My thanks to Ros Taylor of The Wrap Roundup for this funny wee piece in the Spectator (registration required): The great lettuce conspiracy. It’s made my day… We’ve stopped buying as much bagged salad as we used to in our supermarket-shopping days. But every now and again, we succumb when we’re tired and hungry, and just cannot be bothered. Then we wonder why we bothered to buy such an insipid collection of limp leaves that brown in a day anyway. Every year, round about now, we plant all sorts of seeds, onion sets and seed tatties in the veggie patch on the farm. And rocket is always one of my favourites, simply because it just grows, without any input from us. I tried growing rocket in a pot indoors last year (in my south-facing, sunny bay window), and it worked fine too (and would be sustainable if you have your own supply of compost). This year, however, everything vegetable-wise has gone to pot, as I seem to spend every weekend sorting through ten years of accumulated junk, and fighting to get into the local Shelter shop to deposit the better pieces of our collection of detritus. So, no home-grown salad or potatoes for us this summer. Normal service will resume when our move is finally completed. And if anyone reading knows if there are such things as allotment plots in LA, please let me know… I don’t think I can afford to rent a house with a garden in La-la land on my meagre salary.

Open salmon pie
Originally uploaded by framboise.

Had a craving for pie on Tuesday, preferably a savoury one. We’re not very big on pies. The best pies are ones made by someone else and served hot on a plate without the effort of rolling out a pastry that might not work. So in true convenience-culture fashion, we bought pre-made shortcrust pastry. After our last experience, I swore off the stuff. It doesn’t roll or taste right. Nevertheless, a pie craving at six in the evening doesn’t leave much room for letting pastry rest, so pre-made it was again. Nevermore… I must get some made myself and stick it in the freezer. Also, as we were quite hungry when the pie craving struck, we bought a tin of salmon, some Gruyere and a quarter pint of sour cream. Recipe botched from Prue Leith’s bible, and is meant to be topped with pastry to give a flat pie (but because I didn’t read it before we bought the ingredients, I didn’t have enough pastry to top it).

Ingredients:

• shortcrust pastry
• some smoked or tinned salmon (miles apart, I know… but we like supermarket smoked salmon even less than tinned fish)
• 40g butter, melted
• ~30g parmesan, grated
• ~50g Gruyere, grated
• ~50g bread, grated
• 1/4 pint sour cream
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
• 1 small lemon or half of a large one
• 1 beaten egg, for glazing

Method:

1. Roll out the shortcrust pastry into a rectangle just bigger than a swiss roll tin.
2. Grease the bottom and sides, and carefully place the pastry on the tin. Trim off excess pastry, and make many pricks on bottom of pastry.
3. Bake for 10-15 min in a 200degC oven.
4. While pastry is baking, mix the two cheeses with the breadcrumbs and melted butter.
5. When pastry has turned to a light-gold brown, remove from the oven and allow to cool a little.
6. Spread half of the cheese and breadcrumb mix over the base, followed by a layer of salmon.
7. Mix the sour cream with the minced garlic, and spread over the salmon.
8. Squeeze on the lemon juice, and top with the reserved cheese/breadcrumb mix.
9. If there is pastry left over, make a lattice top. If you’ve read the first paragraph of the post and realised you actually need a whole piece of pastry on top, well done! Your pie will be miles better than ours! Whichever route you choose, brush the pastry with some beaten egg and bake for about 10-15 min or until golden brown. (You may notice from the photo that I abhor throwing out the other half of the beaten egg, and so poured it onto the salmon pie.)
10. Serve warm with some green leaves to pretend you’re eating healthily.

This cheese and fish combination would probably work better with some vegetables the next time. We had a really good salmon flan at the Gallery of Modern Art a few weekends ago, and it had some fennel in it. I suspect a few slices of tomato, or even whole cherry tomatoes, wouldn’t go amiss. We’ll certainly try this again, at least until we get fed up of botched pie jobs.

Technorati tags: recipe, salmonpie.

In today’s Guardian Comment, George Monbiot discusses the impact that Tesco’s massive growth has on our lives.

