Japanese food is less daunting than it may seem and yet, of all the oriental cuisines we’ve welcomed to the UK over the decades it has, for some reason, managed to retain an air of mystery that makes us think it must be difficult or even impossible to make at home. But when you visit the country you realise that exotic sounding dishes like soba or udon noodles are in fact the kind of thing Japanese lorry drivers consume at truck stops.  Even then, though, such dishes manage to hold on to a sense of magic when you learn that the chef in the steamy truck-stop kitchen has actually spent four years learning to become a udon-master. Which is enough to put any British home-cook off the idea of trying to knock up a bowl of perfect noodles.  This is a nonsense of course because those chefs are making the actual noodles from scratch, which is difficult - but what Japanese home-cooks do is exactly what we can do here: buy a packet of noodles and concentrate on making a delicious sauce.  In fact, what surprised me was just how simple much of the Japanese food really was. Like every other national cuisine in the world, Japan’s most celebrated dishes were, and are, based on bulky, plain tasting, staples topped with a small amount of something delicious. That is how the masses get fed whether you’re talking our potatoes, meat and two veg, pasta in Italy or Dahl in India.  So whether the Japanese are cooking with their noodles or sticky rice, the formula will be the same - a big bowlful of the basic staple is made appealing by a comparatively tiny amount of flavoursome flesh, some kind of sauce, or maybe a larger amount of strong tasting but watery stock. The now famous Japanese ramen is just that: noodles in a strong stock. But by adding a sprinkling of chopped spring onion, a boiled egg or maybe some strips of cooked meat like belly pork, you can take this appetising luncheon dish to another level. Making ramen is not exactly rocket-science, but the secret of a good ramen is all in the stock - and it happens to be my belief that every home-cook should be capable of making a well rounded and delicious broth out of anything from a few beef bones to a chicken carcass.  Other variations on that theme in Japan see the noodles being served in a separate bowl, next door to smaller dish filled with a concentrated sauce. With the grey-brown soba noodles made of buckwheat, for example, this will often mean they are served cold on a grid-like bamboo platter which allows drainage, so that you can lift a portion with your chopsticks to dunk into a heated sauce.  This may be served with a third dish of something cooked tempura-style, which basically means deep-fried in a light and crunchy batter. The most common example I saw was a brace of large tempura prawns.  All these noodle dishes (and many more besides) will be served with tiny bowls of pickled vegetables.  The overall combo might look impressive neatly arranged on a tray, but it’s all simple stuff. Delicious, but simple. Nowhere near as complex and as mysterious as some European Japanese restaurants would have you believe. Worker food, enjoyed by millions of blue-and-white-collar Japanese at any time of day. And they tuck in with enormous relish. Alarming relish, you could almost say... Because it is deemed polite and even necessary to slurp your noodles loudly because the Japanese believe that aerating each mouthful as it crosses the tongue improves flavour. If you think that’s daft, ask a wine expert. They all do it when they are sampling a glass of plonk. But, given that so many of the Japanese dishes are actually just fuel for workers, it’s worth getting away from tourist hotspots in cities like Tokyo and diving down the backstreets (not perilous in this low-crime country) to find eateries packed with locals. I did this during my stay in Tokyo, but did have the help of a West Country friend who’s lived in the city for 17 years. Adam Kennedy - once of Milverton - loves the gargantuan city with a relish that is only equalled by his regard for Japanese food. On the first night we walked from the touristy Roppongi area, where I was staying in the quiet haven of the excellent Candeo Hotel , to an area that is popular with local white-collar workers. In a packed but charming little place in the Akasaka government district we ploughed our way through a dozen sharing plates and sank more beer and sake than was good for us - and the bill for this giant feast came to £35 each, which was hardly the painful hit I’d been expecting. The next night we met up with some of Adam’s pals in the more distant north-western quarter of the city where he lives, and again the numerous dishes we ploughed through, plus beers, came to just £20 each. The sharing plates seemed endless - both grilled squid and marinaded pork on skewers, various tempura-style vegetables, salads, various forms of tofu… It was a tapas style meal and by the time we’d finish I couldn’t have eaten another bite.     Earlier in my trip I’d been staying in the northern island of Hokkaido at the beautiful Green Leaf Hotel in the mountain resort of Niseko Village where I was lucky enough to visit the local autumn food fair. You get a different kind of cuisine up north - indeed, the area specialises in growing the Hokkaido potatoes which the Japanese love so much. It is also home to the nation’s dairy farming and you will find various artisan cheese-makers dotted about the beautiful fertile countryside.  A vichyssoise soup which I enjoyed at the neighbouring Hilton Hotel was the best potato broth I have ever tasted. Ever. Indeed, the superb Green Leaf Hotel looked after me very well indeed - and I’ll be writing about that stay in a sceptical travel article.  The food festival, though, came as a surprise because it became obvious that the best powder snow in the world boasted by the local ski-resorts and the not-too-distant surfing beaches had combined to attract a certain type of Westerner. So organic farms and various other artisan food businesses have set up creating the most delicious forms of healthy fodder. The rather jolly food festival reflected this influx.  You can eat very well and healthily indeed in Hokkaido, whether you are visiting local restaurants or finding pop-up eateries at local events. I had one of the best beef burgers that’s come my way in years at Niseko Village.   While I was in Japan, numerous people messaged me on Facebook warning of rip-off restaurants, specially in Tokyo. Since returning I’ve heard people on radio say that rugby fans will find themselves taking out second mortgages because Japan is so expensive.  This might be true - but only if they stick to glitzy tourist spots. Away from those - and particularly out in the countryside - you can get a decent lunch for £12.  The Candeo Roppongi Hotel where I was staying in Tokyo had a breakfast that included some 60 dishes - everything from its own massive honeycomb through to extensive chicken stews and curries (which is the sort of thing they like to have for breakfast in Japan), so from the get-go I was hardly in danger of going hungry in that fast and frenetic city.  And I needed all the energy I could get to lift my suitcase, which I crammed with basic Japanese ingredients like dashi-stock powder and specialist artisan-made soy-sauces. Such items are expensive if bought online here in the UK, but cheap-as-chips in a Tokyo supermarket.  Now I’ll be able to knock up my own noodles from the Land of the Rising Sun for months to come, certainly all through the Rugby World Cup.  FACT FILE Martin went to Japan as a guest of YTL Hotels which owns The Green Leaf Hotel in Niseko Village, Hokkaido www.greenleafhotel.com . While in Tokyo he stayed at The Candeo Hotel Roppongi - visit www.candeohotels.com for more details.

This was the last feature I ever wrote as a full-time employee of a newspaper - and it was an enjoyable job for me as I’ve known Mitch Tonks for several years and always like meeting up with him. And again - we’re putting the article up here on the website now because all catering businesses around the country can do with as much publicity as they can get in these difficult times… Like the rest of us, top chefs come in many different guises - although the culinary scales might tip a little towards the likelihood of your finding an irascible bully or a prima-donna in some top kitchens. Devon’s Mitch Tonks, however, would tip those scales back the other way.  If there was an award for “down-to-earth, sensible and intelligent chef of the year, who happens to be a thoroughly nice bloke,” then this well-known preparer of seafood would probably win it with wearying regularity.  Not that Mitch needs any more awards. The list he already has rolled up in his apron would take up half the space we have for this article - although it is worth mentioning that Caterer Magazine and the UK Sea-fish Industry Authority have just placed two of his eateries in the top five UK seafood restaurants. Given the list of hundreds of hopefuls, that is quite an accolade. His Rockfish at Brixham - located at the entrance to the famous fish harbour, is one of them - and Dartmouth’s Seahorse, where I met Mitch for lunch this week, is the other. And as readers may know, these are two very different restaurants. The expanding Rockfish chain caters for families who want excellent but affordable seafood in pleasant coastal locations - The Seahorse is a proper grown-up establishment (winner of the Observer’s Best UK Restaurant award) where the seafood dishes are as good as any you’d find in a top Michelin starred joint.  “To have two restaurants recognised in the final top five for Seafood Restaurant of the Year is a testament to the amazing work that goes on in the restaurants every day - to the people who cook, who serve, who manage, support and promote what I think is the best seafood in the world, here on the south coast,” smiled an obviously proud Mr Tonks. He has every right to feel proud. The lad from Weston-super-Mare came from the kind of humble origins where eating fish meant dealing with buckets of eels that arrived at his grandmother’s back door from the local drainage rhynes of the Somerset Levels. Eels that would be boiled and jellied. The young Mitch would run errands for his grandmother and return home from the fishmonger with shrimps, which he’d help to peel and put into sandwiches.  “These simple shared pleasures were the first small steps of a food journey that would take Mitch to culinary experiences all around the world,” says the blurb you’ll see at his restaurants. “But home would always be the coastline of the south-west of England and the place where his fervour for seafood in particular would shape and resonate most profoundly.” “The Seahorse is the first restaurant we opened in the South West,” Mitch told me as we sat down for lunch. “There can only be one Seahorse, but with Rockfish there are several. Now there are seven, soon to be nine.  “It was our tenth year at the Seahorse last year. It was on old pizza restaurant and I wanted to create something timeless - a bit of a Harry’s Bar. I want it to be here in 100 years time - people will still be dining here - a place to eat and exchange conversation. To me, that’s the point of a restaurant.  “Nine years ago we were thinking about creating a fish restaurant where people could take kids and eat really great seafood that’s not just fish and chips. So over those years Rockfish has really evolved - it’s not something we dreamt up over night - it’s taken 10 years to get it to where it is.  “I’m a weird mix of someone who loves cooking and I’m an entrepreneur as well - and as entrepreneur I am haunted by thoughts of what can be. I see these wonderful seafood restaurants in the States on the Eastern seaboard and I think: why can’t we have something like that? So Rockfish is an attempt at that - mid-market, brilliant seafood. And now it’s gone on to be something that’s bigger than we ever thought.  “The latest opened in Weymouth, which has been really successful. Then we will open Poole and there’s soon going to be one in Sidmouth. I think that having a fish restaurant in a location where there’s fishing activity in sight of the sea makes the whole experience much more wonderful. “I also like to open restaurants and give opportunities - so where we open a restaurant there’s anything between 30 and 50 jobs. Quality jobs. We are creating something that has longevity.  “Sustainability is a big issue - and the situation is getting worse and worse,” sighed Mitch when I asked him about the core ingredients for all his restaurants. “ One thing that’s amazing about the South Coast is - not only do we have some of the best seafood in the world - we have one of the best and most well managed fisheries on the planet. The fishing effort is small compared to what it used to be and there are all sorts of levels and quotas and controls. So my take on it is to continue using fish from small scale fisheries. But for fish that are harvested in bigger quantities we use MSC certified products. Within a year at Rockfish there won’t be anything on the menu that will not be MSC certified or from a local fishery.  “What’s interesting is that at Rockfish we started off selling fish and chips with cod and haddock - but actually it’s less and less about those fish now. It used to be 60 per cent - now it’s down to 30 per cent. People are coming along and eating John Dory, lemon sole, that sort of thing… We write what we have bought at the market on the table cloth every day.   “And we’ve set up our own fish business, so we buy and process our own fish - and more recently we bought a small day-boat run by a really progressive skipper. Between us we’ve collaborated on this idea that fishing can be sustainable - it makes the best of everything that comes out of the sea and it can be profitable for the skipper. When you have fish restaurants, to be at the actual fishing end makes it very real for the customer. “It’s been quite a journey,” shrugged Mitch. “It’s been a roller coaster ride - but I don’t feel I’ve done a day’s work since I was 27. That doesn’t mean it’s been an easy - but when you find something you love, it becomes your life and it’s wonderful.” You may have seen Mitch Tonks appear on television cookery show every now again, and I wondered by - being such an affable and eloquent chap - we don’t see him on the box more often…    “We were about to sign a contract for a series at one point after I’d just done one - and the day before we signed the contracts I sat in this restaurant and suddenly phoned them and told them I wanted to be a chef in a restaurant, not a TV chef.   “Now every lunch and every dinner the restaurant here is full five days a week. We also do a locals’ lunch for 20 quid - it means locals can come and it’s affordable. It’s their dining room - a good community restaurant should belong to the community. If I was on TV and you become a fancy expensive restaurant, it’s no use to the locals. Now they come here and they get value and it’s where they want to be.” And as we spoke crowds were beginning to gather outside as work for the annual Dartmouth Food Festival was going on in the streets. “We are 13 years in with the festival now - it’s the biggest thing in town and it’s run by volunteers. The whole town is alive - lots of stallholders, lots of demonstrations, lots of friends of our come to cook with us over the week. “This place becomes party-central,” said Mitch, reeling off names of famous chefs who can’t resist an annual visit to the beautiful harbour town. “Outside here we’ll be running a cuttlefish taco tall our sited plus some Chinese street food in the evening…” I asked the 50-something year old if he never wearies of the hard work….  “Food is a joy,” grinned Mitch. “I totally love putting these things together. And I get inspired. My children are working here - the team here love it… They won’t see the light of day until the end of Sunday, but it’s what we all love to do.” Mitch Tonks Recipe - Baked sea bass with roasted whole garlic, rosemary and chilli You will need – serves 4 1 sea bass weighing about 1.25kg, scaled and gutted A few sprigs of rosemary 1 small dried chilli 6 whole cloves of garlic, skin left on Sea salt 50ml olive oil ½ a wineglass of dry white wine 1 lemon To make Put a piece of turkey-size tinfoil, about 70-80cm long on to a work surface and cover with a layer of parchment paper.  Fold over each edge so that the foil and parchment are secured together at the edges.  Put a couple of sprigs of rosemary in the belly cavity of the fish and a couple in the centre of the parchment.  Lay the fish on the parchment and crumble the chilli over the top. Lightly crush the garlic cloves by putting the flat side of a knife on top and giving it a thump with your hand, then put them on and around the fish.  Sprinkle with sea salt.  Lift up the edges of the foil to keep everything in and add the olive oil and wine.  Now encase the fish in the foil – it should be in a loose bag but sealed tightly, enabling it to steam.  Place it on a roasting tray and bake in the roasting oven for 35 minutes.  Remove from the oven and carefully undo the bag, folding back the sides to make the fish easy to get at.  Squeeze a little lemon over the top and give everyone a plate so they can help themselves.  Mitch Tonks  www.mitchtonks.co.uk

I wrote the article below about 18 months ago - the young chef, Ross Sloan, has now moved on to open up his own remarkable “shell-and-fish-takeaway” in Porthleven - and this website will be reporting on that enterprise in a week or so. In the meantime we publish the old article because Ross is a very talented chef and - like everyone in the catering industry at present - he could do with all the publicity he can get. So take a look at Landed’s social media and then, if you’ve time, have a read of my old article below… https://www.facebook.com/LandedPorthleven/ https://www.instagram.com/landed_porthleven/ Sometimes you come across some kind of artist, expert, craftsman or woman and there’s something about their work which makes you think perhaps the person has got just that little bit more in the locker. A touch of magic, a streak of genius, call it what you will… That is exactly what I thought one evening last year when I was dining alone in a hotel restaurant on the Cornish coast. The couple of dishes I ordered for my dinner were special - a cut above the rest. The cooking and presentation reminded me of food I’d recently enjoyed at a two-star Michelin rated restaurant where dinner cost five times the price. So when I was invited down to the same hotel - the Mount Haven at Marazion - for a special reception to celebrate the opening of its newly revamped and enlarged restaurant a few days ago, I grabbed the chance despite the fact that it meant a lengthy journey.   I wasn’t to be disappointed - and I say that even though all we ate that night were a large number of canapés dreamed up and prepared by the same chef. I use the phrase “dreamed up” advisedly, by the way, because Ross Sloan is no ordinary kind of chef and he is prone to “evolve” dishes by thinking way outside the box.  Here’s the kind of thing you can expect to hear him say if you ever have a chance to speak with the 38-year-old: “There are so many things you keep finding. Like with fermenting or pickling - the best thing with it is not the pickles, but the left over vinegar. It’s amazing. It’s the best bit. You add the fermented juice of wild garlic and you think: wow!” Ross is a slightly reticent interviewee, and I don’t blame him for that because it must be trying when inexperienced journalists and bloggers ask questions like: “What’s your favourite dish to cook.” But get down to the nitty gritty - talk to Ross about the art of evolving dishes and the act of inventiveness when it comes to weird and wonderful tricks with the alchemy that is fermentation - and suddenly he is a human volcano of passion and ideas.  “You get one idea from a book - then you are getting offshoot ideas of your own,” he told me as we sat in the evening sunshine on the new terrace at the Mount Haven. “There is a transition. You can find yourself going backwards - back to nature based food using the old techniques of preserving stuff. So in a way it (modern cookery) has gone full circle. “So I go foraging when I can - I don’t have that much time but I know spots - and I have a lot of foraging notes so they help me out. I use a lot of seaweed. We store it, we dry it, we turn it into powders, we deep fry it. With kelp we use it as the basis for some of our stocks, like kombu. And we pickle it.  “With wild garlic… We got 50 kilos the other day and we are fermenting it because I’ve been making garlic leaf curd. 50 kilos of garlic to make a small ball. It’s like making curds and whey - you blitz it all up in a blender - bring it up to the boil and the proteins coagulate and separate. So it is a bit like making cheese. You end up with concentrated wild garlic which you can keep all year.  “So we get it when we can and use it all year round. It is a plant-based curd. But it is very labour-intensive. It is well worth it though because, with the whey, we make custards out of it which we pipe it onto tarts. It goes very well with mutton.” By now Ross and I were getting on like a house on fire - first because of his passion and second because I am interested in that kind of cooking. Indeed, I believe it’s people like Ross who are - in their own very separate ways, individually and alone in their kitchens - starting to develop something that could be described as a true West Country cuisine. A type of cooking distinct from any other, wholly dependent on what grows and thrives in and around our warm wet peninsula.  “Nowadays when people come to Cornwall, they want to taste Cornwall,” said Ross - a statement with which I wholeheartedly agree. “I don’t want to go to a fishing village and eat a curry. It’s disheartening - but that’s what some people want. If I go to a fishing village I want to eat oysters, or pickled cockles or a mackerel bap.  “I do try to buy a cheaper fish as well as the expensive stuff. Pickled herrings are my favourite. White wine vinegar, sugar, salt, bit of water, spices… When you start preserving stuff, not only does it take on flavour, it is easier to digest, it can be better for you and things don’t go off.  “So there’s nothing going to waste and, even better, you are left with the fluid which tastes great. You could turn it (the pickled herring liquor) into a jelly, split it with a bit of whey or an oil… “We do an oyster dish with rock samphire. We pickle that and use the vinegar with a bit of whey - which we get when we are making our own ricotta. We put the whey over the oysters and it is delicious.” We talked a little about the career path that Ross has followed…. “I moved to Cornwall, to the Lizard, when I was 10.  My father was a cook and he was Egyptian. No, that hasn’t influenced me. I’m about straight-up English based food and what’s around us. And there is a lot of Japanese influence in it - not Japanese dishes, but techniques.  “My first head chef job in Cornwall was at the Hazelphron Inn (on the Lizard) - and that was years ago. There wasn’t much competition around in those days. But now it’s different - especially on this coast. For a while it was the North Coast that had the name, but now this coast is getting there. “I was in London chasing the dream,” Ross said of his later career-path. “The last job I was doing I wasn’t doing any cooking - just running restaurants.” And if there is one thing Ross obviously loves, it is being very much hands on in the kitchen. “I am a bit anal about how things look - but I do it one way, and the next day I don’t like it any more so we don’t it like that anymore. Dishes evolve. I either don’t like them anymore, or they will and get better and better.  “Here at the Mount Haven (which is owned and run by the St Aubyn Estate) we are starting to use more local farms. There’s a local organic farm and they bring stuff in fresh every morning. I’m starting to use different farms for different things. There’s a farm in Helston I get my pigs from. They’re butchered for us, but it’s the whole pig so we use everything. Where’s it going to go if you don’t use it? Everyone’s used to getting stuff in a plastic bag - and actually we want to see where it’s come from and use the whole beast, otherwise it is a waste. Some of those cuts are the most delicious bits. Pork cheeks we use a lot and the pig’s head, obviously.  “The hogget we buy in it has a better flavour than lamb - you just have to take more care. The challenge is fun - and it’s good. I am lucky that I work for a company that’s backing me. The only problem is a shortage of chefs. You can’t get any - no one seems to want to be a chef any more - you’d have thought there’d be plenty of glamour with the TV chefs, but it doesn’t seem that way. “The estate has tenant farmers, so I’m trying to use them. It would be crazy not to. For example, I want to get in beehives on the estate. To have our own estate honey would be great. The stuff you buy is diluted and horrible. But fresh local honey is totally different.  “We do bar food here - small bites like our smoked mackerel donuts - basically a savoury donut with smoked potato. In the restaurant we do a tasting menu called Land and Sea which is obviously meat and fish - and we do a vegan and we do an a la carte menu. But we still want it to be nice and relaxed - not too formal.  “In an ideal world we just want to keep evolving - trying to make more stuff - you can only do so much with the small team we have,” said Ross as he prepared to go back into the kitchen to make all those astounding canapés for the reception.  “What I want to do is start making everything from scratch. I have realised that simple is best. Sometimes chefs are trying to put too much on the plate, but as you get older you realise that ingredients need to shine out. A lot of the dishes we are doing this year are stripped back from last year - and actually they are much better.” Statements like that aren’t rocket-science, but the art of doing something simple very, very well is one of the pointers that can make a chef sound out from the crowd and lure journalists like me on a 300-mile round trip to taste their food.  Ross Sloan Recipes Smoked mackerel doughnuts, horseradish, smoked herring roe Equipment neededDeep fat fryer, potato mouli or ricer, piping bags, blender, squeeze bottle, mixer Horseradish Sauce1 x stick of fresh horseradish, peeled and grated3 x tbsp of mayonnaisecrème fraiche30 x ml of vinegar1 x tsp of sugarMix the horseradish, vinegar and sugar together and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Transfer this to the blender along with the rest of the ingredients and blend until completely smooth. Transfer this to a squeezy bottle. Smoked Mackerel Doughnuts250g Duchy potatoes500g smoked mackerel made into a paste240ml full fat milk130g unsalted butter4 eggs200g plain flour Boil potatoes. When cooked and dry, puree with a mouli or potato ricer, then add the mackerel paste. Combine the milk and butter in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the flour and stir continually until the mix is cooked – it will come away from the sides of the pan at this point. Transfer the batter to a mixer and beat on a low setting, slowly adding the eggs one at a time. Add the mackerel mixture and seasoning, andmix well. Transfer to a piping bag.To finishTo make the doughnuts, draw a circle of approximately 2 inches in diameter onto parchment paper and pipe mixture onto this. Make circles in the middle to create mini, round doughnuts.Using the deep fat fryer, at 165/170°c, fry until golden and crisp. Once cooked, place the horseradish sauce in the middle of each doughnut and top with a generous amount of caviar or herring roe. Slow Cooked Duck Yolk, Green & White Asparagus, Nasturtium, Olive Caramel, Radish, foraged Herbs & Vegetables (Serves Four) Special Equipment needed Water bath, vacuum pack machine, blender, 4 x small vacuum pack bags, squeezy bottle. Ingredients   SLOW COOKED DUCK YOLK 4 x duck eggs 100g clarified butter OLIVE CARAMEL 200g salted black olives 100g caster sugar  5fl oz water NASTURTIUM PURÉE 200g large nasturtium leaves shallot, peeled and finely diced clove of garlic, sliced 100ml of nasturtium stock *  GREEN & WHITE ASPARAGUS  4 x white asparagus, peeled and trimmed 10 - 20 x green asparagus, peeled and trimmed  TO SERVE 8 x mixed baby rainbow radishes  4 x bronze fennel fronds 4 - 8 x baby garlic mustard leaves 4 x mustard flowers 8 x nasturtium leaves 4 x nasturtium flowers 4 x sea aster leaves  4 x chive flower buds 8x garlic flowers  SLOW COOKED DUCK YOLKS Heat the water bath to 64 .c, separate yolks from whites (and use whites for another purpose). Place 1 yolk into each vac-pak bag with some clarified butter and seal in vac-pak machine on lowest setting no longer than 5 seconds. Place each yolk bag in the water bath and cook for 45 mins at 64 degrees. OLIVE CARAMEL Heat the water and sugar in a pan ’til it reaches a golden caramel colour add the olives with a little water, then blitz in the blender til completely smooth, transfer to a squeezy bottle until needed.  NASTURTIUM PURÉE Sweat the diced shallots and garlic over a medium heat, add stock and reduce, add the nasturtium leaves blend straight away ’til completely smooth. GREEN & WHITE ASPARAGUS  Blanch the asparagus in lightly salted water then char on a hot griddle. TO SERVE Take the nasturtium puree and spoon on to the plates, place a duck yolk in the centre of each plate, season with sea salt flakes, place the one white asparagus and 4-5 green asparagus , squeeze a few dots of olive caramel, add a couple of whole radishes and the rest of flowers and herbs.

There’s not much happening in the catering world at present, so I thought I’d give a shout out to the various chef’s I’ve known and interviewed down the years. They are all highly skilled and talented people - let’s hope they’ll be cooking for us again soon… This article was featured in the Western Morning News and it was all about a charming young guy called Greg Milne - who is head chef at the amazing St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. Here’s what he just messaged me… “Haven’t grafted in a year - but still there. Currently working on menus for this year - so all is looking bright…” Imagine coming across a dazzling, colourful, many facetted jewel on a treasure island… Surely such things don’t happen in real life? Or do they? I certainly came across a sparkling jewel on a Cornish isle the other day - and it happened to be edible and thoroughly delicious.  The thin shards of home-cured pollack fillet shone translucent as pearls, while the foraged flowers which studded the dish gleamed like so many amethysts and emeralds - and the whole crown-jewel was brought together with the ceramic artistry of a stinging nettle mayonnaise and green diamonds made of wild garlic oil. The young wizard who works on the magic island and who was responsible for this jewel on a plate had enchanted this food writer by taking him on an early morning quest under the great walls of the legendary castle.  There, above the boulder beach and below a mysterious forest did we search and forage, until we had enough wild morsels for chef Greg Milne to weave his magic spell.  All of which is maybe just a bit too ethereal and fairy-story like for a young man who used to play with some international success in a heavy metal band.  Having said that, Gregory Stewart Milne, to give him his full name, does not leap around smashing pots and pans at The Sail Loft restaurant on St Michael’s Mount - indeed he is extremely calm and laidback (to the extent that the play The Archers and Radio Four’s Food Programme in the kitchen) - but you get the feeling that his frenetic energy and youthful exuberance are only just quivering beneath the control that is required by a head chef.  “Smashing bloke,” muttered a young boatman called Josh who took us on a trip around the isle in a mercurial light, just after dawn the other day. “St Michael’s Mount is lucky to have him.” And that, indeed, is the sort of thing I’d been hearing about Greg - who is one of a burgeoning army of young culinary stars now working west of the Tamar.  “Gregory, an avid forager, has embraced the local, seasonal and sustainable ethos of St Michael’s Mount’s with this spring’s menu,” gushed a public relations person who sent me an email. “From handpicked crab landed fresh across the bay, to local cheeses and homemade chutneys, he has scoured the county to bring the best produce to this most singular of eateries – accessed only by foot, across an ancient causeway when the tide allows, or by boat when the tide is in.” She added: “The emphasis at The Sail Loft is on fresh, locally landed fish, seasoned with herbs from The Mount’s very own kitchen garden. The changing daily menu might include Fowey mussels, cider, pancetta and thyme or grilled brill, Lelant Downs asparagus, green salsa, béarnaise sauce or a favourite such as crispy pollock, creamed leeks, bacon and broad beans, chorizo jam.” This description was enough to tempt me to travel 150 miles west, but I did so with my journalistic cynicism at the ready. After all, PR people are paid to paint colourful pictures, but the reality is sometimes different.  I need not have worried, The moment I crossed the famous causeway which links The Mount to the Cornish mainland at low tide, I knew that this proposed food feature was in safe hands. Greg bubbles with enthusiasm and, even early in the morning, he has a passion for cooking, the likes of which I have not witnessed in a long time. Indeed, it is hard to put into words what pleasure an older journalist gets when he’s in the company of a younger person who: A) is able to eloquently describe their drive and passion, and B) who knows what they are doing.  All very impressive for a young man who’s never been to catering college but who used to be both a rock guitarist and a National Trust warden.  “I still play a bit now, actually, but I used to be in a band called Krocus and we did a couple of European and UK tours. It was quite heavy, to be honest - we’d better not get bogged down with that,” he told me. “But we were doing really well in our scene.” To see just how well - and how heavy the metal - have a look at one of their live gigs on YouTube. For some, it might be enough to make their nettle mayonnaise curdle.  Anyway, fast forward and Greg was drawn to the lure of the culinary world, working first as a kitchen porter at the celebrated Pump House in Bristol. “It was like watching magic. The chefs went out every Monday morning super early before work and used to bring back punnets of St George’s mushrooms and the like. I fell in love with it.  “The head chef there saw something in me and said he thought I could cook - and that’s how I learned to be a chef. I did the staff meals and I kept building from there, But ultimately that all fell apart because of the drudgery of the hours - in the end it got a bit too much and I wanted to do something else. That is when my passion for conservation and trees took over and I went to work as a voluntary warden for the National Trust on Dartmoor.” Greg was doing so much foraging for wild salads, vegetables and fungi in order to supplement his non-existent income, he was beginning to realise that what he really enjoyed was cooking.  Fast forward again and Greg returned to Cornwall where he’d spent most of teenage and applied for a job with Ben Tunnicliffe at the Tolcarne in Newlyn.  “He was the best chef in the area, so I wrote him a letter and he took me on,” said Greg who learned a huge amount seafood cookery with Ben.  A year-and-a-half later Greg was offered the head chef post across the bay at St Michael’s Mount and he’s never looked back, although being the boss didn’t come easy at first. “I enjoy all the extra work now because I am a people-person - and I’m quite relaxed. I’m not an angry guy, but very forgiving. That’s a good attribute - and I like running a team. But I never wanted to be a boss - it’s been the biggest learning curve for me. It falls on my head to be the tough guy sometimes - so yea, it’s a big one.  “The menus have to be very Cornish-occentric. When people come onto the island they have this idea… seafood, crab particularly. People think of Cornwall and they think of crab sandwiches - so that’s what we do as best we can. Sometimes I’ll do a dish of turbot with wild garlic sauce and sea vegetables which is quite challenging here because this is a tourist restaurant. People might ask - what is a sea vegetable? Some people don’t want the challenge - in July and August we are perhaps at our most basic. But then September comes along and we have more retired people who do want to try things.” Greg took me on a foraging hike around the island, using private paths which are normally only open to gardeners and estate works, and we picked various sea vegetables as well as wild edible flowers and woodland herbs. He was particularly keen to pick a bag of young nettle leaves with which he later made the most amazing, vibrant and zingy mayonnaise. And, no, there was no sting - amazingly, the raw nettle leaves gave the sauce the fresh flavour of cucumber… At The Sail Loft kitchen Greg assembled the fabulous dish which I have called the jewel of the island, the recipe for which we have here… I have a feeling we West Country foodies will be hearing a lot more about the heavy metal conservationist who rules the culinary roost on a magical island with his wizardry and his enthusiasm for food.  Line caught Pollock, wild garlic, nettles and wild herbs from the Mount This dish is perfect for a summers day, light, fragrant and cooling.  Pollock Cure 500g fillet weight of good quality pollock fillets 100g salt 100g caster sugar 70ml water Finding an appropriate container for the pollock, place the fillets skin side down inside it. Mix the dry ingredients with the water and pour over the fillets making sure to cover completely. Cure in the fridge for 2 hours. Wash, dry and slice thinly. Wild Garlic Oil 500ml Rapeseed oil 100g wild garlic Pinch of salt Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and drop the wild garlic in. When it’s all submerged quickly take out and lay on a dry cloth. Taking care not to burn yourself squeeze out the excess water, place the wild garlic into a blender with the rest of the ingredients and blitz on full for 25 secs, infuse for ten minutes, strain the mixture with a cheese cloth.  Nettle salsa 50g Nettles 17g Flat leaf parsley 25g Gherkin 25g Capers 15g Anchovy ½ tbsp Dijon mustard 45g Rapeseed oil 45g White wine vinegar Salt to taste Place all the ingredients into your blender and blitz until emulsified, check the seasoning and leave to one side. House Mayonnaise 4 x egg yolks 1½ tbsp of Dijon 1 tbsp white wine vinegar 400ml rapeseed oil 2 tbsp water Salt to taste Add the yolks, mustard and vinegar into a blender and start blitzing. In a steady stream emulsify the rapeseed oil into this mixture slowly at first and as it begins to thicken and take the form of a mayonnaise you can add the oil more quickly. With all the oil emulsified add the water to let it back slightly and give the mayonnaise a beautiful silky texture. Season to taste.  To Plate Mix equal parts of the nettle salsa and mayonnaise in a bowl and check the seasoning. With a clean plate take slices of the pollock and lay to create a pleasingly circular shape. Dress the pollock with splashes of wild garlic oil and spoon dots of the nettle mayonnaise inside the circle. Finally garnish the dish with finely diced cucumber, common sorrel to add a pleasant sour note and borage flowers to echo the fresh cucumber flavours.

There are times after all the midwinter festivities in January when all you want in your diet is simplicity. And things don’t get much more simple than bread and butter - which happens to be the title of a book I reviewed a year or two ago. However, if you are going to pick up the tome by Richard Snapes, Grant Harrington and Eve Hemingway, do not think you are in for an easy, plain and simple ride. The book could inspire you to do something completely new and revelatory. It did me.  For more than 60 years I have eaten the latter part of the book’s title - but never once in all that time have I ever dreamed of making butter.  Bread, yes. On numerous occasions. Although my bread making ability does leave a lot to be desired. But butter? Who makes their own butter? You can buy perfectly good West Country butter in just about any grocery shop - and I particularly recommend that made by Cornwall’s excellent Trewithen Dairy . However when you see the chapter on butter in the book, you might find yourself rising to a challenge. “The heights that the simple, staple ingredient butter could reach was an absolute revelation,” writes Grant Harrington when descending a chef’s job he was given at a restaurant called Faviken, run by world-famous Magnus Nilsson, in Sweden. “I tried the butter on my first day on the job and literally did a double take – the flavour just blew me away, and it inspired me to pursue this butter-making path.  “I learnt a lot about the traditional and ancient techniques that produce this more flavourful, buttery butter in Sweden, and back home I spent a year researching dairy fermentation and butter, with a focus on the science of lactic cultures,” writes Grant. Ok… So there’s butter, and there’s butter - which is enough to make any reader ask: what am I missing out on? “The fermented cream before churning adds a distinct butyric tang,” says Grant in his chapter on “cultured butter”. “When I broke chunks off the cold block of butter with a fork (in Sweden), tiny remnants would remained on the chopping board - tasting these shards made me realise just how uncared for and plain such an important staple ingredient had come to be, and it made me want everyone in the world to taste something as good as this.” And so the chapter introduces the home-cook to a basic recipe for making cultured butter - which is basically where you introduce a small quantity “live” culture (such as yoghurt or creme fraiche) as a starter to double cream and leave the mix over the best part of two days, which means 20 hours at room temperature and 20 hours in the fridge (see panel). Then you churn, in the traditional way. And whey is what you get, if you’ll excuse the pun - along with rich, wonderful, creamy butter.  So taken was I with the concept that I purchased a mini-Kilner butter-churner off the internet for £20. I followed the simple instructions in Bread & Butter and hey-presto! I haven’t experienced the wonder of such magic since I was a student and learned to develop black and white photographs in a darkroom. By which I mean, the wonder of seeing something coming out of nothing… For four or five minutes I cranked the handle of my little churner and began to think that, in typical Hesp-fashion, I’d misread the instructions… When all of a sudden, it started happening. The crank handle suddenly became much harder to turn and, looking into the glass jar, I could see the paddles were wrapped in something cloying and yellow. A few more turns, followed by a draining off of the whey - then some kneading by hand, followed by the traditional whacking with wooden bats to make the perfect butter pat. Blimey! What a thrill! 60-plus years on the planet - at least a sliver of butter almost every day of my life - and suddenly I’ve made a superior version of it myself! Grant Harrington doesn’t leave it there. His main chapter on butter goes on to give recipes for numerous flavoured butters, some of which we’ve published here.  As I’ve said above, for me this was a revelation. Now I am going to follow every complex step in the making of Richard Snapes’ fabulous sounding sourdough bread. It will take more time and effort than the butter, but making a sourdough is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.  I like the whole feel of this project, especially at this time of the year. A keen foodie of my age can be in danger of being like the dog that chases its own tail. You are constantly on the lookout for something new - something exotic - a cuisine you’ve never tried before. You’ve cooked so many recipes down the years, you’ve become almost lost in your own expertise… Then someone says: “Forget all that for a moment. Why not do something very very simple - and do it very very well.” Which is why I’m on a new quest. My ambition is to make the perfect slice of bread and butter. Not just something passable or even moderately good, but perfect. Better, even, than something you’d get in a Michelin starred restaurant. Next maybe I will be able to make some of Eve Hemingway’s excellent recipes which make up the last third of the new book. Not surprisingly, even her sandwiches seem to be in a league of their own.  The three authors write about being in a cookbook shop marvelling at all the 100s of exotic sounding titles… “At first we couldn’t see how bread and butter, two such quotidian foodstuffs, could stand up to these vibrant and exotic subjects,” they say. “Surely, they could not transport you beyond the familiar, or aid digestion or teach you something you didn’t know because: you eat them every day. Or most days at least. “Yet, on reflection, we realised that bread and butter can do all of these things,” conclude the authors. And they are right. Brilliant bread and butter can eclipse just about anything.  Bread & Butter: History, Culture, Recipes by Richard Snapes, Grant Harrington & Eve Hemingway (Quadrille, £22) Photography © Patricia Niven RECIPES Cultured Butter Ingredients 1 litre (1 quart) 40% fat high-quality double (thick) cream 100ml (3½fl oz) sour cream, crème fraîche or yogurt, which is the starter rock salt, to taste (approx. 20g/¾oz) Makes about 500g (1lb 2oz) butter and an equal amount cultured buttermilk In a large and spotlessly clean bowl, mix together your cream and starter (sour cream, crème fraîche or yogurt), stirring well to make sure the starter is fully incorporated. Cover the bowl with muslin and leave at room temperature (about 25ºC/77ºF) for 20 hours. When the time is up replace the muslin with plastic wrap/clingfilm and chill in the fridge for a further 20 hours. Remove the cultured cream from the fridge and leave it at room temperature for about an hour, or until it has warmed to around 8–14ºC (46–57ºF). This chilling and warming encourages the bacteria to develop and the cream to ferment. Now we’re ready to churn. Using an electric stand mixer or hand-held beaters on medium-high speed (or even whisking by hand if you’ve got arms like an ox) begin to whisk your cultured cream. It’s important to have your bowl no more than half full, as the cream will expand before it splits. When the cream completely splits to form yellow globules (called popcorn butter) and liquid (buttermilk), strain through a sieve, reserving both the popcorn butter and the buttermilk. This cultured buttermilk will keep for 12 days in the fridge. Quickly knead the popcorn butter on a cold, clean surface by working it with the heels of your hands, squeezing out any remaining buttermilk until all the moisture has been removed from your butter. Season with salt to taste. Then hand-knead the butter again to release any final excess of moisture. The cultured butter will keep for up to 3 weeks in the fridge, and will continue to mature and develop over that time. Cultured Butter Variations Wild Garlic Butter When in season between March and June, wild garlic is easy to find in most Northern European woodlands, and it offers an abundance of pungent deliciousness. This butter is my favourite way of preserving the fresh garlic flavour. Once blended and rolled into a log, it can be easily frozen for use throughout the year. Outstandingly simple and satisfying stirred through hot pasta. Makes about 200g (7oz) Ingredients 60g (2oz) wild garlic leaves (ramsons), finely chopped 200g (7oz) Cultured Butter (page 140), softened Fold the wild garlic into the butter. Place on a piece of plastic wrap/clingfilm and roll into a log, then twist and tie the ends to seal. Freeze until needed. The butter will keep for up to 3 weeks in the fridge, and will continue to mature and develop over that time. Seaweed Butter Seaweed types vary, this recipe works well with pepper dulse, which can be foraged in the UK and dried at home. However, a high quality nori from a Japanese food supplier can be just as rich and savoury. This is an incredible finishing butter atop fresh fish – try it with steamed haddock and you’ll be sold. Makes about 200g (7oz) Ingredients 30g (1oz) finely chopped dried seaweed 200g (7oz) Cultured Butter (page 140), softened Fold the seaweed into room temperature butter using the back of a spoon. Place on a piece of plastic wrap/clingfilm and roll into a log, then twist and tie the ends to seal. Freeze until needed. The butter will keep for up to 3 weeks in the fridge, and will continue to mature and develop over that time.

