Having said that, some years ago New Scientist sparked off many investigations into this phenomenon and it really does seem to be the case.  The general consensus is that the cold water freezes from the outside fairly promptly but the water held within cannot lose heat very rapidly, insulated as it now is in an ice shell.  Hot water, on the other hand loses heat uniformly throughout its volume as the internal currents that exist as a result molecules with lots of energy jiggling about cause the water to continually mix.  This continual mixing allows more heat to be lost from more of the water.   These convection currents can be seen if you put a drop of food colouring into each of a glass of cold and hot water.  The hot water will become more uniformly coloured quicker than the cold.

Convection happens within all fluids at all temperatures above absolute zero but the speed increases with temperature – more energy means faster jiggling molecules.  Solid materials do not experience convection currents as there’s nowhere for the molecules to jiggle to.

This then brings us to the legendary chocolate fondant, that unctuous, delightful, chocolatey bit of heaven that is cakey on the outside and all gooey and rich in the centre. 

The secret is to cook them just enough that they remain uncooked in the centre.  Simple as that. Overcook them and they turn into a fairly uninspiring cake. 

Well, that’s the theory at least.  The problem that I have found in cooking fondants is that you’ve got to really know your oven to get them spot on.  Is it ten minutes at 200 or twelve at 190?  It’s one of those things that one has to practice to be sure.  Two minutes either way can make the difference between too much raw cake mix and a chocolate scone.

I always get a “fingers-crossed” moment when a contestant attempts a chocolate fondant on Masterchef because having mastered them in my own kitchen I can only imagine the trickiness of cooking them in a completely unfamiliar environment, under intense scrutiny.  But it isn’t just the oven, oh no.

I have no empirical proof that this is the case but my supposition is that the internal temperature of fondant mixes as they hit the ovens in the Masterchef studio is higher than in the contestants’ homes.  A fondant is usually a mix of butter, chocolate, sugar, flour and eggs which are variously melted and folded together.  As the mixture is distributed to ramekins it begins to cool and if allowed to cool sufficiently the fat will begin to thicken and eventually solidify.

What this means is that a fondant that is left standing for even just half an hour will be thicker and have slower moving internal convection.  But if one has limited time and is in a rush it is a good bet that the mixture will go in the oven warmer and runnier than if one has more time.

My experiments suggest that not only does a warmer fondant cook in a shorter time, but critically the window within which one has to work is much, much smaller. 

That is not to say that one cannot make chocolate fondants quickly, knock up the batter and straight into the oven, but that is where knowing your oven and being well practiced is vital.  By starting from a cooler mixture you can reduce the internal heat-driven mixing, or convection currents, which would otherwise result in the cake cooking through more evenly. 

Specifically, the outside of the fondant will go through a melting, runny phase and then cook as the starch in the flour absorbs water and the wheat and egg proteins cross-link to form a resistant matrix.  If the mix is cool then all this will happen before the core has begun to melt, if the mix is too warm the runny warm outside will flow into a mix with the slightly cooler but still running centre and we have same situation as with the hot and cold water (only with the thermodynamics working in the other direction!)

So there it is.  My suggestion is that the reason most chocolate fondants on Masterchef don’t go well is because the convection currents in the mixture are more rapid – and this is because time pressure does not permit a cooling of the mixture that might otherwise happen at home.  The latitude one has to get a fondant right is massively reduced at higher internal temperatures.

I make this supposition because clearly everyone who has attempted a fondant on the TV has practiced and practiced at home but the failure frequency is too high to be mere chance.  There must be another contributing factor.  Unfamiliar ovens are one thing but ultimately it’s the time pressure that leads to a too warm mixture that results in such a tiny window between under and overcooked that is to blame.

If you want to get a chocolate fondant right, and have never tried one before, you will hugely maximise your chances of success by cooling them first.  It is relatively straightforward and the physics of fluids allows us to see why.  An expert who knows their oven and knows their mix well can get them spot-on without breaking sweat.  But I think it’s a good idea to start by giving yourself the best chance of success.  But then I would say that because my business is teaching people how to cook!

Anyway, the cookery school is dead, is it?

Well, yes, frankly.  I am closing up shop and The Fine Food School will be no more.

E-gads! Shock!  Are things that bad? I hear you cry.

Actually no.  Things are not bad at all, as it happens.  Things, in fact, are good.   Just as with an unbroken succession of monarchy – as one cookery school “ker-flaps” its last oven cloth another fires up its hobs.

