Turkey, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, ham (both home cooked and Iberico) and tongue - not to mention numerous sausages, bacon and a few other carnivorous delights. Having got that little lot down last month, we thought we'd feature vegetarian food. Somehow the body cries out for a little light and easy going, easy-to-digest, plant-life. Of course it is a lot easier in summer. Salads - whacking great big salads filled to the brim with nourishment from the garden. That is exactly what many would eat by choice right now. And it would be easy enough to pop into a supermarket and buy some of those ready picked and washed salad leaves, a few greenhouse tomatoes, a cucumber and a pepper or two. But many people have a thing about seasonal eating. You don’t need to be religious about it, and you can drizzle extra-virgin olive oil over a bowl of Canary Island tomatoes happily enough - especially if you can add a handful of the herbs that still grow in the garden, not to mention leaves from the pot of basil that is struggling on the window sill.  Somehow though, it seems to miss the point. All those un-ecological food miles that the tomatoes have flown, all those poly-tunnels where the Spanish and others bung on the artificial fertilisers with enthusiastic abandon… Having once over-wintered near Motril on the Costa de Sol, and I know what goes into the average Spanish iceberg lettuce - and not a single crunchy but tasteless leaf of the stuff has passed my lips since The sunshine taste of the Mediterranean CAN be enjoyed however, with the help of a pulse and a bean or two. There is a bit of a problem here and it is that most dried pulses need a soak in water - some for lengthy periods - so you really need to get your act together and give your hardened dried vegetable jewels a plunge the day before you intend eating them. Or you can buy them in a can. Nowhere near as good, but what for instance could be more instantaneous and delicious than a simple salad made of cannellini beans, sliced red onion and a heft sprinkling of parsley from the garden? The only work you have to do after opening the can is to slice the onion and chop the parsley (what’s that, 30 seconds?) and make a substantial vinaigrette from the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford, lemon juice and a spoonful of French mustard. A sprinkle of sea salt, some crusty bread, a glass of wine, a little Flamenco music - and for a moment or two you could dream warm Spanish dreams of distant summer holidays. But I’d advise taking the time to prepare the dried pulses. That salad really does taste a thousand times better when you’ve soaked and boiled your own beans, but make sure you pour on some extra virgin olive oil just after you have drained them. This not only prevents them sticking to one another, but somehow heightens the flavour when combined with the eventual vinaigrette. And the great thing about bean salads is that you can add what you like to highlight the dish. If you don’t care who you breathe over and you fancy a little pizzazz - throw in a couple of finely chopped chillies as well as some olive oil soaked sun dried tomatoes, and add half a clove of garlic with some anchovies that you have crushed in a pestle and mortar. Nothing could be more simple and yet that dish will put the taste buds in overdrive. More-over, it's extremely healthy and remarkably cheap - especially if you buy the beans dried. In fact dried pulses must rate as one of the most inexpensive foodstuffs that you can purchase, and if you have a pressure cooker (like the electronic Instant Pot which is the one I’d recommend) they don’t even take that much expensive energy to cook. Add a couple of cans of tuna fish to the above and you will have a supper dish that will feed several people and cost under two quid! Chickpeas are another example of dried, value for money, nosh - and are so adaptable that you can find a thousand and one recipes for turning them into lip-smackingly good sunshine food. They go particularly well in tagines - those warming, Moroccan style, stews cooked in a shallow pot, usually made of brown earthenware with a strange conical top. You must soak chickpeas for at least eight hours and boil them for no less than one-and-a-half hours, but in a pressure cooker this can be reduced to just 30 or 40 minutes. A great favourite of mine is a fish tagine which requires a kilogram of any white fish you can buy. Cheap and cheerful will do, but best if you can to buy something fresh and delicious caught locally. Add large quantities of garlic, paprika, ground cumin, a chilli pepper as well as salt and lemon juice to taste. Simmer this lot in olive oil over a lowish heat for half-an-hour and then add the chickpeas and a little of their cooking water, stir gently in and simmer again for another 10 minutes. Not exactly difficult, but the dish is exotic and it will give you all the warmth of Morocco and brighten even the coldest of January days. Lentils are another great dried gift from summer gardens - especially the slightly more expensive green beauties from Puy in France. I say expensive, but compared to meat or fish they are the food of paupers, yet the flavour of these small pea-like wonders is exquisite. A Sicilian friend taught me this dish… Boil Puy lentils until they are al-dente, fry some garlic and onions in olive oil until soft and slightly browned, grab handfuls of spaghetti and break the stuff into inch long sticks, boil and drain. Combine the whole lot in a large ornate bowl and stir in copious amounts of the very best extra virgin olive oil. You really can’t get much simpler than that - the only other thing you add is some sea salt and lots of fresh ground black pepper - and yet this basic peasant dish is an absolute sensation for lunch.  It’s the sort of stuff you just can’t stop eating, which surely is what you want from any food. And I for one will be taking the simple, sunny, healthy, Mediterranean route to cooking in the next few weeks to save the poor old body from the heavier excesses of midwinter.