What follows is the sort of thing I used to do for a living - a pleasant journey around an area of West Devon in the company of poet James Crowden exploring the food and drink offerings of the area. As I still write the food pages of the region’s main daily newspaper, the Western Morning News, I dearly wish I could do these excellent little research trips again - and hopefully will sooner rather than later. And I say that both for my own selfish sake and for all of us consumers - but more particularly for the sort of people who are featured in this article who, running food/drink related businesses - must be suffering badly during the constant lockdowns… This article appeared in the paper about two years ago…. You could call them food adventures or culinary safaris. The idea is that you simply turn up in an area and explore around until you find some folk who are creating, growing, making or generally doing good things with food or drink - and you either buy some of their wares or, in my case, you write about them in a newspaper.  Which is what I did one day this week thanks to the West Country’s greatest food adventurer or culinary safari man, James Crowden.   James was the partner of the WMN’s erstwhile food editor Carol Trewin until she died at a tragically young age some years ago, and he helped her publish several foodie tomes including The Devon Food Book, the pages of which spurred him on to invite me down to a corner of West Dartmoor this week.  “I’ll arrange for you to spend a night at the excellent Leaping Salmon pub in Horrabridge and I will show you around the area and introduce you to some intriguing small food and drink businesses,” said James, who still owns Carol’s old house in the village, which is one reason why he knows the area so well. And so I got to meet an inventive and thoughtful 29-year-old Oxford graduate who is now a country pub landlord; a pair of scientists who used to grow organic vegetables for a living but now concentrate on making delicious beer; as well as the husband of a postmistress who has turned their village post office into bakery of increasing renown; and a young woman who manages a cheese shop which next month will be staging the largest cheese festival in the South West.  Not a bad little haul for an area which not too long ago was riddled with mines and arsenic waste.  There is, by the way, an organisation which covers this area as part of its larger patch and it is called the Tamar Valley Food Hubs - an online farmer’s market which brings together the “best of local and seasonal produce in one place”.  “By shopping with us you are directly supporting independent growers, local businesses, community projects and co-operatives worldwide,” says the website which you can visit at www.tamarvalleyfoodhubs.org.uk - and I recommend it as there’s some great stuff on there.  But visiting a website is not as exciting as going on a food safari - for a start you do not get to dine and stay in a very pleasant pub, which is what the Leaping Salmon is. For a few years it was a bit of an eyesore - run down and with all manner non-hospitable ideas for its future, like the idea it should be turned into a Co-op shop.  But young Fred Andrews and his family, who’ve lived locally for years, stepped in to save it. Partly because Fred’s dad is a big name in the UK hotel world and partly because the lad himself had some interesting and novel ideas about how a modern English country pub should be run. I liked everything about the place. I approved of Fred’s ideas and was glad to hear that in less than a year it is driving to be a great success.  I liked the idea that above the pub on steep terraces Fred and his girlfriend have developed impressive vegetable gardens which provide the kitchen with loads of good stuff. The fresh courgettes presented in a plain and simple grilled fashioned with herbs were delicious. Indeed, I liked the way Fred is keeping everything simple.  There’s just a small menu on the blackboard, but what is there is first class and affordable. For lunch I had a duck pate on homemade sour-bread toast with pickles and it was everything such a dish should be. For dinner I went down the full-on plain food route and ordered ham, egg and chips - which again, ticked all the right boxes. A good test-bed, ham, egg and chips. Almost every pub does it, but very few do the dish to a level where you’d score it ten-out-of ten. Fred got all the points.  “The vision was to open a pub doing simple food, fresh ingredients - nothing fancy,” he told me. “There’s another pub in the village and we wanted to be quite different from that but keep a community focus. At the same time we wanted to make the food of a calibre that it would draw in people from outside the area as well. “A year of innovations later we got it open and here we are. In an ideal world we’d grow everything so we decided to start off with all the things that benefit from being fresh - salads, herbs, greens… Tomatoes and cucumbers are on their way.  “Quality of produce is paramount for us. If we have fresh things, the onus is on us not to mess it up. I think cooking should be about that. We’ve got great meat coming in from the edge of Dartmoor - we’ve got a lovely couple who just farm Dexters and we take half a cow off them to work though in the pub setting…”    At the beautifully appointed (plain and simple decor, but colourful and modern in a way that doesn’t jar with the old building) Leaping Salmon, they do everything the simple way, but they do it well.  The newly refurbished ensuite room was spot-on as well, by the way, and I would have enjoyed a good night’s sleep if it hadn’t been for the mother of all thunderstorms which rolled through the region on Tuesday night. Maybe I should have downed more of the beer at Bere Brewery . James took me to this establishment at Bere Alston because the couple who run it are gaining a big name for their ales and for the fact that they use a great many of the hops they grow for themselves.  Which, believe it or not, is a very unusual thing among English breweries.  Elizabeth Rikeard told me: “We we were growing organic veg for 18 years but we’d always brewed for ourselves. I gave Jeremy a hop for his birthday some years ago and it grew so well we thought we’d grow a lot more. We ended up with so many we wondered what to do with them and the answer was a brewery. And the brewing side of things has done so well it’s taken over and we’ve cut back on the veg side of things.” Her husband Jeremy added: “Obviously having our own hops allowed me to develop my own recipes. From then going to the small scale commercial basis we already had the recipes and ideas to use. There was the thought that it does actually work and the hops to give it (the ale) something different.” “It’s only metres from where they’re grown and picked to where they are taken to dry and vacuum packed and frozen - so they are handled very carefully so they are not bruised - and I believe that carries over into the flavour as well,” said Elizabeth.  The couple make a fantastic range of bottle conditioned beers in the small brewery in their garden, and the diverse and lovely ales are becoming ever more popular.  “We are having great fun,” Elizabeth added. “Intellectually it’s a move on from glowering veg - you could everything you need to known about growing cabbages but if the weather is against you there are no quick fixes to help you grow a better cabbage.  Whereas the more we know about the beer, the better the beer can be. It’s like a chemistry experiment combined with a cookery experiment combined. A dream really…” Just down the road we called at the Bere Alston post office which has become famous not so much for its parcel services or anything in the postal line, but for its bread and cakes.  Jonathon Hammond and his wife Charlotte own the village store, bakery and post office and he told me: “I worked for nearly 40 years with children with challenging behaviour and I came to a thought where I thought I’d had enough - I thought I’d start baking. Had some successes and failures. I signed myself up to a course in London to learn how to run a micro-brewery from your own home. The lady said the course wasn’t on today - it turned out the online booking company had messed things up. So this wonderful lady came all the way down to Devon and gave me the course personally for three days.  “From that I started baking bread for family and friends - then went to three days a week. Now it’s five or six days a week and we get through half a tonne of flour every three and half weeks. We bought the post office and redeveloped it and converted two rooms at the back of our home to a dry story and bakery. “We do enjoy a good reputation now - we supply quite a few cafes in the area and Country Cheeses in Tavistock take our sourdough,” said Jonathon. And if you’re in Country Cheeses you know you must be doing something right.  Tavistock’s famous cheese store is just a few miles from Bere Alston and by coincidence we met Jonathon in the shop the next morning when he was delivering bread to manageress Becks… She wanted to tell me about Country Cheeses’ annual festival on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 of August. “It’s completely free and we have loads of our cheesemakers there, all with samples and telling their story - explaining why they do it - and people love it. It is very popular - we see 100s of people over the weekend. “We get fantastic feedback with the special forms we have printed in the brochures and people come back to us with their tasting notes…” Which all sounds very jolly to me - perhaps I might return to the area to enjoy that remarkable festival of all things dairy, and maybe even have another meal at the Leaping Salmon.

