RAW FOOD ONLY

This week I am having a drastic change of diet, from one centred on cooked food (or at least foods which have had some heating as part of its preparation), to a very different diet of purely raw food.

My usual diet is not conventional as such, but despite my best endeavours to eat local, organic and seasonal food as much as possible, it must be fairly representative of how much heated food is eaten in most modern day societies.

Starting tomorrow, nothing which has been heated in excess of 40ᵒC during any part of its production, manufacture or preparation will enter my body for a week.

No pasteurised milk on my cereal in the morning, no mid-morning cake, no coffee (or the sugar in it), no bread, pasta, rice, polenta or barley for supper. No pasteurised cheese afterwards. No beer in the evening. And of course, no cooked meat, fish, fruit or vegetables.

So how will I eat? I think I’ll be eating very well indeed!
I may have some sliced pears with mixed seeds for breakfast.
I could make a light mayonnaise with a squeeze of lemon and a scrap of aromatic zest, and mix into grated Celeriac with a scattering of tiny capers for lunch.
A salad of shaved fennel, very thinly sliced shallots, segments of clementine carefully trimmed of pith, with a few spoons of trout caviar (I have a little pot of this in the fridge from a local trout farm in the Cotswolds) would do very well for supper.

I hope that by putting very tight constraints on what I eat and how I prepare it, I will be discovering exciting flavours, textures and combinations in what would usually be a time of year when I’d be eating thick, rich, heavy meals - braised meats, roast game, thick broths, creamy pastas and mounds of fluffy mashed roots.

I hope to be eating vegetables in their crispest, sweetest, most pure and vibrant forms, dressed with soft herbs, virgin oils, and lemon, and meat and fish cured with salt into aromatic prosciuttos and jamóns, and fermented into salamis, as well as simply sliced into tender carpaccio, chopped as a delicate tartar and pickled as lively Ceviche.

When heated, most foods (especially vegetables) are known to be considerably lower in heat-sensitive phytonutrients and vitamins, antioxidants, and important digestive enzymes (namely lipases, proteases and amylases), so my raw food diet should not only give me a fresh approach to food and eating, but leave me glowing with health!

I will of course miss my early morning coffee, the deeply savoury, and salty, unami hit of charred meat, the chewy, sour tang of handcrafted bread, and the smoky, pungency of toasting Asian spices, I revel in the idea of my new striped back diet of uncooked, unadulterated ingredients.        

Potting Crayfish

If you go down to the river today….look out for crayfish! The American Signal Crayfish is causing mischief and mayhem in our waterways. They’re bigger and badder than our little native crayfish and are rapidly destructing their habitat, eating their food, and spreading disease.

During the 1970s, a new inland form of aquaculture took hold across the UK as a response to the public’s growing acceptance to new foods and flavours. Ponds and lakes were stocked with fast growing crayfish from America. Inevitably, they escaped before too long and have been having a great time ever since – spreading across most of the UK, hidden deep under water. Something must be done to control the invasive Crayfish before it’s too late for our native stock….eat the bastards!

Find Crayfish at farmers’ markets, food fairs, on decent menus (the Kingham Plough makes lovely use of them), or catch your own. All you need is a small trap (similar to a lobster pot), some bait (fish guts work well) and a licence from the Environmental Agency.

These fine specimens were caught in Cotswold spring-water fed ponds near Moreton-in-Marsh, and were sweet and juicy. In the kitchen they are just as versatile as any seaside crustacean.  To kill the Crayfish, place them in a box in the freezer for 15 minutes, they chill out and begin to go into hibernation. Bring a large pan of salted water to a rapid boil, and tip the sleeping Crayfish in. They die immediately from the temperature shock, and turn bright red in seconds. Boil for 3-4 minutes, and then plunge into iced water to halt the cooking (an over –cooked crayfish is a soggy morsel). They are now ready for peeling and eating.

I potted my Moreton Crayfish, much like Morecambe Bay pots its Shrimps.

For 100g of cooked, shelled Crayfish, clarify 100g of unsalted butter by melting it ion a pan slowly, and scooping off the white, creamy solids. Add generous pinches of cayenne, freshly grated mace and nutmeg, and take off the heat. Add the Crayfish and a good half teaspoon of salt. Pour the butter and Crayfish into a small dish and leave to set. If all the Crayfish are well buried below the butter, this will last for a good week.

To serve, allow the potted Crayfish to warm up a little, so the butter is spreadable, and eat on hot, brown toast.    

Bletting the medlars

“I love you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.

I love to suck you out from your skins
So brown and soft and coming suave,
So morbid, as the Italians say.

What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour
Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay:
Stream within stream.”

So wrote D. H Lawrence on the medlar in his poem, “medlars and sorb-apples” from “Birds, Beasts, and Flowers”.

The medlar is a small fruit which to look at is somewhere between a small apple and a large rosehip, and is related to both. I have a small medlar tree which crops very heavily without fail each year. The tree can often be found in old orchards or growing feral in hedgerows, especially in the Midlands, Nottinghamshire and Kent – historically regions where medlars were popular.

When young, the fruit is coated in a fine peach-like down which is lost as the fruit matures and forms a rough, course skin. It is brown-russet in colour with a bowl shaped depression at the bottom end.

The medlar was grown as a food source since at least the 2^nd century BC by the ancient Greeks, who valued the tree due to the fruits’ late-ripening. Traditionally the medlar would be the last fruit to be picked in the orchard, after an abundant autumn crop of plums, pears, apples and quinces, the medlar could be left on the tree until hard frosts began. But once picked from the tree, the medlar must undergo a unique preparation before it can be eaten. The fruit must be “bletted”, or rotted. Perhaps “controlled fermentation” sounds a little more appealing.

To blett a medlar, the fruits (hard and inedible from the tree), are put in a box and covered in sawdust. Hidden beneath the sawdust, the inside of the medlars break down from a hard, bitter, acidic flesh to a moist, brown, soft and fragrant paste ready for eating. D. H. Lawrence described the bletted medlars as having “wine-skins of brown morbidity” and “an exquisite odour of leave taking”. The smell is powerful and pungent, but not over powering; like the smell of an orchard in late autumn; full of wet leaves and decaying fruit. And the flavour of the medlar at this point isn’t dis-similar; a slightly alcoholic flavour, sweet and succulent, a little acidity and an earthy, woody, appley taste.

The Victorians scooped the soft pulp from the skins, separated the 5 large seeds, and mixed the fermented medlar flesh with cream and sugar and eaten as an accompaniment for port.

As much as I like the idea of this very antiquated fruit, I have to say, there’s something about the texture of a bletted medlar that I can’t quite stomach. However, I capture the aroma by making a medlar jelly, adding sugar dulls the more “fermented” flavours and brings out a honeyed, floral quality, not unlike quinces. To make the jelly, I chop the bletted medlars roughly, cover with water and stew for 30 minutes until very soft and pulpy. I strain this through a large square of muslin for 24hours – the juice must drip through very slowly to give a smooth-texture and clear appearance, never squeeze or apply any pressure to speed up the dripping.

Measure the quantity of medlar juice you have (discard the dry pulp left in the muslin) and add the same quantity of sugar. Slowly bring to a simmer, stirring continuously to dissolve the sugar. Once you are sure all the sugar has dissolved, bring the jelly to a rolling boil for 10 minutes before testing the set. When the jelly has the level of set you want, pour into sterilised jars and allow it to cool down and set.  

The jelly is a beautiful shade of deep crimson, and is delicious served alongside game - with roast partridge, pheasant or mallard.  


The medlar (once know as "dog's-arse")