Mannablog - Food In South Devon

Way back in February we took advantage of our membership of Taste of the West and took a stand in the regional food corner of Borough Market. For those who don’t know it, Borough Market is a foodie’s paradise in South London where you’ll find the finest produce every weekend. Sellers come in from far and wide, including Devon, and the range of stuff to see, taste and buy is amazing. The market is frequented by discerning shoppers and lots of tourists and is always very, very busy. Admittedly, to afford some of the stuff there you need your own hedge fund, but lots of people are very happy to pay for good quality so it all works; and the atmosphere is fabulous. Anyone interested in food should go. (more…)

Once again I am guilty of gross neglect of our blog and have been getting regular nags and nudges from several quarters re. the complete lack of updates since March.  It’s been busy Ok!?  There’s been a lot going on.  So I’m going to add a few posts now in quick succession and not necessarily in any chronological order.

I know that in my last post I was writing about Indian Food, and I know that we run Mediterranean Classes, Tapas Classes and Pasta Making at the cooking school, and I know I make Stollen and foccaccia bread to sell; BUT …. having said all that, I am a great fan of all things British. 

I love hot cross buns, sticky toffee pudding, faggots, black pudding, fry ups, sausages and my desert island dish would have to be roast rib of beef with yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy.  So when I read last week that many of our native dishes are threatened with extinction because of neglect and being overun by invasive species from abroad I was immediately spurred into action to create a national treasure.

I suppose many people are put off making steak and kidney pudding, or any other steamed pudding, because the idea of something steaming for 4 or 5 hours immediately seems fussy and complicated, but it really is a very simple dish.  Suet crust pastry really is the easiest pastry ever to make, there’s no need to cook the meats before they go into the pudding, and apart from checking that your pan isn’t boiling dry the steaming is pretty much a case of putting the pudding in a saucepan and forgetting about it for 4 hours. And the result is so worth waiting for:

Click here for the recipe

Because this pudding had no added liquid I served ot with Boulanger Potatoes - which sounds all foreign again but I’m not sure if we have a name for sliced potatoes baked with stock - any way the juiciness works well with the pud.

The assembled throng loved it and it really was simple, so give it a go and keep the flag flying.

That may sound like the title of a limited release British Film from the 1970’s but it isn’t.  So if you like that sort of thing continue your quest elsewhere. It actually refers to me wondering what to do with a bag of beetroot that arrived in our Riverford Farm Veggie Box this week. 

Normally the beetroot decision is easy. Steam, cool, peel, slice, season, sweeten, pickle, wait 20 minutes, enjoy with sausages.  However, it is January and the humble sausage is currently persona non grata at Fir Mount pending my being able to do up my jeans. Obviously if you have come for B & B you may gorge on bangers at will, but I must be stoic.

Anyway, back to the beetroot.  Wondering what other exciting ways with roots I might try I consulted an old favourite, Madhur Jaffrey.  For some reason we have two versions of her fabulous ‘Indian Cookery’ which was first published in 1982 to accompany her BBC TV series in which introduced us all to Indian Cooking at Home.

Our copies have been well used over the years and are usually consulted whenever Indian Food is on the menu. In this case I went for Shorvedur Chukander or Beetroot with Onions. This is a very simple dish of beetroot wedges simmered with onions, garlic, chili, cumin and tomatoes to make a nice thick stew.

Served with basmati rice and spring greens with peas (Bund Gobi aur Matar) this made a great supper; delicious, colourful, nutritious, not a bit of saturated fat in sight and full of superfood beetroot .  Now where did I put those jeans?

We’ll be exploring a lot more interesting things to do with the vegetables you find in your weekly delivery during a series of Seasonal Vegetable Cooking Workshops  which we’ll be running in association with Jane and Martin Emmett at Riverford Home Delivery Torbay.  There will be one for each season and we’ll look at less well known vegetables as well as new ways with familiar ones.  The workshops will be suitable for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians.  Learn More

It may just be a coincidence, but only since our wall fell down just before New Year have I seen Goldcrests visit our garden.  It may just be that there are lots more of them due to milder winters and they are finding new territories.  Anyway, that’s by the by as this morning I found this tiny thing just outside the front door looking rather dazed and confused; perhaps having flown into the window.  (more…)

It’s that time of year when we plan ahead and think how we can achieve ambitions and goals; yes, the time to make your New Year resolutions is here. This year, I’d really like you to think about where you get two of our most basic foods from – chicken meat and eggs. 

