Uist Wholefoods Co-operative

I got Maw Broon’s cookbook as a present a couple of years ago, and thought it a bit of a gimmick, a spin off from a cartoon series, tweely disguised as a reproduction old recipe collection. On one level, that his what this book is. It is a ‘copy’ of an imaginary book of handwritten recipes, complete with facsimile newspaper cuttings, copies of old advertisements and ersatz stains. What it also clear is that this has been very well done. This book is as close to my granny’s book as I can remember, reproduced with great attention to detail.

For those of you who don’t know (and there can’t be many of you) ‘The Broons’ is a long-running cartoon strip of a Scottish family, living in an urban area, but still with close ties to a rural past. It seems to be set in the 1950’s but the era and the city are never named. The matriach of the household is the eponymous Maw Broon, a stout and tidy character with a warm heart, built to carry livestock and keep the men in order.

The origins of the book are clear, but what has become apparent about this book over time, is that it is full of ingredients that use local Scottish produce, good traditional recipes. I have found myself referring to it quite often, and being pleased with the results. It is now one of the first books I look at if someone offers me something that I haven’t cooked before. This is good plain fare, done well.

Maw Broon’s Cook Book caught the attention of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, whose aim is to help readers find the best food and wine books published that year. The book won an award in catoegory for Scottish recipe books. It has been cited as being a repository of a heritage of Scottish cooking, including recipes that have not been recorded elsewhere, and might be in danger of disappearing.

For some, the disappearance of these recipes might seem to be a good thing. The dumplings, pastries and pies are loaded with lard, and the recipe for tablet includes enough sugar for one person for a week. Those on a healthy eating crusade will be able to find a lot wrong with a diet based on this book. In context though, when these recipes were the only ones handed down to young housewives, the working man and woman had a day full of heavy duty activity, and families had many mouths to feed, so that portion control was tighter.

In short, this is a great book for local food and local ingredients, but don’t forget that eating healthily also includes moderation and vegetables. I like it.

More information about the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards can be found at www.cookbookfair.com

I have been developing my ideas on eating locally, and started looking into what was around, uncultivated and free. Several late night conversations later, I have a few leads. One of these discussions has led me to researching the subject of wild food by reading books. The most entertaining, relevant and helpful has been ‘Edible Seashore’ by John Wright. This book is number 5 in the River Cottage Handbook series. If they are all as good as this, I think I shall be buying more. Why is it so good?

Information: Everything in the book that I know about seems correct, and with more detail on the subject than I was aware of. He also discusses common problems and pitfalls of identification very clearly. For example, he has a great chapter on finding, cutting, cooking and eating ‘Alexanders’. At one point he covers which plants look similar, with a very clear photograph right next to the text. His description on the taste leads me to believe that he has eaten ‘Alexanders’, and also convinced me that I have other things to try first. He also describes how to get winkles and razors, and his descriptions are spot-on.

Illustrations: The photographs are clear as could be. Even the photographs of edible seaweeds are clear enough for an amateur to recognise dulse, or gutweed. I haven’t taken to book with me to the beach yet, but it will be happening.

Facinating detail: The description of the mating habits of lobsters, or his observations on the popularity of winkles in Victorian London, both good examples of why I was reading this book from cover to cover, instead of just using it for reference.

Wit: I have never laughed before at a chapter on legal pitfalls.

The only weakness was perhaps a few gaps in the list of what could be gathered. That said, it is a worthy and inspiring starting point for wild food.  I commmend this book to you.

This is not a book about games, nor does it imply that the cook is game for a laugh. The subtitle gives us more information; these are recipes inspired by a conversation in a butcher’s shop, about the cheapness and flavour of game, and the fact that most epople don’t know how to cook it. The surprise author of the Game Cook Book is one Rt. Hon. Norman Tebbit, a keen amateur cook. Now, while not signing up to Mr Tebbit’s political views, I think on the whole he is not a man who would misinform his readers. The book was a present from our neighbours and friend, perhaps to help us explore the cookery of the various creatures that can be shot and eaten locally. This is, perhaps, an extreme version of being a locavore. The helpful introductory paragraph adds more detail. Mr Tebbit was always interested in cooking. When his wife was injured and crippled in an IRA bomb attack, he became the main cook. He lists many of my favourite recipe books as his inspirations.

In recent years, Britain’s attitude to food has changed. In a world that is becoming more eco-aware, ‘organic’ and ‘corn fed’ meat is gaining popularity at the expense of immoral, processed food. And yet strangely, ‘game’ - strictly speaking any bird or animal living wild, which is hunted for food - remains on the fringes on many people’s diet. Many people would rather pay twice the price at a supermarket for a comparatively tasteless chicken. Tebbit, a keen amateur chef, uses The Game Cookbook to showcase his favourite game recipes featuring pheasant, partridge, duck, grouse, woodpigeon, woodcock, deer, rabbit, hare and more. Whether the recipe is a relatively simple casserole or a more challenging creation such as pheasant with apples and cream or rabbit with white wine and mushroom, Tebbit’s easy to follow style produces consistent results. The book also includes a concise guide to game, advice on kitchen equipment, handy conversion charts and individual hints on the various game included.