It all began back in July…

I was doing a bit of al-fresco cookery demonstrating the wonders of Napoleon Grills’ new range of barbecues at a great event called Field to Fork at Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire.  Incorporating the British BBQ Championships, Field to Fork is a showcase for Laverstoke’s own organic meat and dairy products.  If you haven’t come across them in your local Waitrose or Sainsbury then hunt them down.  The buffalo mozzarella is world class and the ice cream is probably the best that is commercially available in the UK.  They have won awards for their meat too and the buffalo fillet steak is stunning. 

It was a great fun event for me, I got to publicly unveil my now infamous BBQ sponge cake, the weather was terrific and I found time to hob-nob with some of my cheffy heroes.

But more than that; as a complete Formula 1 geek of many years the fact that Laverstoke Park Farm is owned and run, very much hands-on, by world champion Jody Scheckter added a certain frisson to the experience.

What I had not anticipated was to spend time discussing barbecues, sponge cakes, ice cream and the relative merits of gas versus charcoal with the man himself.  Not only a Formula 1 world champion but the only man to have ever won a Grand Prix in a car with six wheels!  It was because of this chap that I grew up thinking that one day all cars will have two pairs of little wheels at the front and two great big’uns at the back; and here was I discussing vanilla versus coffee for the perfect gelato with the man who drove the Tyrrell P34 to victory at the Scandinavian Raceway!  

Surreal, but definitely in a nice way.

Mr S is a man with a vision, that much is clear.  From the ginormous mounds of steaming organic compost, via the constant monitoring of a state-of-the-art soil analysis laboratory to the fully-equipped production kitchens, Laverstoke really does produce food from field to fork.  By engaging Temple Grandin to design the on-site abattoir Jody Scheckter has ensured that not only are his animals well cared-for and fed on pasture that grows on the richest, most bio-diverse soil but when it comes to the point of dispatch the beasts are calm, unstressed and happy right to the very last.  Jody’s vision for how good food should be produced for his family has mushroomed into an astonishing business.

The Laverstoke Education Centre reaches thousands of kids and puts them in touch with the idea that food comes from nature and that ultimately a burger starts its life as mud.  Restaurants all over the country are using Laverstoke meat and there are Laverstoke ice cream bars in top London department stores.

But one thing Jody doesn’t have is a cookery school.  When I told him about mine, his response : “You should come and run one for us” could have been taken as a throwaway comment.  But in my experience Jody Scheckter rarely makes throwaway comments and we’ve been discussing it off and on ever since.

Well, the discussions are over and it’s time to get to work.  I’ll be decommissioning and relocating lock, stock and barrel over the next few weeks and with a following wind the Laverstoke Park Cookery School will be up and running in no time.

This is a very exciting time, it really is.  I absolutely love what I do; it’s not like work at all.  The prospect of doing it in the heart of an operation which is the model for how food should be produced is thrilling, to say the least.

So, yes, the cookery school is dead but long live the cookery school! 

See you in a class!

This reliance on the presumed infallibility of the SatNav has led to many newsworthy pratfalls – the “turn left in 50 yards” turning out to be a railway line or a farm track.  It has also led to terrible, wholly avoidable tragedies.  But let us dwell on the lighter side. 

It is a brave sole indeed who would slavishly follow all the directions provided by the phenomenon that is Google Maps for a journey from “USA” to “Japan”.  It is not without a certain sense of humour that this extraordinary piece of software selects your starting point for you.  Ask it to start you from “USA” and you will begin your journey from what one can only assume is the very centre of the continental United States as defined by some clever algorithm.  This spot is somewhere between Wichita, Kansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma and is near the appropriately named town of Independence.  It is just about as far as a person can get from any ocean and yet your precise starting point is a place named (perhaps without even a hint of irony) as “Coastside Vacation Retreats.”  

Were you to then follow the instructions you would proceed in a generally North Westerly direction across seven States until you arrived at the wonderfully named Gas Works Park just north of the centre of downtown Seattle. 

As they might say back at your point of origin, the next instruction is a doozy! 

It says: “Kayak across the Pacific Ocean (2756 miles).”  There follows a few “left heres” and “right theres” taking you the tiniest of distances across the gorgeous island of Honolulu and then adds insult to injury with a double-whammy:  “Kayak across the Pacific Ocean, Entering Japan (3879 miles).”

This is the thing.  The virtually impossible or at least highly impractical steps in the journey are presented in the same straightforward manner as those that are a doddle.  If we accept a list of instructions and follow it blindly, one step after the other, without an overview as to where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, then we really shouldn’t be surprised if we end up in deep water.

In this regard cooking is no different to navigation. 

