasn’t under all those ingredients, just to better appreciate the bread.

There are eleven Open Sandwiches to choose from (all named after Austrian towns or villages), all served with a side garnish of potato salad, including two vegetarian options: the Rohrbach, with grilled aubergine and Caerphilly cheese, and the Linz, with marinated mushrooms, sun-blushed tomato and Perl Las cheese. I noted the Kitzbuhel, which included liver sausage and sauerkraut, and the Wiener, with marinated herring and dill pickle, for future reference. We were also tempted by the Aufschnitt: selections of cold meats and cheeses on a platter for two.

Wally’s Delicatessen has been in the Royal Arcade since 1981. It doubled its size by taking over an adjoining shop a few years ago. The Kaffeehaus opened above the Deli about a month ago. It is a family business owned by Steve Salamon - who was chatting to diners in the Kaffeehaus on Wednesday. See the Deli website (link below) for the fascinating family history.

The Kaffeehaus aims to bring Viennese Coffee House tradition to Cardiff (Steve’s father Wally Salamon was born in Austria). That is, there’s no rush, feel free to chat away or read the newspapers provided, while listening to Beethoven and Mozart on the sound system.

There is a pleasing synergy between the Deli and the Kaffeehaus. The café obviously has a wide variety of delicacies they can draw upon (the staff regularly bring trays of ham and cheese up the stairs), and the menu is designed to showcase what the Deli has to offer; while diners can take home the favourite ingredient from their lunch. We particularly liked the Hereford Hop cheese and bought some downstairs in the Deli on the way out.

The Deli sells all manner of things (around 1,600 products from all over the world) and there’s always something new to discover. I also bought fresh yeast this week and have subsequently been doing some baking (but that’s another blog post).

Wally's Kaffeehaus and Wally's Delicatessen
38 - 46 Royal Arcade, Cardiff CF10 1AE

http://www.wallyskaffeehaus.co.uk/

http://www.wallysdeli.co.uk/index.html

The Chocolate Factory, Swansea

2011-11-01T09:24:00.001Z

Last week we had a half-term family trip to The Chocolate Factory, which is located on Swansea’s Fforestfach Industrial Estate. Booking on a guided tour is essential, as there’s nothing to see otherwise. This is entertaining and educational for kids (they are used to school groups) and gives adults an honest behind-the-scenes look at the chocolate-making process.

The tour started in a small classroom. We learned where chocolate comes from – geographically and botanically. Bits of cocoa pod and beans were handed round. There are around 30-40 beans in a pod; these are sun-dried and broken down to separate the shell from the chocolate pieces or nibs. Apparently, you only get the equivalent of around 10 chocolate bars from one cocoa tree per harvest.

The nibs are processed to make cocoa butter (responsible for the melt-in-the-mouth texture) and the cocoa powder (the flavour). White chocolate is all butter and no powder (it’s technically not chocolate). The Chocolate Factory’s milk chocolate and dark chocolate are 33% and 50% cocoa powder, respectively.

All the chocolate processed at The Chocolate Factory comes from the Ivory Coast (where some 40% of the world’s chocolate originates). The milk and white chocolate comes via a processing plant in France, while the dark chocolate comes via Belgium. The additional ingredients are milk and sugar. The factory melts the imported chocolate (by the sackful) and shapes it into the final product.

The tour continued on the factory floor. There are about 40 workers employed here, plus around 15 office staff and a few people on the PR/education/tour side of things. All the factory signs are bilingual - English and Polish, that is – reflecting the nationality of the workforce.

First up were the melting kettles, which can each hold around half-a-ton of liquid chocolate. The molten chocolate is then treated in two ways. It is either directed through nozzles into trays, moving along a production line, to make solid chocolates (e.g., for advent calendars) or put into moulds that are rotated to make hollow chocolates (e.g., Easter Eggs).

The type of chocolate product varies seasonally. The Halloween production had finished when we visited. Some reddish/orange items (coloured using paprika) were consumed, but I think they were more for show than taste. The advent calendar and Christmas lollipop production is now in full swing. The Chocolate Factory deals with many corporate clients.

The Chocolate Factory’s location on a west Swansea Industrial Estate is not pretty. The purple-branded warehouse is looking a bit shabby, although it’s about to get a major face-lift. There are no farm buildings or cows in fields, like Pemberton’s Chocolate Farm in Carmarthenshire, and none of the glamour and fantasy of Cadbury World (since 2010 owned by US giant Kraft Foods). The Chocolate Factory is itself no cottage industry - it is owned by the US-based (Ohio) Adam Limle Company, who also own Babe Ruth Burger Bars and are involved in catering, event planning, Media, Design and Architecture, Sports and much else besides.

The tour continued with the wrapping machines (coloured foil being wrapped around heart-shaped chocolates last week) and ended in the shop. It was very informative and got you right down on the production line (where hair nets and aprons must be worn). There was lots of free chocolate – from the reject piles (must be decent quality control). My two girls, who are knowledgeable about these things, say there is far more free chocolate given away on this tour than either at Pemberton’s or Cadbury’s World. There were even marshmallows, freshly dipped into the milk chocolate kettle.

The Chocolate Factory:
http://www.thechocolatefactory.com/

Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival

2011-10-29T18:26:00.000+01:00

Large crowds turned out today for the seventh annual Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival / Gŵyl Bwyd a Diod Y Bont-Faen (29-30 Oct 2011), in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan. With over 80 exhibitors, cooking demonstrations, food and drink talks, entertainment and children’s activities, it has become one of the regions top food festivals.

We arrived early and parked in a farm on the edge of town – part of the free park and ride service. The main marquees were bustling with activity by mid-morning. Although the festival is centred on these marquees, events occur throughout the market town.

In the main Festival Marquee and the Cheese & Wine Marquee there was a great selection of fine food and drink to sample and purchase. We seemed to sample a lot of cheese, and lingered at Teifi Farmhouse Cheese, Cothi Valley Goats (cheese), Caws Cenarth Cheese, Slade Farm Organics, Wernddu Wines & Vineyard, and many more stalls besides. You can see Cardiff’s The Parsnipship in the foreground of the photo taken down the main marquee.

There was some tempting cooking smells emanating from the hot food marquee. Glam Lamb and the Venison Burger stalls, and the hog roast, were attracting sizeable queues. We opted for Taste of Persia, sharing a Lamb Kebab and a Pomegranate Chicken with Walnuts and rice. Based in Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire, they are regulars at Cardiff’s Riverside Food Market.

Taste of Persia’s owner Kamran Khanverdi was among the chefs doing demonstrations today in the True Taste of Wales exhibition trailer, in the Town Hall car park. Others included Kurt Fleming of ffresh Bar & Restaurant. Martin Cowley (Cowley’s Fine Foods) was demonstrating historical meat-drying techniques.

Bev Robins from the Otley Brewery and Deryck Mathews of Preselli Coffee are among the contributors to the drinks talks programme in Cowbridge Town Hall. A Real Ale Festival was well underway by lunchtime today at the Vale of Glamorgan Inn.

