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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

(**This post was lurking in my unposted half-finished back-(b)log and pertains to two previous posts from September 2007: apologies if it reaches and confuses current subscribers!)

We went round the mulberry tree on Sunday.

I don’t believe I’d ever eaten a mulberry, let alone picked one off a tree. I was surprised. They seemed very fragile, perishable nuggets, difficult to get hold of at the perfect moment of ripeness. Once ripe, these ones at least seemed to be already mouldy. Past their harvest date or inherently flawed? Further research clearly indicated..

The Sunday morning sessions were really interesting. I started with the panel on Foie Gras, poppies and cacao.

The Foie Gras Fracas: Sumptuary Law as Animal Welfare? presented by Cathy K. Kaufman, discussed the ethics of foie gras (duck) production as practised in New York state. Her starting premise was that “killing animals for food is morally acceptable provided that animals not suffer unnecessarily in their rearing or slaughtering”.

The argument she presented was more or less the same as I’d heard from a former chef. She observed that migratory birds have an inbuilt behaviour to store fats for the journey, and to do this practice a form of gluttony that is compatible with being fed the volume of grain that producers provide them; and that the force-feeding of birds, gavage, has been practiced for millenia: it appears on Egyptian tomb-paintings reckoned to date back to 2500 BCE. She also observed that tube-feeding is not a world away from the regurgitation/throat feeding practiced by parent birds on their young (i.e. although we would not want a tube down our throats, it’s not so different from having your mom’s beak pushed down there). The birds Kaufman was writing about were visited by veterinarians who found them generally less stressed and in better living conditions than factory-farmed fowl, as I guess you’d expect when they are raised in smaller numbers. Jeffrey Steingarten has a good piece on the same theme.

In Poppy: Potent yet Frail – Aylin Öney Tan gave the Turkish history of poppy production and the impact of foreign interference in local agricultures. She dated opium poppy cultivation back to Mesopotamia in 4000 BC. Her comments on the physical similarity between poppy seed heads and pomegranates were a revelation, as she showed a few illustrations that could be seen quite differently if you mentally swapped plants. She talked about the culinary uses of poppy seeds: in breads and baking, in both savoury and sweet dishes, and as a cooking oil, which contains no opiates. The oil is also used by artists and the paint industry because of its unique drying qualities. She pointed out that it’s a plant used in its entirety by peasant farmers, including the use of poppy seed pulp (left over from oil pressing) as animal feed (now that would make for happy animals..?). Although poppy production resumed in 1974, after being banned due to international pressure, the legal hoops that villagers have to go through limit the numbers of those willing to cultivate it.

Cacao in Brazil or the History of a Crime by Marcia Zoladz was a bit of a tangled web, covering an example of market manipulation in the late eighties and early nineties. Basically it was the story of a group that was aiming to change the economic and political power balance in Brazil by buying up cacao plantations and then destroying them by infesting them with a fungus known as witches’ broom (Crinipellis perniciosa). The infected plantations would then infect healthy ones and cripple the whole economy. Cacao was always an export crop, so there are question marks about its value in a healthy and self-sustaining economy. Brazil’s complicated social history – where slavery was abolished but replaced by a kind of indentured labour system – was part of the problem, and the reason for the act, as well.

Sunday lunch was organic chicken: local, seasonal foods, very good and extremely beautiful.

A further postscript: The papers presented at the 2007 “Food and Morality” themed Oxford Symposium are now available from Prospect Books.

Moving on from the already full morning, on Saturday afternoon I went to a talk by Rachel Laudan, on how food makes us moral agents – more or less virtuous. She presented two trays of foods representing opposing value systems: in one, we gain altitude on the moral scale through refinement, through mixing and perfecting through cooking and treating our foods. Proponents of the refined side of the equation believe that cooking separates humans from the animals and barbarians who eat raw, unrefined food. Examples include refined flours and sugars (sugar, she observed, is an immortal food: you can remain pure by eating foods that never perish — might be said of a lot that we find on supermarket shelves these days) and wine.