(Photo credit: Scott Ferris) Rolling into Houston at the end of the afternoon, a sticky four hours from Dallas on I-45, south all the way, we pulled up outside Fitzgerald’s, an aging building dating from 1918 and originally a home for Polish music. G.B.Fitzgerald took the place over in 1977, and by the time we played there that September, the joint was being run by his daughter Sara. Playing those Texas dance-halls and clubs on a Sunday night had a little something that didn’t usually happen on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Those nights were usually working nights for local musicians, but Sunday was often a night off, and Roomful being a musician’s band usually drew some very cool cats. The very sharply dressed and very silver-haired Freddie Cisneros with his beautiful wife Mary Jane might show, maybe Pete Mayes, immaculate in a white suit and big hollow body guitar, possibly Johnny Copeland, perhaps the T-Birds, Lou Ann Barton or Stevie Ray Vaughan. One night, a year or two later at Fitzgerald’s rival club Rockefeller’s, we had Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson, Koko Taylor and Albert Collins all up on stage at the same time, shaking the joint with Koko’’s Wang Dang Doodle’. I remember Albert looking me in the eye at the end of that night, saying, ‘Man, if I had this band, I’d be a millionaire’ …  This particular evening Freddie came down with some of the guys from his band, The Cold Cuts, and Freddie sat in, playing Ray Sharpe’s ‘Linda Lu’ for all he was worth, short intensive flurries of notes from his guitar, and then into the call and response “ Oh Yeah, My Baby’s Gone’, another Ray Sharpe tune that Freddie had just recorded for Hammond Scott’s cool new Black Top label, under the name of Little Junior One Hand And His Magic Guitar with The Cold Cuts, an appellation that just has to be one of the best stage names ever. Cool cool Freddie, he sure did swing. He and Mary Jane invited some of us back to their place after the show, where we were wined and dined, plates of tacos and beans and rice, cervezas and endless music talk, records pulled from shelves and spun on the big hifi to appreciative shouts of approval, commentary on the players, a mad jabbering festival of food, booze and music and passionate talk, nodding heads, waving arms, tall tales, cries of disbelief, guffaws and groans, and then another disc, another round of crazed talk, more beer, and then finally, a four am series of goodbyes, and a bleary-eyed ride back to the hotel, the Allen Park Inn, sitting beside the Allen Parkway, that winding old road shooting west from downtown, that runs alongside the equally winding Buffalo Bayou, grab a few hours of oblivion prior to a late Monday afternoon check out, and an eight hundred mile drive to Atlanta, Georgia, back once more to that town that had so changed my life a scant eighteen months before. So out along the bayou, onto the highway, headed for Highlands, Hankamer, and Beaumont, and then as Jimmy Rodgers would have said, ‘Goodbye Texas, and hello Louisiana’, as we bid Orange farewell and rolled east, that long old Interstate 10 just lying out there in front of us for hours, past Lake Charles, Lafayette, the south with its swamps and bayous, little towns and huge petro-industrial installations, gas flares and lights flickering in the humid night, billboards flashing by, garish sentinels of the highway, and on and on to Baton Rouge, over the brown and muddy Mississippi River, forever following its relentless southward destiny, bringing tidings from the northern reaches of this strange and mis-begotten nation, ah Baton Rouge, that Red Stick town with restaurants advertising crawfish Hunan style, blinking neons for Dixie Beer, and billboards for Jimmy Lee Swaggart’s TV shows, beaming the word of God into homes with his messages of faith, flag and family values accompanied by his rolling piano stylings, which if you didn’t know, you’d swear it was some cat like Jerry Lee Lewis running the keyboard, which would not have been a bad guess, because old Jerry Lee was in fact Swaggart’s cousin and they’d grown up together, learning piano together, fishing in the bayous together and learning how to sin together. ‘Course, Jerry pretty much embraced that life, that sinful life, and Jimmy went on to preach against it, tho as we were to find out later in the decade, that devilish holy roller Jimmy really dug it, though his tortured soul could never admit it. Except when he got caught with his pants down, which kind of changed things.  Baton Rouge is where 10 veers off to shake hands with New Orleans, and we rolled through the last of Louisiana on 12, past Hammond, past Ponchatoula, north of Lake Ponchartrain and then hitting 10 again a few miles west of the next stateline, and the Suburban crossed the Pearl River Nature Preserve, the swamps dark and eerie, stretches of water gleaming and flashing silver under the southern moon, and then over the river itself, and it’s ‘Goodbye Louisiana, and hello Mississippi’, Gulfport, Biloxi and then it’s Alabama, poor beat poverty gripped Alabama with the crummiest roads, miles and miles of uneven concrete highway, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump for hundreds of miles, which for those sitting next to the windows means an end to leaning a head against the window trying to sleep, too much ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump makes your head spin, your neck ache and your mind despair - oh, Alabama, state of disrepair, your state bird may be the Yellowhammer, but your roads just hammer and yammer, yammer and hammer.  At Mobile we hit 65, northeast to Montgomery, and then on towards the Georgia line, big bugs squishing on the windshield, and past Montgomery the first faint streaks of dawn beginning to dance on the horizon, and another day breaks, the piney woods emerging from the gloom, dark green and impenetrable, kudzu and Spanish Moss softening outlines, little farms with dungareed farmers calling the cows for morning milking, dusty pickups on service roads and side trails, off to make the day’s wages, another sweat-soaked day ahead, toiling on the land, tractors in the far distance hauling long trailers, strange mechanical animals with long plumes of dust for tails, and then over a hill and they are gone, gone forever, visions seen, visions lost, and the Suburban groans onward, the U-haul trailer obediently and blindly following, fortunately having no choice in the matter, even as its tires become more cupped with each inexorable mile. Oh America, when will your roads ever come to an end, when will your cars finally run out of gas, oh America, when will this urge to see beyond the next horizon ever abate, when will the thrum and drone of rolling rubber ever cease, oh America, when will your mighty engines be quiet, the crankshafts stop spinning, the transmissions finish their whining, the pistons quit rising, the tappets end their tapping, the exhausts stop spewing their poisons, and the differentials come to a slow and joyously agreeable stop?  When? Well, not for a while … still some miles to go, and we gotta gas up, stretch our legs, grab some morning coffee, and clean all these dead bugs from the windshield, and wow, what shit have we hit during the night? Yellow and red splodges of bug bodies, liquified at impact,  and then air-dried at seventy mph, stretching from one side of the glass to the other, a montage of death, road accidents that never make the pages of any newspaper, an unrecorded, unheralded and ignored slaughter, and what remained of their remains washed down the drains of an unnamed truck stop just outside of LaGrange, mass funerals that were unacknowledged by the handful of overweight truckers in polyester coveralls in the adjacent rows of pumps, engaged in hosing down their cabs, chewing tobacco, one hand holding the hose, the other trying to drink coffee from a polystyrene cup all the while listening to the crackle of a CB, the multi-tasking of the American trucking industry, a crazed collage of coffee, diesel, radio talk and dead bugs. The Georgia sun was rising as we pulled back onto the highway, Al driving, Porky and Pic in the front seat, me, John and Jimmy in the next, and then Big Guy, Doug and Rich in the next, with Ronnie back in the hamster cage, the circus was back on the road, and closing in on Atlanta, and the promise of bed, the dream of lying at full length, a soft mattress, the ability to roll over, to the left or to the right, didn’t really matter which way, it was just the freedom to be able to do it, oh, such a luxury, such a delight, such a pleasure, and if you wanted to take a pee, why, just throw the covers back and walk to the bathroom, no having to ask the driver to pull over, and have everyone on your seat get up and out of the truck just so you could make it to the side of the road and get some relief, oh man, the sweetness of a bed and a room, clean sheets, and a pillow. A pillow, dammit, a pillow. These were the dreams of those of us in the Suburban, but the dream was forbidden for the driver. He had to gaze at the road, the immediate future, the many tons of potential death flying by him at horrendous speeds, those fleeting rushing chunks of stylized steel to be avoided at all costs, the most important cost being the complete and utter avoidance of thinking about sleep, no matter how tired he was, how his reddened eyes burned and instead concentrating upon the absolute necessity of keeping those peepers peeled and open, watching, calculating, estimating, keeping that dusty old Suburban on the straight and narrow, eyeing the gauges, watching the signs, checking the rear view mirrors, the side mirrors, the far distance ahead to check of potential problems half a mile down the road, homing in on impending on ramps with possible dangers of cars or trucks piloted by absent minded or just simply crazy fools suddenly entering the highway, be prepared for the sudden whoosh of a passing eighteen wheeler, its forty foot trailer pushing wind, flashing his lights to signal to the trucker that it was now safe for him to pull into our lane ahead of us, and him blinking his rear lights in thanks and acknowledgment, the little courtesies of life lived at sixty miles per hour, and the traffic thickens, rush hour is on and as we get close to Atlanta the pace quickens, all the commuters in their cars, the four wheelers as the truckers call them, hurrying to make their gigs, speeding, zipping in and out of the traffic, as if they have some kind of magic ‘keep me safe oh lord’ halo around their cars, turning them into kinds of psychic dodgems, which will actually work and really keep them safe, which of course they won’t, as sadly evidenced by the mangled wreckage we’d see from time to time, flashing blue and red lights, screaming sirens, and ambulances with back doors open wide, and kids sitting at the side of the road crying, damn halos didn’t work then, no sirree, but there were no accidents that morning, so I guess, for a short while at least, the halos were working, and then we were there. Parked, motor off, stumbled out of the truck, clothes bags and instruments in hand. The hotel. Beds, sheets, pillows, and bathrooms.

