Key Principles of Sustainable Eating

A coherent and simple film that explains what 'SUSTAINABLE FOOD' means in 8 simple principles. Brilliant!

What is Sustainable Food? from Kindling on Vimeo.

If you go to the forest make sure to look for this little delicacy as well. It is called ramson, or wild garlic. It is easy to recognize since it smells like garlic.

You can use it in numerous ways. I can just say that it makes an A-MAZ-ING pesto. But I also love it in salads - and about anything, it is of course given since I am a sucker for garlic and all things pretty...

Run (to the) forest. RUN

I just had an amazing dinner yesterday, the cooks had been out in the wild and picked all sorts of wild herbs to include in the food. The main ingredient was something I have rarely associated with food before and that is fir and spruce.
The first taste was in this wonderful soup. I will share the recipe with you (and say that it is good for the mental health of overworked students to go into a forest).
The young sprouts are in season right about NOW.


For the soup you will need:

4 dl fir/spruce needles (new sprouts)
1 l water
1 tbsp good vegetable boullion
salt and pepper
nutmeg
chili
3 dl cream
1/2 pack dry cured ham (it is of course best local, but you can use parma or serrano - or skip...)

Boil the needles in the water for about half an hour. Sift the needles out. You will need about half of the needles that you chop finely and mix with the soup. Add boullion and spices and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Then add the cream and let simmer for additional 5 minutes.

Roast the ham on a dry hot pan until crisp. Sprinkle crisp slices over the soup.

The needles are sprouting NOW, so run to the forest to charge your batteries and get some exotic ingredients for your dinner. It has a wow effect. Promise.

We don't knead another hero

The one potentially exciting insight Cathy gave me into home cooking was the idea of 'no knead' bread. I love bread but am sorely lacking in the bread baking skill department. I maintain this is a result of my poor kneading technique. Consequently the idea of no knead bread fills me with delight!

To be perfectly honest though, what the bread lacks in human effort, it makes up for in time required. I've now tried this recipe twice: the first time it took the bread almost 15 hours to 'bubble' as Cathy puts it. The second recipe was much quicker (as I 'helped' it along by doubling the yeast and increasing the liquid quantities) and it took about 10 hours.

Nevertheless the bread is quite tasty: it's rather dense almost like Rye bread so darker flour probably works better. There is nothing more fun than serving a home cooked loaf and it is an easy if time heavy process, so in that sense its well worth the 'foresight' required.

No Knead Bread

Ingredients

3 cups of flour

1/4 tsp of yeast (although I upped it to 1/2 to quicken the process)

1 1/2 cups of water

1/2 tsp salt

whatever flavours you would like to add.

Method

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix to a sticky dough
• Leave the dough for 12 hours or so until bubbles appear on the surface
• Take the bubbling dough and place it on a heavily floured surface. Shape into a dough mound shape and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
• Fold the bread in half and in half again to make a bread shape.
• Leave it to rise between 2 heavily floured teatowels for approximately 2 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and place a casserole dish in the oven to warm up.
• Once the bread has risen, carefully transfer it to the casserole dish and bake with the lid on for 30 minutes.
• Remove the lid and brown the crust for another 10 minutes.

Cathy's blog includes a number of recipe ideas for the bread, including this tasty looking cinnamon raisin number.

You say potato and I say...mmm soup.

In my opinion leek and potato soup is one of the simplest, tastiest seasonal dishes imaginable.

Over the years I've had a good few attempts of following leek and potato recipes: some have worked, some haven't... but usually whenever I throw the potatoes and leeks in a pan of stock and the result is fairly consistent, regardless of the method.

So I was interest to find that Cathy had a recipe for this winter staple which suggested roasting the vegetables first. I was a bit sceptical about the added flavour this extra step in the process would add. In truth, not a lot. It did make the dish slightly 'fuller' than usual and actually it was a pretty quick method of cooking the vegetables. So if you don't mind an extra roasting tin to wash up, it's probably worth the effort.

I should not that Cathy suggests using Kale: I couldn't find any so just used more of the top part of the leek in the dish. This has the same slightly bitter taste of kale anyway. I also roasted the leeks on the grounds that this would add more to the flavour.

Roasted Leek and Potato Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients

1 leek, halved and chopped into smallish chunks

4 potatoes, cut into smallish chunks

1 onion, cut into smallish chunks

150 ml milk

500 ml vegetable stock

Olive Oil

seasoning

Method

• Roast the chopped vegetables in olive oil for about 20 minutes (until soft but not smooshy). Watch the leeks so they don't stick to the bottom of the roasting dish.
• Meanwhile bring your stock to the boil.
• Add the vegetables to the stock and cook for a further 10 minutes.
• Blitz the soup until nice and creamy.
• Season well (lots of pepper is very yummy)
• Add the milk

Serve with 'no knead' bread.

Everybody eats when they come to my house

Our previous book reviews have been about exciting, interesting and useful reads on sustainable dietary habits. Unfortunately this one isn't. The Art of Eating In, possibly isn't the worst book I've ever read, but it is certainly in the running.

