When I was a child, my family had a vegetable garden. I can vividly remember the dark green feathery tendrils of the carrot tops and the paler green ripple of the lettuce leaves, poking out from their bed of straw and compost. I took it for granted as a normal part of life, though if the truth be told I don’t think I was especially interested. When I was very small we had chickens as well and one of my favourite jobs was fetching the eggs, which always seemed like a mini Easter egg hunt (though with less chocolate).

Having a garden is a virtuous circle because, as well as helping to feed yourself - lovely fresh food with an infinitesimally small carbon footprint - you also have a green way to dispose of food waste, whether by composting, keeping a worm farm, or feeding to chickens. Food waste sent to landfill is a major environmental problem because it rots anaerobically and produces potent greenhouse gases like methane. By contrast, food waste that is returned to the soil in the form of compost actually locks CO2 into the soil, in a natural form of carbon sequestering. Some local government areas have separate food waste collections but this is rare.

In yesterday’s The Guardian, Michael Pollan, author of In Defence of Food, has written a passsionate riposte to the ‘why bother’ brigade - the argument that our environmental problems are so insurmountable and the actions we take as individuals are so futile that we’re all doomed anyway and may as well just enjoy the time we have left. I really like Pollan’s piece firstly because it’s inspiring rather than just plunging me further into despair and secondly because I think it advances quite a strong argument for the difference that individuals can make. There is the ripple effect - the idea of inspiring other people and creating a chain reaction of individual responses - and also the salient point that, while fixing the problem takes laws and money, it also takes changes to the way we live. Governments won’t act in any meaningful way until we do. It reminds me of the old Margaret Mead quote* about changing the world that invariably gets trotted out in arguments like these but it’s no less true for that.

In particular, Pollan suggests that as individuals we should make a single, meaningful contribution to the solution, and goes on to make the case for a vegetable garden. Did you know that during World War 2, victory gardens supplied as much as 40% of the produce Americans ate?

I recommend reading the piece in full but I have extracted a few quotes. He writes:

“Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

“A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilisers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

“Yet the sun still shines down on your garden, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organised vegetable patch (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden centre), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - CO2-free and money-free.”

He goes on point out there are physical and psychological benefits as well:

“You will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your gardenburning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labour that, having replaced physical labour with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.

“Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself - that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need.”

Finally:

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”

It’s been many years since I have been involved in growing my own food. The closest I have come in recent years has been keeping a few pots of herbs on my kitchen window sill that died when I went away for a month. However, it’s certainly a family tradition. My mother and several of my aunts keep extensive vegetable gardens and two of my aunts are trained designers and teachers of permaculture - a type of organic gardening that relies on design to mimic natural eco-systems and create self-sustaining systems. One runs an organic gardening supplies, Green Harvest, based in Queensland, while the other has a garden design business in Cardiff, Edible Landscaping. My aunt in Scotland also has a rather lovely garden near Inveraray on the West Coast and last year I went up north to pick blackcurrants and make jam.

Currently I live in a rented third-storey flat in London so the opportunities for me to either grow my own food, or avoid sending waste to landfill are limited. Friends of mine in north London have recently acquired an allotment, a UK scheme to give city-dwellers a patch of land for growing their own food. I don’t think I could devote the time to an allotment - it’s a major hobby - and I don’t drive so it would have to be literally around the corner from my house in order to make it feasible for me. But I am hoping that my next home might have a small courtyard garden or balcony so I can at least grow some herbs and flowers and keep a worm farm for my food scraps.

Sinc I don’t have a garden, I do possibly the next best thing, which is to buy locally grown, organic fruit and vegetables. I order a weekly box from Abel and Cole and I’ve always had a very good experience with them, both for fruit and vegetables and also for dairy, bread, coffee, meat and fish, cleaning products (I could almost do a complete weekly shop with them!). It’s very reasonable - we spend £25 a week with them and our total weekly grocery bill for two people is about £40. I particularly like that I can set likes and dislikes - useful in winter to control the amount of potatoes, parsnip and swede I let them send me! I’ve heard very good things about Riverford Organics as well

Do you have a vegetable garden? Do you grow any of your own food? What environmental factors, if any, do you consider when shopping for food?

* The Margaret Mead quote I am referring to is of course: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I’m sure you’ve heard that one before.

