Fresh and Wild Cookbook: A Real Food Adventure

The milk is squeezed through a tiny tube at very high pressure, so that all the lovely cream globules break down into tiny-weeny cream globules that you don’t notice and therefore can’t enjoy. All the unsightly cream disappears and the plastic bottle-like containers look fat-free. Of course they’re not really any lower in fat, plus they take away the freedom of choice to either go for the cream or avoid it.

There are no chemicals involved with homogenization, so it’s perfectly legal for organic milk producers to do it. It just doesn’t seem like the greatest idea to me – processing purely for cosmetic reasons. And there’s some evidence building that homogenized milk is bad for your heart.

I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that non-homogenized milk tastes better, has a better texture and allows the drinker to choose top-of-the-milk or shaken-up. And it comes in a paper-based carton, as opposed to a plastic bottle that will never decompose.

But back to breakfast, a time of happy optimism. When they’re in season, you can use cobnuts instead of hazelnuts in recipes, as cobnuts are simply a local Kentish type of hazelnut. They’re officially in season from St Philbert’s day on 23rd August until Christmas Day. Cobnuts are always sold as a whole nut and generally wrapped in their individual green leafy coats. They’re long and thumbnail-shaped, succulent and delicious, with a milder flavour than the round hazelnuts you get pre-shelled in packets. Make sure you do the shelling when nobody’s about, otherwise all the nuts are guaranteed to be gobbled up before the granola hits the oven.

Popped amaranth also features in this granola mix. This tiny seed from South America is a very special grain that’s like no other.

I went on a solo journey into the Amazon some years ago and found it a very hot, scary and noisy experience, with hundreds of animals and insects making a major racket all night long with their scuttling around, buzzing and general liveliness. Anyway, the local people paint their faces with an orangey-red natural greasepaint, which looks wicked and protects their skin from the sun, as it’s a bonafide total sun block. This stuff is made out of amaranth flower heads, which are big fluffy, feathery things.

Inside the flowers are thousands of tiny amaranth seeds, about 50,000 seeds per plant. The seeds are highly nutritious, full of protein and fibre, and also rich in iron, calcium and vitamin A. In fact, they contain double the amount of calcium as cow’s milk and five times more iron than wheat. And they’re also one of the only types of seed that can be popped, just like popcorn, as opposed to the many that are actually puffed, like rice.

So why aren’t we all eating lots of lovely amaranth? It’s all down to history. The Spanish conquistadors banned amaranth from polite society after discovering the traditional Aztec ritual use of these little seeds. Aztec women made sacred little dollies out of ground amaranth seeds, honey and their own monthly blood, for ceremonial eating, emulating human sacrificial rites. Quite frankly, this didn’t go down at all well with the 16th-century Spanish colonialists, who nearly wiped out the grain from the face of the earth, such was their shock and outrage.

Luckily, a few remote communities deep in the Andes kept amaranth in existence, probably because it forms the basis of the local homebrew of Peru, a highly alcoholic and, in my experience, quite revolting beverage called chicha that seems to keep the local lads and ladettes of Lima laughing.

The Aztec dolly cakes do live on in Mexico, where they’ve evolved to become the popped amaranth and sugar cake alegria, which means ‘happiness’. A nice thought for the day.

GRANOLA

THIS MAKES A WEEK’S SUPPLY:

500g rolled oats (i.e. small porridge oats)

50g walnut pieces

50g chopped hazelnuts or 50g chopped cobnuts

50g sunflower seeds

50g pumpkin seeds

50g sesame seeds

100g juicy dried sultanas

8 tablespoons safflower oil

4 tablespoons brown rice malt syrup

3 tablespoons date syrup

50g popped amaranth

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. In a big bowl, mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly. In a small frying pan, gently heat the oil and syrups to combine them. Stir this mixture into the dried ingredients as soon as syrup goes runny. Divide the granola between two baking trays, spreading it out so that it’s no more than 3cm deep. Put it in the hot oven and stir it with a wooden spoon every 10 minutes.

It should be ready in about 20 minutes. Check it and remove the trays when the oats have just gone golden rather than waiting until they go brown. Once it’s out the oven, immediately stir in the popped amaranth so it sticks to the hot syrupy clumps.

Leave to cool before eating. Save the rest in a container.

Try homemade granola with nut milks like hazelnut or almond milk, and get a doubly nut whammy. You can buy-ready made nut milks at Fresh & Wild, but to make your own, simply soak about 50g ground nuts (as in nuts that have been ground, not American peanuts) in about 100ml boiling water for quarter of an hour. Strain the milky liquid, throw away the solids and try adding a touch of malt.

HOT RICE CONGEE (#ulink_9c589576-0e1b-59f2-806d-fe37a63ec7de)

This Chinese recipe is the first meal of the day for most of the planet’s population. If you generally have cereal and milk, you might find it a bit heavy. However, if you prefer your breakfast savoury, give it a go and see just why it’s so popular around the globe. I recommend cooking up a batch over the weekend ready to simply reheat on weekday mornings.

TO MAKE 3 PORTIONS YOU’LL NEED:

100g white long grain rice

400g Joubere (or 400ml homemade) vegetable or chicken stock

1 tablespoon chopped takuan (pickled daikon root)

3cm piece fresh ginger root, grated

1 heaped teaspoon dried organic mandarin peel, soaked in water

SPRINKLE ON TOP:

Chopped spring onion

Chopped fresh coriander

Chopped sushi ginger

Combine all of the congee ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat so that the mixture simmers slowly. Simmer for about an hour, checking now and then if you need to add more liquid. Cook the congee until it has the consistency of porridge or thick soup. Sprinkle over the topping to taste and tuck in.

For a nuttier consistency, use brown basmati rice instead of, or in combination with, the white rice. Use about 300g of Joubere (or 300ml of homemade) stock to 100g of brown rice. All liquid volumes are flexible depending on how gooey you like it.

APPLE PORRIDGE (#ulink_89522aaa-3f47-55de-834a-6141891abe2a)

There’s dried fruit and there’s dried fruit, and Fresh & Wild is home to some pretty awesome dried fruit. We’re talking intense flavours, enticing varieties, bright colours – and it’s fairly traded by people who care about mutually beneficial interaction. That means we get the very best quality commodity, produced lovingly to the best of a community’s abilities, and the growers get the respect they deserve and a fair price to reflect their hard work and value. This is the kind of trade that makes the world a better place.

This recipe has a standard oat porridge base, but is creamier because it’s soaked. It’s flavoured with a deliciously vibrant mix of apples and tropical fruit, all spiced to wake you up with a zing.

The crushed nuts add an interesting texture and a good mix of oils and proteins.

All in all, this porridge is good for you, tastes divine and improves somebody else’s day in a faraway country.

APPLE PORRIDGE

FOR 4 BOWLS OF STEAMING HOT PORRIDGE:

3 moist prunes, pitted

2 juicy Crazy Jack’s soft-dried figs