Mannablog - Food In South Devon

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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