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Barny Haughton

Food Food Poetry Poetry

I braved the pelting rain to get to the Restaurant Show at Earl’s Court last Tuesday, where I saw lots of stands – including some small food producers I’d been learning about while working on our food producers’ database (which launched on Wednesday, yay!). It was lovely to meet the people and taste the food I’d been writing about. I then sat myself down at The Stage and watched some cooking demonstrations. The first was from Barny Haughton,

who talked about sustainability in the commercial kitchen: inviting people to use less popular, cheaper cuts of meat – if we’re going to be carnivores it’s more responsible to use the entire animal, which is a theme I’ve been hearing for some time – and sustainable fish varieties. He was followed by like-minded Cyrus Todiwala,

who was speaking on behalf of the Greener Food project. He’d been sent a big box of locally-raised, seasonal vegetables and told to make something of them. His beetroot with coconut salad was terrific, as was everything else he made. We were as heartbroken as he that he didn’t have time to make us his pigeon curry…

Then Ian Pengelley, another London chef, took the stage – by this time things were running very late and it got a bit chaotic. His aim was to show us how nicely champagne went with Asian foods, so we got to try a bit with some Thai beef salad, some sushi rolls and some seared scallops. And sure, we agreed! All very nice.

His sommelier was very entertaining – giving us a finale show where he decapitated the last bottle by strategic use of the base of a champagne glass. Definitely not one to try at home.

Then I had a couple of evenings to catch my breath before Friday’s Les Murray reading at Senate House – certainly one building that can accurately be described as neo-brutalist. This grey edifice loomed ahead of me in the dying light, and I sensed trouble ahead as I sought the room which my note to self said was “3rd floor Senate North”.

I entered from a sort of westerly door, I thought, so turned left, looking for north. I found a lift just around the corner, with a notice posted about talks and lectures — including the one I was after, so without anything more to go on, I entered and ascended to the 2nd floor, which was as far as this one went.

On the second floor there was another lift that went up to the 4th floor, but there was a 3rd floor button as well, so I pressed that and pushed my way out through a crowd of students to find myself on a near-deserted floor, where the only open door was to some special library – ancient civilisations or something, with an ominous No Exit sign on the entry.

Not a soul around, so I lugged myself and the bag I was escorting up to the fourth floor, where I found the crowd of students from the lift forming a lengthy queue for library card renewal. Beyond the security gates (only passable by library card holders of course) I spotted and hailed a friendly looking woman in a name badge who told me I wanted room N336. She told me to get back in the lift and go to the ground floor, along the hallway to a different set of lifts.

So back I got in the lift and descended to the ground floor where I found myself facing another set of card-operated barricades and a silver-haired defender of.. of.. whatever it was he was defending seated behind what I’m sure must have been a bullet-proof glass window. He told me I shouldn’t have come to the ground floor in this lift and that I should go back to the third floor as he presumed I was a member of the society for ancient civilisations or whoever it is who lives up there. No, I said, I was looking for the poetry reading in room N336. He said he knew nothing about a poetry reading or any such room, and couldn’t tell me whether I was actually in the north tower or not. After admonishing me again for coming down in that particular lift, and reinforcing his point that this was not an exit, he let me exit through the gate and I was back in the main hallway ready to search out the next set of lifts.

Which I found and ascended to find a big classroom with two doors (one marked 336 and the other 336A) but no other indication there was a reading there. I entered and found a bookseller setting up and three others sitting in wait, which seemed a bit sparse since it was only ten minutes to the reading, but down I sat. The room did in fact fill up nicely by the start time, and Les Murray started his reading. For the next hour, we were entertained by his poems and by the periodic rattling of the door knob closest to the reader (on the door labelled 336, in fact) followed by the covert entry of latecomers through the other door. There followed a wine reception and then it was time to slink off into the night.

I made a nerdy list of the poems he read, and here they are; rather unkindly he read from the Australian edition of his collected poems, so those who rushed the book table afterwards were not always able to find their favourites, but he sold quite a bit and did a little friendly book signing. I was happy he started us off with a food poem, and I liked (and remembered from past readings, I think), his cow poem, which he introduced by saying it was one of his favourite animals, and that he thought he was one of the few real Hindus of Australia. It was a poem from the point of view of the cow, which he observed is a ‘collective creature’ and thus difficult to find a pronoun for.

Beanstock Sermon; Glass Louvres; Words of the Glass Blowers; On Removing Spiderweb; Arial; Cows on Killing Day; Cell DNA; Contested Landscape at Forsayth; The Shield Scales of Heraldray; the Moon Man; Judged Worth Evacuating; Clothing as Dwelling as as Shouldered Boat; Visitor; Jellyfish; Reclaim the Sites; To One Outside the Culture; Melbourne Pavement Coffee; On the North Coastline; Me & Je Reviens; Japanese Sword Blades in the British Museum; The Mare Out on the Road; Birthplace; Sunday on a Country River; and then he finished with a few new poems.

London, Bristol, Bath and Bedford upon Avon

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…

Food for hungry brains – Capra and Counihan

Recently I posted a link to Time’s What the World Eats feature (and later found a related article), and have since found an NPR radio feature on the book (Hungry Planet) that these images come from. The NPR page features some interesting background and interviews with the photographers, who enlisted an impressive list of writers to flesh the book out, including Marion Nestle, Alfred W. Crosby, Francine R. Kaufman, Charles C. Mann, Michael Pollan, Carl Safina, and even our upcoming lecturer Corby Kummer.