Post Christmas walks are a feature of the British countryside. You need to walk off all that festive excess. But not too excessively. When you get to a certain age and over it is wise not to overdo things - especially when your physical-being is already labouring under the Christmas excesses.  So what’s recommended is a little series of post-Christmas hikes that get more demanding each time you go out.  Perhaps the under-50s can do what they like, but I reckon people over that age who’ve been hammering away at the food and drink for a few days would be well served by a short Boxing Day hike of just three or four gentle miles. I know fitness buffs who’d laugh at this - indeed I write these words after just completing a crazily difficult yomp over the most difficult terrain in Southern England, by which I mean Exmoor’s boggy and sodden Chains - but health-care experts tell me that just a couple of miles walked at a brisk-ish pace can do wonders for your ticker and other bits as well.  For example, a friend who has diabetes has one of those little testing devices which measures sugar levels in blood, and he informs me that he can bring his count down a good few points just by walking twice around the flat recreation ground near his house. My dog Finn wouldn’t even regard that as a pee-break - let alone a hike. On the other end of the scale, I know people who believe in the big Boxing Day walk like some people believe in the Second Coming. Nothing will do for them but to punish themselves by yomping for miles over hill and dale in a guilt-ridden frenzy to make amends for the seasonal excess. Let’s be sensible and go down some kind of middle road. Not that middle of the road needs to be boring. Take the short, fairly unstrenuous, walk from Sennen Cove to Land’s End as the perfect example of the genre. Simply walk west out of Sennen on the coast path which runs up Mayon Cliff to the National Trust’s historic little look-out building at the top. That's the climbing bit over and done with and you can look over your shoulder and see all of Whitesand Bay in its great curving glory - and then turn to peer south west where the cliffs march with so much majesty to reach Dr Syntax’s Head and, ultimately, Land’s End. Dr Syntax’s Head? No, I don’t know why it’s called that either, but you pass it on the more or less flat stroll to that most iconic of all Cornish locations. And at Land’s End you can stop and stare at all that maritime wonder, proud of the fact that, just for a few minutes, you are the most south-westerly human beings on the British mainland. At the other end of our peninsula, there’s nothing easier - or perhaps more dramatic - than a walk in the Somerset Levels. And this year, touchwood, you won’t need your snorkel of flippers to enjoy the vast flat landscapes of this very special area.  One easy option would be the four mile hike around the RSPB’s Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve. From the Shapwick-Westhay road, stroll along the old railway line south east to the reserve - but do take the detour through the woods around the ancient Sweet Track as you go. This is very easy going – there’s not a slope in sight - and you can stop off in the various bird-hides along the way and watch countless feathered friends. If you are there early or late, you will even stand a chance of seeing the famous starling murmurations.  When it comes to easy walks, two organisations immediately come to mind. The South West Lakes Trust and the Forestry Commission are both ideal candidates when it comes to providing paths for people of all abilities - partly because they both look after what could be described as controlled environments. The SW Lakes Trust has the region's reservoirs - and most of these have circular paths around their shores which tend, by their nature, to be fairly flat. At Roadford Lake, just above the A30 on the Devon-Cornwall border, there’s Coombepark Walk which is a real lazy doddle because it only takes some 20 minutes each way. Access is from the dam-side car park, and the route takes you past the restaurant along Coombepark Valley towards the fantastic little cob shelter on a spur that stretches into the lake. Up on Exmoor the huge expanses of Wimbleball Lake offer more water’s edge hiking. On Dartmoor, Fernworthy Reservoir has a truly magical saunter right around the region’s highest sizeable stretch of water. From lakes to forests. A spokesperson for the Forestry Commission in the West Country once told me: “We have a policy of open access where we are able to offer it - so where you get car parks and notice boards with forest walks, then the public is welcome to explore.” One excellent area for a bit of post-Christmas walking - which offers stupendous views of the Exe Estuary and central south Devon as a bonus - is to be found at Haldon Hill above Exeter. Another easy access forestry zone can be enjoyed at Cardinham Woods on outskirts of Bodmin. On Dartmoor the Forestry Commission has woods at Bellever where there’s a car park and countless easy routes, including a short trail down to the East Dart river. And then there’s the newly laid, easy-access, footpath that runs down the River Barle from the central Exmoor village of Simonsbath to spooky and lonely Wheal Eliza… In fact, that might well be the route I’ll be taking to mark my own version of a healthy New Year

