Ysanne Spevack - Fresh and Wild Cookbook A Real Food Adventure

For fresh thinkers and wild spirits

dedicated to all those whove had enough of
blandness, both in and out of the kitchen, and who
make the world a tastier and better place to
get fresh and be wild.

Cover (front):

Top left: Richard Doughty with his organic Merlot grapes, Bergerac, autumn 2002.

Photograph: Johnny Doughty

Centre right: Peter Grosvenor with wild Cornish sea bass, Looe, October 2003.

Photograph: Brian Moody

Bottom left: Phillippa Freidman and Joe Schneider with their award-winning organic Daylesford Cheddar, Daylesford, Gloucestershire, August 2003.

Photograph: Brian Moody

Cover (back):

Author photograph: Steve Cook

Introduction:

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Dinner:

Sweet Things:

Soups & Salads:

Breads & Spreads:

Kids Stuff:

Juices & Smoothies:

Why Organic?:

Anthony Collazos
Customer at Fresh & Wild, Clapham Junction, May 2004.

We are lucky enough to have choices in a world where most are not. Whilst millions of people face starvation every year, we can choose to buy high-calorie, low-nutrition foods from corporations whose ruthlessness beggars belief, or fairly-traded, high-flavour, high-nutrition, artisan-made foods that are as strong on ethics as they are on taste.

If you shop at Fresh & Wild, you have made a choice to support small family farms, wholesome businesses, importers who pay people both locally and in faraway lands fairly, and decent people who believe that craft and artistry are essential to the food we eat. Naturally, youre tasteled too, buying real foods full of flavour for the enjoyment of great eating.

At the end of a hard days work, the last thing you want to do is make moral and ethical decisions about your shopping. You just want to get a bunch of tasty stuff, go home and eat it. And thats the beauty of Fresh & Wild. Not only is the experience of shopping there so much nicer, but you can trust that their team of buyers have made all the big decisions for you.

You dont have to worry whether the fish is sustainably caught or humanely and safely farmed. Theres no need to waste time wondering if the hens that laid the eggs have been routinely injected with antibiotics; if the fruit and veg are covered in pesticides or anti-fungal waxes; if the milk and cheese is full of hormones; or if the breakfast cereals, biscuits and sweets contain dodgy E numbers and battery farm eggs. You can be certain that everything for sale at Fresh & Wild is untainted by all these things, that its GM-free, full of flavour, full of nutrition and fresh as can be.

Its not really about what it doesnt contain, but what it does. In short, the store is stuffed with real, proper, tasty and unadulterated food lots of organic foods, lots of imaginative foods, lots of food that you will love. Its not a health food shop so much as a real food shop, full of flavoursome, healthy foods. This can be a bit of a culture shock if youre used to the standard run-of-the-mill supermarket sweep.

Thats where this book comes in. I want you to explore, experiment and have lots of fun with things that youve never tried before. Fresh & Wild has plenty of staple foods that you know exactly how to eat like the excellent hand-baked organic breads, or incredible artisan cheeses, or the many varieties of apples, cucumbers and potatoes but what exactly is mochi? And what are you supposed to do with burdock roots, nori, or Ras-el-Hanout?

I love playing with food. Mixing and matching the most amazing ingredients and recipes from near and far, sometimes making an authentic meal from another continent, other times cooking up a mlange that could only happen in a multicultural city like London or Bristol. Were blessed with choices, so why not enjoy the amazing opportunities we have to tickle our taste buds with local, traditional delicacies or exotic, fairly-traded delights? And have a browse at the culinary gadgets theyve got, too. The Rookie chopsticks are great for kids, while the cast-iron griddle pans are top for char-grilling just about anything, from fennel to fish.

Ingredients listed in this book are mostly available in season at Fresh & Wild. The stores vary from location to location, as each local Fresh & Wild has its own customers with different preferences, so the managers tailor their products accordingly. So Claphams got lots of organic baby food and family favourites, while Sohos geared up for single creatives in their twenties. And Notting Hill satisfies the needs of lots of local models and pop stars, so thats the one for Dr Haushka cosmetics and luxurious delicacies.

The food on offer at all Fresh & Wild stores develops and changes to reflect what you, the customer, want. Some ingredients prove majorly popular and spread throughout the network of stores like wildfire. Others are popular at just a couple of locations whilst customers at the other shops dont go for them. So in short, if your Fresh & Wild doesnt seem to have one of the ingredients you need to make a particular recipe, let them know that your community wants it stocked.

Of course, some really unusual ingredients cant be guaranteed to be on the shelves 365 days every year. The availability of seasonal and niche foods comes and goes, so plan ahead if you want to try some of the recipes with stranger and more exotic things in them. For instance, fresh wood blewit mushrooms arent seasonal, as theyre farmed in Sussex, but theyre unlikely to be stocked all the time, in all the Fresh & Wild stores, until enough people like you and I buy them regularly enough to make it worth their while.

So lets make it happen by buying strange ingredients. Lets keep small artisan food crafts alive. Lets make sure that those special little ingredients stick around for future generations to enjoy. Oh yes, lets have some fun in the kitchen.

All recipes in this book are for organic, fresh produce: organic meat, organic poultry, organic milk, organic soy products and organic eggs and luckily theyre the only kind on offer at Fresh & Wild. Where a recipe includes eggs these are large hen eggs unless it says otherwise. All fish recipes are for organically-farmed fish or sustainably-caught wild fish. Some of the cheeses mentioned are organic, a few are not, but all are proper artisan-produced, slow food delicacies. All oils are cold pressed, the honey isnt heat-treated and there are no artificial chemical preservatives, colourings or flavourings to be found in any ingredients listed.

Use any of the different kinds of salt in the stores, as theyre all from clean waters and have no strange things added like the sodium hexaflouro-cyanate generally found in salt. I particularly like Malden and Geo Atlantic, but try them all and be amazed at their subtly different flavours. And all butter listed in the ingredients is unsalted unless it says its salted.

Ive confidently used things like lemon zest in the recipes, as organic citrus fruit dont include loads of wax and pesticides and are therefore ready to zest. Some of the fresh vegetables, like rainbow chard and burdock root, are only available as organic produce. It makes sense that if youre a farmer growing a very special or heirloom variety, youre the kind of person that wants to go the whole hog and grow it the best way. Lots of the spices are only available organic too, although some are only available uncertified for now.

Im only happy to write recipes that taste delicious and feel good for the people who grew the ingredients, whether theyre in faraway countries or on our own doorstep. Ingredients grown in the tropics and sold at Fresh & Wild are always fairly traded, like dried papaya and cassia bark. When you buy British organic ingredients at Fresh & Wild, like carrots and lamb, you can be confident that our farmers are paid fairly for their hard work and early January mornings, something thats rarely the case in many other stores.