In Our Backyard art exhibition

Received this news from local artist and foodie Eleanor Hoad yesterday, so thought I’d share it with you in full. We should do more food swapping events in Birmingham shouldn’t we, what do you think?

The ‘In Our Backyard’ exhibition at BMAG is the culmination of a year-long residency taking place within 4 constituencies around Birmingham. Community groups within the constituencies of Perry Barr, Erdington, Ladywood and Hodge Hill have worked closely with 4 artists in a series of art activities and projects that will be showcased in this exhibition and throughout the museum.

In Erdington, Eleanor Hoad’s ‘Prepare’ residency explored ways in which we can feed ourselves in the city and celebrate our local harvests. Inspired by urban Permaculture and traditional celebrations around growing food, Eleanor created a fruit harvesting, processing and distributing scheme using unwanted local fruit.

This Saturday come along to see the exhibition and take part in the Prepare Swapshop with Eleanor Hoad Saturday 24th April 2010, 11am – 4pm in the Learning Zone

A drop in swapshop with Eleanor Hoad, artist from the In Our Backyard exhibition, showing in the Community Gallery. Bring along to swap: fruit recipes old and new, jars of homemade pickle, jam or chutney, seeds saved from your own plants or leftovers in a packet and empty plastic vegetable trays to plant your own mini herb bed. Make your own decorated paper bag to take your swaps home.

The Community Gallery showcases the talent of our communities and provides an insight into our rich local neighbourhoods through an exciting programme of exhibitions and events. Displays are created in collaboration with community groups, inviting new audiences and visitors to interact and explore artworks and subject matter.

In Our Backyard runs from 10th April to the 4th July.

The Community Gallery
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Chamberlain Square
Birmingham B3 3DH
0121 303 2834

www.bmag.org.uk

Psuedo-Sourdough Pizza – Recipe

I received an interesting email the other day from a fellow foodie tweeter, Sarah from Brock Hall Farm (lovely goats cheese – check it out if you’re lucky enough to live anywhere near an outlet), based in Shropshire. Sarah was abroad, within easy access of a wood-fired oven, and indebted to some friends to whom she had promised sourdough pizza from the wood-fired oven. So in popped the email, asking me for a magic recipe to make psuedo-sourdough pizza in one day. Now for any bread-heads out there you’ll know you need at least five days to start a sourdough starter from scratch, but a psuedo-sourdough, that’s definitely a possibility if you’ve got 24 hours. Below are my instructions to Sarah to make the dough for her psuedo-sourdough pizza, and below that Sarah has kindly shared her recipe for the tomato sauce reduction – enjoy!

Psuedo-sourdough pizza dough (makes 6)

Day before baking

150g strong white flour, or ’00’ if you can get it
3g fast action dried yeast
130g tepid water
2 tablespoons of natural yoghurt

Combine the ingredients in a bowl, stir thoroughly. Cover with a plastic bag and leave overnight, or for at least 8 hours (the longer the better for a nice sour flavour from the yoghurt). This called a ‘sponge’.

Day of baking

300g sponge from above
460g strong white flour or ’00’
240g tepid water
10g salt
15g Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Optional, I prefer to add olive oil on top of the dough when rolled out, but you could add it now as Sarah did)

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl and than knead on a clean work surface for around 10 minutes. Don’t add any extra flour, that’s cheating. Place the kneaded dough back into an oiled bowl, cover it with a plastic bag, and leave to ferment for up to 2 hours, depending on the ambient temperature. It will roughly double in volume. Divide the dough into 6 150g pieces, and roll each one out to a round a few millimetres thin. Add your tomato sauce, toppings and some nice cheese and bake in a hot hot (250C, gas mark 10) oven for 10 minutes (directly on a pizza stone if you have one), or in a wood-fired oven for about 2 minutes.

Sarah’s tomato reduction

1.5kg vine ripened tomatoes, (the more aromatic the better), skinned, deseeded and roughly chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic
Freshly chopped oregano
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil and garlic in a large saucepan, without colouring the garlic. When translucent, add the chopped tomatoes and simmer quite vigorously for about 10 minutes until they have reduced into a firm and fragrant sauce. Add salt, pepper and fresh oregano and continue simmering and tasting until you are satisfied with flavour and consistency. It should be more of a thick paste than a thick pasta ‘dressing’. You may need an extra glug of olive oil to emsulify it nicely. Click on the thumbnail images below to see how Sarah’s pizza’s turned out.

Will the ash cloud turn us onto local food?