It’s a double-whammy of Leiths posts as I try to get up to date before the class tomorrow night. It’s hard to believe it’s week six already - more than halfway through the course!

Last week the menu was pork tenderloin with sage and madeira sauce, accompanied by crushed new potatoes and peas. We had a dessert for the first time since the second week - citrus fruit compote with spiced caramel sauce. The good news - for my tastebuds, that is, not my waistline - is that we have desserts every week now until the end of the course.

Pork tenderloin with sage and madeira

The pork tenderloin was a triumph. Apparently it’s called ‘tenderloin’ in the United States, while in the UK it’s either called ‘tenderloin’ or ‘fillet’. But those are the only two names it’s known by. It’s very lean, which is great because it’s healthy, but it also means that you have to cook it with great care to ensure it doesn’t get over-cooked and tough.

We trimmed the pork fillets of membrane and outer fat and browned them in a pan with half a tablespoon of sunflower oil. Then we transferred it to a roasting tin and put it in the oven at 190C (350F/Gas Mark 5) for 15-20 minutes.

In the mean time, we poured off any excess fat (there wasn’t any in my case because the meat was so lean and I’d trimmed off any visible fat). Then we added the Madeira and reduced by half, before adding the chicken stock. It didn’t thicken so we had to add a little beurre manie - basically flour and butter - to develop the syrupy consistency. Apparently sherry would also work in place of Madeira.

The pork is done when you put a knife through the meat and it comes out hot where it would have touched the centre of the meat. A lot of people think that it’s dangerous to have underdone pork, just as it’s dangerous to eat chicken that is not properly cooked. The Leiths teachers said this was no longer the case - apparently this perception dates from the days when pigs were fed swill and were prone to gut parasites, but this is not allowed any more and it’s perfectly safe to eat it slightly pink. (However, the Food Standards Agency disagrees).

We set the pork to rest slightly and served it with the sauce, scattered with chiffanaded sage, and accompanied by new potatoes crushed with peas. I opted for olive oil with the potatoes rather than butter. It was amazingly good - lean yet tender and full of flavour. I would definitely make that again.

Citrus fruit compote with spiced caramel

The dessert was quite tricky because we had to make caramel sauce, which involves slowly dissolving sugar in water. Once it’s dissolved, we turned the heat up and boiled without stirring until it turned a dark caramel colour. It is incredibly tempting to stir it but this is risky as it can make the sugar re-crystalise. Once it hitsthe right colour - and not a moment later - we had to remove it from the heat and pour in cold water, taking care not to get burnt by spitting sugar. Then we added spices, including bay leaves, star anise, a cinnamon stick, coriander seeds, lemon zest and root ginger, and left it to cool (to be strained the next day). We were told this would keep in the fridge for weeks.

The fruit compote was slightly easier. We sliced the kumquats finely to avoid big chunks of bitter fruit and peeled and cored the pineapple. The oranges and pink grapefruit were a test of our knife skills, as we had to remove the peel and white pith but keep them separated into attractive segments.

I think of a compote as cooked fruit. This was not cooked, though it was warmed slightly when we poured over the hot caramel sauce. Either way, it was definitely tasty! I really liked the spiced caramel - it would be great over ice cream. It was nice with the fruit as well and it’s good to have a vegan dessert recipe up my sleeve for when the occasion demands it.

Chicken liver pâté and melba toasts

I like liver pâté but I had never previously given much thought to its preparation. Now that I can speak from experience, I can say that ignorance is bliss and in future I will buy my rather than make pâté. Some things are best left to the specialists.

It’s not that it’s difficult to make, it’s just that I had to pick through a pile of chicken livers, removing membranes and green bits. The texture and smell made me gag. The torture wasn’t over until we had chopped the liver into chunks, rinsed them and patted them dry.

Once that was done, it got better. We’d already fried some garlic onion and left the remaining butter in the pan. Now we added the livers and fried, browning gently on all sides. Then we got to do a brandy flambé, which was very cool and almost made up for the grossness of the livers. We had flames shooting up to the ceiling and it was all okay because we were in a stainless steel industrial kitchen.

After that it was all plain sailing. We seasoned with salt and pepper and allowed to cool slightly. Then we blended the liver and onion mix in a food processor.

We made cute little melba toasts to go with it and they were definitely far superior to any commercial melba toasts and dead simple to make. You take white bread, remove the crusts, grill on both sides, then slice in half horizontally and grill again.