Other events around Cowbridge include a Craft Fayre, a Champagne Marquee & Bar, and a circus (from the Belgian twin town of Mouscron). The festival continues tomorrow (Sunday 30 Oct: 10am-4pm). Entry to marquees: £4 adults (under 12s free).

Last year the event was awarded the National Tourism Awards Wales: Best Community Event 2010. If it continues to be this successful, the organizers might have to get bigger marquees to fit in all the visitors (they already have many more applications for trade stands than they can accomodate).

Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival is already pencilled into our diary again for next year, with a note that we need to spend much more time there to do justice to all the events!

Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival:
http://www.cowbridgefoodanddrink.org/

Red Hot World Buffet Cardiff

2011-10-27T17:41:00.003+01:00

The Red Hot World Buffet and Bar was packed for its launch party last night in Cardiff. There were drinks, speeches, belly dancing, Chinese dragon dancing, Indian music, stilt walkers, and finally the opening of the buffet itself.

A walk around the buffet takes you past Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Tex-Mex, Cajun, Italian, Mediterranean and British food items (around 300 in all), including live stations where chefs prepare food such as pizza and risotto. There are also plenty of desserts and ice creams. Portion size is small for most pre-prepared items, to help you make a diverse selection. There's a range of vegetarian options and all the food is attractively presented.

Faced with this cornucopia, I made my usual buffet mistake - my first plateful mixed too many items that did not complement each other. Some of the dishes are pleasingly hot and spicy, for instance, and don’t go with other styles of food. I prefer buffets after I get familiar with them, and always enjoy buffets on all-inclusive holidays more after several days when I can assemble my optimum buffet plateful.

I had an enjoyable seafood selection for my second plate last night, with some excellent mussels. I finished off with several types of dessert (it’s all cream and chocolate rather than fresh fruit). Not all the world’s regions are pulled off with the same success, and I’ll be honing in on the Indian and oriental areas on future visits. I’ll also be taking the kids, to see what they make of it and how the place caters for them. I expect this is where the pizza station comes into its own.

Red Hot World Buffet reminds me somewhat of Epcot’s World Showcase in Orlando, Florida. This is not a criticism of the food by the way; some of the pavilions around the lake at Disney’s park pull out all the stops to promote their nation’s cuisine (although Ye Olde British Pub serving “warm beer” and greasy chips is to be avoided). The connection is the attraction of sampling many world cuisines in one place; although the disneyfication of the dining experience was evident in the choice of entertainment at Red Hot World Buffet and Bar last night.

The first Red Hot World Buffet and Bar was founded in Nottingham in 2004. The Cardiff branch is the seventh in the UK. It offers all-you-can-eat buffet dining for a set price, from £7.99 for lunch and £12.99 for dinner.

If you really want, say, Italian or Japanese, then you should probably stick to a specialist restaurant, but if you want to sample a range of world cuisines in one sitting then Red Hot World Buffet is definitely the place for you.

Red Hot World Buffet and Bar
3-6 Hills Street, St David’s Dewi Sant, Cardiff CF10 2LE
http://www.redhot-worldbuffet.com/redhot_cardiff.html

The last time I ate at Epcot I had an excellent Moroccan evening (complete with obligatory belly dancer, of course). Penarth-based food blogger Rebecca (Fasting Foodie) recently ate in Epcot. Here's her post:
http://fastingfoodie.blogspot.com/2011/10/eating-in-america-food-is-theme-park.html

The NOMA cookbook

2011-10-25T16:00:00.002+01:00

Recently I staggered home from Cardiff City Library with their copy of NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi, head chef of NOMA in Copenhagen (“The Best Restaurant in the World™”). I should make it clear I borrowed the book on my library card. If you do likewise, I suggest leaving a wheelbarrow outside the library to help you get the volume home (don’t worry – there’s currently a low incidence of wheelbarrow theft in central Cardiff).

There seems to be a competition among alpha-male celebrity chefs (see also: Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal) to produce the biggest, heaviest and most expensive cookbook. I believe Nathan Myhrvold is currently winning with his 2,438 page, 40 lb, £395 r.r.p. book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (suck on that Redzepi). I like reading these books, despite knowing I’m never likely to eat in the actual restaurants. I did see the outside of NOMA on a recent trip to Copenhagen, en route to a Tivoli snackbar.

NOMA is a fascinating book, which traces the origins of the restaurant. The main challenge, and the main source of interest for me, is this: How do you go about presenting original and seasonal Nordic cuisine year-round to the highest possible restaurant standards. When the idea was first hatched, top-end Danish restaurants served mainly French and Mediterranean cuisine and the idea of NOMA was not taken that seriously (jokes about seal blubber, apparently). Redzepi has certainly proved his critics wrong.

The best-reading section of the book comes early on. It is a diary of Redzepi’s initial research trip through the Nordic region, looking for inspiration and potential suppliers for the restaurant. He takes in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Finland and northern Scandinavia. Here, the core idea of foraging for wild ingredients takes hold. Among the memorable dairy entries are descriptions of eating raw puffin and whalemeat, and live langoustines: “you can still feel the meat pulsating in the mouth.” He learns that there are 59 types of edible berry growing in the Nordic Region (actually, he probably knew this already being a clever sort of bloke). The diversity of seafood and edible flora gets his mind racing.

The second section is of photographs: Noma dishes, Nordic scenery and food producers. The food is picturesque. Colour is important, with red and yellow dishes a particular feature. Circular swirls of sauce help to unite the components of the dishes, which frequently contain elements representing the wild habitat from where the main ingredient was found.

The final section of the book is the recipes, which refer back to and make sense of the photographs of the dishes (it is sometimes unclear how the dishes relate to their titles). These are not recipes to do at home, unless you have an off-kitchen laboratory (equipped with thermomix, water baths, Pacojet, vacuum bags, refractometer etc.) and several assistants. They are however inspiring, like conceptual art, and give an essential insight into why Noma is so highly regarded.

Unusual ingredients commonly used include hay, for smoking food - with the ash being used for organic effect - and malt (a brewery by-product) that's also used to create ‘soil’ and landscapes on the plate. Milk skin with grass and herbs, and dessert of wild flowers, are signature dishes. Crabs, sea urchins, scallops, squid and other seafood are often combined with foraged seashore herbs or berries. You could be served bulrushes, violets, elderflowers, spruce shoots, juniper or wood sorrel, with fresh cheese or tartare of beef. You get the picture.

So is there anything a cook in Cardiff can learn from NOMA? The main thing is that food is out there for the taking, and foraged food should not be looking down on or regarded as inferior to ingredients sourced from a high-end supplier or deli. Indeed, handling ingredients from picking or harvesting all the way to the plate, Redzepi suggests, gives you a better feel for the food. There are plenty of berries, nuts, fungi, herbs, wild flowers, seaweeds to be foraged, for instance, in the Vale of Glamorgan (most recently blackberries, sloes, haws, mushrooms), and it’s free.

Cardiff’s library copy of NOMA is now safely back on its groaning shelf (I’m currently in training so I can borrow Heston’s Home Cooking). I don’t think they have the Myhrvold in yet.