It used to be that people knew how to read a map and plan a journey keeping the overall plan in their head whilst travelling and that’s really the essence of cooking.  The reason that Jamie Oliver can apparently bish-bash-bosh his way to a meal that seems so much trickier when we try it at home is that for all his bish-bash-boshery his skill as a chef is the result of years and years of hard work, practice and a fundamental understanding of how cookery “works.”

We return to where we began.  We can all build a wardrobe from a flat-pack kit with a set of instructions.  True, a recipe is a set of instructions but where is the culinary flat-pack?  Very few of us indeed would claim to be able to build a wardrobe from scratch, from wood, from a tree.  So why should we expect to be able to cook like a Jamie Oliver or a Michel Roux just because we’ve got a recipe?

Are you one of those people who has been inspired by a chef on the TV or a nice cookery book and had a go at cooking and been…well…a bit rubbish?  Do you think you can’t cook because you’ve had a go and it wasn’t very successful?  If so then this is my challenge to you; have a think about how you would fare if I asked you to pop out and rustle up a cabinet, or paint a portrait.  I bet your cooking is better than your carpentry or artistry isn’t it?  You’re not rubbish, trust me.

Cookery is a skill, just like those other things and just like them cookery takes practice.  But unlike them, we all somehow expect to be good at cooking right from the word go.   Because we’ve got a list.  Because we’ve got instructions.  It must follow, surely, that if we’re not perfect first time then we’re no good at it. Right?  Well, wrong, actually.

For this reason, I don’t teach recipes, I teach people how to cook.  These are not the same at all.  The simple truth is if you know how to cook then you can follow a recipe but just following the recipe on its own is no guarantee of success. 

Consider for example a nice ragout – a meat sauce perfect for, say a spag bol or a lasagne.  What is important for a ragout is the process, not really the ingredients and certainly not the quantities of each.   When we make a ragout in a class I advise my students not to get hung up on how much onion we used or whether it was oregano or parsley but to think about what is happening in the pan, and why.   Because whether you want to make a spag bol, a chilli-con-carné or a shepherd’s pie the only thing you need to know is how to make a ragout, the rest is just detail.

You’ve got to know where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there before you set off otherwise you could end up doing a lot of unnecessary paddling in open water.

So don’t give up before you’ve even started and if you fancy learning how to cook so you can make good use of all those beautiful books then I’d recommend some lessons.  Well I would, wouldn’t I?

paul.blake@thefinefoodschool.co.uk

These days there is a new way to wear a scarf.  One should double the scarf, put the loose ends over one shoulder, the loop over the other and tuck the loose ends through the sloop creating a simple slip knot. 

This sartorial innovation has only been with us for the past few years and yet it is easy, straightforward and so blindingly obvious a way to wear a scarf that it is astounding that it was never thought of in the past! 

Now, I know what you’re thinking and, no, I’ve not taken leave of my senses and set off on an Adventure in Fashion!

It’s just that recently, what with the awful weather, I have mostly been wearing a scarf in the “new improved” style and wherever I look everyone is doing the same.  On the street, on TV and in magazines.  How so?  Why?  Who said so? I don’t even know when I started doing it!

Fashion it could be said is dictated by style-gurus and designers whose bizarre catwalk creations are the inspiration for the next season’s high-street trends.  In some senses this must be true.  There are always trendsetters, people in the public eye and companies whose ideas and style-choices are instantly adopted and copied by their admirers – although I’m not sure my butcher has had that many requests for Handbag a la Ga-Ga!  At best this is flattery through imitation and at worst it’s cynical manipulation.  But let’s not get onto the subject of that man and his reality TV talent shows!

The cynic in me believes that, for example,  the annual obsession for this-year’s-must-have-toy at Christmas is more manufactured than anything else.  By creating a demand and then deliberately limiting supply one can foment a craze for something out of nothing which must be good for the manufacturer if nothing else.  If it makes the National News then the PR payoff is incalculable!  Another piece of Heston’s Xmas pud, anyone?  What?  Didn’t you get one?

But things like this new way to tie a scarf are undirected, unfocussed and just seem to have arisen spontaneously and spread like benign viruses.   The real fashions and trends that colour and add interest to our lives are never really those that are dictated by the marketeers and impresarios but those that seem to have a life of their own and reflect the times we live in, they are the real definers of the zeitgeist, if you forgive such pseudness!

Social psychologists call this type of thing a “meme.”  Memes are the informational equivalent of genes.  Memes are specific, they replicate, they evolve and they have a life of their own.  Attempts are made on the web to actively create memes (I saw one called “take a photo of yourself with your head in a fridge”) but these aren’t real memes in the same way that surreal catwalk get-ups aren’t real clothes.  The holy grail of marketing is of course to be able to dictate consumer behaviour from a central point, but all too often we humans and our memes have other ideas!

