Save our Bacon

A subject dear to my heart. Pigs. Given the bad press they’ve been lumbered with by several of the world's major religions and virtually every European language I can think of, it’s heartening to know that at least one British supermarket is doing a little to give them a PR boost. Actually, not so much the pigs themselves, I don’t suppose they care very much about not getting into the papers, but a more endangered breed altogether, the British Pig Farmer. They are having a tough old time and I was invited to Roast in Borough Market for the launch of Save Our Bacon by the folk at Waitrose Food Illustrated to hear all about it. A press launch! The very idea that Jamfaced would be there seemed bizarre, but I guess I’ve been put on the mailing list by mistake. There was going to be free sausage, so who was I to refuse the invitation?

This is where I do my best Micheal Winner impersonation, just try to imagine the rest of the post as spoken by a man with a great deal of mash potato in his mouth.

I was actually invited by Tonia George, food editor at the magazine, who’ve I known for a very long time and knows of my penchant for bacon. This is name dropping of the most horrific nature and I apologize, I’ll use some swear words in a bit so keep reading. Guessing that she needed someone to act as a pork based waste disposal unit, I tripped along and the first thing I was greeted by was a hog on a spit. An auspicious start, for me anyway. The poor bugger tending the animal had been at it since two in the morning all so I and a horde of journalists could have crackling at 9 in the morning. Good man.

So, here’s the deal. Some 95% of British Pig Farmers are thinking of quitting the business. Despite the fact we are more conscious than ever before about where our food comes from and how it’s produced, according to the British Pig Executive; the average pork farmer loses 26 quid per animal. The supermarkets are screwing them all for cheaper meat, feed prices have soared due to the demand for grain and all in all, if we aren’t careful the British Pig Farmer will be no more and we’ll have to eat other pigs, that don’t speak English and don’t willingly go into proper sausages. It’s all pretty damning actually and I’d advise you all (even you yanks, do you even have pigs anymore? You’ve probably bred missile shaped pig bacon tubes or something, as I’ve never had good bacon nor sausages on either coast –yes, I expect howls of derision) to sign up.

I’m so proud. I copied some of that out of a press release. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the British Pig Executive. I love the fact there is, a fine porker in a pin stripe comes to mind. So, clutching my press pack I watched the proceedings, whilst stuffing my face with pork. This I believe is how the best journalism is conducted, so I felt quite the professional. I saw the Hairy Bikers giving endless interviews. I saw Krishnan Guru-Murthy eating sausages. Eric, who was giving a sausage making demonstration, had a stash of British Army Sausage seasoning, the recipe of which is covered by the Official Secrets Act. He’d seen it stuck to the wall in a kitchen in Aldershot and taken a sneaky photo. I took a photo of him and his seasoning. Feeling quite good about my scoop I headed off into Borough Market and bought some hot cross buns. Food journalism is a doddle!

Sign the Save Our Bacon petition at www.waitrose.com/saveourbacon

Save the oatcakes!

Going north of Watford but all in a good cause. The Hole in Wall on Waterloo Street in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent has been serving up traditional oakcakes (pancakes made from oatmeal) for over a hundred years and is now threatened with demolition. Sign the petition going to 10 Downing Street and help save this fine old culinary institution....

Read all about the The Hole in the Wall here.

Sign the petition here.

Things you only cook once a year.

Turkey. Toffee Apples. Anything to do with Pumpkins. My bi-annual attempts to make jam, mayonnaise and veal stock (actually that's probably once a decade). Lentils. Pancakes. Ok, I made up the bit about lentils. I never cook them, the vicious little buggers, but tonight was my yearly pitch battle to make pancakes. An ongoing struggle of good versus evil, an eternal battle to get the batter right, get them to cook evenly and yes, I'm ashamed to say flip the little fuckers. I just told the girlfriend on the phone that I was cooking them. There was a pause. "How's it going?" was the tentative reply. Forefront in her mind was the year I exploded into an apoplectic rage when my pancakes were all lumpy and tasted like cardboard. Years of therapy and a much better frying pan later, this year's effort was well, pretty effortless.