I have to admit the pâté was absolutely delicious. It almost made it worthwhile. But really, I’m not sure it was worth the pain considering the stuff at the delicatessen is so good.

On the other hand, liver pâté is not the only type of pâté in the world. There’s a recipe for kipper pâté right above the chicken liver pâté recipe that looks lovely and simple. And I had a great aubergine pâté from an Italian deli today. So perhaps I’ll be making pâté after all, just not in this form.

Chilli broccoli salad (and salmon)

The second thing we made was a lovely salad from Skye Gyngell’s cookbook A Year in my Kitchen. The salad involves broccoli that has been cooked but is still crunchy, radicchio and frisee lettuce. It is dressed with chilli and garlic oil, roasted red onions, lemon zest and juice, anchovies, olives and salt and pepper. It was a wonderful salad and would be almost as good without the anchovies for vegetarians or anchovy-haters. (I say almost because I love anchovies!).

We cooked salmon to go with it and we were shown how to fry or to roast in the oven in a parcel of aluminium foil. I really enjoyed it roasted - it tasted very clean and healthy.

Twice-baked salmon and dill souffles

The first time I ever attempted souffle, the result was a rather nice frittata. It tasted great but it was flat as a pancake - and not a Scandinavian one. (In my defence, I would like to point out that we didn’t have an electric mixer and I was attempting to whisk egg whites to a satisfactory state of stiffness entirely by hand). So I was pleased that the Leiths course would be covering souffle.

In particular we made twice-baked salmon and dill souffles. The advantage with twice-baked souffles is that they are slightly easier and you can prepare them up to 24 hours in advance. We made white sauce and combine it with egg yolks, dill and salmon. We also whisked (with an electric mixer!) the egg whites and then folded it into the salmon mixture. We baked the souffles in ramekins (or teacups or your vessel of choice) in a baking dish with a few inches of hot water. (This stabilises the temperature so they cook more easily). Once we removed them from the over, we waited for them to cool, turned them out on to a baking tray and poured over the sauce (a cream dill sauce in this case) over the top. They then get returned to the oven for 10-15 minutes when it’s time to eat it. Salmon and dill was a great combination but there are plenty of others - cheese and chive is another classic for example.

Duck breasts with apple and blackberry sauce

However, the star of the evening was the duck. We made duck breasts with blackberry and apple sauce from a Viv Pidgeon recipe. We had large juicy duck breasts with the fat and skin left on and started by frying the duck, skin side down. It released an unbelievable amount of fat and we had to keep pouring off the excess fat into a bowl. It’s the first time that I have ever fried something in order to reduce the fat content! When the skin and fat was brown and crisp, we turned the duck over briefly to seal the meat. After this point it can be left in the fridge for up to two days or even frozen, before the final step, which is roasting it for 8-10 minutes. After the roasting, we let the duck rest for five minutes before slicing it on the diagonal and serving, along with a homemade blackberry, apple and port sauce and some lightly boiled green beans. It might not be the way to a healthy heart but this was absolutely superb. I would definitely love to make this for a fancy dinner party and I know just who I would invite for maximum appreciation too.

Next week (tonight actually - how the week has whisked by!) we are making chicken liver pate, melba toast, salmon fillets and broccoli with chilli and garlic.

It was Indian and Sri Lankan this week at Leiths but before I tantalise your tastebuds with descriptions of the yummy food, please permit me a short rant. If you don’t live in London, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

Leiths used to be fairly centrally located in Kensington. Unfortunately they needed bigger premises so they moved to the wilds of west London. It’s in the middle of nowhere, sort of wedged between Shepherd’s Bush Tube on the Central Line (which is closed right now anyway) and Turnham Green on the District Line. On Wednesday I was shopping in the West End and I left a little late, mainly because the glorious summer weather tricked me into thinking it was an hour earlier than it really was. I decided to get the Central Line to White City, the next station along from Shepherd’s Bush, and then get a taxi. I rang Leiths to say I would be about 10 minutes late and then went down for my Tube. I popped up in White City about a quarter hour later and found the roads in a state of traffic gridlock. I waited for a cab for over an hour and then the cab journey took nearly half an hour. I arrived at Leiths at 8pm - an hour and a half late. I was quite upset - it was a double whammy of the misery of getting there and the fact that I missed most of the class, which averages out at about £60 a night. So if you are thinking of taking a short course at Leiths, do be warned that it’s quite tricky to get to unless you work nearby.

