Slow food catches on quick
Apr 25 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal
Fast pace, no time, quick fix, little appetite? Alastair Gilmour opens the door on Slow Food – and does us all a favour.
TIBERIUS, Emperor of Rome (42BC-AD37), was described as “the gloomiest of men”. His namesake couldn’t have a more different attitude if he tried, lording it as he does over a harem in a Borders woodland. Cohorts Augustus and Caesar also live the life of Riley.
Tiberius is a very large wild boar, snuffling, grunting, squealing and rummaging in the undergrowth with several sows and attendant piglets. He is a mover and shaker in Borders Wild Boar, the company that generates one of the finest ranges of meat in the North East. The four-year-old firm is a member of Slow Food Berwick-upon-Tweed, an organisation with some 60 representatives locally – and 83,000 worldwide – who are deeply committed to quality food and its availability to all.
The Berwick branch – or ‘convivium’ as it is more accurately known – was set up in July 2006, seven years after the international organisation began in Italy by a journalist horrified at the opening of a McDonald’s at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome.
Slow Food is the antidote to fast food, but it’s not a ‘Stop The World I Want To Get Off’ faction or a private dining clique, rather a socially aware body highly active in promoting food as “good, clean and fair”. The thrust is that food should taste good; it should be produced in a clean way, free from artificial preservatives with no harm to the environment, animal welfare or human health, and it should be tabled at a fair price for producers.
“We’ve added ‘local’ to that,” says Liz Houghton, organiser of the Berwick branch. “We feel strongly about the effects of food production on the local economy and not having food shipped from the other side of the world in plastic bags. We’re particularly interested in organic production methods and sustainability.”
As part of its activities, the group – operating within a 40-kilometre radius of Berwick, a 50-50 split north and south of the border – organises a variety of events such as tastings, themed dinners and visits to places with a food and drink interest. In September, Slow Food Berwick is organising a major food festival at locations around the town.
Liz says: “We’re working on a food heritage programme involving the whole community, with schools, the Scouts and local groups. We wanted to make it more than an eating and drinking experience and to link food into history and heritage.”
A Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £48,000 will help enormously in putting a research and events project together which should reap benefits locally for some years.
Slow Food Berwick’s members include egg producers, poultry farmers, mussel gatherers, smokers, butchers, bakers and canape makers. Among them is the magnificently-titled Well Hung And Tender which farms Aberdeen Angus cattle, producing beef that is matured for up to 28 days. It’s an enterprise that lives up to its name, but born from potential disaster.
“We were tenant farmers until foot-and-mouth in 2001 changed it for us,” says Donald MacPherson, who works 88 acres at Castlehills Farm on the edge of Berwick. “We thought we’d lose everything at the beginning as there was no compensation. BSE also gave us a bit of a blow but foot-and-mouth actually did us a favour.
“We had animals ready for the Royal Highland Show and that year it was cancelled. The supermarkets offered us £1.65 a kilo for our meat when we could get £2.67 dead weight. They also wanted us to send them to certain slaughterhouses which we didn’t want to do, so we decided to try the farmers’ markets.
“We were just so naive it was unbelievable, we had not an earthly – and all the time we were worried about going bust – but by the second month we had customers coming back.”
Despite facing financial disaster, Donald took the brave step of studying for two years on a Millfield Scholarship investigating the eating quality of beef. He studied in America, Australia and the UK, took it all on board, then sold off his Charolais and Limousin herds and restocked with Aberdeen Angus.
“I studied welfare methods which prevent pre-slaughter stress, one of the most important factors in meat quality,” he says. “Aberdeen Angus are very quiet anyway but if animals are stressed you could hang them for six months and the meat wouldn’t get tender.
“We’ve put the emphasis back into animal welfare – you get good meat from happy animals. We treat them with homeopathy and use no antibiotics and no chemicals on the farm; it’s back to the way it used to be.”
Donald hangs his meat on the bone for up to 28 days which gives enzymes longer to tenderise the meat and reduces moisture content, concentrating flavours and preventing shrinking during cooking. Being totally fed on grass results in high levels of omega-3 essential fatty acids.
He says: “More and more people are becoming interested in where their meat comes from and last year we branched out to the catering side at events. Now we’ve built a brand and we’re doing fine. Maybe it was chance, but I’m really happy we’ve done it.”