Another place Rick Stein has visited while filming his excellent BBC programme on Cornwall is that shrine to good quality meat, otherwise known as Philip Warren & Son’ s extraordinary butcher’s shop in Launceston. I’ve known Philip for years and always enjoy talking with him - he and his son Ian are real experts when it comes to first class grass-fed beef, lamb and all the other carnivorous substances many of us enjoy. Here’s a feature about the father and son team I wrote a couple of years ago for the Western Morning Nwws… There can be few individuals whose name rings bells of universal approval throughout the industry or trade they represent, but mention Philip Warren to foodies anywhere in the West Country, or in top restaurant kitchens across the UK, and you can expect to see a hearty nod of endorsement.  The name of the jovial and hugely knowledgeable Launceston butcher is synonymous with quality.  Whether you are speaking to a Cornish housewife or a Michelin chef, the sort of thing you’ll regularly hear from Philip’s customers is: “We love his meat. The beef tastes like beef used to taste years ago. Full of flavour.”  And yet a slight correction should be applied to all the praise heaped on the name Philip Warren. To be accurate, we need to add the name Ian Warren to the equation - because Philip’s son is the main driver behind the company’s recent expansion and the reason why some of the most famous chefs in the land phone Launceston when they’re in need of meat that stands out from the crowd. It was Ian’s idea, for example, to invest what was almost a six figure sum in expanding the company’s meat dry-ageing system on the trading estate where they opened a second shop a few years ago. It was originally supposed to be a small annex of the old shop in Launceston town centre, but the outlet our near the A30 grew and grew in popularity, and so did the back room work that went with it.  All of which might sound as dry as ditchwater in a food article, but there is a reason I went to see Philip and Ian and take a tour around their new dry-ageing system - and it is a story that should fascinate anyone who loves quality meat.  You will see terms like “28-day aged steak” in most good restaurants nowadays - and you could be forgive for imagining that butchers simply hang the meat somewhere cool and dry for a period before cutting it into steaks or joints.  But talk to the Warren family and you quickly learn that ageing meat properly is a highly complex procedure. You also learn that the meat of certain breeds and types of cattle behaves in different ways when it comes to being processed.  To cut a long story short, all meat goes through a series of changes after an animal has been killed. Hack a steak off a freshly slaughtered beast and try to eat it, and your jaw muscles will have their work cut out. Once the animal is slaughtered and control systems in its cells stop functioning, the enzymes begin attacking other cell molecules, turning large flavourless molecules into smaller, flavourful fragments. Among other things, there is an enzyme called calpain that gets to work tenderising the muscle fibres. So if you hang beef in the right conditions, this natural tenderisation process can be allowed to occur over, say, 14 to 18 days. In that time the meat will both become more tender, and loose weight through moisture loss. Other molecules (friendly bacteria etc) also get to work - all of which helps to heighten the flavour of meat the consumer will eventually eat.     Getting this process to function in exactly the right way is not as easy as it sounds. Which is why Ian spent a long time thinking about and planning the multi-fridge system now in place at Warren & Son’s premises. Father and son are now so proud of what they’ve achieved, they take top chefs - and journalists like me - on a tour to see how it all works.  “When we first started ageing the meat we had a fridge rigged up to keep the humidity down,” Ian explained. “That is fine, but you can’t put your meat straight into that fridge because it is starved of moisture. So now we have a succession of fridges.  “The general rule of dry-ageing meat is to have a good air flow and constant temperature - so we’ve got a big fridge with ultra-high-spec fans that keep the 10 metres by 20 metres unit at exactly the same temperature, despite the fact that the door is open and shut umpteen times a day.  “All the meat stays in there for at least 14 days. That is because we want the enzymes to work inside the meat.” After the meat has been hanging at a precise cool temperature for between 14 to 18 days it is shifted to a second fridge which is also humidity controlled.  “By then the enzymes have done their work inside the meat but we need to get it into the humidity controlled fridge before spores start forming on the surface,” said Ian. “You need to dry the meat in a slow, relaxed, way - if you do it too fast you’ll make become too brittle.  “Over four weeks we lose 6.8 per cent of the weight - and four per cent of that is lost in the first two weeks,” said Ian, adding that the business now ages different cuts of meat for different periods of time and also that the length of ageing can depend upon a particular commercial customer’s requirements (some will want beef that been aged for as much as 70 or 80 days). This highly technical and exacting ageing process is only part of the story - because, as Ian says, nothing in the world will improve meat that has been bred and raised in the wrong way. Which brings us to Philip and his extraordinary knowledge of cattle and the different breeds. Here’s a part of the story that might surprise many meat-eaters - Philip Warren & Son tend to purchase the kind of cattle that a great many buyers in the meat trade would reject - ie the more traditional breeds like Red Devon, Galloways and Dexters that have not been finished on rich diets of grain, but which have grazed in the West Country uplands.     Philip has seen research that shows these older breeds contain more calpain in their muscle systems than you’d see in the huge modern European crossbreed types.   “The big European cattle are all about bulk,” he told me. “So you’re getting a lot more muscle and density, which works against tenderness. That is why we are always looking for the old moorland type. It is about the old saying - the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.  People seem to think it was a way of saying: eat meat on the bone. It wasn’t that: it was saying that the meat nearest the bone eats sweetest. So with these modern breeds with more muscle - as you are coming away from the bone and you are just getting more tough muscle.  “In our system the calpain is basically tenderising the meat - but the loss of moisture in the aged meat is helping to increase the flavour.”  At this point, father and son moved on to a subject that surprised even a food writer like me. It seems incredible, but the European grading system for beef does not account for the potential flavour ratios a carcass might offer - whereas the far more exacting grading systems used in countries like Australia take many different factors, including potential flavour, into account.  Philip told me: “For Britain to survive as a food nation it will be the little things that make the difference - making sure what it says on the tin is what it is. For the British quality beef industry to survive after Brexit - you might be looking at niche markets. “Yes, people want to go out and have two steaks and bottle of wine for 20 quid - and you can do that out of bullocks with a high yield. But you cannot do that out of bullocks with a low yield which might be high in flavour.”  Ian added: “The way classification is carried out in the European way as it is now is very basic. For the quality end of British beef to change that, we need to classify beef like they would in Australia. There they look at a carcass in much more detail - like the colour of the fat, the marbling in the flesh, and so on. The graders there have cards like a sample carpet-swatch with numerous shades of reds - they hold it up and select the flesh colour and then judge it one to nine. The potential flavour is part of the grading.”  Philip said: “This could be very important and give us an opportunity because Ian’s biggest challenge (in top London restaurants for example) is to replace the USDA (United States Dry Aged) beef they are buying.  That stuff has all the marbling and soft texture because it’s grain fed. But Ian has had to prove to the chefs that he has taken grass-fed beef to another level.  “The chefs who are used to the USDA beef need to see that marbling - and because of the ay we dry-age beef they now can with ours. We can say: this is a natural product which is as close as we can get to USDA - but when it comes to the flavour there will be a big bonus. “Maybe it is not quite as tender, I think some beef is far to soft anyway. But it’s about getting the customer to understand that you need to - not chew, that is the wrong word - but just hold the beef in your mouth a little longer.” When customers walk into the main Warren & Son shop just off the A30 at Launceston, they are confronted by a big plate glass chiller cabinet full of cuts from various traditional beef breeds. It’s fascinating, if you can make your way through the inevitable crowd, to see how the marbling and fat cover can vary. And from that moment on you, as consumer, realise that you have stepped in to serious territory. This is a kind of shrine - one that is all about a long and complex story that ranges from rough grazing to the flavour of meat - from provenance to process to the eventual proof in the pudding. A motto I’ve had for a while now is: eat less meat but eat better meat - and Philip Warren & Son allows you the prime opportunity to do just that.

Like many people, I am really enjoying Rick Stein’s Cornwall series on BBC television. I think he’s a good presenter - partly because he always seems to know what he is talking about and partly because he just seems to be a jolly nice bloke. I have had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of times for the newspaper, but only on the phone - my huge regret is that after his producer David Pritchard died I was set to go to Cornwall to interview Rick in order to write a big tribute to the man who’d produced all his TV programmes from the year dot. Alas, the interview was called off pretty much last minute because apparently Rick had a business meeting - which I found a little disappointing. We were the only paper ever likely to give David - and his work - such a big double page spread. I’ll put the interview I once did with David up here on the website one day soon as a podcast. Anyway, the one thing I have noticed about the new Cornwall, series is that just about everywhere Rick goes, I have been before. At least half the people he’s interviewed have been featured by me in the Western Morning News down the years - which is only to be expected because Cornwall is not the biggest of counties… Here, for example, is a news piece I wrote the Cornish potato vodka maker Steve Dustow after I visited him a few years ago Cornwall is about to get its first gin and vodka distilling operation complete with high-tech equipment and a visitor centre - and it’s all happening in the middle of a potato farm. Steve Dustow, who has been making the now well known Cornish Aval Dor vodka from his farm’s potatoes, will be opening the doors to the new distilling project in the next few weeks. “In 2010 my brother and I dreamed up the idea of having a distillery on the farm, but then realised it was going to be pretty difficult,” Steve told me. “After that I was taking our potatoes, our water, our bottles up to an expert company - and ultimately they would do the distilling all the way up in Cambridgeshire.  “It allowed us to test the market, give us more confidence and build relationships in the business, while we evolved this project in the background,” Steve continued.  “It took a bit longer than anticipated - eight years, in fact - but we got a grant to do the project from the Cornwall Development Company South Eastern Local Action Group which is all about farm diversification and job creation, and that really helped.” It’s been a steep learning curve for Steve who has had to thoroughly understand the complexities of distilling alcohol as well has successfully pass through numerous legal hoops in order to bring the project to where it is now.  “The equipment we’ve got is state of the art - but you still need to know what you are doing because it is very volatile stuff,” he said as the new stainless steel equipment was hard at work distilling a local Cornish cider, which Steve is making into an apple based gin. Steve says there’s one other still operating commercially in Cornwall - but he believes that no one else west of the Tamar is going the extra mile and distilling pure alcohols like gin or vodka. Creating something like a brandy from a basic drink like cider is one thing - but repeating the process so that you get totally clear 96% alcohol is another job entirely.  Most new gin-makers buy in industrially made alcohol and then add flavours with the help of ‘botanical’ ingredients like juniper to give their product a USP. Steve believes in going the whole hog himself in what he calls a “plough to bottle” process. Having made his own 96% clear alcohol which is far too strong for anyone to enjoy, Steve then dilutes the product by using spring water from his family’s Colwith Farm, in the hills inland of Fowey. That creates a smooth and sophisticated drink like Aval Dor vodka - but gins are more complex again because they are flavoured with “botanicals”. “We will be making both our vodka and gin here,” Steve told me. “I call it from plough to bottle. In the wine industry they call it single estate. To do everything on one site - like grow the crops (which my brother and father do),  cook them in a mash tub to make your own ‘wine’, distil that into pure alcohol, secondary distil it into gin, age it, bottle it, source your own water from your own ground...  “That is 100 per cent authenticity and that is what we are really proud of doing.”