The book is a collection of anecdotes and stories from Cathy, who -for somewhat inexplicable reasons- has chosen not to eat out in New York. Cathy shares with us her revelations that home-cooking is cheaper, healthier and sometimes tastier than eating out. I fully acknowledge that I entered into the relationship in complete knowledge of Cathy's agenda, however, ever the aficionado of a good foodie book, I was willing to put aside my concern over the underlying premise of Cathy's 'journey'. I shouldn't have. It was dire.

'Well I decided to give home cooking gimmick of my own. To eat for a prolonged period of time without the assistance of restaurants whatsoever. Was that something that a New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American such as myself could achieve?'

It's certainly a question that only a "New York-born, New Jersey-bred, working, middle-class, twenty six year-old American" would pose. The book's accompanying website suggests we 'join the challenge' and 'eat in for a week'. WTAF

The book offers us insight into Cathy's homecooking: including her first foray into bread making where -despite claiming to be an avid cook- she states " I didn't think I'd ever seen one of these packages of yeast before". Unfortunately I ignored this giant flag to "STOP READING NOW!"

To be fair, Cathy is clearly a keen and competent cook but does she 'homecook' like normal people? Does she hell. Her dinners always appear to take hours of preparation and end up on the table at 11pm at night. Occasionally she tries to excite us by listing those things she just 'threw in a pan': I cannot believe that she doesn't realise this is how most people usually cook/eat.

In the book Cathy marks her visits with freegans; supper clubs and cook-offs in an attempt to widen her culinary horizon. This could have been really interesting, perhaps if she told us some more background or studies or facts about any of these things, then I might have been more interested. As it was we heard Cathy's non-too-deep thoughts on the matters:

"I didn't feel that I was sacrificing my health by having meat only once or twice a week. On the contrary you could argue less meat in our diets keeps humans and the earth healthier".

I'm not sure who the target audience was, but I am sure I wouldn't like to meet them!

The one thing that struck me in the book was when Cathy estimates her grocery bill for a week of 'eating in' to be $25 which is about 160 sek, £15, €19. What?! I knew food prices in America were artificially low, but that is ridiculous: especially when you read about the kind of food Cathy was cooking.

I think this sums up my problem with all these 'extreme diet' books. Some try and make ethical points but many end up as money making gimmicks and fail to address real problems. The market is flooded with these 'food challenge' books and the underlying points about the unsustainability of our food systems seem to become lost in the process. How have we reached a stage in human development where it can be an 'alternative' lifestyle to cook at home?

The Seasonal Beets are trying to encourage people to eat chose seasonal foods and cook sustainably, but have we underestimated the size of the problem? Do we need to actually go back to basics and teach people the benefits of homecooking? I hope not.

To be fair I feel that whilst Cathy might be a bit misguided, she's not malicious in her writing and she is attempting to encourage more sustainable eating. For that reason I suggest you check out her blog and also our next 2 postings which are my attempts at making some of Cathy's recipes a little more time-friendly.

Would I lie to you?

A report in today's Guardian Newspaper suggests that 'localism' can be a misnomer in food labelling. Apparently those naughty supermarkets and food producers label items 'local' as a method of distinguishing the 'type' of produce rather than the origin.

Food labels are getting more and more complicated and, if like me, you don't own an i-phone and cannot download one of the latest apps to help you out, I thought I'd provide this handy guide to making sure you buy seasonally (and locally) as much as possible.

1) Learn the life-cycle of the plant: shoots & stalks, then leaves grow, then come the berries and soft fruit, hard fruit, then roots.

2) Look outside your window, what stage do the plants appear to be at: shoots? leaves? berries?

3) Go to your local vegetable provider pick accordingly (checking the labels just incase so you don't make a Netherland/Sweden faux pas...)

It's not right but its ok...I'm gonna make it anyway!

Earlier this week our lovely friend Anja celebrated her birthday. Anja is part of Lund's Sustainable City Walk a great initiative which provides information on sustainable shopping in Lund. I decided I was going to attempt some seasonal baking for a birthday treat and came across this very tasty looking recipe for pear and ginger muffins.

Then disaster struck (well minor blip anyway) I discovered you cannot get Swedish pears in January. I was quite surprised at this as I always thought of pears as a winter fruit; but no, the pears in this recipe are from The Netherlands :(

That said, it was still rather tasty and I think would work equally well with apples: especially those apples that are a bit grainy and reaching the end of their winter lives.

I changed the recipe slightly (because my sugar coated baked goods have a tendency to burn) but the original can be found here.

Pear and Ginger Muffins

Makes: 18! (although the original recipe said 12, but then it is a Nigella effort and her portions are always a bit suspect).

Ingredients:

2 large pears (1 peeled and finely chopped, the other thinly sliced)

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup of brown sugar

3/4 cup of caster sugar

1 tsp of ginger

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of flavourless oil

2/3 cup of sour cream

1 tblsp of honey

2 eggs

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
• Line muffin tins with paper cases
• Mix the brown and caster sugar with the oil, until light and incorporated.
• Whisk in the eggs, honey and then stir in the sour cream.
• In a separate bowl sieve the flour, baking powder and ginger.
• Fold the 'wet' mix into the dry (careful not to over stir)
• Fold in the chopped pears.
• Fill each muffin case about 2/3 full of muffin mix and top with 3 small slice of pear.
• Bake for 20 minutes
• Cool for 5 minutes in the tin.

Enjoy eating with coffee, friends and only a smidgen of guilt that the pears came from The Netherlands.