Carols are an important part of Christmas, but there was a time when they dominated seasonal proceedings. Almost every community would have had its own festive song which would have been performed again and again each December around the parish.  Alas, most of these have now been lost or forgotten, but there is one Somerset village which is fighting hard to pass down its own unique carol for future generations. The Dunster Carol is a joyous, melodic, song performed each year around the village’s famous medieval streets - as well as in the magnificent church - and it has always been sung in the crowded bar of the ancient Luttrell Arms on the last Sunday before Christmas for as long as anyone can remember… But the Dunster Carol would have been consigned to the history books like so many others had one local man not been determined to keep it as an audible jewel for the community.  “I was born here in the village and as soon as you were able to walk years ago, you were in the choir at Dunster Church,” I was told by retired garage owner Steve Bowden. “The men in the church choir used to go around singing carols and the boys were dragged in to sing as well.” After World War Two Mr Bowden moved away from the village for a few years but eventually returned in the early 1960s to find that carol-singing had almost died out in the village.  “There were no carols being sung at all - so I went around and got a few of the older chaps together and we started singing again,” said Mr Bowden. “I got some little books printed out with the words - because none of the carols we knew were written down.  “I got them from the old fellas who were still around - and now we’ve been through songbook after songbook as they’ve worn out over the years.” Mr Bowden believes the Dunster Carol may first have been sung during, or just after, World War One. The melody is identical to the music of an ancient French folk tune and the hypothesises is that one of Dunster’s men serving in the trenches would have heard it, memorised the melody, and then brought it home. After that someone adapted a poem (I Hear Along Our Street) by the British poet Longfellow to suit the music - and so a carol was born. “Actually, we do have another carol which is unique to this village,” said Mr Bowden, leafing through his old homemade book of carols. “Christ The Lord Is Born This Day is really more of a Dunster Carol than the other one in some ways because it is older. But I know nothing whatsoever as to how that carol came here.” But Mr Bowden, who is in his eighties, now fears there’s a danger the old carols could be lost sometime in the near future. “When I was a boy there were no televisions or radios much, so as you went around the village people were more interested in listening to you. These days they open the door and say, ‘Sorry, we’re watching the telly.’ “And of course, a lot of our members nowadays are ‘going up to see Our Maker’ and our numbers are dwindling - but we are still trying to recruit some younger people. And we have some in their 50s and 60s which, as far as I am concerned, is young,” said Mr Bowden, who is delighted that staff at the local school are now teaching the village carol to the children.   “It is very important to keep it going and I hope we will manage to do that over the years. For all I know it might well be the only village carol still being sung in a small community like this each year,” he said. Many towns and villages used to have their own distinctive repertoire of carols in times gone by. In fact, carols have been part of Britain’s festive tradition since the Middle Ages. Today the word 'carol' tends to be attached to any non-pop or commercial song connected to Christmas, but originally ‘to carole’, meant ‘to dance’. Then, through the Middle Ages the special festive songs began to be connected with the nativity story and were often featured in plays and church processions. But it seems that local carols did not travel far. Certainly, Mr Bowden remembers how the Dunster Carol would only ever be sung in and around his West Somerset village - with one exception… “The only place we used to go to outside the village of Dunster was the Butcher’s Arms in Carhampton,” he recalled. “This was in World War Two and there were no lights or head-lights or anything - you weren’t even allowed to use a torch. So the only way we could get there in the pitch dark was to follow the white line in the middle of the main road.” At least the men and boys walking in the dark would have had their spirits lifted by the following words as they sang the Dunster Carol… I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs Hark! They play so sweet On their hautboys Christmas songs. (Chorus) Let us by the fire  Ever higher, ever higher, Sing until the night expire Sing until the night expire In December ring Every day the chimes Loud the gleemen sing In the street their merry rhymes. Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol rings. Shepherds at the grange Where the Babe was born Sing with many a change Christmas carols until morn.

