Heavenly Halibut

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you're cooking, the gods and goddesses of food, just seem to be smiling down on you?  You pick the right recipe, find the perfect ingredients and manage to carry out every process required of you in the right order and without incident.  And the result is so completely worth the effort.  I had one of those this week!

If you've been reading the blog, you'll know that I'm not very brave with cooking fish.  It scares me a little, the result of which is that I tend to play it safe with haddock, salmon, prawns and other known entities.  But when I went to the fishmonger (Pecks in Wednesday Market) they had the loveliest looking piece of Halibut.  So I bought it since I needed a firm white fish for the recipe I wanted to cook.

Image from BBC Ingredients

According to the BBC Food Ingredients pages, Halibut is the largest of the flat fish, growing to a size of 4 metres or more.  Apparently there are also concerns over the sustainability of wild Halibut so (note to self), farmed might be a better option.

If you haven't yet got your hands on one of Bill Grainger's cook books, I can highly recommend them.  I never think of him as one of my favourite TV chefs but whenever I pick one of his recipes, I'm always blown away.  Maybe they embody a little Ozzie sunshine :-)  What I notice is how fresh the combination of flavours always tastes.  Anyhow, I digress...

My chosen recipe - Bill Grainger's Fish Burritos.  Blitz up a big handful of coriander, 2 tsp of paprika, 1 tsp cumin, red chilli, tsp sea salt, black pepper, zest of a lime and 80ml of olive oil in a food processor.  Slather it over your fish (already cut into strips) and marinade for at least 15 minutes.

Then just fry your fish for a couple of minutes each side.

Make a cucumber salad to go with it.  Cucumber (skinned, seeded & chopped), cherry tomatoes, spring onions, coriander, lime juice, red chilli, sea salt and a little caster sugar.

And a little mayonnaise flavoured with the zest and juice of a lime.

Then pile it all into a tortilla with some lettuce leaves for health.

I swear this is heaven on a plate.  And I'm so glad that I've discovered halibut.

Local Eggs & Cereal Alternatives

Hi, I'm John Cant. I run http://www.marumarket.co.uk/ which is an online shopping and home delivery service from 5 local independent grocery shops in Beverley. Anthony and Amalia have asked me to write a guest post so here goes...

I don't want to plug my business too much but can't help mentioning it since it's here to help overcome some of the barriers to shopping at local shops which Antony and Amalia mentioned in their final reflections post. The main obstacle is time and limited opening hours but with our service this is less of a problem as we deliver in the evenings when most people are at home. Plug over and on with the post :-)...

In winter, we buy logs for our fire from the farm on Dog Kennel Lane just north west of Beverley. One day we discovered that they also sell fresh free-range eggs from their hens around the back of the farm too. Now it's nearly summer and we're not using logs anymore we've continued to buy our eggs there. They're fresh, our money's going straight to the producer and our 2 year old daughter enjoys watching the hens for a few minutes and now understands where eggs come from. There's no comparison with shopping at supermarket. Not to mention the price of eggs in Tesco! There are lots of farms which sell eggs direct. I'm sure you've noticed many an “Eggs for Sale” sign as you're driving around so why not stop the next time you see one? And let us know where the best one are...

This takes me on the topic of breakfast which I remember Amalia & Antony writing about recently, saying how they struggled to find things to eat when they couldn't have cereal. Last Sunday morning, we looked in the cupboard and found half a loaf of stale bread. If we'd bought it at the supermarket then it would probably have gone straight in the compost bin. But since we got it from a local baker it felt very wasteful to do that since we appreciate the time and effort put into its baking. The result? French Toast with our farm fresh eggs. The stale bread actually improved the texture and it tasted fantastic. 

Another option for breakfast is kippers. It's something which isn't fashionable these days but again it makes a fantastic change from cereals and has been a staple British breakfast for many many years. It doesn't take long to make either. Simply grill while toasting bread and making a cup of tea or coffee. It's done in 5 minutes. And Beverley's very own fishmonger, Peck, sells fantastic home smoked fish so it's a great opportunity to have something different for breakfast.