Copenhagen Food Diary:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/09/copenhagen-food-diary.html

Tesco Express, Dinas Powys

2011-10-23T14:21:00.004+01:00

The arrival of a Tesco Express in a village well-served by local shops was always going to be controversial. It’s a story familiar to communities all across the land. There have been no riots in Dinas Powys, in the Vale of Glamorgan, as occurred recently in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, but there has been significant opposition to the development. Advertising material has been torn down and “Local Shops - Use Them or Lose Them” signs have proliferated in the local butchers, greengrocers, pharmacy, post office etc.

The Tesco Express is replacing The Castle Oak pub, which shut down earlier this year. Although Tesco did not need planning permission to convert from a pub to a convenience store, they had to apply for planning permission for signage, the installation of air-conditioning units, an ATM, and a new shop front. The relevant Planning Committee meeting was held on 29 September.

When Tesco appeared to be working on the shop front weeks before this meeting, the “unauthorized” work created a local storm. The situation was exacerbated by the pavement being blocked, forcing pedestrians into the road. An 84-year old woman tripped on the kerb, banged her head, and needed hospital treatment. The elderly shopper was making her way to the Valley View Fruit Stores, owner by Jan and Tony Mapstone. They have run the local shop for 14 years and, like many local traders, consider the attitude of Tesco to be arrogant and cavalier. A Tesco spokesperson said that they had simply been improving the internal structure of the building.

It should be noted that not everyone in Dinas Powys is opposed to Tesco. One local resident expressed a typical view: “I for one will be using Tesco alongside the local greengrocers and butchers.”

The outcome of the Planning Committee meeting on 29 September was indecisive and a decision was deferred pending a site visit. This took place on Thursday 20 October at 3.15pm. The Planning Committee was met by a demonstration of protestors with placards.

Local Plaid Cymru Councillor Keith Hatton said: “Concerns are centered on the applications for an ATM (where one already exists next door in the newsagents) and the proposed non-illuminated gantry sign on the grassed area to the west of the site.” The proposed gantry sign was particularly contentious, being 3.2m high and 17m from the building; potentially dominating the approach to the shops.

The members of the Planning Committee returned to the Civic Offices in Barry for a Full Planning Meeting on the evening of 20 October. The outcome was that the signage situated away from the store was refused, but the ATM was deemed acceptable.

Tesco will be hard-pressed to open before Christmas, but work is now going full-steam ahead including Saturdays and Sundays. Tesco will be selling very little that is not already available in the shops of Dinas Powys. Furthermore, their produce is unlikely to be locally sourced, as it is in the Valley View Fruit Stores. It's not just about the local stores, remember, it's also about the local farms, bakers, pie-makers and other producers who sell through local stores.

When Tesco opens, it will be up to the community of Dinas Powys (and similar communities throughout the land) to either support their local shops or lose them.

I’ll post again here on developments.

Re: Comments below:
I agree about the Spar, which really does need to raise it's game if it is to survive.

St David’s, Cardiff

2011-10-22T11:41:00.012+01:00

The extended St David’s / Dewi Sant shopping centre was officially opened two years ago today. It's now hard to imagine Cardiff City centre without it.

The Eastside part of the extension (formerly St David’s 2) was designed as a Café Wing, which remains open in the evenings after the main shopping concourse closes. There are now two major concentrations of chain restaurants and cafes in Cardiff: here and in Mermaid Quay, Cardiff Bay.

All-together there are around 35 places to eat and drink in the wider St David’s Centre complex: BB’s Coffee and Muffins, Bellini’s Express, Bhs, Boof, Cadwaladers, Café Rouge, Carluccio’s, Chimichanga, Costa, Costa Coffee, Debenhams, Ed’s Tasty Diner, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Greggs, Jamie’s Italian, John Lewis, Krispy Kreme, M&S, Muffin Break, Nando’s, Pizza Express, Prêt a Manger, Prezzo, Ruby Tuesday, Shake Away, Soho Coffee, Spud-U-Like, Starbucks, Starbucks Link Bridge, T.G.I. Friday’s, Wagamama, Yo Sushi and Yoo Moo.

There are three significant food openings in the coming weeks: Auntie Anne’s, Signor Valentino and the Red Hot World Buffet.

Auntie Anne’s is moving into a unit on the ground floor of Eastside. A US chain founded in 1988, Auntie Anne’s has its roots in a Pennsylvania Farmers’ Market and will sell baked goods, including pretzels.

Signor Valentino, the Italian restaurant chain established by Barek Arabestani in 2011, will be opening shortly on Level 1 Eastside, in the unit vacated by the closure of the Sale Pepe Italian restaurant. The chain will be building on the success of their outlet in Mermaid Quay.

The Red Hot World Buffet opens next week and will offer food from around the world (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Tex-Mex, Cajun, Italian and so on) in a large unit on pedestrianized Hill Street opposite Debenhams. I’ll be there for its opening next week to check it out.

The keystone to St David’s 2 was arguably the early involvement of John Lewis, whose store is at the far (southern) end of the mall complex. With John Lewis in place, others followed. At the sharp end of the John Lewis resides the department store’s main restaurant. This is a light airy space, with glass walls offering views down to The Hayes. It’s a good place for relaxing and quiet conversation. Finding a table seemed to be no problem early lunchtime (11.45am onwards) and there are plenty of food options (hot meals, salads, jacket potatoes).

I enjoyed my cappuccino (£2.25) and honey and almond slice (£1.95). The John Lewis restaurant is called The Place to Eat, rather a grand claim given that it looks down on the likes of Carluccio’s and Jamie’s Italian!

The success of St David’s is not in doubt. Figures just released show that the shopping centre attracted more than 75 million visitors in its first two years, making Cardiff one of the busiest city centres in the UK.

St David’s:

http://www.stdavidscardiff.com/Dining

All you need to know about St David's (catchment area etc.). Click on Downloads, Leasing Brochure:

http://www.landsecuritiesretail.com/portfolio/St-Davids

Further visitor number information:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/10/21/wales-biggest-shopping-centre-attracted-75-million-visitors-in-first-two-years-new-figures-show-91466-29633372/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15403930

Four Seasons Pizza

2011-10-19T13:42:00.002+01:00

A family meal last night: the teenager (birthday and off to Italy tomorrow) chose Pizza Express on Mermaid Key, Cardiff Bay. We dug out a voucher for an offer on Dough Ball starters and Classic pizzas. It fitted the bill.

I ordered the Four Seasons (Quattro Stagioni). This was my favourite pizza when I was a teenager, but I have not had one for years (in fact, I'm not a big pizza fan).

Pizza Express started as a chain in the UK in 1965 and the Classic pizzas are apparently made using the original recipe. A “sampler pizza” when pizza first became popular in the UK, the Four Seasons was once thought sophisticated. Now, in concept it sounds a little dated and off-message (“what, only a quarter of it is fresh and seasonal!”).

Of course, you rightly say, the four quarters are only representative of the four seasons, and this pizza was served in Italy many years before pizza chains became fashionable in the UK. Traditionally, artichoke hearts represent spring, olives summer, mushrooms autumn, and prosciutto or another ham represents winter.