Here is a truism I believe in ever more strongly each time I walk out the front door: travel, in all its multifarious forms, is the most mind-broadening and informative thing most of us can do to improve our knowledge of the world on a regular basis. For example, it’s one thing to read about climate change or to wonder about its planet-altering enormity by watching television programmes - but it is altogether more informative to stand next to a high alpine glacier in midwinter and feel a warm wind on your face. Do that - and be told by a local expert that the ancient glacier will be completely gone in 30 years time - and you will know that climate change is happening here and now, even if you won’t learn what’s causing it. I did such a thing in shirtsleeves recently, while gazing down into a high Swiss valley that was green, but should have been white. It’s when you go to the extreme edge of things that you really see climate change in action. Mountains are the high altitude equivalent of the Earth’s Poles - they provide us with a chance to escape our temperate zones and visit places where the slightest meteorological change has its first profound effect. And right now the great heights of Europe are telling us something big and worrying is happening. But then, if you don’t live in Switzerland and you are not a winter-sports fanatic, why should you care about what happens in mountains? It could be that the lack of ice up there has nothing to do with the crazy conveyor belt of storms that’s been hitting Britain in recent times. The act of travelling won’t give us any answers to that, but it can allow us a hunch or two. Nor does travel have to be quite as dramatic as standing on the edge of a midwinter glacier in a T-shirt. Also recently I was on an early morning commuter train - but it was like no workaday journey you’d experience in the UK. A ride on the train from Andermatt to Zurich gave me plenty to think about… Every person in the carriage was busy making business calls on mobile phones in a plethora of languages. The immaculately dressed man next to me went from English to German to French in a single call. Others were switching from Italian to Russian - one woman was using a cocktail of Mandarin, German and American English. Can you imagine that happening on the 8.15 from Taunton to Exeter? I felt a bit of a rustic sitting there in my muddy clothes - which is the way apparel goes when you hike in alps that should be covered in snow but instead are just wet. As we rattled along at a highly efficient 120 mph on a train that was guaranteed to reach its destination within seconds of the advertised time, I began to wonder how poor old Britain - with all its self-important, head-in-the-sand, parochialism - can hope to compete internationally when a second-class train carriage plying the shore of Lake Zurich is full of multi-linguistic people who have the world at their fingertips. At least, I was wondering that - until I began to earhole the English parts of conversations going on around me. Then I realised that these people were speaking the same old balderdash as the rest of Europe, or even the rest of what used to be called the Western World. All the conversations were centred upon arranging meetings, or strategies, or some other kind of middle-management claptrap. I have been on commuter trains in emerging Far Eastern “tiger economies” where people talking on mobile phones hurriedly discuss the pure and profitable act of making things. Here (by which I mean the UK, or Europe) we talk about managing things - which is an important-sounding way of creating, or keeping, jobs which aren’t really jobs at all. “We’re having a video-conference later to discuss response-times,” said the bloke next to me. “They’re slow, and we’re worried about customer satisfaction.” I felt like saying: “Don’t bother with the video conference - tell the person in charge of response-times to make things better, or else…” So my new theory - inspired by a week’s alpine travel - is this: that the snows and glaciers of Europe are melting because there’s too much hot-air being wafted uselessly upwards by the millions working in management.