Sri Lankan chicken curry, chana dhal, poori and raita
As a consequence of my late arrival, I expected I would be in time to pick up most of my ingredients to attempt the other dishes at home and maybe make one last dish. It turned out we were actually cooking in pairs so my poor partner had made everything without me (she kindly insisted that I still take half the food). I was in time to help make the cucumber raita (yogurt and cucumber condiment), and roll out and deep fry the poori (unleavened flat bread). I didn’t make the Kukul Mus Kari (Sri Lankan chicken curry), or the Chana Dhal (yellow lentil curry) myself, though I talked through the recipes with the instructors and feel confident I could attempt them on my own. The instructors also kindly showed me a few of the techniques that the class had covered earlier in the evening and explained how you would toast spices (although the spices came pre-prepared for the class).

I learned the following techniques: how to finely chop an onion (by cutting in half through the root and then criss-crossing with the root on) ; how to peel ginger (with the side of a teaspoon); how to cut chilli (lengthways and then scoop out pith and seeds with teaspoon); and how to toast spices (in a heavy frypan on low-medium heat with no butter or oil and then grind afterwards in mortar and pestle or in coffee grinder for large batches).

The chicken curry and the chana dhal were both quite mild and if I were making it, I would add more spice and chilli. This is a matter of personal preference. The chicken curry recipe used chicken thighs, which are more succulent than breasts (increase the cooking time if it’s on the bone), coconut milk and garam masala (a spice mix with coriander, cumin, fennel, black peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and fenugreek). The recipe also gave a few variations - the tomato and yogurt option sounds good to me. I’m not sure whether or not I would make the chicken curry again - I might attempt a different recipe instead. I do want to make the chana dhal though - the recipe used yellow lentils (the orange ones fall apart too quickly and brown lentils are for a different dish) and was cooked with spice and onion and tomato.

Poori is unleavened deep-fried bread. The dough was already made by the time I got there and had been sitting for 20 minutes under a tea towel. We took small lumps of dough and rolled it out thin with a rolling pin. We had a deep saucepan full of boiling oil and we used a slotted spoon to deep fry the bread. As soon as the dough started puffing, we turned it over and sloshed it about in the oil for a few seconds, then removed it from the oil, drain and sprinkled with salt. The poori was crisp around the edges and quite nice, though I like grilled or dry-fried flat bread just as much and it’s certainly healthier.

For the raita, we grated cucumber and then removed excess water, first by draining it through a sieve and then by wringing it out. We added salt and then mixed with yogurt, black pepper and mint. Raita is lovely and refreshing with spicy food, though it was a bit redundant with such mild curries.

Next week: Twice-baked salmon and dill souffles; and duck breasts with blackberry and apple sauce, and green beans. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!

I am mostly a self-taught cook. I learnt the basics from my mum and dad and since then my cooking repertoire has expanded through cookbooks and magazines, sharing recipes and ideas with friends, and playing around in the kitchen inventing new dishes from random ingredients. I guess it’s been a moderately successful approach as I like to think that I am a competent cook if not a spectacular one. I have my weak spots (I’ve never made custard, for example) but I also have my strengths (salads, Italian and Asian food).

That’s all going to change because I have signed up to do a course at Leiths School of Food and Wine in west London. I wanted to do it partly because I’ve been getting into food writing (both blogging and articles) and mostly just because I thought it would be fun. I’m just doing an amateur course but even that was a 10 week commitment and a bill in the vicinity of £600.

I chose the Confident Cooking course rather than the Beginners course as I thought it was better to challenge myself than to waste the money on learning things I already knew. That’s lucky as I think it’s definitely going to be a challenge! My first class was last night and we supposedly started off easy, with choux pastry, aubergine and prosciutto gougere, and chocolate and sour cherry biscuits. I found the choux pastry quite challenging actually - we had to melt butter in water, then bring it to a rising boil, then remove it from the heat, quickly add sifited flour and, in the words of the instructor, “beat it to billy-o”. Then we had to slowly add beaten egg until it would “easily but reluctantly” fall off the spoon. Fortunately there was lots of help on hand and it turned out fine. We get to take the food home afterwards so my fridge and pantry is stocked with goodies and I’m going to fill the pastry case with the gougere tonight and bake it for my dinner.