My wife is Japanese and so from time to time we have rice & miso soup for breakfast to help get our daughter used to Japanese food. Recently we added a kipper to the dish too.  Maybe it's not for everyone but I'll add it to the mix of breakfast options.

Thank you Antony & Amalia for asking me to write a guest post for you and it would be great if you could write a post for my blog one day soon...

Happy Bees and Local Honey

There's something so appealing about the sight of lavender in the garden.  The vibrant colour and subtle  fragrance that, if you squint a bit and ignore the frostbite creeping up your legs, could almost make you feel like you're in sunny Provence.

Image from Viator

We've found it amazingly easy to grow as well which is a bonus.  Well, all except those fluffy French varieties which seem to turn their nose up at our claggy English soil.

But no matter, there are plenty of breeds that seem to like our devil may care attitude to gardening and resolute lack of attention.  Even I can manage to trim them back a couple of times a year to stop them going all woody.

Last year, having dug up a hideous border of dwarf trees, we planted a Lavender hedge.  It made me happy every time I looked at it.

So now I'm all excited about planting more this year.  Especially since the bees really do seem to love it - you can just about see one happy little fella at the top of the pic.  As Antony was potting up our first new lavender purchases at the weekend, it got me thinking about bees and what else we might be able to do to encourage them.

They seem to love one of the airbricks in our wall (clearly not ideal!) so this year I think I might get a little bee house.  We should be getting these jaunty little things in the shop in the next few weeks so I think one definitely has my name on it.

According to Save Our Bees, if our native bee species die out, we could lose a third of our diet.  Bad news.  And it seems that unless we all step in to help, their decline could be inexorable.  In the 1950s, there were 50 native species of bees.  Now there are only 25.

Friends of the Earth are so concerned about the plight of our bees that they are petitioning the government to act and have their own Bee Cause campaign.  Their research indicates that:

• the loss of habitat is the most pressing problem facing British bees:  97% of our vital grasslands have been lost in the past 60 years
• bees pollinate 75% of our main food crops worldwide, including some of our favourite produce like apples, strawberries and tomatoes
• scientists estimate that it would cost over £1.8 billion every single year to pollinate UK crops by hand

What's more, they emphasise that the diversity of bee species is important in ensuring good quality crops and reliable yields.

So aside from my new bee house, my plan is to plant more flowers including maybe some wild flowers, which apparently they love.  And according to The Mail Online, researchers from Queen Mary's College London, their favourite flower colours are violet and purple from which they also collect more nectar so it's a happy coincidence that the one border we got replanted and looking OK last year is mainly in shades of purple, pink and white.

And the other obvious thing to do is to buy local honey.  Support the people who are taking care of the bees for us.

East Riding Honey have a fascinating page on their website about their beekeeping year.  I had no idea that the hives are moved from place to place!  They've also got some great photos (like this one) and more information about the different types of honey they produce.

Another interesting website is Beverley Beekeepers' Association where you can find a list of places to buy local honey (which includes Jacks, Drewtons and Fresh & Fruity) and some interesting looking honey recipes.  Date & Honey Tea Loaf sounds like a winner!

I love this car planted with pollinator friendly plants by Fiona Weir (a member of the Beverley Beekeepers' Association) for last year's Freedom Festival to highlight the importance of city planting.

Image from Beverley Beekeepers' Association

Brilliant!

A Sunny Bank Holiday

Don't you just love it when the weather forecast is right?  Especially when they say we'll have beautiful blue skies for a bank holiday weekend - and we actually get it!  Amazing.

I'm still feeling cheerful and floaty light from having an unprecedented 2 days off together.  It was the perfect balance of lazy and active and included some great little & local highlights so I thought I'd do a quick blog post about them.

Our garden is an ongoing mission.  It's still in pretty bad shape but we're finally making some progress, I think.  Every time the sun comes out, it's a mad dash to do a bit and as we had a bit of time this weekend, we had a lovely wander round Minster Plant Centre on Long Lane.