Half the word’s frankincense used to pass through the doorway in our photograph during the period when Jesus Christ was born. So it is highly likely that the valuable incense that the Three Kings so famously brought to Bethlehem would have gone through this very doorway on the coast of Southern Oman. You don’t have to be religious to be enchanted by the Christmas story to feel the magic of it. Every part of the tale surrounding the birth of baby Jesus in Bethlehem seems to resound with a beauty and a profound sense of magic and mystery. But apart from the idea of an “immaculate conception”, perhaps one of the strangest parts of the best known story in the world is the appearance of three kings bearing gifts. Who were these magi? What was a magi? Why did they follow that star and ride their camels quite so far in its nocturnal beam of light? And why gold, frankincense and myrrh? As a child growing up in rural Britain, the story of the Three Kings of Orient struck me as being more exotic and bizarre than any other part of the Christmas tale. Especially the mention of those two latter gifts - frankincense and myrrh. Maybe other kids in my class knew what these items were. Even when my father explained something about “incense” and “fragrant oil” I was none the wiser. But I liked the sound of those mysterious gifts they’d brought for a baby in a manger. And, unlike 99 out of 100 things I learned at school as a child, I always remembered the two words. Frankincense and myrrh. Who doesn’t have these curious and unknowable things on the tip of the tongue at Christmas-tide?   Then one winter’s day standing on the edge of a desert gazing at a very ancient and empty ruin on the side of the Indian Ocean, a man called Mussaiam said to me: “You see that opening in the old wall? There was a time when all the frankincense in the entire world went through that doorway.” When I read the small rusting metal interpretation board shoved into the sand near the door at Khor Rori, it confirmed what Mussaiam had said - and it also informed me that this ancient fortress had held sway along this coast from the 4th century BC to the 5th century AD. Which sent shivers down my spine. Because it meant that the Three Kings - or at least the Magi called Caspar who carried frankincense to Bethlehem - must have passed right through this small door.  It was the only sea-facing aperture in the fortress and in this way the folk who ran the place - and controlled the frankincense trade - could monitor and tax the extremely precious incense going out into the wider world. When Mussaiam saw how excited I was, he began to explain that the area that makes up the very southern tip of Oman has always been known as The Land of Frankincense. It has been one of country’s most famous and highly prized natural products since antiquity, and its unbelievably exotic aroma can be sniffed everywhere, wafting out of homes, mosques and souks and even through to modern office blocks and hotel lobbies.   Most of the world’s frankincense is now harvested in Somalia, but the Omani version is the one connoisseurs go for, especially since the Yemeni supplies dried up because of the ongoing internecine war. Indeed this part of Oman, known as Dhofar, is on the border of Yemen and it is the frankincense from here that is considered to be the world’s finest. I asked Mussaiam to explain what frankincense actually is, and with a shrug he said we’d go and find some. With much tortuous twisting and turning we went deep into the coastal mountains past the city of Salalah and beyond a coastal village called Mughsayl. As coastlines go, this must be one of the most dramatic in the world. Vertiginous, impenetrable, wild, empty…  All you see are rocks, more rocks, the odd camel, and the occasional frankincense tree. We climbed some crags to reach a ragged grove of these trees and Mussaiam showed us how its boughs would instantly bleed a pure white liquid gum if nicked with a knife.  This is frankincense - and the stuff that exudes from the brach immediately after the first cutting is reckoned to be the best you can get. It’s a resin and it can be taken from four different trees of the Boswellia genus, particularly the Boswellia sacra, which thrives in the arid mountains around Salalah where it can survive the most inhospitable conditions imaginable.  The few trees we found were growing straight out of solid rock.  These tough little examples were not much more than 15 feet in height and they had a peeling, papery bark. Tapping and collection is a skilled business - the harvesters allow the “tears” (as the weeping gum is called) to turn white in the sun and harden before they take them from the tree.  Almost all frankincense is collected from trees growing in the wild (they are notoriously difficult to cultivate) which somehow adds to the mystique. Mussaiam immediately shoved some of the gum into his mouth and began to chew it because he said it had miraculous health properties. We did the same, although mine only remained within my lips for a second. I found it gritty and the flavour very, very, unpleasant indeed.  Arabic custom has it that the resin is good for a healthy digestion and soft glowing skin. Modern medical uses are currently being investigated, including a possibility that it might be beneficial as a treatment for Crohn’s disease, as well as osteoarthritis and even cancer. There are quite a few varieties of frankincense and around the Salalah area you can visit small workshops where experts sort the resin by hand. It is  graded according to colour, purity and aroma. The whiter and purer the colour, the better the grade. Varieties that appear to have a yellowish tinge are less highly valued, while at the bottom of the scale come the darker examples from Somalia. The stuff I brought home was the very purest white - and a couple of tiny lumps left on the hot-plate of my wood-burning stove is enough to fill the entire house with scent at Christmas.   It helps a non-believer like me to remember the best known story in the world - and its amazing scent sends me to bed at nights during the festivities wondering who on earth the enigmatic Caspar was, and why he and his friends made such an extraordinary journey bearing gifts just over 2000 years ago.