We have now tried a couple of recipes from the book, including a fine recipe for pigeon with cabbage and wine. I think it would also work well with goose, so we have to test that as well before I log it on this website. Having this book, I feel prepared for whatever should be brought home late at night by amateur hunters. I have to add that this is mostly rabbits and geese, and while to book has many recipes for rabbit, the goose has been ignored. I am going to try some of the other pigeon recipes with goose before I report back.

Final Score: Highly commended.

I was given a copy of HOME FARMER Magazine yesterday. I can honestly say it’s the first magazine that I have read from cover to cover.  The magazine covers a wide range of topics - here are but a few:  starting your own veggie patch, rearing chooks and ducks, make your own sausages, using herbs for health,  loads of recipes. 

There are  articles running through the magazine, showing you how to, for example, make herb planters from scrap wood, raise hens and keep them in good health,  involve children in planting seeds, and look after their plants, explore natural remedies from the plants in your garden. The recipes encourage readers to provide healthy food using the fruits - and veg - of their labour. Easy to follow instructions for those of us with a creative streak are catered for too:  candle and soap making for starters.

It’s the sort of magazine that you will keep dipping into and has something for everyone, young and not so!

The website is worth a look too - www.homefarmer.co.uk

The magazine is published monthly and costs £3.25. 

One of the choices that we are faced with, when shopping for food, is whether to buy produce that has been shipped long distances. For instance, is it better to buy organic from africa, or to buy local produce that is not organic. To take another example, which is more environmentally friendly, salad grown in greenhouses in the UK, or airfreighted in from overseas?

I bought this book because I assumed that it would support my prejudices, give weight to my arguments with suitable quotes, and also help me unpick some of these more difficult ethical issues. As it turns out, this is not a book of polemic or of diatribe. Instead, it is a balanced look at the history, politics, sociology and development of the journeys of food. The research is often first hand, easy to read but clearly backed up with in-depth knowledge and understanding.

The book is structured chapter by chapter on the contents of an imaginary shopping basket. Each item is used to explore one aspect of food transport technology. The issues are analysed carefully, and in context, and then discussed.

Sarah Murray does not try to bend her facts to come down on one side of any issue or the other. There is no ranting, no moral outrage here. Since this was what I had been expecting, initially I was a little bemused. However, her facts are so neatly presented, it is possible to build up a good understanding of the food transport industry. It is only towards the end that she brings all her themes together to discuss their relative importance.

Her last chapter is masterful. From all that had gone before, and her even-handed collection and analysis of facts, she draws her conclusions skillfully. She also allows the reader freedom to think about their own attitudes and how they might influence her conclusions. For me, it was enlightening to realise that the carbon footprint of a drive to a supermarket is much greater than the freighting of the food. Taking a slightly wider perspective, and looking at the impact of our lifestyles, it is the way we heat and light our houses that is the biggest energy issue. For food, she has made it clearer to me that the political and sociological impact of importation is a very powerful driver of moral choice.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more about the incredible journeys our food has taken.

I refer to this gardening book more than any other. I have shelves of reference books, full of theory, pictures, plans and ideas. However, when it comes down to the bare facts, they are all here, neatly summarised, and organised so well that the index is almost superfluous.

The reason why it is my best used reference book is also due to the fact that I grow as many vegetables as I have time to manage. Why? Because fresh vegetables are better. They always beat frozen, canned or imported vegetables. This is true for taste, texture, for vitamins, for the environment, and in terms of food miles. Home grown vegetables can be harvested when they are truly fresh, small and tender. They can be served within minutes of harvesting, with their nutritional benefits still at a maximum, and flavour without comparison. And you can also grow varieties that are not available in the shops.

Of course, you can also save money. Without having the same overheads of comercial growers, and will less reliance on fertilisers and sprays, the estimated cost is that for each £1 spent in the garden is worth £9 of vegetables. It is also wonderful to pass on the surplus to friends. It is a healthy hobby, one that is a challenge every year, with new varieties to try and new techniques to practice.

The author, Dr D.G. Hessayon is the world’s best-selling author on gardening. Born in Manchester, he was variously a horticulturist research scientist, university lecturer, artist and newspaper editor before launching the Expert series in 1959. In 1999 Dr Hessayon was awarded a Guinness World Record Certificate for being Britain’s best-selling living author of the 1990s. He lives in Essex, and has two daughters and four grandchildren. I can’t work out how many books he has written in the expert series, but he has 190 titles listed on Amazon.