Last week we had four things to occupy our minds. Still reeling from Serge Latouche‘s lectures, we were offered some therapeutic time in the kitchen with Barny Haughton, as previously reported. Then we had two head-spinning days with Fritjof Capra, a day of gelato, and a concluding meeting with Carole Counihan. I have covered the gelato day separately.

Speaking mainly from his book, The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, Capra explained his theories about food’s systemic role, from the molecular to the environmental level. In brief, he said his view was all about ecosystems; that every living thing – even a cell – is part of a system, and we consider anything in isolation at our peril.

He also expanded on the point that had brought him to Carlo Petrini’s attention: that living things are divided and defined by food. For example, the two categories at the base of the kingdoms, bacteria and protists (single celled nucleated mechanisms), ingest food through semi-permeable cell membranes; the intake of food actually determines the molecular (biological) identity of the cell. Distinctions between the other three kingdoms – fungi, plants and animals (humans) – are also through food. Plants are defined through photosynthesis; fungi send enzymes outside the organism, digest the food outside the organism and then ingest it in digested form. Animals ingest and then digest food. In the human realm: biologically we are animals, but for us food also has its cultural dimension – which we share through communal, social and cultural events. So, he argued, you need to understand cognitive as well as cultural elements to fully understand human relationships with food.

He talked as well about the globalised world: its foundation on the whims of electronic investors, which he described as a global casino. No longer, he said, are companies measured by ‘bricks and mortar’, but by their place in ‘analyst expectations’ – which can change in a moment with immeasurable impact on the lives of the real people who work for those companies, while enriching a global elite. Like us, he had been greatly affected by the film Life Running Out of Control, and its message about our unprecedented destruction of and genetic tampering with existing life forms.

So: to survive on this planet, we must change the rules of the game, he says. The underlying principle that making money is the only company value is outdated and dangerous. Human values are not laws of natures; they can be changed. He urges us to consider a new global civil society, built on networks and an underlying pair of basic values: human dignity – the right to shelter, housing, food, security, free speech, educational and religious freedoms; and ecological sustainability.

Implementing this kind of change includes three areas: addressing the negative impact of globalisation, reshaping governing rules and institutions, through such organisations as the International Forum on Globalisation; agroecology, reshaping food and agriculture, oppositn genetically modified foods and promotion of sustainable agriculture through such organisations as Slow Food; and ecodesign, redesigning technology, buildings and physical structures for sustainability, through such institutions as the Rocky Mountain Institute.

It was a relief to have some tangible resources to explore and find concrete ways to counter the bleak global vision we’d been thinking and talking about. It made me think some more about what and how I think about food; and sustainability and ecosystems have got to have more to do with the total picture.

Barny Haughton had asked if we felt optimistic about the potential for people, companies, countries to change, even in the midst of unassailable evidence of environmental damage. He didn’t get much of an answer, but he himself observed rather bleakly that from his experience he thought people unlikely to change unless forced to do so.

Indeed. We can talk till we are blue in the face about the need for change, but will we give up our cars, our pre-packaged convenience foods, our comfortable heat and cold, our plastics and fossil fuels? Just one more little car ride to the mall when we could have walked. Just one glass bottle we can’t be bothered to wash for the recycling. Just one more package of pre-washed salad with individual portions of inedible dressing, all in full plastic armour. Who else can stop it?

We had concluding food anthropology meetings with Carole Counihan, who shared her research into food cultures in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, and had us share our mini-research (observation studies of local food-related places) with her. Mine was the quirky and I think laudable Progetto Latte, one of several interesting enterprises of the Bertinelli family.

We cook lunch

Having spent the weekend in the environmental vale of despond, we faced Monday with chef Barny Haughton, who talked about the efforts he and his more-than-a-restaurant Bordeaux Quay are making to live and work sustainably, modelling good behaviour as a restaurant and educational body. They aim to be carbon neutral within five years, having already invested in sustainable infrastructure and culinary techniques and following local food procurement policies (“if it grows in the West Country”, he says, “we don’t buy it elsewhere”).

Tuesday, we all cooked together under Barny’s watchful hand, becoming one happy appetite making a communal lunch. We had been sent to the morning market to come in with a vegetable (or something) to contribute, and we had quite a feast: stuffed mushrooms, risotto milanese (made with fresh chicken stock), saltimbocca with salsa verde (with fresh herbs, anchovies, mustard, lemon, olive oil) aubergine towers, aioli with crudites, and a zucchini frittata.


In the process of making saltimbocca Barny explained a bit about the veal education campaign, which is to try to communicate to people who drink milk or eat cheese that they are actually forcing the production of veal, which it has become unfashionable to eat. If they then refuse to eat it, you end up with the situation as it is in England where the calves that are needed to initiate milk production are either shot and buried on the farm or shipped to Italy. This is not to minimise the brutality that has been exercised on veal calves in the past, but to say that veal is to beef what lamb is to mutton; people who eat lamb without qualm should be equally prepared to eat veal rather than perpetuate the waste of life that exists now amongst a confused public.