Food is no different to couture in this regard.  There are fashions in food (Ooh, sun dried tomatoes!  how positively eighties, darling!) and there are plenty of culinary designers whose lead we love to follow.  Let’s face it, if Jamie mentions Tonka beans on the TV then the Tonka growing industry are in for a bumper year!  This is of course why the food retailers love working with celebrity chefs – a guaranteed boost in sales of whatever ingredients he or she mentions this week.

This month, then, I’m not sure what will happen to the sales of Cod.

If you’ve seen Hugh F-W’s TV shows about the state of the fishing industry and fish stocks then you’ll know what I’m talking about.  It’s pretty horrendous – the wastage, the critical stock levels, the wholly inappropriate Common Fisheries Policy.  Hugh’s suggested solution is that we should make an active choice to have something other than cod, salmon or tuna then next time we want some fish.

Now, cards on the table, I absolutely support this without reservation for all of the enviro-political reasons in the programme but even if all that were put aside I would be arguing the case for you putting a broader range of fish in your shopping basket for culinary reasons alone.

Sea bass, mackerel, John Dory, gurnard, breams, soles, dab, plaice, hake and haddock to name just a few are not only alternatives to but are all superior in flavour to cod, salmon and tuna.  Don’t get me wrong, cod is a lovely fish but its subtlety is lost in fish and chips.  Precious cod deserves to be treated with a little reverence!  Salmon is just over-farmed to an industrial degree and being grown to a price means that what was once a delicious treat has become a ubiquitous, flavourless pink protein pile on the plate.  Yet here in North Dorset there is a farm that produces Arctic Charr – a fish easily the equal of the best salmon in my book.

The problem is I’m not sure how the deeply-ingrained meme of “cod’n’chips” can be easily supplanted, however well-meaning the efforts to do so.

Martyn at Something Else Fishy in Milborne Port, has for a while been offering sea bass and mackerel – with chips – alongside the usual suspects and has now moved to 100% line-caught Haddock.   He tells me that he loves the idea of extending the range further but there has to be a demand for it to be possible.

 And that’s where we come in, I suppose, to create the demand.

So if you haven’t already, try tying your scarf in that new modern style and start to get to know some of those wonderful, sustainable fish!   Of course, if you’re unsure what to do with fish, if bones and scales mean you never buy fish to cook at home…well…I do run a cookery school you know!  My seafood day could open up a whole new world for you.

Politics, it is said, is not something that should ever be discussed in polite society and certainly not over dinner.  But, then again, there is politics and there is politics. 

As I begin to write this column I am sitting many thousands of miles from my usual office enjoying a glass of very cold white after a lovely hot day on the Gulf of Mexico. 

As I complete the column I am watching the snow fall over North Dorset – while I was away it seems someone turned the heating off! 

On leaving the UK the big political hoo-ha was over Harriet Harman calling Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent” and on arriving in the US the mid-term election results were coming in and it was clear that the American electorate have voted-in some truly bizarre individuals with some of the most astonishing opinions and beliefs. 

Now, it strikes me that whatever one’s opinions of British MPs, either collectively or individually, one can be fairly certain that the majority of them can be considered to be sufficiently in touch with reality to do their job, or at least be safe around sharp objects!  Ms Harman’s playground insult seems just an ill advised bit of rudeness compared to some of the weirdnesses that the newest members of Congress are espousing.  The ironic coincidence is that history’s other famous Tea Party was the one hosted by a Mad Hatter!  But what on Earth has that got to do with food?  More than you might imagine, I think.

Get any group of foodie types together in this country and the conversation will inevitably turn to the politics of food – the polarity of the saintly local producer against the evil multinational.  London’s network of pop-up restaurants and supper clubs even style themselves as a kind of subversive underground; culinary resistance fighters struggling to save the land from being crushed under the clown shoe of the junk food war machine.   Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I disagree with those attitudes it’s just that it is far too easy to look at food in this country and just see the bad side.  Sometimes one needs a bit of perspective.  

In the same manner that – however rubbish it is – our political system has got an awful lot to be admired, the state of food and attitudes to it in the UK is a lot better than it might otherwise be.

All over the country there are organisations, many funded with government money, which are running projects to reconnect us with our food, supporting and promoting local food initiatives and educating our children about food and where it comes from.  Far from fighting a losing battle against the tidal wave of turkey twizzlers; the supermarket tsunami – these people are at the vanguard of a new way of thinking about what we eat and what we buy.  Here in Dorset, and of course all over the country we now have genuine choice when it comes to buying our food.  