This is the story of how I once successfully pulled the belle of the ball. Well, not belle perhaps - but certainly the biggest bird at the ball. Or him, actually. For it was a male, or stag, turkey that I bought for my family’s Christmas dinner one year at the amazing, colourful, traditional, Cutcombe Christmas Show. And, weighing in at 33.5 pounds, he really was the biggest bird at the ball. However, I didn’t manage to get a bird at today’s annual fatstock show- mainly because it is just a little early for Christmas and I don’t own a chiller cabinet.  The birds which feature at the now rare traditional Christmas shows like the one Cutcombe, are what some people call “long-dressed” - in other words they are killed and plucked, but still contain all the insides which are normally gutted or drawn. This apparently - and counter-intuitively - helps them remain fresher for longer. Sorry if this carnivorous talk is offending anyone, but there it is. It’s the reality of meat-eating at Christmas, or at any other time of the year.  Or, rather, an old-fashioned kind of reality that many millions have forgotten ever existed.   So why am I and hundreds of others willing to go to all this extra trouble for my Christmas dinner? It isn’t a decision made on price. It is because the kind of birds which are sent to shows like the one at Cutcombe are, for the most part, real free-range farm creatures. They have never seen the insides of a large industrial shed.  Like the geese, capons and other carcasses up at Exmoor Farmer’s Market - situated in one of the highest villages in Southern Britain - they are properly reared, proper bits of meat, and as such will have a depth of flavour that makes any extra effort well worth the while. In so many ways events like the Christmas show at Cutcombe represents all I love about enjoying the very best provender of this remarkable region. It’s about people using the natural attributes of this peninsula to grow, glean, produce and prepare great food. Each year, the people of the Exmoor hills come together in the festive season to demonstrate publicly what they do best – which, for the most part, means breeding and raising animals for meat.  The result is the very antithesis of the modern world’s overly commercialised build-up to Christmas. At the Cutcombe Christmas Show everything going under the hammer has been produced in just a handful of parishes. So the show is a shrine to localness. A high church of eco-friendly, sustainable living. A temple of authenticity when it comes to rapidly shrinking British way of life. A tabernacle of tradition. A memorial in praise of mankind’s ability to work with nature. Staged at Cutcombe Market under the auspices of Exmoor Farmers Livestock Auctions Ltd, the annual event is organised by a special committee. It begins with a sale of donated items, the proceeds of which are sent to local charities and organisations. The craggy-faced farmers of the hills and their soft-spoken spouses often pay over the odds for everything from a jar of honey to a slab of belly pork (I saw a small jar of honey fetch £10). In the meantime expert judges are busy evaluating live lambs and ewes as well as the carcasses of recently killed lambs, and poultry.  I’ve been attending the event for years and recall one poultry auctioneer telling me: “Historically, you won’t always find a bargain here. But these are fresh birds - and they are locally produced - people will pay a premium for quality and what we have here is excellent quality.” A show committee chairman added: “People do come for the ingredients of their Christmas dinner – this is a community thing for people in the hills. We have had ladies come up from local towns to buy turkeys – and they do go quite pricey - but they are such good quality people come back year after year. All these birds are free range.” And an erstwhile vicar of the parish once told me: “The market feels almost, to me, like you are stepping back in time. You could imagine it would be happening here 100 years ago - and there would be very little difference - and that somehow encourages the feeling of Christmas.” It does. And I’d add this… We consumers consume for 365 days a year. Some of us always try to make the food we eat special, others aren’t particularly interested and scoff whatever’s put in front of them. But if there is one time of year we really ought to be pulling all the stops out, it is Christmas. Not only in terms of quality and flavour, but also in ways that reaffirm who we are, what we are, and what we believe in.  If we love the countryside and approve of the things that make the place look so beautiful - then we ought to be supporting the folk who live and work in, and help create and sustain, those green and productive spaces. In that way the food on our plate has a story to tell.  