Sep 21

Sep 21 Autumnal Food

Last week this website brought you the story of a fantastic 25-mile-menu - this week we get even more local by talking about a five-metre-menu. We refer, of course, to the stuff that is marching en-masse, and in volume, out of West Country gardens this month. If ever there is a season-of-plenty in an English vegetable plot, now is that time.

I say that even though the home-grown vegetable project at Hesp Towers is… Well, not exactly Gardeners’ World. That nice ever-calming Mr Don might choke on his artichokes after seeing our rather lacklustre efforts - talking of which, I have actually grown and now eaten one globe artichoke this year.

But a single artichoke doesn’t make a bumper harvest, and we’ve certainly suffered a few failures. However, kilos of runner beans have been run down to the kitchen day after day for weeks, so they do deserve the annual ‘glut’ label. We’ve never had such a good year - and all ours are coming off a twin row just eight feet in length.

But to slice or not to slice? It’s a running argument between runner bean aficionados. Some people believe the invention of the little bladed box which you can buy for not much more than £1 in most kitchenware stores has been the best thing since sliced bread. Others believe the runner bean slicer is the work of the Devil and that the pods should be simply relieved of their stringy sides and chopped at rakish slanting intervals.

I am of the former persuasion, at least, when the beans are young and not too leathery. Pushing fresh runners through a slicer provides you with green and succulent strips that look almost like vegetable spaghetti. Lightly steamed, the results can be tossed in butter and served with no more than a sprinkling of sea salt, plenty of fresh ground black pepper and a mere hint of lemon juice. Indeed, I hit upon a fabulous innovation this week when I decided to allow some extremely ripe Sharpham Brie to gently melt into a pile of steaming beans.

Sharpham Brie melting into steamed runner beans by Greg Parsons, who makes the lovely cheese in Devon

Which, I think, is a good example of one of the truly great things about home-cooking. You’d never see such a simple dish in a restaurant, but wow..! The salty creaminess of the Sharpham Brie blended beautifully with semi-sweet greenness of the runner bean flesh, so that a small bowl dressed only with a grind of pepper provided an early autumnal starter from heaven.

As the bean novelty wares a little thin and the runners keep producing, I begin to add other enhancers, such as strips of crisp fried, dry cured, streaky bacon or pounded anchovies, lemon zest and garlic.

And now that the runners are beginning to grow bigger and tougher (simply because I cannot keep up with the endless supply) I do give up with the box-slicer and grab a sharp Y-shaped swivel-peeler (much better than the straight handled versions). With an extra-large runner bean (the older ones which my wife swears are now inedible because of the tough skins) all you do is run the peeler down the two stringy edges and then place the pod on a flat surface so that you can pull it along the ultra-thin, wrinkled, rather waxy, skin on either side.

It sounds like a delicate operation and that is why you need a good quality sharp peeler (you can get one for less than a tenner), but I find it a rather relaxing and meditative procedure (with a glass of wine) and you do end up with fat and very juicy chunks of tender runner bean.

My other great autumnal culinary revelation this year has come in the shape of a pan. Which might seem like an odd thing to say - but when my friends at the quality British pan-making firm, Samuel Groves, announced a new range of their Britannia cast iron cookware (https://www.samuelgroves.com/Products/Britannia-Cast-Iron-Cookware) my tastebuds leapt with joy. Why? Because the range includes three sturdy cast iron pans which have just small handles on either side - which means they’ll fit inside a Japanese style kamado barbecue.

Which in turn opens up a whole new world of opportunities, because suddenly you can be cooking a range of dishes over charcoal which would be impossible on a basic wire grill.

So, continuing the bumper garden crop theme, I made a fabulous ratatouille this week from our courgettes, tomatoes, peppers and aubergine. By adding just a small handful of apricot wood chips to the fire from my pals at the Devon based company Hot Smoked (https://hotsmoked.co.uk/shop/smoking-woods/wood-chips), this modest vegetable stew was raised in status to something you’d pay a great deal for as a vegetarian option in a restaurant.

But my Holy Grail on the wood-fired front has always been a paella, having once eaten a truly amazing version of that dish cooked in a kind of pizza oven in an ancient restaurant on the side of a remote Spanish mountain. I’ve made a thousand paellas at home since, but not one has ever come up to the memory of that rice-masterpiece served in the hills above El Port de la Selva.

Now, thanks to the folk at Samuel Groves - and also to a friend who brought me some fresh caught prawns from our local beach - I’ve reached the Holy Grail. Putting together an extremely simple paella dish using Spanish bomba rice, some garlic, celery, green pepper and saffron, I let the whole thing cook in a filtered stock made from the prawn heads and shells in my new Britannia pan, adding the fat prawn tails just a few minutes before serving.

You could do this in any barbecue with a lid, but I’d recommend the Kamado Joe (https://uk.kamadojoe.com/) range because the whole point of the stone-lined kamado is that you can cook more gently and also because these weatherproof appliances allow you to cook outdoors right through the winter.

Hot smoked chicken - thanks to my friends at Devon based Hot Smoked for the wood chips

Oh, and talking of both the kamado and Hot Smoked, I did also bung in a local organic chicken this week using some of the Devon firm’s applewood chips and, blimey… If someone asked me to name a single dish which was both incredibly delicious and ludicrously easy to make, it would have to be a hot-smoked chicken.

I realise my five-metre menu has expanded a bit but (ignoring the bomba rice, saffron and some olive oil) we are still only talking about five miles to include the chicken and the prawns - which is still what I call local.