I went to my local butcher yesterday to order my turkey for Christmas and I bought a chicken, a pound of beef mince, two duck breasts, half a dozen sausages, two pints of milk and a dozen eggs and it cost me twenty quid.  Of course, I could buy the same list from the cheapest range in a supermarket for less but, like-for-like, my butcher is no more expensive that the supermarket.  How does he do it?  Because he’s very, very busy – and that is because people are actively choosing to go there. 

When we exercise our choice to buy good food, rather than have the choice dictated to us then it genuinely becomes something of great value – affordable, sustainable and resilient.  And we are fortunate enough to live somewhere where we can exercise that choice.  Where I’ve just come from I couldn’t find an independent butcher, not one.

So, arriving home amidst snowfall, student riots and news of the Irish economy in desperate trouble it looks like it could be a long hard winter.  There is a lot to be envied about the US, particularly the weather in the South in November, but, as far as the politics goes; whatever my opinion of our current lot, good or bad, I don’t envy their job at the moment and at least I’m fairly sure that they’re not all totally barking mad.  It may be that you might not trust that the Chancellor truly understands that we’re “all in this together” but, I think you’ll agree it is good to know that at least he doesn’t think he’s from another planet! 

As for November’s adventure in food, it was not so much an adventure as a voyage of rediscovery; in that it is only in the going away that one appreciates what is back home.   I will be enjoying my Christmas lunch even more this year knowing that everything from the turkey to the butter and flour in the puddings have been selected from as close to home as possible as part of a genuine choice. 

That’s not about being a smug, middle-class food-fascist it is about celebrating the fact that through the choices we make and the food we buy we can support our local suppliers who are, after all our neighbours, our friends and ultimately ourselves; I suppose that’s what being in this together is all about.  If we lose touch with that we lose touch with reality and end up voting-in Martians at the next election.  I’d rather live somewhere where the politicians might be rubbish but they are basically just people like you and me.  Somewhere where I can make a little difference for the better by doing a bit of shopping!

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.

In the finals of TV’s Celebrity Masterchef Christine Hamilton prepared a terrine of pig’s head for a table of top chefs.  They loved it.  Well, why not?  Pork is delicious.  Yet many people would balk at the idea of eating pig’s head. 

A while back there was a TV programme that said it would expose unsavoury practices in the food industry.   Instead it attempted to shock and horrify the viewer by serving passers-by with burgers made from…wait for it…beef heart. 

The consumer reactions that were shown involved an initial approval turning to disgust when that key ingredient was revealed.  Well, beef heart, yuck!  Yes?  Er…no, actually.  What on Earth is wrong with using beef heart in burgers?  Heart is high quality protein and is made of all the same material as fillet steak, just arranged differently.   It is sad that heart, like head and cheek and tail and tongue are all too often sent for pet food or simply wasted.  It seems strange that terrine of pig’s head is considered a gourmet delicacy in a top-class restaurant but, stick it in a bun and sell it from a van and there will be riots!

The real horror story is not that your budget burger is made from something other than the finest steak but the increasing distance and disconnection between us and the food that we eat.

So much food is now manufactured in factories that the real scandal is not that a burger might contain heart (delicious) but that a simply cookie could contain e-coli (not so delicious).   In the US alone the recall of contaminated food and the knock-on effects on the economy run into the billions of dollars.  One global food giant recalled millions of dollars worth of uncooked cookie dough from supermarket shelves after the flour used was found to be contaminated with e-coli.  Every year hundreds are hospitalised and many die from food poisoning caused by contamination of processed food prepared in factories.  But how hard is it to make your own cookie dough?  How have we become content buying cookie dough made in a factory and yet disgusted at the thought of eating heart? 

This month’s wide-ranging adventure in food gave me a moment to pause and consider that perhaps there’s hope for us yet.  It’s Summer show season, and I’ve been all over doing demos in fields here and there.  It’s always fun trying to measure out flour in a high cross-wind!  At the Dorset County Show at the beginning of September I ran into Lee from The Dorset Pantry whose demo was to be the skinning of a deer.  The organisers were a little concerned that it might offend but in actual fact Lee attracted a great audience, many of whom were children.  Understanding where food comes from should be a vital part of everyone’s education and it was terrific to see so many young people engaged and enthralled.   

I have also been treated to a personal tour of Jody Scheckter’s amazing Laverstoke Park Farm.  The Education Centre there reaches literally thousands of children each year putting them in touch with their food and where it comes from.  It is a superb example of what can be done to re-engage us with what we eat.  We need to know, and should really care about what is going on our plate and we should perhaps change some of our perceptions as to what makes good food.   

