FREE FOOD IN ENGLAND: A COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE FOOD THAT MAKES US WHO WE ARE PDF Dorothy Hartley | 672 pages | 02 Jul 2009 | Little, Brown Book Group | 9780749942151 | English | London, United Kingdom Christmas menu: Classic dinner - BBC Good Food We get our chickens locally, delivered fresh and never frozen with excess fat already trimmed off. We then marinate them in a sauce that contains no preservatives, colourants or artificial flavours for hours so that the flavour goes right through to the bone. We spend hours in our Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are kitchens exploring ways to improve our recipes — be it in the way our food is prepared, or the way in which it is served. What we do know, is where it started. Used for centuries in local cooking, people from far and wide fell for the full-bodied flavour of these chillies. The Portuguese explorers were no different, and when they arrived in Mozambique centuries ago, they added a twist of lemon and a touch of garlic to create the first PERi-PERi sauce. They used Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are on just about anything, but especially as a basting for chargrilled chicken. Fortunately, what was never protected was the Portuguese love of good food, sharing and laughter. To help choose your heat before you eat, we have the PERi-ometer. Besides giving farmers access to the latest farming techniques, quality seedlings and finance, we also give them a fixed outlet for their crop and pay a premium for every kilogram of chillies harvested. From the first seeds planted in by just six Mozambican farmers who produced 1. A digital tracking platform called Green Fingers Mobile helps us manage and monitor the technical support, credit system and profitability of the farmers. We also conduct an annual impact assessment through a third-party assessment company. The results have been encouraging. Food security, education, health care, water, energy and housing conditions have all improved for the PERi-Farmers. Stable incomes have meant they can afford education for their children, add rooms to homes, access solar power having been off the grid before and add livestock to their herds. But as we continue to learn and grow, so do the farmers. Welcome to our table! The PERi-ometer. We now work with over 1, farmers in 18 growing regions. The One Food the Queen of England Hates | Travel + Leisure Cornwall has always been a place apart from the rest of England—a proud and fertile province where the pasture meets the sea. But now the old traditions are giving way to something new, as the next generation of chefs, farmers, and fishermen transform their pastoral corner into a culinary eden. One day last summer the chefs Tom Adams and April Bloomfield splashed through a stream and then crossed a field behind Coombeshead Farm, their 18th-century Cornish farmhouse. We stopped under an oak tree reputed to be well over years old. Consider: it would have been years old when Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne, nearly when the American colonies broke free from Great Britain. Adams shook his head. The land doubles as a buffet, if you know what to look for. We passed wild watercress, common hogweed whose seeds taste of citrus—more orangey than lemonyand pineapple weed, which Adams plucked, rubbed between his fingers, and held to my nose. It offered an instant olfactory trip to the tropics. Blackberries were destined for an arranged marriage with Cornish cream. Returning to the farmstead, we skirted a streamside forest. Oh my god. Simon Watson. The object of their awe was in a tree: a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom about the size of a human head. It was an expression of Cornwall itself—unexpected, unfussy, and gorgeous. Together with the Cornish farmers and fishermen who trace their roots back generations, they are sparking a profound, renewed confidence in the bounty of this land. When it rains, the terrain can be tragic; ina flash flood washed away much of the village. From Boscastle, the path traverses slope after seaside slope, some so steep that we ascended and descended by earthen staircase. Gulls squawked but kept their distance, much as the locals did. Everywhere we went, they were welcoming but reserved, embodying the ambivalence that the Cornish have about outsiders. Left: Cattle grazing near the village of Boscastle. Every hill on our hike brought new vistas, every bend a different field—this one framed by an ancient stone wall, that one filled with golden rapeseed blossoms. Just as abundant: the stories, stretching back centuries. In Trethevy, we sat for a few silent minutes in a 14th-century chapel dedicated