The Four Seasons has been variously reinterpreted in the UK; for example, with pretty contrasting colours. Fortunately, Pizza Express go for contrasting taste sensations. Their Quattro Stagioni has a mushroom quarter, a meat (pepperoni) quarter, a mozzarella quarter, and an anchovy and caper quarter. The olives were fairly random and didn’t belong to any particular quarter. I liked the salty/fishy taste in contrast with the rest of the pizza, but where were the artichokes?

I prefer my pizza crust a little crisper than Pizza Express were serving last night. The ingredients also lacked a little zing or freshness. The pizzas were not bad, but fell a little short of value-for-money, and are certainly not the best you can get down Cardiff Bay. My particular recommendation for pizza is Bar Cwtch, the cellar bar of Jolyon’s Hotel.

The Dough Ball starters at Pizza Express are, in effect, a variation on garlic bread. The more-ish Dough Balls have also recently appeared (minus garlic) with Nutella on the dessert menu.

Pizza Express score with their Dolcetti – mini-portions of sweet dishes to have with coffee. Last time I enjoyed the Caffé Reale (figs, cinnamon, white wine spiced syrup and mascarpone). This time the Semi Freddo Reale (a gelato dessert with marsala and a crust made from nougat and praline) hit the spot alongside a cappuccino.

It will be interesting to hear how our oldest rates the food in Italy compared to Pizza Express.

Pizza Express menu:
http://www.pizzaexpress.com/our-food/discover.aspx

Penarth Apple Day

2011-10-16T16:53:00.000+01:00

Apple Day was first launched as an annual food awareness day in 1990 by the environmental charity Common Ground. Today (16 Oct), Penarth’s local environmental group Gwyrddio Penarth Greening (GPG) organized Penarth’s first Apple Day in Belle Vue Park.

Among the stalls was a display of different apple varieties, with notes on their history, and a comparison tasting of three stewed apples (Bramley Seedling, Tom Putt and Golden Noble). An apple press was being put to constant use, making freshly-pressed apple juice from local apples. You could buy apple chutneys and preserves, cider and apple wine and apple juice, and apples from an orchard “picked on Thursday.”

Hampton’s were selling half-a-dozen different types of apple cake and tarts. I went for a large slice of the Apple Date and Cinnamon Cake, which was generously topped with toasted nuts. This kept me going for the rest of my cycle ride from Dinas Powys.

La Crêperie de Sophie were cooking apple-themed pancakes.

In addition to organizing the Apple Day, GPG have been running the Harvest Penarth scheme. Anthony Slaughter of GPG said that this involves some complex logistics. Groups of volunteers have to be organized to visit gardens around Penarth that have unwanted and surplus fruit. They have harvested over 20 trees from residents who are happy to support the scheme. The idea is that the fruit is distributed to care homes and charitable organizations in the area. Some of the damaged and bruised fruit collected was used to make the chutneys on sale today.

PGP also organize the Penarth Food Festival:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/07/penarth-food-festival_17.html

PGP:
http://www.gpgpenarth.org.uk/

National Food Weeks

2011-10-13T13:55:00.006+01:00

This week it is apparently National Curry Week, Chocolate Week and British Egg Week.

There has been a proliferation of National Food Weeks in the UK (and globally) over the past ten years or so. These promotional or awareness weeks are initiated by corporate concerns, government bodies and pressure groups. They are usually promoted uncritically by the media. No wonder National Food Weeks are so popular - it’s free advertising!

In addition, there are any number of food promotion days (e.g., Yorkshire Pudding Day falls on 5th Feb 2012) that are too numerous to record here.

There are also health awareness weeks most weeks, highlighting medical conditions that are often food-related (e.g., Food Allergies and Intolerances: 23-28 Jan 2012). The medical conditions rising in incidence the most alarmingly, such as diabetes, are linked to overeating and obesity (National Childhood Obesity Week: 4-12 July 2011).

If you want to start your own awareness week, you better get in quick as there are not many weeks left free (in fact, most weeks are double-booked!). The more they stack up, the more ineffectual they are going to become.

This week I cooked curry, scrambled eggs and ate chocolate (not all at the same time), but I refuse to believe that it had anything to do with National Food Weeks.

Below I list some of the main promotional weeks in the UK with dates and the names of the organizations behind them.

National Farmhouse Breakfast Week (22-28 Jan 2012) is a government promotion of cereal farming by the Cereals Division of AHDB (Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board).

Bramley Apple Week (5-12 Feb 2012) is bought to you by The Bramley Campaign.

National Chip Week (21-27 Feb 2011) is an initiative from the British Potato Council.

Fairtrade Fortnight (28 Feb - 13 March 2011) is Fairtrade organized.

British Pie Week (7-13 March 2011) is bought to you by Jus-Rol Pastry, a division of General Mills Berwick Ltd.

Bacon Connoisseurs Week (21-27 March 2011) is a Red Tractor initiative - a government agricultural promotion.

British Sandwich Week (15-21 May 2011) is organized by The British Sandwich Association and supported by Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Ginsters, Greggs, Prêt a Manger etc.

National Vegetarian Week (23-29 May 2011) is organized by The Vegetarian Society of the UK and supported by Cauldron Foods.

British Food Fortnight and Welsh Food Fortnight (17 Sept - 2 Oct 2011) is sponsored by Aramark.

British Cheese Week (24 Sept - 2 Oct 2011) is organized by The British Cheese Board and sponsored by Ryvita. Events include The Great British Cheese Festival in Cardiff Castle.

National Cask Ale Week (1–9 Oct 2011) is a brewing industry initiative.

Chocolate Week (10-16 Oct 2011) is sponsored by Hotel Chocolat, Thornton’s, Divine Chocolate and others.

British Egg Week (10-16 Oct 2011) is organized in association with British Lion Eggs (the egg marketing board).

National Curry Week (9-15 Oct 2011) is supported by ASDA, Cobra Lager and Pataks.

British Sausage Week (31 Oct -6 Nov 2011) is an initiative of The British Sausage Appreciation Society (supported by several commercial sponsers).

National Taste of Game Fortnight (5-19 Nov 2011) is organized by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC).

National Eating Out Week (20-26 Nov 2011) appears to be a spin off from National Curry Week, supported by Indian restaurants among others.

Of course, being a food writer, I am as guilty of passing on National Food Week marketing as the next blogger. Sometimes it just can’t be resisted.

Here’s a previous post on British Pie Week:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/03/british-pie-week.html

For a complete list of US National Food Holidays see:
http://foodimentaryguy.wordpress.com/today-in-national-food-holidays/today-in-food-holidays-food-facts/january-food-holidays-foodimentary/

RWCMD, Cardiff

2011-10-12T22:16:00.002+01:00

The recent extension of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) houses The Richard Burton Theatre and The Dora Stoutzker Hall. At the back of the central lobby, there is also The Café Bar, which does coffees and teas, sandwiches and jacket potatoes, along with a soup and a hot meal special (£6). It’s a good place to get a filling lunch, if you are happy eating the dish the chef happens to be cooking.