I for one am convinced that isolation from how our food is prepared and unquestioning trust in industrial processing can’t be good for us in the long run.  Cook weird things and enjoy it!   Happy Cooking!

On Columbus Street in San Francisco there is a restaurant called “The Stinking Rose” and just in case one is in any doubt from three blocks away, it has the words “A Garlic Restaurant” appended to the sign.  I ate there once on a Wednesday evening in 2000, enjoying a starter of slow roast garlic, a main of garlic and wild mushroom lasagne followed by garlic ice cream with chocolate mole sauce all accompanied by a garlic Semillon blanc.  When I arrived back home and stepped through the front door on the following Saturday morning my wife called from the kitchen, “Did you have garlic on the plane by any chance?” 

I must confess I still blush at the thought of the following two days of meetings, taxis and aircraft during which I’d inflicted my reeking presence on others.  Still, it was a fine supper!

There are certain ingredients inspire that almost nerd-like dedication that led to the creation of such a restaurant.  Chocolate does it, cheese does it.  Even rotting fish does it for some Swedes.  There is a kind of obsessive uber-geekiness attached to some culinary pursuits.  Now, although I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as having these nerd-like tendencies, I’m sure others certainly might describe me that way and, well, if the cap fits…  

One ingredient that has always held a particular fascination for me is the not-so-humble chilli pepper.  I’m not alone, either.  In one supermarket I recently found over eighty chilli sauces, pastes, dips, dressings and powders.  Not just ingredients that contained chilli but products that led on the fact that there were chilli this or chilli that.  Is there any other ingredient on the shelf in such a profusion of costumes?  And it seems it’s all because of one little property, the burn!

Several million Scovilles worth of serious chillis!

Since my university days I’ve had a bit of a thing for plants, and particularly their chemical products called “secondary metabolites”.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Don’t all students have a fascination with certain chemicals produced by plants?  Well, perhaps but that’s not what I’m talking about.

“Secondary metabolites” are all the chemicals that plants manufacture that are not directly involved in energy production and growth, hence the “secondary” label.  Every scent, every flavour, every colour, every poison and every narcotic produced by plants has evolved to attract, deter, reward, punish or in some cases even consume a particular species of animal.  It was the fact that the vast majority of the chemistry that goes on in plants is key to these animal/plant interactions that I interested me.  I signed up for a course called “Secondary Metabolism in Plants” only to find it was cancelled for economic reasons.  Too few students wanted to take a module that was, for me, probably the main reason for studying biological sciences.  Still that was nearly a quarter of a century ago.  One day I hope to be able to fill that gap.

Of the things I managed to pick up in the meantime, however is that plants of the genus Capsicum produce a chemical called 8-Methyl-N-vanillyl-trans-6-nonenamide.  Mercifully it is also known as “capsaicin.”  Present in high concentrations around the seeds of ripe Capsicum fruit capsaicin binds to the pain receptors of mammals causing a burning sensation, without, incidentally, doing actual harm.  Birds, however, adore chillis, are attracted by the bright red, glossy fruit and are unaffected by the capsaicin, if not attracted by it. 

It makes perfect sense if you think about it.  Mammals will destroy the seeds by chewing up the fruit with powerful sets teeth.  Whereas birds will swallow the seeds whole whilst attacking the fruit and pass them complete with neat little packets of fertiliser.  Capsicum has evolved to deter mammals and attract birds.  Clever little pepper!

Only dumb mammals and smart birds enjoy a feast of chillis

So much I already knew.  But wanting to find out more I made a trip to visit the brilliant and charming Michael and Joy Michaud at their home in West Bexington from where they operate Sea Spring Seeds and Peppers by Post.  A modest sounding company, perhaps, yet they grow literally dozens of varieties of peppers and the most astonishing tomatoes and herbs.  And what peppers!  Famous for the Dorset Naga, probably the hottest chilli on the planet, Michael and Joy are justifiably equally proud of the quality and range of all their peppers.  I guess growing the hottest peppers get’s one coverage whereas growing the best pepper wouldn’t.  Fortunately these guys do both.

Michael selects a few peppers for tasting

If there is ever any suspicion in your mind that the chilli pepper is a one-trick-pony of a vegetable then you should try some of the amazing varieties that Michael and Joy grown including some that they have developed themselves.

There are cultivars galore from the classic cayenne, Anaheim and pimiento de pardon to the new and delightful Sparkler and Fairy Light varieties.

The gorgeous fairy light cultivar

I was introduced to the whole range from green bell peppers the size of rugby balls to perfectly spherical, scarlet, pea-sized chillis.  From the glossy black to palest peach, from mild and sweet to quite indescribably hot.