On the other side, where we find wholemeal breads, water or milk, we gain moral value through the belief that foods are naturally good, and that cooking or refining them disguises their benefits. In this value system, cooking stimulates unnatural appetites and leads to sins like gluttony. So, I guess the bottom line would be that once again, you judge others according to what you’re used to.

Then on to Steven Kramer, a philosopher-foodie, who invited us in How Clean Is Your Plate? to think about morality and change, the entrenchment of habit when it comes to our food choices. The talk’s title referred to the admonishment by parents to clean your plate because children (always elsewhere) are starving. Quoting from Plato, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, his recommended starting point was actually a book about animal welfare by Peter Singer, a utilitarian philosopher, called The Way We Eat: Why our food choices matter. He spoke about our willed ignorance when it comes to food production, particularly the raising of animals for meat: we don’t want to ask the questions about what’s on our plate. But when we introduce ethical issues to our eating, are we creating a fear of food? He concluded with a discussion of the moral issues demonstrated in Babette’s Feast, with its opposition of dull but virtuous cuisine versus extravagant gourmet foods, and the less than simple value systems attached to each.

There was then a discussion of food and environmental challenges, in which student Brian Melican asked how one brings people round to actually make choices and change their eating patterns without imposing on them a kind of consumer dictatorship. He questioned the difference between marketing and propaganda and balancing food preferences – like, say, mangoes – against their wider issues, such as the environmental cost of transporting them to your table and the need for their producers to make a living. It was, he said, a ‘different pocket’ reality: when ultimately we pay for the real and hidden costs of cheap food under different names, there’s a disconnect.

Saturday night’s Ethical Dinner, prepared by chef Tim Kelsey in consultation with Caroline Conran and Anissa Helou, was based entirely on ingredients sourced within 25 miles of Oxford. The evening’s entertainment was edible hat-making, led by Alicia Rios, to which end we gathered what was left on the tables after supper, and added it to the groaning board of ingredients.

Some stunning headgear emerged.

On Saturday morning I hopped a bus to Oxford at the unearthly hour of 7am on my way to the Oxford Symposium on Food and Drink, whose theme this year was food and morality. It was a gorgeous morning and I walked towards the college, passing a sunny graveyard.

By 8.45 I had dropped bags in my room at St Catherine’s college and was on my way to a vigourous survey of the ups and downs of right-thinking foodies in Berkeley California from the sixties to the present by the simply wonderful Ruth Reichl, in an opening address called What Should We Eat?

Speaking from her considerable experience in documenting food trends, she pointed out that we have been agonising over food ethics from the year dot, and that the underlying reasons have swung between efforts to control class, religion and the economy.

In the fifties and sixties, efforts to churn wartime industries into moneymaking economy meant that advertisers positioned cooking as symbolic of an unworthy, undesirable prison that modern women would be fools not to shed. We were encouraged to liberate cooking time for other aspects of life: time was more valuable than food in those days of plenty. Movement followed movement: food was politicised by such books as Diet for a Small Planet. Meat was out, boycotts were in.

By the mid nineties, industrialisation of our food had created all kinds of new jumping points for protest: chemical adulteration, genetic modification, contamination and disease; the end of food as we knew it. She mentioned a test by English volunteers who had tried to live as battery chickens for a week, and lasted 18 hours. There were starting to be a lot of questions about how our food animals were treated, and the demand for ethically raised meat has rocketed as a result.

For a while fish seemed like the answer, but fish are fighting a losing battle with the modern world: oceans are being drained of species by fishing technology, and the global hunger for sushi has had a huge impact, a food that is less about tradition and health than it is about the possibilities of refrigeration and air freight. Bluefin tuna was a despised fish 35 years ago, but its price has increased 10,000 times since then, and it is vanishing as a species.

And we have contamination of farmed fish, and contamination of sea and land and deforestation of wetlands resulting from increased fish and shellfish farming.

But what do we do? Technological advances mean it’s unrealistic to expect farmers to go back to ploughing the fields by hand. For the first time in history, we have too much food AND starvation: “while half the world goes hungry, the other half is killing itself with calories.” We have, she said, so many moral choices today it’s a wonder any of us eat at all.