to Saint Piran that had languished as a farm outbuilding until its restoration in the s. Once, the miners took these thick pastries, filled with beef, potatoes, and onions, down into the tin and copper mines as a practical, all-in-one meal. Corner and crust also doubled as an insurance policy: once discarded, the remnants were said to be scavenged by knockers, el ike creatures believed to inhabit the mines. A few miles past Trebarwith Strand, we passed a flock of sheep grazing in a cliff-top pasture. I confessed to my husband I was thinking about mutton stew and lamb chops. He chided me. And sheepskin-covered seating. Though tourists throng Port Isaac, the setting for the TV show Doc Martinand Padstow, a foodie destination, we encountered other hikers only occasionally. As we descended into one narrow valley, an elderly couple negotiated the opposite slope. Upon drawing closer, I noticed a pattern: the man would bound down 10 or 12 steps. She had two walking sticks, one Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are each hand, and took care with each step, never rushing. When she approached him, she held both sticks in one hand. He reached out to her, she grasped his hand, and they walked together for a few steps before he sped his way down again. As we passed the couple, we greeted them. We ended our hike in Padstow, which owes its culinary stardom to celebrity chef Rick Stein, who moved to Cornwall in the s. The lemon sole in a perfectly crisp batter was heavenly—the fact that we had to pay one pound for tartar sauce, less so. Right: A branch of the popular Cornish Bakery, in Padstow. The establishment is one of eight Padstow businesses bearing the Stein name, including four restaurants, two gift shops, a fish market, and a bakery. He also runs a hotel and rents cottages and rooms above the restaurants. The Cornish never fail to point them out. Crowds in Padstow, whose population swells from about 2, to 5, during peak season. The upsides of success? Hundreds of jobs, as well as a magnetism that attracts tourists and culinary talent. He never expected inspiration from the place or its people. When I asked what rejuvenates him, he thought for a moment. The more recent cohort of non-native entrepreneurs includes Tarquin Leadbetter, proprietor of the five-year-old Southwestern Distillery. Reared in neighboring Devon, he spent several years in London before settling here. Leadbetter now lives that dream on Constantine Bay Beach, a crescent of golden sand. Everything is made in small batches, mostly in a still named Tamara, after the river Tamar, which divides Devon and Cornwall. For his gin, Leadbetter grows violets in his garden. For his pastis, he forages for wild gorse flowers, which lend the liqueur an unexpected hint of coconut. Both are made with naturally sweet Cornish water. Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are admits his water talk may be overwrought, but it does speak to Cornish patience. Such patience can be misinterpreted. People elsewhere in Britain often condescend to the Cornish. All of his fish are caught by rod, handline, or inshore trawls and pots, the most sustainable methods, and he pays his small-boat suppliers premium prices. His landlubbing counterpart might be master butcher Philip Warren, whose namesake butchery has been carving up cows from Bodmin Moor since the s. Though often stereotyped as bleak and moody, the moor is a vibrant ecosystem of granite and peat, hill and marsh. Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are the millennia, moor and cattle have become symbiotic. It would be overgrown with bracken. We want to create a place that not only fills the stomach but also lowers blood pressure and makes guests feel at home. We want Coombeshead to be wholesome. During the past decade, Warren and his farmers have found new life by marketing their meat to London chefs and Rick Stein. Business has roughly doubled in that time, and he now has a long waiting list of chefs. Really, the entrepreneurship that Astrinsky and Warren exemplify is just a new version of an old story: neighbor caring for neighbor. The costs were too high, revenues too low. Today, part of the Hellyar land—set amid coastal countryside designated by the government as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty—is a caravan park. Over eight weeks each summer, the Hellyars reap four times as much revenue from trailer fees as they do annually from barley and lamb. Hellyar, who also owns vineyards in France, fantasizes about planting some grape vines. Coombeshead Farm is the architectural manifestation of their philosophy: welcoming, understated, unpretentious—from the restored slate floors to the cozy, handsome library.