Michael is actually working on a cultivar that might well take the title from the Naga.  He presented me with an innocuous looking pale orange fruit that he’d split open.  A fingertip wiped once on the cut edge of the fruit and then wiped across the tongue was like eating a entire vindaloo!  I mean that is some serious heat!

I thought I knew a lot about chillis but an hour with Michael and Joy was an education!

The beauty and elegance of the hundreds of poly-tunnelled plants with their cascades of jewel-like fruit, the enthusiasm and dedication of Michael and Joy, the sheer pleasure of being amongst such an array of amazing plants – not to mention the single finest tomato I have ever tasted in my life – all combined to create quite a memorable morning.

A smart mammal and a dumb mammal with chillis

Laden with a dozen different varieties and looking forward to making some cracking salsas and sauces I took my leave of the Michauds with a warm glow inside, for all sorts of reasons.

 Buy your chilli seeds from Michael and Joy at www.seaspringseeds.co.uk and your peppers from them at www.peppersbypost.biz

Beautiful purple peppers. One of Sea Spring Seeds' many excellent varieties

Nobody seems to mind too much, least of all those of us with a garden in desperate need of water, because there seems to be an expectation that this is just a blip; a bit of Summer rain and we’ll be getting the good stuff back soon.  Here’s hoping!  I for one am not ready to hang up the tongs and go back into the kitchen just yet.

There’s something about cooking outdoors that is just great.  And it’s not just me, Radio 4 just this week dedicated their entire edition of The Food Programme to the subject.  I’ve been doing a bit myself, not least at some major events one of which is nearly upon us, the boldy-named Grillstock! 

Just a fortnight ago I was at an event called Field To Fork at the excellent Laverstoke Park which included the British Barbecue Championships (the professionals) and the Amateur BBQ World Cup.    Needless to say the amateur day although highly competitive was much more relaxed without an ego in sight as far as I could see.  In a fiercely fought grill-off ten teams slaved over their identical Napoleon Mirage Grills – herb-scented forge workers perspiring in the grey-white heat of culinary industry.

I was set up mere metres away, and slightly downwind, demonstrating the range and versatility of the finest Canadian grilling machines from our friends at Napoleon.    The barn that Mr Scheckter had set aside for the event soon resembled something from downrange of Eyjafjallajökull as the finest white ash rained steadily down from the rafters.

And it was very fine ash indeed from the very finest of charcoals from the finest sustainably harvested British hardwoods.  

It was with no little delight that I discovered that the charcoal used for the event was from Bioregional, a company set up by one of my oldest and closest friends, Pooran Desai (OBE no less).  Bioregional Charcoal was his first of many successes on the road to becoming one of the world’s leading green entrepreneurs.  In the years to come I’ll be able to say “I knew him when…”

Actually, sod the years to come.  I knew him when…back in the early 90s I worked with Mr Desai (OBE) on a disused plot of allotment land to create a demonstration area promoting sustainable food production.  We centred the design with a big old pond and a motley crew one Sunday set about excavating a big enough hole to created a naturally “puddled” watertight pool.  With our worthy green credentials established we lay about the task with shovel and mattock and much graisse de coude. 

At about the half way mark there was much flagging of spirits and irritable mutterings.    But the half-hearted prehistoric clink clink of hand-tool on flinty soil was broken by the post industrial thock-thock-thock-thock- CRUNCH! of a diesel engined leviathan crashing through a (rapidly widening) gap in the onlookers.   Like some latter day mahout coaxing a trumpeting cadmium yellow elephant through the middle of a hippy commune, PD (OBE), grinning at the controls of a huge JCB, waved regally at the peasants below.  We knew then we were in the presence of greatness.  When the going got tough, the tough kept digging but the smart got a JCB.  

In borrowing the machine from the owner of the garden centre which backed on to the allotments (it might have been borrowed or “borrowed” – he remains inscrutable on the subject to this day) our glorious leader demonstrated the maxim that, at the end of the day, you can be as green-principled as you like but principles alone won’t dig you as big a hole as a JCB!

My great friend, genius, polymath, entrepreneure and giggler. Pooran Desai, OBE

By approaching his socio-environmental agenda with the eye of a businessman Pooran Desai has created companies and ways of doing business that are both profitable and green.   When challenged about his own carbon footprint, generated from travelling the world to set up new sustainable industries, he is typically sanguine.  I asked him once whether “it” (anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation) was as bad as “they” (them) made out.  Thoughtfully he laughed and said “I actually think it could be a lot worse than that!”  When asked if that didn’t give him pause to wonder why he was bothering with all the Bioregional effort he was equally frank and replied to the effect that it wasn’t really a choice to be made.

