Taste Britain: Food Miles and a recipe for Hummus

Sourcing and eating good quality food can be and a tricky and expensive business, we constantly hear about how many miles our food has to travel to reach us, but a how far do we have to travel to buy our food on a weekly basis? This is a little extreme but to produce the above platter we had to travel over 400 miles. With some exceptions granted we did not make the trips to all of these places to specifically pick up these items, but living in a village is not all it’s built up to be when you read the glossy magazines promoting county life to city dwellers who only need to walk down their high street to find deli’s, fishmongers and butchers. Very few villages or even towns offer all or any of these luxuries. The nearest fish mongers to us is nearly 50 miles away in Kings Lynn. There is not a fruit and veg shop within 10 miles. The only option for many people is to use the supermarkets.

We do however seem to have a growing selection of butchers and instead of moaning about what we do not have I am putting together a local directory of our best local suppliers. See here.

If you can recommend any suppliers please leave a comment.

We also have some very good delivery companies who supply our area, including Riverford Veg and a local frozen fish supplier, there used to be a fresh fish van but he stopped coming quite a few years ago, I suppose there is a lesson there – if you don’t use it you lose it.

I received last week the book Taste Britain by the fabulous people at Cool Camping. The first thing I picked up on and wanted to criticise was the lack of suppliers in the East Anglian region, but this book is only a snap shot of the county and to consider what the UK has to offer compared to other countries, how lucky we really are. I actually get a bit tetchy when a local supplier or restaurant (for example The Pheasant at Keystone) takes centre stage as prices start to rise or you can’t book tables, I’m selfish and I want them all to myself, but then if they were only supplying me they would never survive as a business! Cake & eat it come to mind.

Taste Britain is described as a foodie’s dream travel guide and it does also inspire you to find your local food hero, they should have included a notes section as I am sure to be scribbling on the maps to remind me where to stop next time. The book focuses on little known producers so I was surprised to see entries for Raymond Blanc and The Fat Duck, although undoubtedly famous foodie locations being so well known I feel they took up valuable space in book that has already covered so much in a somewhat still portable volume, I already look forward to Taste Britain II, or maybe Taste Europe – if the authors need help with checking these locations out I am available!

Our Food Miles Platter

1. Ham – Measures butchers, Brampton, Cambridgeshire – 1 mile.

2,3&4. Parma ham, olives and sun-dried tomatoes – Simmons Deli, St Ives, Cambridgeshire – 12.4 miles.

5. Hummus – Homemade – 0 miles

hamos, houmous, hommos, hommus, hummos or hummous

130g cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 garlic cloves, crushed

6 olives

1/2 tsp cumin powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

pinch sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp tahini paste

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, the best quality you have

Flavoured olive oil such as that left over from preserving olives or sun-dried tomatoes.

Method

Blitz the chickpeas in a food processor, add all the ingredients other then the olive oils and add a drop of water if required to soften the paste. Drizzle the extra virgin olive oil in slowly if possible while the mixer is turned on until you reach the required consistency. The hummus it should be slightly denser then the mass produced dip you might be used to, so you should be able to pinch a bit and roll it into a soft ball.

Transfer to a storage container or the bowl you intend to serve it in and then pour over the flavoured olive oil. Serve on flat breads, toasted pitta bread or with chunky vegetable batons.

6. Potted shrimp – Shrimp – Peter’s Eastern Fish Shop, Hastings, East Sussex – 131 miles.

7. Manchego - The Rye Deli, East Sussex – 131 miles.

8. Black Bomber Cheddar – Griffins Country Store, Ely, Cambridgeshire – 24.8 miles.

9. Carrots & celery – Riverford vegbox – delivered from Sacrewell Farm, Cambridgeshire.

Sour-dough – Hambleton Bakery, Rutland – 36 miles.

Cromwell’s OSB Cider – St Ives Market, Cambridgeshire – 12.4 miles.

So if you do find yourself on the road a lot here are some recommended books to keep to hand, for both shopping and foraging, remember to keep some spare carrier bags too. The Collins books are great as they are pocket sized. One day collecting cockles off the rocks near Brora in Northern Scotland, we didn’t have any bags with us so Thane put them all in his pockets, it could not have been nice for him let alone for the poor cockles in their last hours of life.