Christmas fatstock shows - at which farmers and producers large and small traditionally compete with one another in all manner of categories - used to take place in just about every market town in the country before strict EU wide regulations began to restrict proceedings.  “This is probably the biggest Christmas fat stock show left in Southern England - we’ve no cattle, but today we’ve got 100 poultry, 69 lamb carcasses, 100 live show lambs and 40 show ewes,” said David Powell, chairman of the annual Cutcombe event.  My old friend Bill Liversidge, who often wins the poultry section and whose turkey came second this year, told me: “It is all about breeding, feeding and presentation. You can buy the breeding from the marvellous breeders we’ve got - and you can buy the feed from the marvellous feed companies we’ve got - but the presentation is down to you.” Poultry judge, Devon based Mike Wright, once told me  he was looking for well fleshed birds. “A turkey has to have a lot of meat, obviously, but also a good layer of fat on it. Otherwise it’s not finished completely - it also enhances the cooking.  “On top of that in a show like this they have to be well presented. There are one or two that haven’t been dressed properly which would have got higher marks if they’d taken the trouble.  “With the geese you are basically looking for weight and meat - they can be over fatty,” said Mr Wright. “The one I picked out obviously isn’t. You have to have a bit of fat on a goose but not too much. The biggest goose you can get will only feed eight people - whereas a turkey of the same weight would feed double that.”

Preparing food over a naked flame has become a lot more sophisticated in recent years – barbecue devices nowadays come in all shapes and sizes and some of us spend as much on our outdoor garden cooking as we do on our indoor kitchens.  Anyway, I thought I’d take the opportunity of learning more about authentic primeval cookery from the real experts. And where better to pick up a few tips than Borneo? After all, it wasn’t that long ago that folk on the giant equatorial island were boiling one another for Sunday lunch.  Things are still a bit primeval when you go way, way, up into the rainforest. Up in the remote hills there are people who know hardly anything about the modern world – either in terms of cooking trends or just about any other fashion, come to that – although a tribal chief I met deep in the rainforest did say goodbye to me with the words: “Would you like my email address?” I’d met the Tuai Rumah (as the chieftain is called) and his charming ex-head-hunter people in their communal longhouse situated high up the Lemanak River, in the Sarawak province of Northern Borneo – and, after some negotiations with our local guide Henry, the tribe agreed to put on a lunchtime picnic which would show off their rainforest cooking techniques and skills.  Our first job was to find a shingle bank in a shady and beautiful part of the river – the rainforest in these parts is the genuine article, in that it’s extremely thick and not particularly conducive to picnicking. There are lots of mosquitoes – and snakes – and sometimes both. What follows is a description of a technique that could be described as “organ-pipe” cookery – and it is something we can copy, to some extent, here in the chilly, mosquito-less, UK. Except for the basic organ-pipe element, that is. Our bamboo doesn’t tend to reach the large fist-sized diameter that it grows to in an equatorial rainforest – but never mind, there are alternatives.  Having travelled along the river in canoes to reach our shingle island in the shade, the tribal boatmen and women split into two groups. One lot disappeared across the water to climb into the forest where they could be heard chopping this or that with their frightening machetes, while the others set about building a large fire. By fishing out tree limbs that had fallen into the stream, they erected a basic gantry above the flames – the idea being that the long soaked rainforest hardwood would survive the heat without burning. A few minutes later the others returned with long fat poles of bamboo which they’d cut straight from the jungle – and these were then chopped into two or three foot lengths and washed through. Banana leaves, which had been brought from the small family gardens around the tribal longhouse, were now brought into the cookery action – they’d been soaking in the river since we arrived and were now being loaded with handfuls of wet, uncooked, sticky rice. With a neat folding action, each was made into a cylindrical parcel and popped, two or three at a time, into a length of bamboo pipe. With the addition a little water these were then propped upright over the flames – their bases safe outside the fire on the shingle, their tops leaning onto that central hardwood gantry. This exercise was then repeated