It's one of my favourite independent garden centres because its really straightforward.  They grow and sell plants, rather than all the other stuff that seems to be packed into garden centres these days.

Chris and Carolyn who own it (and their staff) are also brilliant about giving advice and making sure you've bought the right thing.  I got some tips on how to bring my sad looking Fatsia back round and they sorted us out with the right compost for potting up last year's Christmas Tree (also bought from there) which now needs a bigger container.

We managed to resist veggies and bedding plants as we really don't have anywhere to put them until we've done more work but just seeing them makes you feel like summer's on its way.

On Monday, we had a day out with friends and headed over to Burton Agnes Hall for a wander and a picnic.  Wow.  Built sometime before 1610, this Elizabethan Manor house is absolutely beautiful.

Image from gardenvisit.com

Apparently, it has been described by Simon Jenkins in his book England's Thousand Best Houses as 'the perfect English house' and as one of the twenty best English houses alongside Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Chatsworth House.  Pretty high praise.  And it's right on our doorstep.

The house is warm and welcoming, the friendly staff were great with the kids and full of interesting information and the walled garden is beautiful.  It also has a small maze and giant games including this snakes and ladder board - where a competitively fought game ensued.

Image via cheriesplace.me.uk 

Easily the best thing about the whole place for me was the amazing art collection.  When I got back and googled it, I couldn't believe how few mentions there are of it online.  It seems to generally be referred to as an impressive collection of English and French Impressionist Paintings, which it is.  But come on, what's wrong with dropping a few names?  Try Matisse, Renoir and Pissarro for starters.  Throw in Cezanne, Corot and Gaugin.  And top with Augustus John, Manet and Derain.  And seriously, that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I know nothing about art and even I know these names.  There are so many more that I didn't recognise but will go back to see again.  If you love beautiful things, go.  Run there.  You'll love it.

There's a woodland walk, cafe and shops and an area for the kids to play.  A word of warning though.  Approach the cafe with caution - we queued for over half an hour for a cup of tea and an ice cream.  If they got a little more organised, it would be perfect.

We enjoyed our picnic on the lawn so much that we're tempted to go back for their Jazz Festival in July.

Oh, and I have a new culinary success to share.  I wanted to take a salad on our picnic and remembered seeing a jar salad on a blog last year.  It makes salad easy to transport and stops it going soggy in the dressing.  It's super easy and looks good too.

Make your salad dressing - I just made a simple vinaigrette and then added some thinly sliced red onion and oregano so that the onion would soften in the dressing and not be too strongly flavoured.

Throw that into the bottom of a jar (one with a tight seal on it) and then add layers of whatever salad things you want.  I added carrots, chopped flat leaf parsley, tomatoes, cubed feta cheese and lettuce.  Put the hardest stuff (like carrots) at the bottom as they'll soften just the right amount when they're in contact with the dressing.  Put the softest stuff like lettuce at the top.  You'll end up with something that looks like this.

When you're ready to serve it, just turn it out into a big bowl and toss.

After taking the very long route round the woodland walk (slight navigational error) we'd all walked our lunch off and were ready for tea so we came home via Hornsea and had a chippy tea in the sunshine on the seafront.

They were queuing right down the road at Sullivans, which I think qualifies as an east coast institution.  The young team were super efficient and within a few minutes, we had chip butties in hand...

... and six very happy people.

After all, what's a few thousand calories between friends?

Little & Local - The Finally Tally

It's the first of May already so that's it done.  April was our Little & Local month and it's been and gone already.  Incredible.

I suppose the first thing to say is that we're feeling even more passionate and enthusiastic about the concept of shopping at small, independently owned shops than we were when we started.  So that's a good sign!  And we're definitely going to keep writing the blog - probably not quite as often but at least a couple of times a week.

But I guess there should be some sort of reckoning.  An attempt to evaluate (very unscientifically) what value there there was in the whole experiment.

What about the money, money, money??