There’s an interesting article on the Guardian’s word of mouth blog today about how the consequences of the current volcanic ash cloud on our food supply might turn more people onto local food. I’m not sure it’s going to have such a dramatic effect, but one of the silver linings on the cloud – along with tonnes of carbon dioxide being saved and Chris Moyles being stranded abroad – is that it will at least show us how fragile our current global food system is, and perhaps make those in power take the localisation agenda a bit more seriously, who knows. Anyway, to read the whole article click the image below, and to find out where to buy local food in Birmingham, check out our local food directory

Butchery Course a Roaring Success

Wednesday evening saw Loaf Cookery School’s first butchery course, and an exciting collaboration with local master butcher Steve Rossiter. Steve proved himself to be a natural teacher, and the enthusiastic students warmed to him immediately, and took eagerly to applying the techniques they had learned to produce some stunning dishes. Trying to lead the evening and take decent photographs proved a bit too much for me, however you can see a few shots showing what we did below. We jointed, spatchcocked and butterflied our way through the evening, and ended up with a veritable feast at the end, all washed down with a nice glass of red wine. On the menu was Raz el Hanout tagine chicken legs with minted cous cous, chorizo-stuffed chicken breast wrapped in streaky bacon, spatchcocked poussin with lemon and wild garlic, and chicken liver and wild leaf salad. Sadly I didn’t get any shots of the finished dishes, but I have included a ‘one-I-made-earlier’ photo of the wrapped chicken breast below. One of the most exciting things for me was having a 15-year old lad on the course who is an aspiring young chef looking to study catering at UCB. He was eager to learn, and I was secretly jealous that I wasn’t as in to food at his age as he is – not many 15 year olds know how to butcher a chicken and turn it into fancy, delicious dishes like he does now. Steve and I are keen to do more courses together in the future, so stay peeled to the cookery school page for upcoming dates.

Shed 2.0

This is not really a food related post, but I’m a man who’s proud of his new shed, so I couldn’t resist telling you why. In a bid to get organised for the growing season ahead in the garden, we decided to sort out our dilapidated shed that has had a leeky roof for two years (oops!). It was a toss-up between knocking it down and buying a new shed, or repairing this old one and giving it a refurb. Under the guidance of our friend and all round wood-man Fraser Lewis, we decided to choose the eco option and pimp our shed. First of all we emptied it of all the junk, and turned it round ninety degrees, which was not easy. Then we called in Fraser and helped him take off the current leaky roof:

Next Fraser put in a new ridge pole to give the apex of the roof a lot more strength:

We asked Fraser to turn our shed into a saltbox shed, so that we could store logs on one side of it, so he put in some rafters which extended an extra 2ft on one side of the shed:

We adapted some pallets to keep the logs off the floor and allow the air to circulate around them:

We then put on the roof which consisted of a layer of under felt stretched over the rafters, then a sheet of plywood, then top felt tacked onto that. The log store saltbox was covered with featheredge board:

The following day I built some shelves inside the shed to help us keep it more organised. I spent £9 on the wood for the frame, and used odds and ends of wood lying around for the shelves – bargain.

Then of course, we filled it back up with stuff!

Hopefully now we’ll have a clean, tidy, and dry shed, which will help us to have an organised season of gardening ahead. We’ve saved a bit of cash too by refurbing our current shed, as new sheds aren’t cheap. We also used lots of reclaimed wood, so the timber costs were pretty low – quids in!

Interested in Connecting Food and Community?

Sustain and The Soil Association are putting on a free event in Birmingham on the 28th April all about setting up and running food co-operatives and buying groups – It’s a must for anyone that’s into community food initiatives. I’ll be there, as will South Birmingham Food Co-op. You can find out more about it on the flyer below.

The Quest for the Perfect Balti

I’ve taken on a challenge, a project, a search, a quest if you like, to find the best Birmingham Balti. Why? Because I’ve been asked to speak as a ‘local food expert’ at an event in July 2010 – the topic is the origins of the Birmingham Balti – and quite frankly I’m scared. Although I’ve eaten and loved them for 9 years since first moving to Birmingham, I’m certainly not a Balti expert. So, I thought, I better get doing some research. Now there’s going to be other experts speaking who know a lot more than me about the Birmingham Balti, and there’ll be chefs there talking about the finer points of the ingredients and cooking style, so what’s left to research?

I’m going to take a look at the Balti from the perspective of the inquisitive eater, using my tastebuds, stomach, and general ignorance as my primary research tools. And I’ve set up a new blog to document my progress at http://perfectbalti.wordpress.com. I’ll be posting food reviews for sure, but I’m hoping to delve a little deeper, ask some questions, meet the owners and chefs, take some photos, discover the culture, stroke the underbelly, and hopefully present an overview of what a Balti-eater can and should expect. And who knows perhaps along the way I’ll find the perfect Balti…

Can the Midlands Produce Britain’s Best Dish?