The contents are neatly arranged, with each topic set out over a small number of pages. The book covers the basics of vegetable plot management, and A-Z directory of vegetables suitable for cultivation in the UK, a trouble shooting section, and chapters on herbs, rare vegetables, crop care and an index. All of the terms and symbols used in the book are clearly expained, and are easy to understand.

If you haven’t got a copy, here is the reference to amazon for the latest edition. I recommend it.

This book sets out to introduce us to the art of Persian cookery. It begins with a beautifully written chapter on Persian food, illustrated with quotations and reproductions of Persian art.

Then, on with the recipes. These are well set out, and unfamiliar cooking techniques are well described. I found some of the recipes very salty, and the art of cooking Persian rice is so far escaping me. By and large, though, the dishes are delicious, and very authentic in flavour. The recipes include light appetizers and kababs, hearty stews and rich, golden-crusted rices, among many other dishes, all fragrant with the distinctive herbs, spices, or fruits of Iran.

I have had some difficulty in locating some of the spices, and the source list at the end concentrates on London grocery shops. Try Seasoned Pioneers for most of the rarer ingredients.

I liked this book particularly from an academic point of view; it helped me to understand the culture in which it is set. It also has culinary links to dishes found in Lebanese and Greek cookery, as well as Northern India.

Because the food I have already prepared from this book is so different and tasty, I shall be hunting out more of the ingredeints, and trying out the resulting banquets on Malcolm and the girls through the year.

This is the book that confirms all the sneaky suspicions you have always had when shopping in big supermarkets. Why is nothing ever out of season anymore? Why is everything packed in plastic? Why do we pay the same price for chicken today that our Grandparents did? If everything is so clean and perfect why do we still have outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and bird-flu and E-coli, not to mention CJD?

Readers will discover some harrowing facts about the way the industry processes our everyday food. If you don’t know, you’ll find out what mechanically recovered meat is, how chickens are raised in Brazil, that when you order chicken in a restaurant you may in fact be eating 30% beef, that a farm is no longer a place where food is grown but an industrial complex of packing sheds around lorry parks or that the conditions under which illegal immigrants pick fruit and vegetables in Spain can be compared to “South African apartheid”. The author visited a giant refrigerated packing plant near Aylesford that reminded her of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”!

Did you know that a standard shopping basket in a supermarket with 20 fresh foods represents an average accumulation of 100 000 “food miles”? The mange tout or asparagus from Peru you buy have a journey of 6312 miles behind them. Did you realise that 60% of the factory bread consumed in Britain is produced by plants belonging to two industrial giants, British Bakeries and Allied Bakeries? A few big supermarkets and agri-industrial complexes shape our diets more that we have cared to know.

If you believe that you should protect your health and conscience, this book will change the way you shop forever. If you believe that shoppers have economic power, and that we all should use that power to bring change for the better, then pass on the message in this book; recommend it to others, give it away to anyone who will read it.

Mrs Lawrence has plenty of examples in store in her study that will surprise many a reader about the way our modern food is manufactured and processed. In the same vein, readers may also be interested in Joanna Blythman’s very instructive discussion of supermarket policies in her book “Shopped”.

At the moment at least one of my children is fascinated with all things Japanese, and messing about in the kitchen.

I hadn’t realised how interested she was until she ordered this wagamama cookbook for herself! She’s put her name inside to make sure I don’t pinch it. For those of you who don’t know, wagamama is a noodle restaurant chain, and there is a branch in the centre of Glasgow, in West George Street, not far from George Square.

If you want more information, you can visit their website where you can even look up the menu.

The noodle book is well illustrated with photographs, but at the same time they have managed to fit in plenty of recipes, including sections on children’s noodle dishes, recipes for entertaining, quick recipes and suitable drinks.

The initial section covers the basics of noodle types and how to chop vegetables and make stock, preparing you for better results. The index is sorted by ingredients, which I always like in a recipe book.

The acid test is whether the recipes work. I have to admit that I’ve only had a chance to try one recipe, quick vegetable noodles, and it was very easy and tasty. I substituted French beans for runner beans, and it was still great.

Some of the ingredients may be hard to source, but our catalogue does have a section on Japanese ingredients.

Some local shops also have some more exotic ingredients. But hey, it is not a competition to make every recipe in the book.

The Ethical Travel Guide, published by Earthscan Publications, lists over 300 holidays in 60 countries that benefit local people directly. In addition, you will find listed visits to amazing local communities not mentioned in the usual guidebooks. The range of holidays includes simple, local-style breaks up through the scale to luxury retreats. There is also a lot of information on what the guiding principles are behind the holidays chosen for this book. And it is available from Amazon. I have not had a chance to test it out, since it might be noticed if I suddenly took off on holiday for ages, but it is really tempting.