October 2010
There isn’t, but should be, a saying that goes “As in life, so in teeth.” According to archaeologists the chemical composition of human remains, particularly the teeth reveal intimate details of where and when the owner of the aforementioned teeth lived. As ancient people consumed food and drink produced where they lived they literally became what they ate – the mixture of different isotopes of certain chemical elements varying slightly but detectably from place to place and from diet to diet.
Our isotopic fingerprints are a direct reflection of the food we have eaten and the water we have drunk. Intriguingly, then, on discovering ancient remains in Dorset a paleoanthropologist may be able to determine that the person was actually born and raised in, say, Mycenae or North Africa.
One has to wonder then what distant future archaeologists will make of our remains, discovered as they might be at the same buried stratum as The Great Urban Chewing Gum Event. Our own isotopic fingerprints will have been forged from Canadian Wheat, New Zealand Lamb, Argentinean Corned Beef, Green Vegetables from Kenya, Bananas from the Caribbean, Tea from India and water from pretty much everywhere used in beer and soft drinks from around the world.
And that is just if we stay at home all our lives. We really are global citizens, like it or not.
And yet buying and sourcing locally are increasingly popular and indeed important. I don’t think anyone can suggest that we should return to an iron age diet of local self sufficiency – I for one couldn’t live without coffee and sugar and above all…spices! But when local consumers buy much of what they need from local producers the effects on the strength of the local economy and society are extreme. Centralised production and distribution has got to be inherently more risky than local. In Channel 4’s Food Programme recently Jay Rayner suggested that in the future a big percentage of the UK’s milk production could come from a single site housing many thousands of cows. The chance, then, of a single failure or outbreak decimating the milk supply is increased massively. It is said that the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001 occurred chiefly because of the closure of so many local abattoirs and increasing reliance on long distance haulage and a few centralised facilities. If true then it goes to show how local can indeed be healthier, more sustainable and affordable in the long run.
It was therefore with great pleasure indeed that I was asked to play host at The Fine Food School to the filming of and edition of ITV’s latest food series “10 Mile Menu”. OK, I can hear some of you saying, “Just what we need, another cookery show.” And, despite my foodie credentials, I do sympathise somewhat. As in all things we want quality, not always quantity. But hear me out.
“10 Mile Menu” sees two teams – each comprising a celebrity chef and a non-chef celebrity – spending a morning sourcing ingredients from within 10 miles of their base town and spend the afternoon cooking a three course meal for some local judges. Inevitably it was Shaftesbury’s turn. The town’s reputation as a centre of local food excellence being well established.
Chefs Paul Rankin and Ed Baines and their respective partners garden design guru Diarmuid Gavin and Snooker über-legend Dennis Taylor set off from The Grosvenor Hotel and, taking in most of our fantastic local farm shops, fighting over who got to buy from Martyn at Seafoods of Stalbridge and trying their best to sabotage the other team they finally rocked up at the school for an afternoon’s cooking.
I’m not going to spoil it for you by letting on precisely what they cooked and who won the contest but the team of five judges from TLW Dance – Shaftesbury Academy lead by Principal Tiffany Longley described the results as “literally the best food we’ve ever eaten!” Of course they’ve never tried my chicken curry which I’ve promised to teach to them in return for some dance lessons – but that’s by the by.
It was a fascinating day watching the whole process – let no one tell you that working in TV is glamorous. The crew worked hard. Seriously. But best of all was the vindication that within 10 miles of Shaftesbury you really can source astonishing ingredients from some passionate, dedicated and committed producers and retailers. Of course the chefs, like the rest of us, couldn’t resist the risotto rice and the chocolate, neither of which are local in the strictest sense but this is where we started. We are no longer small communities of self-sufficient crofters and buying imported specialist ingredients is by no means something to be ashamed of. But in this part of the world there is so much that is produced that we can buy locally – and this is the thing – that you can’t get better examples of from anywhere else!
That has got to be the lesson to take from shows like “10 Mile Menu” and good on them for putting local right at the top of the agenda, particularly as organisation is well underway for the 2011 Shaftesbury Festival of Local Food. The Shaftesbury edition of “10 Mile Menu” will be broadcast in March.