Today I picked up some tickets and stayed for lunch. The main meal was Pork Belly with Sweet Sage and Apple Sauce served with Potatoes and Seasonal Vegetables. This comprised a large chunk of succulent belly pork, slightly caramelized on top and topped with hot apple slices (good to see the skin still on) in a sweet and rich sagey gravy. It was served with steamed cauliflower and baby carrots, and roast potatoes (I probably didn’t need the potatoes). This was a hearty meal that sort of demanded a colder day. The lunchtime soup special was French Onion.

The café was busy with students, people attending the Electric Stage event, and community police officers (the station is nearby). As I was leaving, the main meal had changed for the afternoon. The chef was now cooking Spicy Aubergines filled with couscous served with garlic bread. On a previous occasion it was Swansea Mussels.

A walk around Bute Park on this balmy October afternoon was in order afterwards.

On a musical note, it’s good to see RWCMD programming modern jazz. Cardiff jazz fans have long been resigned to frequent trips to Bristol, which has a superior jazz scene, to hear the top modern jazz acts. Among the concerts I’ll be attending later this month at RWCMD is one by the jazz trio Meadow. With Cardiff setting great store on its music scene, jazz concerts to rival Bristol’s would be most welcome. Here’s a plug for Meadow's new album Blissful Ignorance on Edition Records.

RWCDM:
http://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/

A previous post on the RWCMD:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/06/penguin-cafe.html

Red Mullet

2011-10-06T21:36:00.001+01:00

Back in the day, we thought a mullet was a haircut. Nowadays, we know it’s a fish; a fish that is becoming more common on UK fish slabs.

We need to change our fish-eating habits. Cod stocks are depleted and switching to whiting, mackerel, coley and other sustainably-fished species is desirable. However, there is another change coming: global climate change.

A recent report by marine biologists concluded that global warming will lead to profound changes in the populations of common fish species in the waters off the UK. Rising sea temperatures will adversely impact cold-water species such as cod, haddock and pollock. The good news is that the study demonstrated responses to warming in 72% of common species, with three times more species increasing in abundance than declining. The study is supported by recent data from actual catches. Red mullet, hake and dab are among the species that are now being caught more frequently in British waters.

It is therefore a good time to look out some recipes for red mullet and other warmer-water species. You will not find them in British seafood cookery books; you have to look to Mediterranean cuisine.

Red mullet or surmullets are actually two species of goatfish (Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus), which are unrelated to grey mullet. They have been eaten in the Mediterranean since Roman times, when they were reared in pools (an early example of fish-farming).

The Silver Spoon, Italy’s best-selling cookbook, has the following recipes for red mullet: with fennel, Livorno-style, with herbs, and with beans. The book advises that red mullet be touched as little as possible, since the tender flesh breaks up easily.

On Monday, I had Red Mullet with Anchovies and Herb Crème Fraiche, cooked by guest chef Shaun Hill, at ffresh in Cardiff Bay (see October 4 blog). It is a pretty pink fish, with delicately flavoured white flesh. On that occasion it was cooked to perfection.

I was going to cook red mullet tonight, but didn’t manage to get hold of any (rather undermining the thrust of today's post!). However, I did cook sea bass; briefly under a hot grill and then roasted with fennel seeds, lemon and a splash of wine, and served with ratatouille and some apple smoked sourdough made by Geraint here in Dinas Powys. The fennel seeds inside the fish cavity imparted a pleasing flavour.

References:
Continental Shelf-Wide Response of a Fish Assemblage to Rapid Warming of the Sea. Stephen D. Simpson, Simon Jennings, Mark P. Johnson, Julia L. Blanchard, Pieter-Jan Schön, David W. Sims, and Martin J. Genner. Current Biology, 15 Sept 2011.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(11)00891-8

The Silver Spoon. English Edition. Phaidon Press. 2005.

A previous post on tilapia:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2010/07/tilapia.html

PastaPot, Cardiff

2011-10-05T21:01:00.001+01:00

Pasta Pot opened for business today on Guildford Place, near the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I was one of their first customers.

The first thing that strikes you about PastaPot is the bright and distinctive colours. This is the first food venture for the three owners, but it’s obviously branded with an eye to a franchise.

This is very much a take-away; with very little space for eating-in (three stools and a counter shared with the cutlery, sugar etc). Meals are served to go in waxed cardboard boxes. I’m not sure how often I’ll be using PastaPot (the street furniture along St Mary Street looks less attractive in the autumn rain); pasta is a less versatile on-the-move fast-food than a baguette (and potentially messier). Customers will probably be from local offices, although it should be popular with crowds heading for the nearby Millennium Stadium.

The main focus is on build-your-own pasta meals. There are three pasta shapes to choose from: penne (tubes), conchiglie (shells) and spaghetti (strings); then a choice of sauces, and then a choice of toppings. The pasta is genuine Italian: sourced from De Cecco. There is no Jamie’s style in-house pasta maker, but co-owner James wasn’t ruling it out as an option long-term.

I must admit, I am not a fan of the Subway approach, where you decide on a staple (bread type, pasta shape), then the filling and then the garnish. Mathematically it suggests infinite choice, but you always end up with basically the same thing. I much prefer a creative cook to do the thinking and to come up with something a little different. This does not happen at Subway, but Cardiff independents (e.g., Fresh baguette bar) are generally good at this sort of thing.

Luckily for lazy people like me, Paul the chef at PastaPot has come up with interesting ready-made favourite options and he’ll be doing daily specials. I went for today’s special, the Cheesy Green Nutter (a reference to the green men who have been running around promoting the place). It consisted of penne pasta, with roquefort cheese, fresh asparagus, pine nuts, fresh basil & cracked pepper, and it was good. Today’s soup special was sweet potato and roasted red pepper.

The hotpot sauce choices include arabbiata, bolognese, carbonara and pesto. I would suggest going for the larger pot (£3.95 cf. £3.50) and arming yourself with a plastic spoon rather than a fork if your option has pine nuts and suchlike. Don’t forget to pick up a 10% off loyalty card.

There are different coldpot selections for building your own pasta salad. There's also fruit on the counter. In fact, the food in PastaPot all looks very healthy. Pot Noodle it’s not.

Pasta Pot:
http://www.pasta-pot.co.uk/

De Cecco pasta:
http://www.dececco.it/EN/

ffresh bar and restaurant

2011-10-04T11:31:00.000+01:00

ffresh bar and restaurant is celebrating its second birthday in the Wales Millennium Centre, in Cardiff Bay, and its recent inclusion in The Good Food Guide 2012. Last night, Michelin-starred Chef Shaun Hill (Consultant at ffresh and Executive Chef at The Walnut Tree) and ffresh’s own Head Chef Kurt Fleming prepared a stunning meal as part of the restaurant’s celebrations.

There was a veritable smörgâsbord of food bloggers among those invited, spread over three tables (so you won’t need to look far for a second opinion).

Politicians present included Alun Davies, the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and European Programmes. ffresh is notable for its policy of sourcing locally (around 80% of its ingredients) and working with Wales the True Taste partners (an annual awards initiative funded by the Welsh Assembly Government).