We are hearing a lot about growing our own food, cutting down our food miles and buying locally. But is that the correct moral stance? There have been studies that show it’s a far from simple equation: the nature of mechanisation on the farms, the type of feed (it takes a lot of fossil fuel to produce grains like maize) and the slaughtering systems for meat (where are they, how are they powered, etc.) can all throw calculations off. So one New Zealand study found that 1 tonne of lamb raised in New Zealand and eaten in London was less fuel dependent than the same amount raised in Oxford and eaten in London.

She cited a recent review in Atlantic Monthly of Michael Pollan‘s Omnivore’s Dilemma as formulating an attack on gourmets: the author’s moral stance appeared to be that the only moral choice is vegan, “where the Christian and the gourmet part ways.” Will the vegetarian diet be the only acceptable diet of the future?

Most of us, she concluded, would like to do the right thing.. if only we could figure out what that was.

Well. That was some beginning. We turned then to a swiftly-moving panel.

Chocolateer John Scharffenberger talked all too briefly about ethical sourcing of cacao beans. The all-too familiar gist was that farmers are getting the short end of the stick, being paid very badly while supporting with those poor wages whole communities. He proposed instituting higher quality varieties of healthier beans which would allow a fair living to the people who grew them.

Then Raymond Blanc stepped up to dash our illusions about the charmed life of the kobe beef cattle. He’d visited Japan and, eager to see their living environment, met many stone walls. Finally he set up a visit himself and found filthy calves, confined to small pens, and force fed grain until a final year of grass fattening. And a slaughterhouse where the cattle were killed and hung in the open air in front of their fellows, the blood running between the hooves of the waiting animals. In short, marketing mythology at work.

Henrietta Green, described as the mother of farmers markets in Britain, talked about the evolution of chicken from a food of luxury to something valueless; bizarre questioning by supermarkets and fast food chains to decide whether chickens can suffer; questions about whether a battery chicken has a right to life or anything else just to feed us cheaply. And that, as always, it’s all about taste: a better reared chicken (free range and longer lived) tastes better.

And finally, Armando Manni talked about the decline of the polyphenols – the health-giving components of extra virgin olive oil – through poor bottling, transport and storage. I was thanking my lucky stars for my olive oil technology classes which meant I was, I gather, one of the few who understood every word he said.

Tim Lang talked about public policy and the role of the state as arbiter of food morality in a world where private morality can’t address most of the issues – since they mainly have to do with industrialised food whose safety and availability has been decided for us by the state. We may think we have too many choices nowadays, but according to Lang, we can call it choice but it’s really selection. The individual consumer cannot influence the food chain when it’s in the hands of a few large food companies. We are all, he concluded, juggling with highly complex bundles of contradictions.

Well, didn’t I take a wrong turn during the tea break. Look what found me…

And here you could buy quinces and jams.

And here I’ll stop, for now.

On Sunday I went into town and snapped this from the National Gallery’s front steps, on my way to the National Portrait Gallery. The BP Portrait Award show was on, always a winner for me, and I loved it. Then I had a last look at the Keith Arnatt show at Photographers’ Gallery, as it closed that day, and lusted after the book, but left it there and decided to cut through Chinatown on my way to elsewhere.

I picked up a bite to eat at a Chinese bakery and got as far as Regent Street where I discovered an Incredible India festival was in full swing, with

drums, dancing,

samosas,

and big crowds all the way from Piccadilly to Oxford Circus.

The rest of the weekend was spent in restful preparations for my trip to Bristol and Bath, the event being given an extra frisson by rumours of a tube strike set to start on Monday. Happily, transportation was normal when I set off, and I caught a bus to Bristol which was a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours, not much longer than the train trip and quite a bit cheaper.

Upon arrival, I asked about internet cafes, and was sent up a less than salubrious street nearby – a back-of-bus-station strip of pubs, sad-looking electronics shops and massage parlours. I did indeed find an internet cafe: a sad, shabby little room with a sandwich-board outside that promised lattes and cappuccinos; but while I cast my eyes dubiously over the grubby hardware on offer I asked the North African who descended a rough set of steps with a couple of chipped cups in his hands about wireless and he looked puzzled and shook his head. I thought I’d head into the smart part of town and see if I couldn’t find something better.