Wild boar meat also has dietary positives coming out of its ears. It’s very low in cholesterol and saturated fat, making it a healthy option, but what’s more, the Borders Wild Boar herd lives and breeds in completely natural surroundings, a 250-acre woodland. Company director Elaine Thomas is a member of Slow Food Berwick, so takes its principles to heart – and literally.
“Wild boar is not like pig meat,” she says, “it’s more red and finer grained. It’s a different taste, too, like a cross between venison and beef. You cook it low and slow. It goes very well with fruity sauces, red onions, blueberries or juniper berries. The belly with the skin left on, cooked very, very slowly, then sliced cold, is lovely.”
As wild boar come under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, Elaine and her husband Richard spent enormous amounts of money, time and effort into fencing off different areas of their forest when they set up the business in March 2004.
“It’s ideal for them,” says Elaine. “They’re the original omnivores and have the best possible conditions in their short lives.
“We gave them tree cover – they need the micro-climate of that natural environment; cool in summer and mild in winter. We have to feed them – special foodstuffs and potatoes – as they can’t live entirely off the forest floor. It’s mainly sitka spruce and there’s not much vegetation in the undergrowth.”
Elaine is in the fortunate position of being able to sell everything she produces, from joints to sausages, all sold from the abattoir at Galashiels through farm shops around the Borders and butchers Skelly’s and Foreman in Berwick.
“We have about 35 sows and we name all permanent members of the herd (hence the Roman emperors and supermums Dilly and Tilly). Its a matriarchal society and success is when you get sows all getting on with each other, down through the daughters.”
Wednesday May 28 is a big day in cereal farmer Ian Logan’s diary. Another member of Slow Food Berwick, he turns his attention to geese for the second half of the year and it’s the day he collects some 2,000 day-old chicks from Norfolk. His Alemill Farm Geese business then passes on a portion to fellow goose producers in Scotland. The big market, of course, is Christmas.
“It means life gets pretty hectic in December,” he says. “It’s a short window between December 10 and 22 when they’re killed, plucked, hung and prepared oven-ready.”
The chicks are kept under heat indoors for their first three weeks on the farm near Eyemouth until the days are warm enough to go out to grass.
“We take them out in the mornings, walk them up the field, then back in at night,” he says. “We cross the road at eight o’clock every day and again at four – the neighbours know to keep clear at those times.
“They’re fed at night with grain grown on the farm when they’re brought in for protection from foxes – domestic geese can’t fly. You can’t get much finer than a grass-fed goose and some people say the sea air gives them something extra.”
According to experts, roast goose meat is much lower in fat than some textbooks suggest. Many of them rely on information that no longer reflects modern strains of bird and cooking techniques.
Dr Sarah Rennie from ADAS, an agriculture and food production consultancy, has found that goose has a lower fat content than beef or lamb; contains a relatively low proportion of undesirable saturated fats, and a higher proportion of mono-unsaturated and essential fatty acids.
“Goose meat is all dark, there’s no white meat at all,” says Ian Logan. “It’s almost a roast beef colour and is full of flavour – they’re hung for between seven and 10 days which helps the flavour and tenderises the meat. A four-kilo bird will serve six people and a six-kilo one will feed eight.
“I started in the 1990s with 80 birds, then it was 100 then 650. It’s demand-driven and we could always sell more. We sell through butchers and wholesalers and farm-gate sales, plus a company sells them on the internet for us.”
Following celebrity cook Nigella Lawson’s lead, the whole nation has become aware of a newly-discovered cooking medium.
“The spin-off is goose fat,” says Ian. “Before Nigella, we used to throw it away.”
At Slow Food Berwick, Liz Houghton confesses to being a great admirer of every member and of the utmost care they take over food production, whether it’s studying genetics in Aberdeen Angus or stirring raspberry jam with a wooden spoon. Her aim is to guide that emphasis on quality towards the local community.
“We don’t accept the argument that people have no time,” she says. “You organise yourself to make time – and organic and locally-produced food doesn’t have to be expensive, plus there are no alien ingredients.”
But, it’s her husband Tony who has the last slow word. “Eating at the table is very important as well,” he says. “It’s the thing that brings the family together at the end of the day.”
* Further details at www.slowfoodberwick.org.uk
We’re working on a food heritage programme involving the community, with schools, the Scouts and local groups
