We’ve planted some seeds including four types of tomatoes, fennel, beetroot, turnips and lettuce:
We watered them with a specially adapted water bottle (in the absence of one of those funky mini watering cans):
We’ve popped them in propagators on a sunny windowsill, and now we just have to keep our fingers crossed and water them. These will be thinned out to individual pots in a few weeks probably. In the meantime we have some donated seedlings to care for :
Birmingham artist Eleanor Hoad is marking the end of her first year as ‘Artist in Residence’ for Erdington constituency by exhibiting work in the Community Gallery at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. It’s running for three months from April 2010, and she needs your help. She’s managed to get an old market barrow and is planning to make a display by filling it with produce made from Birmingham food – it all has to be non-perishable as the show is on for three months. So things like pickles, jams, chutneys, dried beans, syrups, herbal preperations, home brew etc are all great. Eleanor says:
“I’ve got the foyer area of the museum to display it in which is amazing, lots of people will see it and I’m keen to show the diversity of city produce that is possible.”
Eleanor is looking for donations of produce to fill the barrow with, although she can pay a little bit towards it, or you can have it back at the end of June when the show comes down. Donations need to be vegetable based as Eleanor’s looking for vegan items. If you can help at all by donating, or know of anyone Eleanor can get in touch with, please get in touch with her on 07974 934 917 or eleanorhoad@hotmail.com. I’m hoping to go out on a forage and make some wild pesto to donate (sans parmesan) as my contribution.
To see what Eleanor’s been doing in her year in residence, you might want to check out this and this
So about three weeks ago I went to visit the historic Charlecote Mill in Warwickshire, where I had a private tour from John Bedington the Miller. When I got back from holiday I was champing at the bit to try out the wholemeal flour I had taken home, so much so that the sourdough starter was whipped out of the fridge and refreshed before i’d even taken my coat off. I keep a white sourdough starter, and taking John’s advice, I wanted to include a decent percentage of strong white flour to create a light, wholesome loaf. So I made it with a high percentage of sourdough starter (40% of dough weight), but all the remaining flour was Charlecote Mill standard wholemeal flour. A 67% hydration dough and a long, cool, overnight bulk fermentation led to a light, wholesome loaf, full of flavour and a sense of history and place.
That was two weeks back, and since then i’ve managed to organise to get a 32kg sack of flour dropped off this week, so after a little more experimentation I’m hoping to add a local, wholemeal sourdough loaf to the standard loaves I produce for the community bakery every Friday.
Now all it needs is a name – let your opinion be heard by voting in the poll below!
[poll id="10"]
Bread is one of my favourite things in the world. I get a bit obsessive about it sometimes and do rash things like build an earth oven in my back garden or quit my job to set up a community bakery. I also love teaching, which is what I’ve done for the NHS for the last 4 years as a community nutritionist. Starting Loaf Cookery School has been an amazing chance for me to bring these things together, and courses like last Saturday’s Bread: Back to Basics have utterly convinced me that I’m doing the right thing. Not only were they an excellent group of people eager to provide fresh wholesome bread for their households, but one of them secretly left me a little message on the chalkboard that made me smile from ear to ear when my wife discovered it halfway through the evening (see picture). The group went home with armfuls of bread: wood-fired white loaves and sourdough baton’s, wholemeal seeded batch rolls, ciabatta, fougasse, brioche dough, and a belly-full of pizza. A thoroughly enjoyable day all round I’d say!
I was left alone at home tonight, so thought I’d indulge in some easy comfort food for dinner. There was minced pork belly lurking in the bottom of the fridge that I was planning on making into homemade chorizo (there’s always next week), and the remains of a bag of cranberries, so I thought I’d whip up a burger or two to have between some crusty sourdough bread. I got the pork belly from Rossiters butchers in Bournville, and I believe it originated on Galileo Organic Farm in Warwickshire. Ask your butcher to put the belly through the coarse setting on the mincer. This recipe makes four tasty burgers:
Ingredients
400g coarsely minced organic pork belly
Small handful or cranberries
1 large clove of garlic
1 level tsp hot smoked paprika
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 dessert spoon Dijon mustard
1 tsp maldon sea salt
Good pinch black pepper
1 small dried red chilli
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Method
Chop the garlic finely, and the cranberries roughly (and weep as they fly round the kitchen). In a pestle and mortar, bash together the fennel, salt, pepper, and chilli, until thoroughly crushed. Add these to a mixing bowl together with the pork, mustard, paprika, and parsley. Get stuck in with your hands and combine all the ingredients thoroughly. Now add a tiny dash of rapeseed oil to a frying pan on a low-medium heat. With two hands, mould the mixture into four round burgers about 2cm thick, and place them into the hot pan. Fry for 5 mins on each side, basting it frequently with the liquid that is released from the burgers as they cook. Serve between two thick slices of rustic bread, and enjoy, perhaps with a little fresh goats cheese, and a full-bodied red wine. Eating alone is for Kings!
As a baker, or even just as a passionate foodie, it’s important to me to get up close and personal with the ingredients that I’m putting into my food and into my mouth. I was delighted therefore to have the opportunity to have a private tour around Charlecote Mill in Warwickshire the other day after a cheeky off-the-cuff phone call to John Beddington, the master miller. I don’t use John’s flour, yet, but nonetheless it is wonderful to see a craftsman at work, turning inedible raw wheat grains into beautiful soft wholemeal flour.