And so I found my way to the waterfront, and got to Bordeaux Quay without incident: it was bright, clean, airy and welcoming with sparkling views of the river out its front wall of windows.

I had a tour of its kitchens and cooking school with the able and interesting development manager Amy Robinson, and a little chat with a very weary Barny Haughton, who was recovering from cooking demonstrations and organisational stress at the organic fair they’d had along the waterfront that weekend. Had some excellent Tuscan bread salad

and Provencal fish soup for lunch

and then on my way out, stopped at the deli counter to scooped up a stunning loaf of potato bread which I got to sample later that evening with some of BQ’s wonderful jam (Blackberry & Peach). On I went to the Watershed, a lovely cinema complex with a spiffy cafe where you can get wireless access and a nice cuppa coffee.

Passed an old friend on my way to the train. Bart, hero of my spice cupboard, I never know you lived in Bristol!

Jumped then on a train and arrived in Bath where Carrie and I played an unlikely game of hide and seek in the microscopic train station before finally spotting one another, and headed off to supper with some of her students at Wagamama. On our way, she pointed out Demuth’s, a vegetarian restaurant I’d heard about from someone else, which comes highly recommended.

Full of noodles and rice and good cheer

we carried on to the excellent Raven where there was a mixture of evening diners finishing up and a flock of poets settling in. A good crowd, I’d guess around 30 or so, with a fair number of open mics including some excellent poems from Carrie and her students. One of the readers, John Wheway, was particularly good – had published in the distant past and is getting a manuscript together, which I reckon will be a stunner. As will Carrie’s when she gets hers out there.

In the morning, before returning to London, I got a tour of beautiful Bradford upon Avon…

Another quite pleasant partially sunny day today, after a week of same.

I began the week with a quintessential London moment. Walked down a street called, promisingly, Post Office Way, hoping to find a post office at the end of it, but no. The kindly woman in the Post Office logo-ed glass booth said no foot traffic was allowed there; I would have to walk all the way back and around the front of the building. Which I did and encountered a second kindly woman in a second glass booth who told me I couldn’t actually mail anything there, I would need a Post Office Counter, and she thought there was one a couple of bus stops up the road. But it was getting late by then so I gave up for one day. It’s already clear that ever more post office branches are being closed just now anyway, in my hour of need, when the queues at many of them go out the door regularly, so it’s only going to get worse. There, my first London whinge of the season.

An Italian-style crop of signs on a nearby gate.

I’ve been enjoying the office, where we have good citizen mugs to read while we sip our tea

and an excellent bakery around the corner (where I bought a fabulous pumpkin loaf the other day – a cheery orange colour with pumpkin seeds throughout).

I take the tube to get there; I’m glad I don’t have a bicycle. There is amusing evidence all over London demonstrating how this city just doesn’t get the concept of bike lanes.. Naturally cyclists ignore this little strip of insanity and ride in the bus lanes, hoping for the best.

Today’s outings included a jaunt up to St John’s Wood High Street where I visited its three or four charity shops and came away a couple of books heavier: a couple of Bill Bryson hardcovers I couldn’t pass up: I’m A Stranger Here Myself; and A Short History of Nearly Everything. And then I met Judi and we descended into the crowded cheerful basement of Food For Thought, where I had one of my favourite things, a big plate of their quiche and mixed salad.

I never have room for their fruit crumbles but that’s just as well. We went on to Neal’s Yard Dairy and tasted several of the wonderful things we were offered.

I bought some Coolea and some Berkswell and then we had tea around the corner in Neal’s Yard,

where a couple of tuneful buskers passed through with accordions. And then we had a flying visit at the Photographer’s Gallery where the excellent Keith Arnatt was having a show, and got kicked out as it was closing time, and had a glass at the Coach and Horses and called it a day, as she was nursing the beginnings of a cold and I was finishing mine off.