In a real old Cornish “mizzle” the other day I stopped at the old mine stacks west of Gurnard’s Head located under the great crag of Carn Galver which gives the tin-mine its name.  A path sets off toward the sea next to the ruins and if you walk down it you will find yourself peering into the depths of Porthmoina Cove. Look around you and you will get the feeling that there is something odd about the lay of the land around here.  That is because mankind mucked about with the place for centuries extracting tin. Before they took to going deep underground to dig the stuff out, the tinners first used a process called ‘streaming’ which basically meant washing out the metal using water from the tiny runlets that pour off the hills.  After that, they learned to dig ‘costeen’ pits in search of lodes or deposits of lumps of ore which had been separated out from the mother-lode by weathering.  They wouldn’t have been given planning permission today – it was all fairly ruinous in landscape terms. But things soften with age and now the area seems to have been given an added sense of interest. To one side of the cove looms the headland upon which once stood Bosigran Castle. This place may or may not link King Arthur to the area. His mother was called Y’gran – and the identical sounding suffix of Bosigran has been enough to convince many that she hailed from here.  Nearby Gurnard’s Head is most famous nowadays for the excellent pub/hotel, but the actual headland is well worth a visit. Go there on a stormy day if you like watching the ocean at its most spectacular…  In Cornish the place is called Trereen Dinas, which means the castle on the high place. And there was indeed a fortified cliff castle perched here, dating from the second century BC.

This lockdown week I have mainly been eating… Well, I return time and again this winter to hot-smoked chicken. It never fails to put the patent-wow-ometer way into the pink - which is relevant because hot-smoked chicken tends to have a slightly pink hue about its normally white flesh.  The point is that a hot-smoked bird gives you much more bang for your buck. By which I mean: with very little effort on your part you can produce something which explodes with 100 times more flavour than a simple roast chicken. All you need is a lidded barbecue or, even better, a Kamado Joe and some wood chips. Talking of which, the Devon based company Hot Smoked has just been named as a finalist in the Gift of the Year Awards for their basic smoking kit.   Pasta-bake. The very name makes my foodie enthusiasm wilt, but during this dark cold winter during lockdown I’ve needed every ounce of comfort food I can get - and a really good pasta-bake can do that job like a creamy eiderdown.  I also love to slowly steam some frozen fish, which is all I can really expect to get in a pandemic lockdown. With polenta chips it makes a light and simple supper. But you really need a fresh salad to go with it - even the most simple caesar-salad will do - or this diced Russian salad made with winter vegetables like endive plus a few cheeky summer things like tomatoes and radishes from the supermarket. You’ve gotta break a few rules…

It’s amazing how rapidly and readily we humans adapt and adopt. Here’s an example: for centuries the idea that anyone could mess around with the names of months would have seemed crazy, but now we all seem to accept the concept with hardly the uplift of a raised hairy eyebrow - especially in January, or Januhairy, as women who have signed up to no longer shave their armpits now regard the first month of the year… But these are the food pages and of course Veganuary is the big one at the moment. It is the subject of the half the food related emails I’ve received since Christmas - hundreds of them sent by official vegan organisations, movements and businesses. Veganuary is closely followed by the number of Dry January emails - which have been knocking on my door, to little or no avail, for years.   Also in the rename-the-month game there’s Janujuiceless (does what it says on the tin), something called Manuary (men officially celebrating masculinity) Januhairy (as mentioned above) - after that we move on to FebFast, Februhairy, Parched March, Maykadonation, Dry July, Souptember, Dogtober and, of course, Movember.  I don’t do any of them. Yes, I know some represent good causes - but being a non-joiner type person, I’ll grow a moustache at any time of the year in the unlikely event I’d suddenly want one. And I am more than happy to eat non-animal-based food when, and if, I fancy it. People like me are much happier with the idea of Tryanuary. My RAW Food and Drink PR colleague Kath Hope explains: “Tryanuary is a nationwide campaign, founded in 2015, to encourage support for the beer industry throughout January.   “Our breweries definitely need our support with pubs shut again for the third time,” says Kath, who works on the Salcombe Brewery account and who wanted to tell me about their new beer, Sun Drop, a vegan and gluten-free ale.  She adds: “There is a wider meaning to Tryanuary… Instead of giving something up in January (booze, meat etc) why not take a more positive stance (we could all do with some positivity) and TRY something new.” Exactly the kind of New Year’s Resolution which wins approval in certain quarters, especially in these dark times when there’s not much to look forward to… But to return to Veganuary, the fact is that many of us yearn fresh green salads and light veggie based foods right now - partly because of the grim grey weather, and also because fresh veg is difficult to find at the best of times in midwinter. You could, however, find plant-life inspiration in a wonderful new book called Scandinavian Green, (Hardie Grant £26) by Trine Hahnemann - subtitled Simple Ways to Eat Vegetarian, Everyday. The author is a ‘flexitarian’ and she writes: “I try to live by the 80:20 rule. Eighty per cent of what I eat should come from fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes, and 20 per cent from animals. On a regular diet you should eat about 2,500 calories a day, so about 350 calories of that should come from animals.” Even lovers of good quality grass-fed West Country meat and dairy, can be happy to go along with such an equation - although as the cook in our house, I am not going to go to the lengths of actually measuring the quantities out as Trine suggests.  She says: “When you look at your dinner plate, half of it should be vegetables, one-sixth should be pulses and lentils, one-sixth grains and the final one-sixth a mix of dairy, unsaturated fat and nuts.” It’s all very well doing it with a one-pot dish like a soup, stew or casserole where - as the cook - you’ll know exactly what went into the pan in the first place. But many of us would much rather follow the Italian or French way of eating and have separate courses in which the diner can actually taste each ingredient. Take, for example, a prime grass-fed Red Devon beef steak - I’d much rather eat it with nothing more than a few homemade chips than see it submerged under a swamp of vegetables and pulses.  However, such a meal would include a generous course of fresh salad with multiple raw ingredients, and perhaps some fruit to finish.  So I’m happier to look at an entire day’s consumption than simply focus on a single plate. But let’s not be pedantic about this - the basic “flexitarian” concept is a sound one. I even know a leading West Country butcher who’s mantra is: “Eat less meat - but make it good meat.” There is, of course, a really easy way to either go vegan, reduce your alcohol intake and whatever else it is that helps you feel more worthy - and that is to buy items which are made with exactly that job in mind. The good news is that there are many producers in this region who are able to help you with such a quest… One prime example would be Chunk of Devon - two-time winners of the Britain’s Best Pasty Award. The Ottery St Mary based company has launched a new vegan selection box for Veganuary, consisting of three award-winning vegan pies and pasties and one new product, the Cheatin’ Cheeze Pasty. Chunk’s Simon Bryon-Edmond told me: “We have been creating award-winning pies for nearly 15 years and our focus has always been on producing great tasting products, using locally sourced ingredients with no additives. This collection is no exception. It’s all about the taste, so whether you are vegetarian, vegan or just an all-round lover of pies, we are confident that you’ll adore our vegan range.” The box includes the Chunki Roast Veg Pasty (Taste of the West Gold 2020), the Spicy Jack Pie (scored a gold award at the British Pie awards 2020), the Nips and Nuts Pie (another Taste of the West Gold 2020) and the aforementioned Cheatin' Cheeze Pasty. The Vegan Selection Box (£30 for a box of eight) is available for nationwide delivery from 1st January from chunkofdevon.co.uk When it comes to Dry January I’ve got a bottle of gin, which I admit sounds as though I’ve misunderstood the whole idea. But Salcombe Distilling Company’s New London Light - known as NLL - really does taste and ‘feel’ like the real thing (by which I mean London Dry Gin), without containing a single drop of alcohol.  “NLL is crafted by first distilling three botanicals - rich Macedonian juniper berries, ginger and habanero capsicum - into which 15 additional botanicals are blended,” said a spokesman for the region’s multi-award-winning distillery.  “In this way it delivers a complex spectrum of flavour with hints of citrus, orange and sage.” Try one of Salcombe Gin’s alcohol-free cocktail recipes (like the one in our panel for Clear Sights) and you really will be able to close your eyes and imagine you’re in some fabulous bar enjoying a drop of the good stuff. And, as we are experiencing in these strange times, that is half the battle in achieving  lockdown success. It’s not so much about what we’re actually doing - because we can’t do much - the main thing is about how we feel. If we can make ourselves feel good about our lives and our world, getting through these dark days will be a good deal easier. As the renaming of the months, I’ve just come up with Flexibruary in honour of the diet I shall be pursuing all of next month… Salcombe Gin’s ‘Clear Sights’ Swap your daily smoothie for something that adds a little sophistication and spice. ‘Clear Sights’ combines a careful balance of citrus, savoury and spice to highlight NLL’s flavours of habanero capsicum, zesty orange and herbaceous sage.  Ingredients:   50ml ‘New London Light’   50ml fresh orange juice 50ml carrot juice 12.5ml lime juice 1 slice of jalapeño to garnish  Soda water top Method:   Muddle the jalapeño slice in the Boston shaker. Add the NLL, orange, carrot and lime juices along with plenty of ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice, top up with soda water and garnish with a baby carrot.