In a way John’s story is a sad one, and it speaks of this country’s increasing love affair with bad bread over the last few decades. John has been milling at Charlecote for 26 years now, and has leased the building for more than 30. In the first few years John supplied six local bakeries, including the (sadly no longer) Raddlebarn bakery in Selly Oak, Birmingham, but now John only supplies one bakery, and it’s not even that local, down in Oxford. However John is still managing to run his business, and has found an unexpected market for his flour. John principally mills three types of flour at Charlecote. The standard wholemeal flour is made from local Warwickshire wheat and milled to the right grade for chapatti flour, which John sells direct to the Indian and Pakistani community in Coventry, delivering door to door. 
He also sells maize flour to the same community. Being Soil Association certified, John produces an organic wholemeal flour too, which is milled from two local wheats from Warwickshire and Worcestershire, as well as a bit of organic wheat from Kazakhstan, to improve the mix.
Charlecote Mill itself is a charming building, and one that John clearly loves dearly. It is an isolated building, standing on the meandering river Avon between the villages of Hampton Lucy and Charlecote. In it’s current construction it’s been there since 1806, but John believes there was a mill on the spot for several centuries before that. It is driven by two water wheels, which through an impressive network of bone-crunchingly powerful cogs power two stone mills on the first floor of the building, which are making the current batch of wholemeal flour as we visit. 
Up in the attic of the building John shows us a large grain store, and the pulley system that allows mill operation to be a one man job. Sacks of flour are strewn everywhere on the ground floor, and the chute from the mill upstairs churns out soft wholemeal flour in a steady stream, like it has for hundreds of years. It’s a romantic scene. John sells me a couple of bags of flour, and we bid farewell, for now.
Without my sourdough starter and having been in a poorly equipped holiday cottage kitchen, I haven’t yet used the flour. However i’m envisioning a part wholemeal sourdough loaf, made with a good percentage of white leaven. I’m hoping this will create a light but wholesome loaf, full of flavour, and a sense of history. I’ll be reporting back on my search for a more local loaf in the coming weeks, stay tuned…
If you’re anything like me, there is almost always a stray cabbage loitering about at the back of the fridge, looking thoroughly rejected as all the other veg get hoisted away day after day to be made into sumptuous treats and simple suppers. Well over the years of being committed to a veg box scheme, I like to think I’ve become a dab hand at using it up and making cabbage interesting- my main rule is that I almost never boil it! My latest recipe is to simply sautee it in butter with cranberries, garlic, thyme, and chilli, and add a splosh of nice oil to dress it as you serve it with filled pasta – delicious!
Ingredients (serves 2)
Whole hazelnuts – 2 tbsp
Unsalted butter – about 30g, cubed
1/2 savoy cabbage – the outer half (about 8-10 leaves, keep the heart for roasting!).1 bay leaf
1 star anise
1 clove garlic – finely chopped
1/2 dried red chilli – finely chopped
Few sprigs of thyme – stripped and finely chopped
Small handful of cranberries
Salt and pepper to taste
Walnut oil (or good rapeseed or olive oil)
Parmesan
Method
First lightly crush the hazelnuts in a pestle and mortar, aiming to half or quarter them. Pour these into a medium-hot, dry, non-stick pan to toast for a couple of minutes, tossing frequently. When lightly toasted, set them aside in a bowl. Now put the pan back on the heat, and add the unsalted butter, and after a minute the bay leaf, star anise, and savoy cabbage that you have washed and finely shredded. Sautee for a minute, before adding the garlic, thyme and chilli.
Sauteed Savoy served with spaghetti - nowhere near as good as with filled pasta!
Stir, turn the heat down a fraction to medium-low and if you’re pan has a lid, put it on (if not, improvise). After a couple of minutes add a tablespoon of water and replace the lid quickly. After a further couple of minutes, remove the lid, and add the cranberries. When the cranberries burst open, turn off the heat. Serve with filled pasta, a good dousing of walnut oil, grated parmesan, and the toasted hazelnut pieces.
Next week Loaf launches it’s ‘bread club’, where we’ll be baking bread every Friday for up to 20 monthly subscribers. Subscribers pay up front for a months worth of bread, and then pick up their delicious loaf from Cotteridge on a Friday evening – simple! There are still some places left for subscribers so if you have any friends who live or work in the Cotteridge area, please tell them about Loaf Community Bakery’s bread club. If you want to subscribe or enquire, just email bread@loafonline.co.uk.
Revolution Rye (front) and Cotteridge Sourdough
We’re also going to be supplying one or two other places wholesale, where you can sample our bread. Capeling & Co, the excellent new cheese shop on York Road in Kings Heath are stocking Revolution Rye on a Saturday, last week they sold out super fast, so get down there early if you want some. Friday and Saturday customers of Farm Fresh Organics veg box scheme can also now order Revolution Rye.
It’s market day tomorrow Saturday 9th January, so it’s a great chance to battle through the ice and snow and show your support to the market! According to Duncan’s farmers market blog there’s a slightly reduced line up tomorrow, but there’s still plenty to choos from, and hot food on offer to warm the cockles. See you there tomorrow!
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