I’ll report back every week on what we make and how I’m finding the course, so please subscribe to make sure you don’t miss future posts in the series.

Everyone is familiar with Mexican food in some guise but usually what we get in the English speaking world and Europe is actually Tex-Mex - an Americanised version of Mexican food. I’m told that nachos, for example, is not traditional in Mexico, that the burritos are usually smaller and skimpier on the fillings, and that tacos have soft shells.

In Sydney, nachos were ubiquitous on café menus throughout most of the 1990s, though the trend seems to have died off now. They might not be traditional but they were very good - a rich spicy red kidney bean stew, crunchy corn chips, melted cheese and spicy homemade guacamole. Imagine my disappointment when I went to the United States for the first time and encountered the liquid cheese horror of Taco Bell!

That is not fair, of course. The US has some fabulous Mexican - or Tex-Mex - food. I encountered it in Brooklyn, in Mexican Town in Detroit, and of course, in California where the cuisine really comes into its own.

In London, one of my favourite places for a burrito is the Daddy Donkey cart on the Leather Lane street market in Clerkenwell. It’s not cheap - it costs around £5 - but they keep the quality of their ingredients very high. You can get either a wrap or a salad bowl and they have chicken, beef, pork or vegetarian options. The meat is always tender, the salad crisp, the guacamole fresh and tangy, and the black beans and rice marvellously satisfying. Buy it to take back to your desk or grab a seat on one of the picnic tables beside the van.

Restaurant Review: Taqueria

Sometimes you want to sit down for a meal and the sad truth is that London is starved of good Mexican restaurants. Enter Taqueria in Notting Hill.

I have never been to Mexico but I’m pretty sure that the food here is as authentic as you’ll get outside Mexico. It’s quite unlike any Mexican food I’ve had anywhere else, with homemade tacos and light, fresh toppings.

The website says the restaurant makes everything from scratch, from Mexican chorizo to the hot chocolate, which is ground in house. They go to great length to source Mexican ingredients - the parent company, Cool Chile Co imports dried chiles and herbs, masa harina (tortilla corn flour), corn husks and pozole (a stew made from hominy - a type of dried maize) directly from Mexico, while the Mexican chiles are from Dorset-based Peppers by Post. They use organic chickens, British meats and cheeses to supplement the Mexican ingredients.

The food is very good indeed. The best thing to get are the tacos, which come in pairs. If you have a group of people you can order an assortment of tacos and try a few different flavours. The portions are not huge so you will need 2-4 tacos per person, depending on whether you have appetisers or dessert as well. Flavours include “carnitas” (shredded slow-cooked pork, green salsa, diced onion, coriander), “spinacas y queso” (browned cheese with spinach and red salsa on large tortillas) and “camaron” beer-battered prawns, avocado mash, chipotle mayonnaise, Mexican salsa, limey shredded cabbage, doubled tortillas. Vegetarians are catered for but the selection is not overly large.

For the drinks, I recommend the Horchata, a rice milk drink flavoured with almond and cinnamon. It’s sweet and smooth and quite delicious. The Flor de Jamaica, or hibiscus juice, is quite nice as well, tasting, not surprisingly, quite like hibiscus tea.

It will be difficult to leave without doing dessert as well. My favourite is the “plátanos con cajeta”. A banana split by another name, it features fried plantain (cooking banana), coconut ice cream, cajeta (goats milk toffee) and toasted almonds. It is simply perfect. There is also a hibiscus pudding, ice cream or sorbet, and the classic option of churros (doughnut sticks) with Mexican hot chocolate.

The service is occasionally patchy but generally good and it’s always friendly. Aside from a slightly overdone taco on my last visit, the quality of the food is exceptional.

Taqueria
Address: 139-143 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7229 4734
Web: www.coolchiletaqueria.co.uk

Mexico is my third country to feature on my UN food challenge, after Ghana and New Zealand. There are 189 countries to go…

Who can resist these beautiful macaroons from Yauatcha? See how pretty they are in their box with all the different colours lined up. Even the packaging - a hard box with a ribbon and a frosted stiff plastic bag - is gorgeous.