Eggs.  A basic ingredient and a building block in so many recipes as well as an integral part of our Great British breakfast. I have long been convinced about using free-range eggs and now we absolutely won’t use anything else. From a cooking point-of-view there really is no contest between a free-range egg and a battery-produced one – the colour is a much brighter yellow, the taste is significantly different and using them in a recipe makes a big difference to the result. More importantly from a welfare point-of-view, battery hens do not have a happy life. Despite 86% of the population saying they do not agree with battery farming, there are still 20 million battery hens in the UK. They enter a cage at 18 weeks with 4-5 other hens and each has no more room than an A4 piece of paper. They stay in this cage til they are 52 weeks old producing cheap eggs for us and the food processing industry. Despite this intensive farming they only produce 15 more eggs per year than a free-range hen. (more…)

All in all 2007 was a very good year for Manna from Devon.  The bed and breakfast was very, very busy, the Cooking School grew and has begun to establish a good reputation, our Brownies and puddings become ever more famous and everything was looking fair set for 2008.  I suppose then that it would was foolish to hope for a quiet and uneventful New Year.

On Saturday 29th December a 40ft retaining wall in our garden decided it had had enough and collapsed into the road below.

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Now there can’t be many people (vegetarians excepted) who can stand before a spit roasting pig without salivating at the thought of succulent pleasures to come.  So of course it’s always a delight to be asked to cook a hog roast at an event because you know the assembled throng are going to be delighted at the outcome.  And so it was with pleasant anticipation that we planned a wedding feast for Alison and Nigel, to take place in the garden of their home near Kingswear.

Of course it’s not something to be taken on lightly.  If you cook something for 7 hours and then realise that it’s all gone horribly wrong the fallback position of bread and salad is not going to sit well with the hundred hungry, and by now probably tipsy, revellers.  So we really needed to get it right.  So here are my top four tips for the perfect hog roast wedding:

1. Get the best pig you can get hold of from a good butcher or direct from the farmer.
2. Get a really good roaster to cook it in.
3. Get some really good staff to help you out.
4. Don’t be tempted by the excess of beer, wines and spirits on display until the whole thing has been cooked, carved, served and eaten.

Let me explain: (more…)

We had a totally delightful day last Saturday when we hosted a hen party for 11 at the cooking school.  All planned in secret, the friends, work colleagues, mum and mum-in-law to be opted for a Tuscan theme for the day and managed to keep it all from Lindsay, the bride to be, until they were actually in Devon on the evening before the event.  Luckilyshe was totally into it and was delighted when she turned up at the school on Saturday morning and found out exactly what we’d be cooking.

Tuscan cooking is all about simple, rustic fair; lots of beans, grilled steaks, baked fish and fresh, seasonal vegetables simple prepared and presented.  The area is famous for beef and of course chianti, so bistecca fiorentina had to be on the menu.  This consists of a huge chunk of t-bone steak, 2.5 kilos in this case, rubbed with oil and seasoning and chargrilled on the barbecue. (more…)

Did you realise that the lovely pork sausages you just tucked into for brekkie may have contained as little as 42% pork and of that pork much of it may have been fat or connective tissue and so your banger may have only contained 30% lean pork meat?  Me either!  But, having invited Lesley and Richard Goodman of Gara Barton Venison and Rare Breed Pork into the school, and spent a day making and discussing sausages, we now know a whole lot more.  Not only that but we also made a vast array of delicious sausages and sent everyone away with a a variety party bag to take home.  My favourites were the Toulouse Sausage, because I made them, which contained pork cut by hand rather than minced with garlic and red wine - delicious but a bit hot for brekkie.  We’re hoping to put together another sausage making course in the autum, let me know if you’re interested.