It has always seemed to me that it was in attempting to deal with the paradox that in trying to bring about our salvation might hasten our destruction that Pooran discovered his true calling. 

While some people follow the Clarkson line and deny everything in the hope it might go away and others give up washing and cutting their hair to super-minimise their carbon toe-prints, Pooran Desai has suggested that by maybe synthesising sound practical, business, scientific and environmental principles there might be hope for us yet.  As he might say, there probably isn’t, but there might be and that’s enough for me.

It is with immense pride in reflected glory that I can say that Pooran Desai’s work has ultimately resulted in some truly novel paradigms about how we live our lives including the concept of the “zero carbon” business, a term which he first coined – which is funny from a guy who established his credentials by selling barbecue charcoal!

We’re getting there in my meandering journey to answer the question I posed a couple of ‘blogs back – “why cook?”  Of course I’m not asking why we should bother cooking more “why do we cook?”  “Why cook?  Why cook?  Why not just eat?”

The single most important reason for cooking is not pleasure as some might think but energy efficiency.  Here’s the thing.  It takes, on average, 25% more energy for a human to consume and digest raw food as opposed to cooked.  This is a massive effect in evolutionary terms.  On the one hand survival is optimised as the advent of cooking means one has to find 25% less food to achieve the same results.  But more importantly, on the other hand when there is no shortage of food the additional energy available can be put to good use powering the most energy hungry organ in the human body – the brain.

Now, this is not to say that the discovery of cooking is the only thing that differentiated early humans from apes.  There is, for example, the small matter of a single knock-out gene that give the chimpanzee its cranial ridge and consequently massive facial muscle structure and powerful bite – and which is utterly absent in humans.  Thus we have a weak bite but (and this is a big but) our brain case is not constrained by the massive muscle structures and has had room to expand without compromising our ability to function.  Now; take a population of hominids without the brain constraint and give them a higher energy diet and leave to simmer for a million years or so…

Still, no one can be sure when cooking food, or let’s face it the discovery of fire-control first appeared.  But there is evidence for when cookery might have first appeared.  Last time I suggested we might be able to identify the first dish ever created by a human cook – and that was not barbecued meat.

Archeological Scientist Professor Martin Jones is an expert in the archaeology of food.  “If we think of the human diet in two steps; one is with early modern humans there is an enormous adventurous diversification.  We’re eating everything; we’re eating seeds, fish, birds, mammoths – anything that moves, we’re finding a way to eat it.  Then there’s a second episode which starts around 10,000 years ago where we seem to home in on a small number of target species particularly grass seeds, what we call cereals, underground tubers and a small number of animals.”

About 8000 years ago the rains that fed the Saharan savannah began to dry up and it started to become desert.  At around the same time humans learned how to tame wild cattle and manage and herd them rather than chasing them down one at a time. 

Archeological evidence shows that around this time cattle were kept in villages, corralled in small numbers and butchered for meat.  But many of the cattle were killed when they were old, too old to have been raised for food.  The time taken to raise them to that age, plus the poorer quality of the older meat makes it highly unlikely that these were beef cattle.  They must have been kept alive for other reasons.  It is possible that they might have been used as pack animals but it seems more likely that they were tapped – for blood. 

Blood gives essential dietary protein, in the context of a single animal it is a renewable resource, unlike beef.  It is likely that the meat on the beasts was used as a fallback should other sources of protein fail or be used when the animal reached the end of its life.  The meat was perhaps not the best thing to eat but it would always have been available as a last resort.

The, perhaps more obvious suggestion that these were early dairy cattle is almost certainly wrong.  Not only did ancient cattle produce very little milk by today’s standards but drinking cow’s milk is very much a modern behavioural adaptation in humans.  It is not something we evolved to do, nor do we have the body chemistry to do it well.  For most of us our bodies have learned to tolerate cow’s milk but many humans around the world still have a severe intolerance.

So it is highly likely that one of modern humankind’s earliest sources of protein was blood.   If one is to feed on blood rather one has a choice, fresh or not.  It might not always have been convenient to drink the freshly-tapped blood immediately and the thing about blood is that it very rapidly ceases to be fresh.  It will clot and dry and consequently one would need a way to store, preserve and subsequently consume it.  If one mixes fresh blood with ground up cereals and bakes the resulting cake-like substance on a stone by the fire…well, of course, it’s black pudding.  An easy way to preserve and store the most precious food resource.

It is very possible, then, that black pudding was the earliest dish created by modern humans.

The consumption of cooked food with its liberated energy sources was a key ingredient in making us what we are today. 

Perhaps we owe more than we realise to the humble black pudding!  All hail, by ‘eck, all hail!