The wine for the meal was supplied by the Wales the True Taste award-winning Ancre Hill Vineyard, Monmouth, whose owner Richard Morris was present. A sparkling rose accompanied the canapés, which included a very tasty wild rice arancini (breadcrumb-coated fried riceballs).

Red mullet with anchovies and herb crème fraiche was an exceptional dish; the herby saltiness enhancing and not overpowering the fish’s subtle flavour. The crème fraiche was sourced from Rachel’s. An Ancre Hill Chardonnay had the right citrus notes to accompany this fish dish.

The Roasted Partridge with its own pudding was an uncompromising dish, with a deep and intense gaminess. It was accompanied by some hispi lettuce and the mysterious round puddings. Partridge is a feature of Shaun Hill’s menus. The taste evoked memories of an off-the-beaten track gamekeeper-supplied rural pub I knew in my youth. Shaun also seems to like working with lentils, but pureed so it’s not obvious they are lentils. The main course was helped along by a fruity and full-bodied Ancre Hill Pinot Noir 2009, the pick of the night’s wines for me.

Hot chocolate fondant, hazelnut praline sauce and Wild Fig vanilla ice cream was nothing short of sensational. The hush that descended on the dining room was an indication that something special was going down. A honey-sweet wine accompanied this, which tasted way-to-sweet before the pudding arrived but made perfect sense against the intense chocolate.

There were a couple of other restaurants in this unit before ffresh, but being operated by the Wales Millennium Centre itself has worked to ffresh’s advantage – it feels more integrated into the building and it’s activities. With its open kitchen, enabling diners to see the chefs working, programmes of bar music and guest chef nights, ffresh serves up Good Food Guide quality food and an entertaining dining experience.

ffresh, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay:
http://www.ffresh.org.uk/

Ancre Hill Vineyard, Monmouth:
http://www.ancrehillestates.co.uk/

The Walnut Tree, near Abergavenny:
http://thewalnuttreeinn.com/index.html

The rebranding of the Cardiff Arts Institute

2011-09-27T21:25:00.004+01:00

The Cardiff Arts Institute (CAI) re-opened this week, after a radical refurbishment. Brains are now sole owners and they have rebranded the bar as “The Institute”. The Lego wall and all the other quirky details have gone.

Established in 2009, the CAI (“Canteen, Social Club & Music Room”) was a partnership of Brains with 580 Ltd and Something Creatives who did the design and event programming. It had a very distinctive décor, with some highly original touches, but it was not really built to last.

The new décor is more robust than previously and not as bland as some feared it might be. The new theme is Art Gallery, appropriate given that this bar is across the road from the National Museum of Wales. There are numerous reproductions of old masters, along with a good selection of historical photos of Cardiff. The Lego wall has been covered in blue flock wallpaper of the type found in old-fashioned museums. The (frankly awful) wall of rubber gloves is now bare brick and a handsome large mirror. There’s Leonardo (sorry, Michelangelo) on the ceiling above the bar, and the skull (optically corrected) from Holbein’s The Ambassadors above the stairs descending to the basement; although in other areas the selection appears pretty random (and I don’t think the originals of any of these are in the museum over the road).

I thought the food (and drink) in the old CAI was overpriced and a little fussy. Brains have completely changed that, with a no-nonsense menu that caters to the budget eater and the very hungry.

Breakfasts include The Breakfast (£4.95) and other items apparently marketed toward the hung-over; “sarnies” start from the £2.25 Chip Buttie; jacket potatoes and fillings start from £3.50. There are pizzas, grills and many “pub favourites” including fish & chips (£5.79), bangers & mash (£4.29) and lasagne. Curries are particular good value on Mondays, when they come bundled with a drink. The coffee is Costa Coffee, which can be bought in combination with a slice of one of the cakes displayed on the bar.

You may have already guessed that this is probably not the place for refined or particularly healthy eating. In fact, overindulgence is encouraged with The Hulk Burger (£17.95) constructed with three 10 oz steaks and all the works: at least 4,500 calories guaranteed. To get your head around this, if I (a 70 kg man) ate a large meat pizza (of 2,900 calories) it would take me approximately 7 hours to walk off the calories. This is competitive eating and The Hulk Burger comes with rules about no sharing, no public vomiting etc. However, it may all be a subtle ploy, as anyone eating this amount of fat-drenched dead cow in one sitting might subsequently decide to spend the rest of their days a vegetarian.

Music and events have been scaled back in The Institute, although Brains are hosting an acoustic night on Wednesdays and live bands on Saturdays. The old stage has been removed to accommodate more seating, and music will be set up to the left at the back rather than the right (if you know the place). It is unlikely that the art classes and other cultural activities will carry on as before.

The old CAI will be missed. It was a one-of-its-kind with the wide range of social activities and events it hosted.

However, the owners of this new Brains bar seem to know what they are doing. Much more food is going to be consumed here than in the former-CAI, for example; food that is competitively priced and ideally washed down with a pint or few of Brains.

Previous post on the Cardiff Arts Institute:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/02/cardiff-arts-institute.html

Cardiff Arts Institute
29 Park Place, Cardiff

Community Food Cooperatives

2011-09-26T18:36:00.002+01:00

There are over 300 local Food Co-ops in Wales supported by the Rural Regeneration Unit (RRU).

A food co-op is a non-profit operation that gives people access to affordable, fresh fruit and vegetables on a weekly basis, at a local community venue. Volunteers meet each week to bag up food that has been sourced from a local supplier. Bags are ordered a week in advance, with cash up front to pay the supplier on delivery. The supplier sends potatoes, carrots and three or four other best-value seasonal items. Deliveries are shared equally and the cost of each bag is £2.50 (organic £4.50).

The RRU is a social enterprise scheme funded by the Welsh Assembly government. The funding is to enhance diet in communities, via a supply of affordable fresh fruit and vegetables, and (through Rural Affairs funding) to promote local produce.

There are around twenty food co-ops in Cardiff and five in Penarth supported by the RRU. A new food co-op in Tennyson Road in Penarth already has volunteers packing around 40 bags weekly.

The first step in starting a food co-op, via the RRU route, is to talk with a regional representative. They will approach local businesses, to see if they have any objections, and then talk to potential local suppliers.

Today, I joined Geraint Roberts, who is initiating the process for setting up an organic food co-op in Dinas Powys, in a meeting with Hannah James, the RRU's Food Development Worker for South Wales. She talked us through the process. We were impressed by the level of help available from RRU in setting up a food co-op. Through Welsh Assembly funding, for example, the RRU supplies the reusable green bags for the food, along with some other equipment and promotional literature.

The initial meeting went well. I will keep you posted on developments and will share our experiences of setting up a local food co-op.

Rural Regeneration Unit:
http://www.ruralregeneration.org.uk/

New food co-op in Penarth:
http://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/latestnews/9240540.Fruit_and_veg_co_op_launched_in_Penarth_s_Tennyson_Road/?ref=twtrec

Clark’s Pies, Cardiff

2011-09-21T21:17:00.002+01:00

Clark’s Pies operate from a corner-shop in Grangetown, Cardiff. The history of Clark’s Pies can be traced back to the early years of the 20th Century and they are a Cardiff institution. The meat pies are nicknamed “Clarkies” or “Clarksies”. This week (Monday 19 Sept) a brand-new Clark’s Pies flavour was launched: Beef Tikka.

