Could you 'Eat Local' for an entire week?

The local Transition group has launched a challenge:  can you eat locally produced food for a week?

http://teigntransition.org.uk/eat-for-devon/#comment-87

The week starts this Sat 21 August and there are more details on their website - this is a South Devon challenge at the moment.

It's a really interesting proposition and I'm certainly keen to take the challenge myself, but will be postponing it for a week and doing it the following week.  Looking forward to the fish, meat, cheese, fruit part of it....but am rather worried about missing out on bread and pasta.  I guess it depends how strictly you follow the challenge - should we eat bread that was made in Devon but the wheat came from Canada?  I think the whole idea of the challenge is not to be too dogmatic, but just to really consider where each item comes from and to see what percentage of our normal diet is locally sourced.

Teignmouth Seafood House: Finest Crab, Scallops, Lobster...

It’s worth seeking out the tiny shed that is the Seafood House (newly opened Summer 2010) for the freshest, tastiest seafood in South Devon.

The small stable door, crab tank and chairs and table are between the Newquay Inn and the Ship Inn near the Back Beach and harbour.

They freshly catch and pick the crab to order (we only had one tiny piece of shell in 500g crabmeat which is quite impressive) and together with Nigella’s Forever Summer, I made a damn tasty Crab Linguine: white and brown crabmeat,  a squidge of garlic, some sea salt, a chopped red chilli, some grated lemon zest and juice, plenty of Extra Virgin olive oil and some chopped watercress or rocket, plus a heap of pasta.

Fresh crabmeat is the essence of summer food in Devon.  There are some fishmongers that pasteurise their crabmeat so that it extends the shelf life.  The stuff they sell here is so fresh and sells out so quickly they don't need to!

Place your orders on 07919 566630, or risk turning up Weds – Sun 10-ish till 4-ish.

I shall be trying their hand-dived scallops (95p each) and lobster (£4.50 / pot) on Friday and will report back.

Gelato - Italian Rose Petal Ice Cream

Normal transmission will resume in September, focusing on Devon...but in the meantime, I'm just back from two weeks in Tuscany, Italy and have some wondrous delights to share.

The ice creams kept us cool and the kids happy - we averaged one a day from this wonderful Gelateria in Buonconvento, Southern Tuscany.

Favourite flavours?  Kids - Straciatella (see the vanilla and chocolate one above), adults - Pistacchio or Crema (creamy custard).

This was a combo of vanilla and rose petal:

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Chocolate Profiteroles - So Easy a Child Could Make Them...?

My children surprised me the other day by announcing they were going to make profiteroles.  I've never made them before and have always regarded choux pastry as 'too tricky'.  Plus, I was busying myself with other things, so I agreed, but told them that I wouldn't be able to help.

Surprisingly rapidly, they had summoned up these with the help of the River Cottage Family Cookbook:

They weren't prepared for how much they expand during cooking and the little lumps of pastry mostly merged into one big choux bun.  The pasty doesn't have that much sugar in and when we tasted it, a bit warm from the oven, we all agreed it tasted (and looked) like Yorkshire Pudding - obviously, as the recipe is very similar.  The four profiteroles around the edges of the tin were perfect.

The children still weren't convinced.  

"We've just made Yorkshire Pudding and it's rubbish," they sighed, ready to chuck them away.

After dinner,  I convinced them to make a chocolate sauce regardless and that we could fill the profiteroles and the big blobby one with vanilla ice cream instead of whipped cream.  The results were delicious.  Yorkshire Pud with chocolate sauce and ice cream perhaps, but delicious nevertheless.

Our Vegetable Patch and Cheeky Chickens

The veg patch is looking pretty amazing at the moment, all thanks to N's hard work and a bit of help from Mother Nature - more lettuce than we can possibly eat; courgettes getting nice and plump; potatoes flowering and beetroots bursting forth:

And did I mention lettuce?

It's a beautiful sight.  The full bloom of summer time.