During April, we spent a total £228.59 on what we'd call our 'weekly shop'.  That's an average of £57.15 a week.  We'd rarely spend less than £60 a week in the supermarket so conclusion 1 has to be that shopping little and local works out a bit cheaper for us.  I think this is mainly because (a) we don't waste stuff - we only buy what we know we're going to use and (b) there isn't as much temptation to pick up prettily packaged things (I'm a sucker for good packaging).

And will this have any effect in the local economy?  Well, those clever people over at Totally Locally tell me so.  Here's their poster from Retford:

and they've got this rinky dink calculator that lets you work out the same equation for your own town, according to which:

If every adult in Beverley spent just £5 per week in their local independent shops instead of online or at the supermarket, it would be worth an extra £6.2 million per year going into our local economy.

Just imagine what £57 a week could do!

Every week during April, we've shopped at 6 local shops - G Jack & Sons, Ye Olde Pork Shoppe Butcher, Fresh & Fruity Greengrocer, H Peck & Son Fishmonger, the Wednesday Market Bread Stall and The Bread Shed.  They're the ones easiest and most convenient for us.  We've also thrown in occasional purchases from at least half a dozen more local shops including O'Briens, Maple News, Briggs & Powell, Vanessa, Roberts & Speight and the stalls on Saturday Market.  That's 12 real business owners we've supported to pay their mortgage, have a holiday, pay for their kids' ballet lessons etc.  Whatever.  It feels a whole lot better than making a few shareholders even richer.

And there's some nifty research from the New Economics Foundation which says that for every £10 you spend in a local shop, up to £50 can go back into the local economy.  That's because local shops use other local suppliers and service providers.  Their accountant, their window cleaner, their cardboard recycling company - the chances are that all or most of these will also be local, which keeps that money circulating right here in Beverley.

What else was good about it?

It's encouraged me to open my eyes.  I can never believe it when new customers come into our shop and ask how long we've been open.  We've just had our 7th birthday.  But now I know that I do exactly the same thing.  It's kind of like wearing blinkers.  You walk the same route round town.  You assume you know what a shop stocks.  If this month has taught me anything, it's that I definitely didn't know as much about shopping in my town as I thought I did.  I didn't know that I could get eggs at the butcher.  Or coconut milk at Jacks, cheaper than at the supermarket (and a whole lot more convenient to walk the 20 paces from our door to theirs).  Or jam at the greengrocer.  Or whole fresh chickens at the newsagent (yes, really).

It's nice.  Today the butcher stood chatting to me for about 10 minutes, telling me all about his 4 year old daughter (also boning some chicken thighs for me at the same time).  Four weeks from when we started, the shop owners are getting used to seeing us and it's all starting to feel comfortable and familiar.  We see the same faces and have started building relationships - the kind that result in good service that's a million miles away from the soul destroying sweep around the supermarket.

It's encouraging us to think more seasonally about food.  Something I've wanted to do for ages but have always struggled with.  In the supermarket, you see the same fruit and vegetables more or less all year round which I'll admit is very convenient.  But the downside is that you don't get much of a feel for what's growing right now.  I've noticed in the greengrocer that it's somehow much easier to tell.  For a couple of weeks now I've been noticing how good the fennel and artichokes look.  So this week, I found a fish stew recipe and bought myself some fennel.  Actually, the fennel didn't look quite as cheery this week but since I planned to cook it tonight anyway, I was still happy.

And although I haven't braved the artichokes yet, my copy of Olive Magazine arrived a couple of days ago and what did I spot on the seasonal food pages?  Yep,  two recipes for artichokes.  Definitely going to have a go next week.

You can find cool bargains.  Now I know that you get bargains at the supermarket too but they're increasingly BOGOFs or 3 for 2s.  Good for store cupboard stuff, toiletries, cleaning products and anything else that doesn't go off but not so good for fresh stuff because it often leads to waste.

We've discovered a different kind of bargain while shopping little and local.  Today it was a bag of mushrooms for 50p ...