I went along to their shop today to get a selection of pies for dinner. They are all oval-shaped with a thick shortcrust pastry casing. The four flavours are now distinguished by an extra bit of pastry on top: square for Chicken and Mushroom, a circle for the Chicken Balti and a flower for the new Tikka. The Clark’s Original (available in small and large sizes) has a plain pastry top. Ever since 1934, every pie has the word "CLARPIE" stamped into the pastry on the bottom (“If it doesn’t have CLARPIE – it’s not a genuine Clarksie!”).

Clark’s Pasties - the Original (small, medium and large) and vegetarian Cheese and Onion - and a range of drinks are also for sale in the shop; along with Clarks Pies T-shirts, baseball caps, bottle opener key-rings, lanyards and other souvenirs (did I tell you it was a Cardiff institution). The actual bakery is out back, where they start baking at around 5.30am.

I was told that it was best to heat the pies for around 15-20 minutes in a hot oven; “they’re not the same in the microwave.” We ate them with chips, baked beans and some buttery cabbage.

First up was the Clark’s Large Original (it’s also sold in a smaller size), which comprises minced beef with potatoes in a gravy base. Apparently, it has remained largely unchanged for many years. It is a very tasty beef pie and got a big ‘thumbs up’ from everyone.

Next was the Chicken and Mushroom. Our youngest does not like mushrooms, so she passed on this one. The filling is thicker, and side-by-side I preferred the taste and gravyness of the Original.

The Chicken Balti pie was launched earlier this year. Clark’s describe it thus: “Chunks of chicken with tomatoes and onion in a spicy balti curry sauce…. with spice base of cumin, paprika, chilli, coriander and garlic”. The filling is like something you would serve on rice. It is very tasty. This would be good if you fancied a pie that was a little different.

Finally, the brand-new Tikka flavour. This is the original beef recipe with a spicy tikka flavouring. Described as “Tikka with Gravy” by Clark’s, this has the plus factors of the Original with a tikka flavouring, which is nicely understated. This was a hit with everyone here.

On the night, the Clark’s Original came out top, but if I was watching sport on a cold winter's day and wanted a warming pie I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the Tikka.

All the pies are characterized by a thick pastry casing, so they don’t require a tray. They are therefore very practical to eat on the move. Needless to say, many Clarks’ Pies are consumed in Cardiff on football and rugby match days.

Clark’s Pies have been made in Cardiff since around 1912. They gained in popularity during the 1920s, enabled Mary Clark to open the first Clark’s Pie shop in 1928, at 110 Paget Street in Grangetown, just around the corner from their present location (on the corner of Paget and Bromsgrove). For a history of the company and the family that has run it for four generations see the Clark’s Pies website: http://www.clarkspies.co.uk/

Dennis Dutch, grandson of Mary Clark, opened the Bromsgrove Street shop in 1955. Here is his story on the We Are Cardiff blog:
http://wearecardiff.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/i-always-knew-i-wanted-to-join-the-family-business-dennis/

There is a film and accompanying items relating to Clark’s Pies in the Cardiff Story museum. See my previous post on the museum: http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/04/cardiff-story.html

This video on YouTube was filmed recently during a Clark’s Pies eating challenge at a Cardiff Blues game in the Cardiff City Stadium:

Clark’s Pies, 23 Bromsgrove Street, Grangetown, Cardiff CF11 7EZ

Shop opening times: Monday to Saturday 10:00am till 1:30pm

Unusual Vegetables

2011-09-20T10:12:00.002+01:00

It has come to my attention (via Luigi Guarino) that Dr Michael Mazourek (Professor of Plant Breeder at Cornell University in the USA) is engineering all manner of new fruits and vegetables, such as black-and-white cucumbers, pear-flavoured melons, and miniature vegetables with vivid polka dot patterns.

However, these innovatives are not the result of a genetic engineering program, but the clever use of traditional and cutting-edge plant breeding techniques.

The Farmer's Daughter honeydew melon was bred for mildew resistance and for easy harvesting, as it slips off the vine when ripe, as well as its pear-like flavour. It is the result of six years of selective crossing.

The black-spined white-skinned 'Salt and Pepper' cucumber, the result of a cross between white spine and long green varieties, proved to have an unexpectedly sweet flavour.

Mazourek’s lab has also released a mild habanero pepper - the Habanada - for those who like the flavour without the hotness, and a miniature butternut squash called the Honeynut.

His current experiments with purple snap peas and miniaturized vegetables with vivid colours, stripes and polka dots are being conducted with the aim of producing vegetables that appeal to children, and thereby improve their diet.

There is also a market for unusual vegetables among celebrity chefs in top-end restaurants, keen to introduce their customers to new food experiences.

Mazourek's vegetables are bred for high nutritional content, disease and pest resistance, and suitability for growing under organic and regional growing conditions. He has a keen eye for novelty, which adds extra value to the fruits and vegetables produced at Cornell. It's a good illustration of the power of plant breeding.

Read more:

Luigi Guarino, Agricultural Biodiversity roundup:
http://www.scoop.it/t/agricultural-biodiversity/p/466624396/plant-inventor-creates-designer-veggies

Stacey Shackford, Cornell University news:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept11/MazourekCALS.html

Steve Garrett on Cardiff's Castle Quarter Farmers' Market

2011-09-15T16:41:00.000+01:00

Steve Garrett is quietly confident that Cardiff’s weekly Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market will carry on after its initial 12-week trial period. Steve is the founding director and special projects manager of the Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA), which runs the market. “The trial so far has been a real success - in spite of some very rainy Thursdays,” he says.

Today’s sunshine certainly suited the outdoor street market much more than last week’s rain. A guitarist entertained shoppers with some appropriate tunes (“parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme”) and more people were stopping to sample the cooked foods on offer. “Customers have said that the top of the High Street on Market Day is like a 'piazza' - with the Castle as a backdrop and a lovely buzz of people and smells from all the stalls,” relates Steve, “This is just what we wanted to achieve”.

This particular Farmer’s Market has a good range of cooked food for customers to eat, as well as plenty of breads and cakes to take home. In addition to last week’s stalls (see last week's post), this week saw the return of The Parsnipship, selling an interesting range of pies and breads made in flowerpots, and there was a first-time appearance for Hungry Planet, selling artisan sourdough loaves.

Steve stressed that “local businesses are mostly happy with the new footfall that the Market is drawing to the area, and the Central Market is benefiting from a guest stall that we offer one of their traders each week to help promote them as well”.

“All the indications are that the Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market will continue on after the trial period” says Steve, “and we have some exciting Xmas food market plans for the location later this year as well.”

Previous post on the Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/09/castle-quarter-farmers-market-cardiff.html

Two Loaves

2011-09-13T11:52:00.000+01:00

I bought a couple of sourdough loaves recently deserving of comment: one made in Bristol and one made in Dinas Powys.