Of course, I doubt anyone actually remembers the recipe for pancakes; I got mine from the rather unwieldy "How to cook bloody everything" (or something along those lines) by a committee of home economists (You know the kind of thing, basically every recipe you could conceivably want described in the same dry tone I imagine a surgeons instruction manual might describe a vasectomy) and it worked a treat. I was a touch suspicious at first but it proceeded along uneventful lines until I had a stack of steaming golden brown discs sat upon a plate. Here's hoping next year is as easy. Happy Fat Tuesday everyone.

Notes from the Underground

Someone just sent me this interview with the Annie Mole, who writes the very cool Going Underground blog covering all things, well Underground. London Underground.

http://trustedplaces.com/blog/2008/02/05/annie-mole-the-interview/

The very cool thing is she sites Jamfaced as one of her favourite blogs, which I must say was very kind of her. Cheers Annie!

Cooking as therapy or how to cook your way out of the blues

Dark days and rain don’t lend themselves to being expansive and creative about food, not for me anyway. It’s a time to hunker down, head down, teeth gritted, time to get through the rest of winter without getting too down. It easy to fall back on a few old standards in the kitchen, not even thinking about what you’re sticking in your mouth. The temptation to come in from work and vegetate in front of the TV or the 360 is ever present and the thought of putting any thought to what I’m eating is a bit much. This is not, of course, the best state of affairs for a food blogger, it’s pretty much terminal in fact. Funny thing is that once you actually stop and think and spend some time pottering around in the kitchen , the mood lightens and simple flavours and textures can really turn you around.

I’m not talking chocolate, well, I probably am to be honest, but that’s beside the point. it’s been far simpler than that over the last couple of days. The tang of grated parmesan on pasta from a hunk I bought in Milan a couple of weeks ago, the memory of eating panini bought from mobile stalls as I walk towards the San Siro to watch the most frightening game of football I’ve ever seen bringing a grin to my usually furrowed face. The citrus herby twang of fresh thyme on a roasting chicken with family knocking round the house. Five perfect little fairy cakes in a shop near the office that I bought for some colleagues.

Stopping being quite so inactive and actually getting down and dirty in the kitchen, making something for the sake of making it. I’ve being trying to avoid cooking for the sole reason of blogging about it, it can feel a bit mercenary and I’ve been questioning my motivations regarding this old blog of mine. So I’ve been trying to get back to why I started blogging in the first place, because it’s fun and I love the thought of making something well and then just sharing that with you lot. I don’t want cooking or blogging to become a chore. I don’t want to feel guilty about not doing it, I want to just cook, make a mess, fill my face and get a spring back in my step. Just messing about with flour and eggs, the simple pleasure of dicing an onion perfectly, the meditative process of cooking and preparation.

14 minutes and 9 seconds to blog

I'm at the airport and I've just paid a considerable sum of money to access perhaps the slowest machine on earth to bring you this post. 13.05 now. So, what could be of any interest at 11.30am in an airport on a Tuesday night? What need has Monkey Gland? What could he possibly tell us that would whet our appetites and charm our senses? Well, actually not a great deal in the immediate vicinity save a rather folorn looking barista at Cafe Nero and an arcade machine that keeps playing the first five or six bars of Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene. It was the depatures board that got me thinking.

Ever since I was a kid the departures board has held a fascination (9 minutes now), the promise of far far away places; Jedda, Hurghada, Bangkok. Names that seemed to speak of dust storms and white horses galloping across sand or opium dens and roof top chases in an Indiana Jones style. More often than not it I would ask my Dad what they ate in the places on the board. He would take delight in lying outrageously (4 minutes, 28 seconds). It always seemed to make our own hum drum destinations (Valencia, Alicante) seem drab and unintresting. Here I was standing with a thousand possibilites in front of me and we were off to see (and more importantly eat) the same old things.

Travel is easy now and flying a chore to be endured. Airports seem to be more like bus stations with a few Prada concessions as a nod to a luxurious past. Though, that feeling, looking at the departures board endures. Mysterious places, the whiff of spices. Time's up.