... and a cooked ham hock from the butcher for the bargain price of £2.49.  It's going to go in a salad for lunch and I'm going to make my first ever quiche this weekend, so it'll go in there too.  Might even use in sandwiches.  I'll admit that it's not beautiful but I sneaked a little corner and I can tell you , it's so much tastier than pre-packaged slices from the supermarket.

Which brings me to another big upside that I've noticed.  I'm baking more, which I really love.  I think it's a by-product of seeing less ready-made temptation and more ingredients temptation.  We bought some wonderful flour from The Bread Shed so I've been baking bread.  Antony is like a bottomless pit and eats breakfast, sometimes 2nd breakfast, elevensies, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and sometimes an evening snack.  That's a lot of filling required.  He'd normally buy fruit bread or bagels from the supermarket for snacking but in their absence, I've baked various cakes and cookies.  Not great for my waistline though :-)

And finally, it's completely brilliant not having to (a) find a parking space at the supermarket and (b) queue.  To be fair, we normally go to Waitrose so parking isn't usually a problem but with the roadworks, it does take at least 40 minutes to drive there and back.  However, when I do nip to Tesco, the carpark drives me CRAZY.  In fact, I went there today (don't forget, the experiment's over so I wasn't cheating) and had to drive out again.  After a month away, I literally couldn't face it.  And we haven't queued for more than a minute or two anywhere that we've been shopping.  Lovely.  As I object on principle to the self-service desk (and the fact that I never seem to get through without upsetting it), I always have to queue at the supermarket.

OK, that's the upside done.

What about the downside?  

Well, I can't lie, there have been frustrations and drawbacks.

The flipside of the seasonality issue is that it's maddening when you want a specific ingredient and just can't find it.  Like lemongrass.  We cook a lot of Thai food at home and it's just not the same without.  You can get it at the greengrocer but you just can't be sure you'll get it.  Not great for meal planning.  It's also impossible to get some things - like ready rolled pastry.  We're having a retro weekend and Antony tells me he's making sausage rolls (because he loves them with a passion!).  Puff Pastry from scratch is just a step too far so I was happy to be able to pick up a pack today at the little Asda on Norwood instead.

We've had to be more organised and think a little differently.  After a very disorganised first week, we've started writing our shopping list by shop.  It takes a bit longer but avoids having to go back to a shop you've already been in because you forgot something.  We've also had to change the day we do our weekly shop to a day that's more practical for us to come into town.

And the final big downside to only shopping little and local is that buying some things at independent shops is just daft.  We had to buy a little tiny bottle of Fish Sauce for near enough the same price that we'd normally buy a huge one the size of the Soy Sauce in the photo below.  Bonkers.

Some final reflections...

There are 2 things we've heard most often from people in the last month.

(1)   Well, Beverley's a good place for it.  There's hardly anywhere else it could work.
(2)   The problem is time.  People are really busy so it's not practical.

Well, Beverley is a good place for it.  But it won't be unless we support all our local shops.  As I walked through town the other day, I noticed an alarming number of empty shops.  I hope it's nothing to worry about.  And while I agree that in some towns it would be almost impossible to live for a month without the internet and supermarkets, I still believe that there are things that could be bought locally.  Even if it's only a loaf of bread.  It's just about thinking local and doing what you can.

Then there's the time question.  We're busy.  We own a business.  We could easily work 24 hours a day and still have things to do.  But we still need to shop.  We've been doing our shop between 9am and 10am on Wednesday mornings.  Granted not everyone could do that but I'm betting that a lot of people do manage their shop at some point during the day (rather than an evening).  And lots of people have Saturdays too, which we can't manage because we're at work.  Honestly, I do think that to shop local you need to be more organised but I don't think you necessarily need more time.  It's just about how we choose to use the time we have.

What happens next?

I guess the final big question is will we carry on shopping little and local?  That's a resounding yes.  We ask people to shop with us at Amanti so it's the very least we can do to support other businesses.  And there have been, on balance, far more positives than negatives.

There's no way we'll stop shopping online and in supermarkets altogether.  But I'm guessing that on an average week, we'll continue to spend two thirds of our cash in little and local shops.  It's a change we're really happy to be making!