I officially left my job as an NHS nutritionist on Tuesday. It was a strange moment as I headed out of the building, leaving behind me four and half formative years of working on the front line of food and public health, and heading into the unknown world of running a new food social enterprise. Then my phone rang. “Hello?” I said. “Hello, this is Christina from ITV” said the voice on the other end. YES, I thought, my gamble has paid off, goodbye NHS, hello Ant and Dec. “I was wondering whether you’d help promote a cooking programme for us”. Ugh. No River Cottage meets Jamie at Home TV series for me after all.

Nonetheless I was all ears, not wanting to miss an opportunity to show off Birmingham’s cooking talent. As it turns out, ITV are about to start auditioning for the 4th series of Britain’s Best Dish. The programme is an amateur cookery competition in which they celebrate local produce and fantastic home cooking. Birmingham auditions take place 15th May, so please do go for it. Lets show the nation that Birmingham’s not just about Michelin stars, we’ve also got some of the best home cooking in the country. Email bestdish@itv.com to enter. Tell them I sent you. Check out the flyer below.

Breadmaking Photos

Shaping fougasse before it goes into the earth oven.

We had another great breadmaking course here on Saturday, with enthusiastic students creating lots of lovely loaves. One of my students took some great photos of the produce, which you can find on this Flickr set. Said student also happens to be the head honcho at School of Everything, which you should definitely check out – did you know they now have 9,000 teachers worldwide teaching anything from maths to martial arts, amazing! The next ‘Bread: back to basics’ course is on the 17th April.

Course Spotlight: Butchery

I’m really excited about some of our upcoming new courses, not least the Butchery workshop that we’re running in collaboration with master butcher Steve Rossiter on the 14th April. Steve is a bit of a local legend around these parts, founding Birmingham’s first organic registered butchers in Mary Vale Rd, Bournville. Steve has agreed to help me run an evening workshop where we explore beak-to-tail butchery of poultry birds, along with some tasty and impressive ways of cooking them.

We’ll start the evening with a whole chicken (one between two). Steve will then teach us how to respectfully joint it, and show us what else we can do with the various joints. Then I’ll take over, and lead us in some fantastic chicken recipes that show off your new found butchery skills and taste amazing too! We’ll be making butterflied chicken breast stuffed with homemade chorizo, chicken Raz al Hanout with minted cous cous, and pan fried chicken livers with a wild green salad. Anything we don’t cook, you get to take home and show off your new skills with!

The first course is on Wednesday 14th April from 6.30pm-9.30pm, and is a snip at just £50, which includes all the ingredients and equipment, course notes, and a full stomach! There’s still a few places available, so email tom@loafonline.co.uk to book your place!

Fingers crossed, we’re going to be able to offer a lamb-in-a-day type butchery experience in the Summer too!

Free Your Food!

There’s great news for families in the Selly Park area of South Birmingham, who now have access to a community food cooperative, and can buy all their essential store cupboard items communally, getting a cheaper price and bypassing the supermarkets. The South Birmingham Food Coop has been up and running since January 2010, and stock wholefoods and store cupboard items as well as environmentally friendly household products. Nancy from the food coop says:

Currently we order on an adhoc basis according to members’ demands from Suma (www.suma.coop), a cooperative wholesaler based in Tadcaster. We are run for and by our members on a not for profit basis with the aim of providing affordable, quality and healthy food to our communities. In the future we hope to become an outlet for local producers and stock fresh produce too. If you would like to join and take control of your food, get in touch; the bigger our membership, the more we can do.

South Birmingham Food Coop are based out of Enheduanna Housing Cooperative in Selly Park and can be contacted by calling Nancy on 07923405153 or at bhmfoodcoop@gmail.com.

Birmingham Post calls for more local food – hurrah!

In this weeks Birmingham Post, food critic Richard Mccomb has a good old rant about the lack of local food available in Birmingham shops, especially the City Centre. We agree, go on Richard, you tell em’! Read it here

We’ve Started Growing!

After an inspirational visit to a relative’s garden in Hampshire at the weekend, the vegetable growing season has started with a vengeance here at Loaf HQ (a.k.a. my back garden). We’ve built some raised beds and moved the chickens:

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 :

Brummie Food is a Work of Art

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

In Search of a Local Loaf – Part 2

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.