After reading about the macaroons in Time Out and blogging about them yesterday, our fate was sealed. We had to try them out. It’s an enormously decadent treat - one box of 18 macaroons cost about £25 - but oh boy, are they good. So far we’ve tried a blue one with a blackcurrant filling, a white speckled one with a sesame paste, and a green tea-flavoured one.

At those prices, I can’t see us bringing them home terribly often, but they would make a lovely gift for someone. Meanwhile, I’m definitely going to try making them.

Yauatcha
Address: 15-17 Broadwick St, W1F 0DL
Tel: +44 (0)20 7494 8888
Tube: Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus

When I grew up in Australia in 1980s, beetroot was something that came on a hamburger and it was always canned. Even now, I think fresh beets are quite rare in Australia.

I’ve always loved beetroot but it wasn’t until I came to the UK that I realised quite how good it can be. When I first came I was quite impressed with the vacuum packs of beets because of the freshness and sweetness of the taste, compared with the canned product, which is generally boiled in malt vinegar. This is because vinegar is a preserving agent but food writer Sophie Grigson calls this “abuse” and she has a point as the vinegar seriously affects the flavour of the beets, which are naturally sweet.
However, if you really want to know how good beets can be, you need to make your own - the results are far superior. I get a weekly box of organic fruit and vegetables from Abel & Cole and beetroots make a regular appearance. I have also discovered other varieties of beetroot on my forays to Borough Market (one of my favourite places in London). As well as the deep red-purple variety we all know, there are also golden beetroots and candy beetroots with an exquisite pattern of white and pink cocentric circles (pictured). The other cool thing about beetroot is that the stems and leaves are also edible and make a nice substitute for spinach or chard (silverbeet) in most recipes.

One of my favourite things to do with beetroot is to make a salad. All you do is chop the ends of the beet and peel it and then grate the beet. You also grate a carrot. Then you toss the grated beet and carrot together with a lemon and olive oil dressing and two teaspoons of sunflower seeds. You get the deeper flavour of the beet combined with the sweetness of the carrot, the nuttiness of the seeds, the acidity of the lemon, all coated in a light layer of extra virgin olive oil. Delicious and healthy too.

I also often roast beetroot. Usually I peel the beet and cut into chunks, then toss with oil, salt and pepper and perhaps some rosemary, before roasting it in the oven. Half a beetroot takes about an hour to cook using this method and smaller chunks closer to half an hour. It’s far quicker than roasting potatoes or most other root vegetables.

I did try boiling beetroot in salted water once and it worked fine but was nothing special.

Tonight I had a bit of time on my hands so I thought I would try Sophie Grigson’s method of oven roasting whole beets wrapped in foil and then peeling them afterwards. I’ve wanted to try this for a while but it does take quite a bit longer than other methods, so this was the first time. This is from her 2006 book Vegetables, which is an excellent accompaniment to any kitchen but particularly useful for households who participate in a vegetable box scheme. This is from the general introductory section to the chapter on beetroots.

Beetroot - Cooking

“Although it is not the only way to cook beetroot, by far the best general method is to roast them, guarding all their juiciness and flavour. For most purposes, the process is as follows: wash the beetroots well (but don’t scrub brutally, which will rupture the skin) and trim off the leaves, leaving about 2cm (3/4 inch) of stalk in place to minimise bleeding. Do not trim off the root. Wrap each beetroot individually in foil, place in a roasting tin or ovenproof dish and slide into a preheated oven. For the finest results the temperature should be fairly low - say around 150C/300F/Gas 2. You should allow 2-3 hours for the beetroots to cook. They will still turn out well at a higher temperature if you want to speed matters up a little, or have something else cooking in the oven - anything up to 200C/400F/Gas 6 will do nicely. To test, unwrap one of the larger beetroot and scrape gently at the skin near the root. When it comes away easily, the beetroots are done. Take them out and cool slightly, then unwrap and skin each one…”

Beetroot - Partners

“Despite, or perhaps even because of, its distinctive presence, beetroot has an affinity with a remarkable number of other ingredients. In eastern Europe, where it is used most famously to create borscht - beetroot soup in several different forms - beetroot is often combined with aniseed flavours (fennel seed, aniseed, dill and so on) and with soured cream. Try serving cubes of hot cooked beetroot tossed with fresh dilland butter, or fry it briefly with cubes of eating apple and bruised fennel seeds, then serve topped with a spoonful of soured cream (or stir creme fraiche, not soured cream, which will split, into the pan to make a light sauce). Cooked beetroot (puréed or finely diced) is also a brilliant addition to mashed potato, turning it a startling bright pink, which will wow children as much as it amuses parents…”