[Rant on] The point he raises about farmers having to jump when Mr Supermarket Man tells them to was the key determinant in our switching to local shops that stock local produce. We still make a weekly trip to Shitways for recycled loo roll and other modern conveniences we have yet to wean ourselves from. And whenever we make a trip to M&S, Sainsbury’s or Tesco, it never fails to amaze us how uniform the produce look, blemish-free and standard sized. Supermarkets have perfected the art of stacking veggies on shelves and extending shelf lives of fruit, all on demand. But at whose expense? Certainly not the consumer’s (unless you’re after exotics like mangoes or fancy potatoes). Milk prices paid to farmers are ridiculously low compared to what we pay at the checkout, yet supermarkets view milk as a loss leader. A quick search on the Office of Fair Trading‘s website pulls up a 2004 OFT review of supermarkets’ code of practice, which highlights suppliers’ dissatisfaction with supermarkets, but no specific cases against the supermarkets. Farmers fear being dropped from supplier lists, and don’t have anyone to speak for them (I’m not referring to the wealthy estates who are quite able to take care of themselves). An excerpt from the review:

The CC said [snip] that ‘almost all the complainants were extremely reluctant to be named, or indeed to name the multiple or multiples that were the subject of their complaints.’ There appeared to the CC to be a climate of apprehension among many suppliers in their relationship with supermarkets.

From section 3.1 of the 2004 OFT review of the operation of the supermarkets code of practice.

Tightening up the code of practice is all very well, but if you can’t get farmers to speak up or even realise demands made on them are unfair, you can’t make a case against the supermarkets. Plus, they can get lawyered up. On top of that, if the supermarkets are pushed too hard, they’ll just pull out of using British suppliers altogether, move on to Africa with more disastrous consequences. You just can’t win.

As for farming magazines, they really are just written advertisements for the latest multivitamin protein-rich feed, shiny new tractors, or some other multinational corporation’s product. The same companies you see handing out freebies everywhere at the agricultural shows (if you’re giving things away, are you making too much money off the farmers?). And don’t get me started on bloody Belgian Blues or double-bummed sheep. Belgian Blue cows cannot deliver their calves naturally; they require caesareans¹. [Rant off]

And now supermarkets turn their attention to newspapers and magazines? Ha! Good luck with that! At least journalists can articulate their discontent, and don’t need to be in print medium to do so.

For more on the invasion of the shopping trolley, have a look at Corporate Watch’s article: What’s wrong with supermarkets?.

Also in today’s news, the BBC reported the impending death of small farms: small farms may vanish. While trying not to be too sentimental about the loss of smallholdings, I can’t see how developers can be prevented from further encroaching on green belts if fields aren’t being farmed.

¹The article compares cows to heifers as mothers, not the effects of caesareans on cows and calves.

Technorati tag: supermarkets.

Celery and cashew soup

Originally uploaded by framboise.

No prizes for guessing where this recipe comes from. It’s been a soup-tastic week. We had celeriac soup on Thursday out of a thermos flask on Yellowcraigs beach. And last night, P cooked us some onion soup, recipe courtesy of Nigel Slater on the OFM calender. It’s not that the weather is cold or anything, we just fancied soup this week. As one-pot cooking, it can’t be beat. Plus, we get more onions in our veg box than we can use in a week. It builds up until we decide to do something about it. I didn’t take any photos of the celeriac or onion soup, but here’s today’s celery and cashew nut soup recipe (from the NCGSC’s Book of Soups), modified for two big eaters. The end result is a smooth, creamy concoction, that doesn’t sit in the stomach heavily. It’s also great for the lactose intolerant, as are chinese dessert soups that use ground cashew/almond/peanut/seasame for their creamy texture.

Ingredients:

• a small knob of butter (10-15g)
• 1 head of celery, roughly chopped
• 2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 100g unsalted cashew nuts (raw nuts can be obtained from either a health food store or an asian supermarket)
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• And a handful (50g) of cashew nuts for garnishing

Method:

1. Gently cook (without colouring) the celery and garlic in the butter for 10 minutes in a covered pot.
2. Grind 100g of cashew nuts until fine. Add to the pot along with the veg stock. Cover, bring to the boil, then simmer for about 20-30 min (until the celery is soft).
3. While the soup is cooking, fry the cashew nuts until brown (no oil needed, just high heat) and set aside.
4. Allow the soup to cool a little before liquidising. If you don’t want bits of celery fibre to stick between your teeth, pass the soup through a sieve. We’re too lazy.
5. Reheat the soup, and serve garnished with the toasted cashew nuts.

We’re cat-sitting again this weekend. The poor dear was in considerable pain the last time she visited. Towards the end of her one week visit, we realised she had blood in her urine, a sign that her bladder stones were back. Her parents took her straight to the vet on their return, and poor Muran had an operation to remove an embedded bladder stone. She seems to be recovering well, and is due to have her stitches out tomorrow. So as a small treat, we thought she would enjoy some soup too, garnished with some cat treats. She’s had a lick so far, then gone away to sulk again. Not sure what that says about our cooking…

Scruffy and Elegant	Our new taste tester	Cat’s celery and cashew soup

Update: Muran finished the soup, leaving the cat treats behind. Again, not sure what that says about our cooking.

Technorati tags: recipe, soup.