Mark’s Bread is Bristol’s smallest independent bakery. They deliver around south Bristol by bike, but every Wednesday Mark drives a van across the Severn Bridge, and along to Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff (4-6pm). They sell a selection of their wild yeast breads (sourdoughs), bakers’ yeast breads, and spelt and rye loaves. Last week's Special at Chapter was a Fig and Black Pepper loaf.

The first picture is a small South Bristol Sourdough, a sort of signature bread for them. They make their loaves using sourdough cultures, without commercial yeast, and prove them slowly in linen-lined wicker baskets. They mainly use organic flour from Shipton Mill, Gloucestershire, and don’t use improvers or additives (this is definitely Real Bread, as defined by the Real Bread campaign). The ambient yeast and bacteria in sourdough cultures naturally differ from one area to another, bringing subtle differences to the finished bread. So ‘South Bristol Sourdough’ is distinct from sourdoughs made elsewhere.

Geraint Roberts, another Real Bread advocate, bakes all his bread using sourdough cultures, at the Hungry Planet (Hupla) Workers' Co-op in Adamsdown, Cardiff, and at his home in Dinas Powys.

Geraint sees Bread Subscription Schemes as a way forward for micro-bakeries. He is planning to start a subscription scheme for Hungry Planet, with people paying a month in advance for their bread. From his home in Dinas Powys, he teaches bread courses and does a smaller weekly bake to order. Bread subscription schemes give more security of market and reduce waste, because you only bake exactly what is required. More money also goes directly to the baker than if the bread was being sold wholesale through shop outlets.

Last week’s home-made sourdough loaf (second picture) was a Multigrain Wholemeal, made with Bacheldre organic stoneground flour (87% wholemeal, 13% white), polenta, buckwheat groats, wheat flakes, millet flakes, oatmeal, organic natural salt and water. This was moist, tangy and flavoursome.

Mark’s Bread, North Street, south Bristol:
http://www.marksbread.co.uk/

Geraint Robert’s website:
http://geraintbakesbread.webs.com/

The Real Bread Campaign:
http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/

A previous post on sourdough:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/search/label/Geraint%20Roberts

Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market, Cardiff

2011-09-10T08:57:00.000+01:00

The Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market in Cardiff, on Thursdays between 11am and 3pm, is now mid-way through its 12-week trial period. It may become a permanent feature on the recently-pedestrianized High Street in central Cardiff. The council will make a decision in October or November. Stall-holders are keeping their fingers crossed for a positive outcome.

The farmers’ market is run by the Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA): the same organization that operates farmers’ markets in Riverside, Rhiwbina, Roath and Llandaff North. The Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market started on August 4, with 16 stalls. This number has apparently been relatively consistent, although this week the miserable weather meant that only 12 stalls were up and running. The market operates with the full support of the existing Cardiff Central Market and other adjacent businesses.

For me, a farmers’ market has to sell fresh fruit and vegetables to be worthy of the name. Blaencamel Farm bring plenty of their fresh organic produce to this market. Local artisan food products are another key area, and most of the stalls fit this bill. The stall selling artisan bread, buns, brioche and pizza was doing a brisk trade; although the rain was doing the Olive Bar and the cake stall no favours.

There was plenty of prepared food to eat or take-away today. Falafel Wales had a selection of Middle Eastern options; the Samosa Co were selling spicy Indian snacks; Seasons Farm Foods had a range of pies and other baked savouries; while Madgett’s Farm were cooking up duck burgers and hot dogs, and selling poultry products (I have a half-dozen duck eggs).

Collette Crewe of Elm Tree Foods, based near Newport, was selling pies and pasties, as well as honey from their farm. I had an Elm Tree Pasty (Cornish-style). Trealy Farm were selling smoked cured and air-dried meats, including salami. The other stalls today were Splott-based Inner City Pickles (“have a taste”), and a stall from the pet suppliers in the indoor market.

The Castle Quarter Farmers’ Market brings a range of food products to shoppers in the city centre, which supplement those available in other local eateries and shops. It also brings a vibrancy to the streets in this pedestrianized area. Long may it continue.

Riverside Community Market Association:
http://riversidemarket.org.uk/

Previous post on Cardiff's Riverside Farmers’ Market:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/01/riverside-farmers-market-cardiff.html

Mill Lane, Cardiff

2011-09-09T10:20:00.005+01:00

It’s all change on Mill Lane in Cardiff.

On the corner of St Mary Street and Mill Lane, Peppermint Bar and Kitchen has taken over the premises previously known as Zync. Peppermint has an extensive menu and also operates as a late-night bar.

Next come two businesses established in 2009. The Mocka Lounge is a popular café and club; while at No. 3, Flavour Eurasia offers rotisserie, noodles, salads and a range of Asian-style food.

Sodabar is currently moving into No. 4 Mill Lane, with the large venue occupying several of the original units along the lane. Refitting work is well underway, changing the decor from something period French into something brash and modern. There will be a range of event evenings and a roof terrace. The original sodabar operated on St Mary Street (between 2002-2008).

Next door to the new sodabar is Retro: “home of the 90’s vibe”. A place to party rather then to eat. I won't lie to you, it's the “home of Stacey’s Hen Night”.

Nestled between The Bridal Centre and the sex shop Private is the recently refurbished Las Iguanas (at No. 8). With another location in Cardiff Bay, Las Iguanas’ Latin American cuisine is proving very popular in Cardiff.

Juboraj comes next, part of the small Juboraj group of restaurants serving high-end Indian and Bangladeshi cuisine. They have been in Cardiff for around 20 years, also having establishments in Rhiwbina and Lakeside with another restaurant in Newport. The Mill Lane restaurant has undergone extensive refurbishment in recent years.

The nightclub called No 10 has recently been replaced by the "stylish strip club" Sugar at No. 10, one of several Gentlemen's Clubs that have opened in Cardiff recently. Next door to this doorway is The Ladybird, a brand-new nightclub whose façade has just been painted a fetching bright purple.

Gios (10-11 Mill Lane) and Ask both serve Italian food. On the ground floor of Gios is an "Italian Deli Restaurant", with lounge and bar rooms upstairs. Ask is a classier-than-average pasta and pizza chain.

Across the other side of the Wyndham’s Arcade entrance from Ask, the quirky Rebel Rebel outlet (and tattoo parlour) has moved and the unit is being turned into a new café bar/restaurant, with further details coming soon (it says).

At the St David’s end of Mill Lane was the King’s Cross pub. The owners (Mitchells and Butlers) have just closed this popular gay pub, despite protest from regular customers. They are currently doing massive refurbishments and are reinventing the place as a gastropub: The Corner House.

So, Cardiff’s self-styled Café Quarter is still clearly a continually evolving and vibrant place, although whether all the changes are for the better is debatable.

Peppermint Bar:
http://www.peppermintbar.co.uk/

Mocka Lounge:
http://www.mockalounge.com/

Sodabar:
http://www.thesodabar.com/index.php

Retro:
http://www.retrocardiff.co.uk/

Las Iguanas:
http://www.iguanas.co.uk/cardiff.asp

Juboraj:
http://www.juborajgroup.com/

Gios:
http://www.gios.co.uk/menu