Road test

Of course, Sophie has far more to say on the subject of beetroot but I thought that was a good starting point. I followed her instructions on roasting the beetroot to the letter and then I interpreted her suggestions for how to serve it, according to the ingredients I had to hand. I went with the suggestion of fennel as a good flavour partner and used mayonnaise rather than creme fraiche or sour cream. There’s no point doing this with cheap mayonnaise as that would ruin the flavour - you need to either make your own or buy the most expensive, unadulterated product you can find.

Ingredients
3 beetroots, including one candy beetroot
1 head of fennel
1 shallot
Tablepoon of mayonnaise (I used Delouis Fils brand of French mayonnaise)
Salt and pepper

Method
Sophie’s instructions were very easy to follow. I had the temperature at 160C for one hour and then moved it up to 200C for the second hour. They peeled easily though I should have waited a few more minutes before I did this, as it was very hot.

Meanwhile, I chopped the fennel and shallot finely, mixed it with a tablespoon of mayonnaise and added salt and pepper.

I sliced the beetroots and served it with the mayonnaise and fennel as a condiment.

Results
The beetroots cooked beautifully using this method. Roasting them in foil and with the skins on preserves the flavour and colour but, unlike boiling, does not add an element of wateriness or acidity. They were good with the mayonnaise and fennel, though I think creme fraiche or sour cream would be even better.

I served this with a frittata, a green salad, and oven-roasted celeriac and parsnip chips. Look how pretty it is with the two varieties of beetroot - almost like a dessert!

Verdict

I would do this again when I have the time. It’s not a method that is practical for making dinner after work since it takes at least two hours to make it. But for weekends, it’s fine - the actual preparation time is minimal and the beauty is that you can put them in the oven and then more or less forget about them - perfect for pottering about the house on the weekend.

I had never considered fennel as an accompaniment but will definitely try that again. Overall it contributed to a delicious meal and was a hit with everyone in the house.

It didn’t take us long to return to Marylebone Crêperie, which I first wrote about in my Pancake Day post. We went for breakfast with a friend from out of town yesterday morning and this time we opted for the sweet crêpes.

My crêpe (pictured left) was from the list of Chef’s Specials and the filling was summer fruits - mainly black currants and red currants - with Belgian chocolate. I had a choice of dark, milk or white chocolate and opted for milk. The sweetness of the chocolate and the tartness of the fruit blended beautifully, though it was unbelievably rich and I was not able to finish it.

The other two crêpes were equally good and not quite as rich. One friend had a crêpe with a banana, caramel and walnut filling (pictured below), which was delicious. The other friend had a crêpe with a chestnut filling, which he told us was a standard dessert ingredient in Eastern European cooking. It was sweet and nutty but not overpowering.

They also made a decent cappuccino, which is essential for any breakfast establishment in my book.

Marylebone Crêperie is also open for lunch and dinner and it does a nice line in savoury crêpes and also galettes - a style of crêpe from Brittany made from buckwheat flour, with a darker look and almost a sourdough taste. There is a wide range of fillings including an extensive list of vegetarian options. The seafood with white wine sauce and the mushroom with tarragon were both tasty and filling. I also enjoyed a Breton cider to go with my galette.

The crêperie is a cosy, corner shop, opposite Caldesi Cafe, not far from Marylebone High Road. Marylebone is a lovely part of town and I always forget how central it is - I associate it with Marylebone Station, which is miles away, but it’s actually closer to the Selfridges end of Oxford Street. The service is friendly and prompt, though you might wait slightly longer than you expect, simply because the crêpes are made fresh to order. In a lot of places they are pre-prepared, which means the quality can suffer and it’s more of a fast food experience where you are in and out as quickly as possible.

A main course, dessert and a cider would set you back £18 - but portions are generous and only those with large appetites would be able to manage such a large meal. I would recommend going for either main course or dessert, or sharing with a friend.

Marylebone Crêperie
Address: 71A Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2PJ
Tel: (020) 7935 2993
Nearest Tube: Bond Street