For the Love of British Food

I’ve been feeling more than a bit blue this week. 12 years ago I was on honeymoon in Antigua, now I am sadly separated from my husband. At least I have some great memories of the island and just yesterday was enthusing about it to a friend who is visiting there on a cruise boat later this month. 

We went back in 2000, different hotel (Sunsail Colonna the second time, our honeymoon hotel at Jolly Harbour was trashed by a hurricane), and we were very well entertained by some Antigua residents we had met online.

We had some great sailing and memorable meals, with them and on our own, one of the best was Coconut Grove at Dickenson Bay. According to my researches it’s still open despite some vicious hurricanes since then.  Antigua has an offshore reef which helps to protect from some of the worst storm surges, but with higher sea levels the future could be less certain. 

How do we link to British food? Well, settlers from the Caribbean were in the vanguard of immigration in the 50’s and 60’s but the vibrant fruits and vegetables typical of Caribbean cooking were longer to reach our tables than other newcomers to the UK. 

Now we can buy sweet potato, yams, scotch bonnet chillies, pineapple and fresh coconut in most supermarkets, and ready mixed jerk and other seasonings. My favourite brand is called Walkerswood, but have also used Dunns River which seem to be easily available in the UK.

The first meal ever cooked for me by a boyfriend was jerk chicken, it was fabulous and it took me years before I could find a recipe to re-create it in my own kitchen. He is Jamaican, his name is Philip and I met him at college at Harlow tech college on a journalism course and I often wonder what he’s doing now - don’t recall his surname so can’t look online.

If you don’t want to use ready-made jerk seasoning, I’ve researched a good recipe that is easy to make and find the ingredients for.  Also on the UKTV Food site, I found this unusual cake made from sweet potato. I tried it, changing the recipe just slightly to be more like my favourite lemon drizzle cake. I made holes in the warm cake with a skewer and the thinner and less sweet syrup I made had orange rind rather than segments. 

When I lived in South London for a while in the 1990’s I saw goat on sale in Sainsburys, albeit frozen, but have not yet seen it in Portsmouth. It’s a common ingredient, especially in Jamaican cooking but you can use mutton which has a stronger flavour than lamb. The spices will tenderise it, so you can go for cheaper cuts.

Mutton is beginning to be available again, after going out of fashion for years. The official definition is sheep meat from an animal over two years old. I found Mutton Renaissance, an excellent site that gives lots of information. Our heir to the throne, HRH Prince of Wales supports it, so that is a good enough recommendation for me. Previous readers will know I am a Riverford Farms customer and mutton now features on their organic meat menu. Try this spicy stew and to go with it, rice and peas – not garden peas as we know them, but a type of bean called ‘pigeon peas’ or small kidney beans. 

Typical ingredients you will find in the cooking of many islands include saltfish – usually a type of cod, ackee – a tree growing fruit, but used as a vegetable, limes, pineapple, guava, mango, bananas and plantain, breadfruit, papaya, okra and various squashes like acorn. More exotically named, there is soursop and christophene or chayote.The latter turns up in both savoury and sweet dishes. Callaloo is a green vegetable similar to spinach or chard. If you are in London, try Brixton or Borough Market for fresh fruit and veg from the above lists and recipes.  

Apart from hot fresh chillies, you’ll find allspice, the seed of the pimento in jerk seasoning and many other dishes and different types of pepper ground and whole in stews and thyme as the commonest cooking herb (herb has other meanings, so be careful!)

I can’t bring back the Caribbean sunshine to my life, but I can at least cook something spicy and good, and have a tot of rum in my coffee or hot chocolate.  Smile! 

At home I have continued to try to economise by using what I have in the fridge and freezer and buying as little as possible other than basics like bread and milk. I’ve done quite well at that, and have used up quite a lot. I will need to tidy and pack any spare space with something like bags of polystyrene packing chips or blocks. This will make sure I use as little energy as possible.

To top up, I am looking for cheap seasonal and tasty. Winter is a good time to eat pork and I have bought some pork belly which is an inexpensive cut and can be cooked in many different tasty ways. A Chinese cookbook might be a good place to start, but I’ll think about that later. The quantity I bought will make two meals for about £2.50 a meal including veg. I have plenty of root veg in stock and I bought a savoy cabbage for fresh greenery. You would be hard put to find a good ready-meal at that price and you would not get much for your money.

Channel 4 TV featured two families who were trying to economise. One family looked to supermarket value ranges, the other family shopped around, went to local butchers and markets. They both saved money, but there is no doubt in my mind who had the healthiest diet.

The Riverford fruit and veg box still has some treats in store, one being a fresh pineapple. I’ll really enjoy that just as it is, but might chunk and caramelise a few pieces to go with a dessert of rice cooked in coconut milk, another storecupboard gift.

I have plenty of pasta, so tomorrow night’s supper might be based on that and I have all the ingredients for a full Sunday breakfast partly thanks to Waitrose generosity. The assistant on the checkout opened the box of eggs I was buying and found two cracked. The store didn’t have any more that size which were on special offer, so gave me half a dozen of extra-large at the same price.  They are usually regarded as being at the top end of the price ladder for supermarkets, but they are trying hard, they have special offers on food and household items to match Tesco and Sainsbury and are SO much more friendly.