The homemade scarecrow occasionally gives me a real shock while I'm picking peas. I think that my son has crept up behind me to 'boo' on me.  Ironically, it doesn't scare away the crows, pigeons or seagulls.

And next door to the veg plot, we have the cheeky neighbours: Con Carne, Rascal and Peppermint:

This one (Con Carne) is the boss and gets right under our feet.  She is forgiven though, as she provides us with wonderful large speckled brown eggs with bright yellow yolks.

Dutch Truffle Brie - The World's Most Delicious Cheese - go oranje!

A quick caveat:  I usually blog about all things situated in the South West of the UK, but this one is a triple import / cheese amalgam and has nothing to do with Devon let alone England.  This is a French cheese that has travelled to the Netherlands to a simply amazing cheese shop called L'Amuse just outside of Haarlem in Santpoort-Noord and then blended with Italian ingredients.   So while the rest of my family are watching Holland in their World Cup semi-final, I thought I would post about a Dutch cheese to show my support for their great football team (without having to watch any football = result!).


There are two branches of L'Amuse - the one in Santpoort-Noord, that I have been lucky enough to visit, and one in Amsterdam. They are a family-run, friendly business with an incredible selection of the best 400 cheeses from around the world, but this is the one that everyone goes there for, Truffle Brie:

Our wonderful, beautiful, kind, fun friends (yes, you can come again, A, D and A!) visited us from the Netherlands and generously brought us a wickedly ,melting slice of L'Amuse's truffle brie.

The cheesemongers take an entire round brie, slice it in half, spread it with a thick layer of rich, white mascarpone and thin shavings of black truffle, then replace the two halves and shave some more slivers of truffle on the top and leave to mature.

It is one of my favourite foods in the entire world.  It tastes like brie, only more so.  Pungent, earthy, creamy and melting.  You have to wrap it in several layers if it gets to your fridge as the aroma can pervade all your food.

I apologise to the unnamed pale orange whole cheese (with fern) that is fading into insignificance in the background in a very modest and unassuming way.  This was also really tasty - all I can remember is that it's from Corsica - but it cannot beat its upfront rival - Dutch Truffle Brie.  I enjoyed this cheese platter at the end of a lovely summery dinner at home, with four great friends.

1-0 to Holland so far at 20:05 - Go Oranje!

Oh no 1-1 at 20:10......Come on Holland!

A Cake Idea for Gooseberries

I picked some wonderful gooseberries at Netherton Pick Your Own Fruit Farm, near Newton Abbot.

I used a very simple  Tesco recipe to make a gooseberry and yoghurt cake:

Ingredients

• 75 g (3oz) butter (thanks, Choclette!)
• 75 g (3oz) natural yoghurt
• 125 g (4oz) unrefined caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150 g (5oz) self-raising flour
• 25 g (1oz) butter
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
• 300 g (10oz) gooseberries

Method

1. Heat the oven to Gas 4,180°C, 350°F.
2. Butter a 20cm (8in) loose-bottomed cake tin.
3. Beat together the 75g of butter, yogurt, sugar and eggs until blended. Fold in the flour until smooth. Spoon the mix into the prepared cake tin and bake for 20 minutes.
4. Melt the 25g of butter and golden syrup together. Add the gooseberries and mix well.
5. Carefully pull the shelf out of the oven a little and quickly spoon over the gooseberry mix. Bake for a further 30 minutes, until golden.
6. Remove and run a knife around edge to release the cake. Cool.
7. Using a palette knife, release the cake from the base and transfer to a serving plate. For a picnic, simply leave in the tin.

The generous dollop of Total Greek Yoghurt (I must declare an interest - the yoghurt was a freebie from the people at Total) really adds a lightness and tang to the sponge.   

This was my second cake (first one eaten by my greedy family before I took a photo) and was delivered to a friend for his 40th birthday - I was told that the gooseberries looked like onions - perhaps it's not the most photogenic cake, but it tastes great.  Gooseberry season in Devon is now in full swing.