They are also helping the community. When you pay, however little you may have bought, you are given a small green disk. That goes into one of 3 bins at the front of the store and at the end of each month, a charity contribution is assigned to 3 different local causes proportionate to the number of disks in each bin. Customers can also suggest local charities to benefit and I am hoping to see RYA Sailability feature sometime soon - we have a group at our sailing club with specially adapted boats and trimarans. The boats include a landing craft type that can take wheelchairs, and Challenger trimarans that can be controlled by hand and foot pedals and can’t capsize.

Sorry, diverted a bit from the food topic there, but it is good to see a big supermarket chain wanting to get involved like this.

I’m not sure what to do about my growing plans. I know I’ll be putting the house on the market, but don’t want too many big and heavy containers to move if I am out before the summer. I know I want to try to take a cutting from the bay tree to take to a new abode.  I will be checking my River Cottage diary later to see what I should be planting in February. It may still be winter, but there are signs of spring in the garden, even now and jobs I am hoping for a respite from rain and stormy winds to get on with.

For starters, just a quotation. Nothing to do with the rest of the post, it was on my Igoogle page today and I was watching my cat eyeing up the birds in the garden enjoying the food I’d put out for them. Don’t worry bird fans, he’s much too old and slow to catch anything these days and I’ve had no ‘little presents’ for a long long time.Just thought it would amuse you all.

The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
  - Michael Friedman

====================================================================

Now onto my main subject.

It was listening to a favourite song that gave me the idea for this post. Simon and Garfunkel sang their version of the old folk tune ‘Scarborough Fair’ which mentions four of the most beloved herbs that appear in English cooking - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

They also feature in quotes from English literature such as Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet “There’s rosemary for you, that’s for remembrance”. In fact, you can find many herbal and floral references in Shakespeare, including fennel, rue, roses, mint, savory and marjoram, over 170 different plants and trees appear in all his known works.

Parsley and thyme are staples of the ‘bouquet garni’ which although we call it by it’s French name, is an essential part of any stew or stockpot along with a bay leaf. If you have some celery, make a little tube with two small pieces face to face, and tie in the bay, rosemary and thyme sprigs.

All of these, except possibly parsley are very easy to grow. There’s an old tradition that says variously that parsley only grows for the virtuous, otherwise the Devil has it, or that you must plant it seven times for Satan before it will grow well for you. In my Wiccan faith, the Goddess and the Horned One are both forces for good and join together to bring my garden fertility.

I would add mint to those four classic herbs as where would I be without mint sauce to go with my roast lamb, or indeed, a sprig of mint in my Pimms.

Parsley is often used just as a green garnish and almost dismissed, yet it has a fresh astringency of its own that would be missed in sauces and accompaniments such as parsley, thyme and lemon stuffing for chicken or turkey, or parsley sauce poured over a piece of fish or gammon, and in the ‘liquor’ that you get in the few pie and mash shops left in London.

I used to go to Manzes in Tower Bridge Road with my husband and his brother and cousins on a Saturday morning before we all went off to watch Millwall football matches at the New Den, and John used to work in their Peckham branch - his first part time job as a teenager, peeling potatoes, and greasing pans for the pies, then washing up. The shops also traditionally sell stewed and or jellied eels, again with the parsley flavoured liquor.

English parsley is the tightly curled variety, the European continental type which I think has a better flavour, has a flat leaf. If you buy it in a bunch in the supermarket, it will keep for a few days with the stems in water.

Thyme has varieties such as lemon thyme, but I prefer the common one. The bees and other beneficial insects love it when it comes into flower. If I’m not making a breadcrumb stuffing for chicken, I put a handful of thyme in the cavity along with half a lemon, and I squeeze the juice over the chicken before it goes in the oven. It goes well with fish too, especially mackerel and sea bass.

Medicinally, you can use thyme made into a tea with boiling water, and sweetened with a little honey. Bruise the sprigs a little to release the oils before pouring on the water. Good for sore throats, bronchitis and gastric problems.

Rosemary marries wonderfully with lamb. Pierce little holes in the fatty side of a lamb joint with the point of a knife and poke in a few needles of rosemary in each hole along with a garlic sliver. Use a whole rosemary stalk as a skewer for a lamb kebab - make the hole with a skewer first. Alternate pieces of meat with cherry tomatoes, pieces of onion and pepper and thick chunks of courgette. You can also throw the green sprigs directly onto hot barbecue coals to make a fragrant smoke to scent your meats.

“Bubble and Squeak” is a traditional way to use up mashed potato and cooked greens such as cabbage or brussels sprouts - just fry together, preferably in the fat from whatever roast meat you last cooked. Finely chop a few rosemary needles and mix into the veg. in the frying pan.

Sage goes in the stuffing with onion for roast pork or turkey and is also excellent chopped and sprinkled before roasting root vegetables. In Derbyshire, sage is used in the making of a semi-hard cheese - Sage Derby, It isn’t herb you want to use raw in a salad, the flavour is much better cooked. Make a sage flavoured butter to pour over filled pasta such as tortellini. Chop and add with fried onion to minced pork, shape and wrap in foil and bake, to make a fragrant meat loaf.

The Greeks and Romans believed that sage was good for snakebite and I’ve even read that it has been trialled as a herbal remedy for Alzheimers disease. You can steep it in boiling water, and cool to make a fragrant hair rinse that will help prevent dandruff.