with other ingredients for the meal. Beef was chopped and added to copious amounts of fresh minced chillies, garlic, ginger, shallots and white pepper – all gleaned from the local gardens. And they used white pepper by the way – the Iban people grow a lot of this spice and cure both the white and the black peppercorns – but as I’ve learned to do in recent years, they prefer to grind the white rather than the black we are addicted to in Europe. The resultant mix was rammed into yet more bamboo poles – as was a similar preparation of chicken meat. Lastly various vegetables – including huge green beans and a plant that looked for all the world like young bracken fronds – were given the same treatment. All these filled bamboo lengths joined the rice until the fire was heating some 30 or 40 green “organ-pipes”. Adjacent to this was a basic wire mesh grill on which some larger pieces of meat were barbecued – including the local favourite, chicken gizzards.  At this point in the proceedings there was a 15 minute lull which necessitated some speech-making and much toasting (with the Iban’s home-made rice whisky). And finally, the unpacking… The now charring bamboo pipes were emptied of their loads – steaming and not at all burned on the inside - the sticky rice parcels where unfolded so that white cylinders of the starchy grain could be arranged in a bowl. The meat and veg dishes were simply decanted into yet more bowls – and the whole delicious lot placed was along a central plank taken from the floor of one of the canoes.  That meal, which we consumed with our fingers on that rather uncomfortable but mosquito-less shingle bank, was one of the best lunches I have ever eaten. So how have I been emulating jungle cookery techniques at home? Well, I’ll admit that the lack of giant bamboo has taken just a bit of the authenticity away from my efforts – the large bamboo stand I have in my garden produces shoots that are the diameter of a thumb rather than a fist.  But I have been experimenting with other measures and the first bit of good news is that if you’ve got one of those kettle barbecues with a lid you do not have to find rainforest hardwood that’s been soaking in a river for years.  The other central requirement, banana leaves, are available on the internet ( www.thai-food-online.co.uk or www.easycaribbeanshop.com ) – they are a bit pricey, four whole banana leaves can cost as much as £4,99 - but as each leaf is approximately 18 inches x 36 inches in size you can cut them up to make multiple parcels. The leaves need to be kept fresh so that they remain supple - the best way to store them is by keeping them in an airtight plastic bag in a fridge - and I soak mine for half an hour before use which helps prevent burning.  We’ve made various parcels of both plain sticky rice and also filled with the beef and chicken mixes mentioned above. In place of the bamboo pipes I simply stack the parcels into tall-sided Le Crueset style pans – one for the rice and others for whatever flavoured mixes we’re preparing.  By placing these on a grill as high above the charcoal flames as possible you avoid the danger of having parcels that are burned on one side and raw on the other – although the lid of the kettle barbecue does help deliver an all-round temperature.  Once the parcels are on the heat you will be eating a meal that will taste amazingly similar to my Borneo lunch within 20 minutes.  Having now cooked jungle style a couple of times, I will admit I’m still experimenting with whether or not to put the lids on the big iron pans – my preference at the moment is to partly cover the moistened rice parcels so that they steam, but to leave the meat filled banana leaves completely uncovered to so that they take on some of the charcoal’s smoky barbecue tang.  Anyway, it’s easy. This is genuine primeval cookery. And you don’t need a Sarawakian rainforest in which to do it. Although a little less rain of the cold Atlantic variety would help.

The photograph above shows me with an ITV film crew on the Isles of Scilly about 12 years ago. Wish I still looked as young as that. But anyway, I put it up to show I’ve done a bit of broadcasting in my time. Quite a lot, in fact - TV, and radio. And I thought I’d put that on the website because we are going to feature a new series of podcasts over the coming months. There will be regular updates featuring all manner of subjects. Some will be related to an old series of podcasts called Adventures in Rural Journalism which I tinkered around with while I was still working for a newspaper. It was all my own material gathered in my own time on my own equipment, but because that series was being delivered on a platform belonging to a company I no longer work for, I took it down. I am hoping that fans of that series will find out about the new one here - it’s simply called Adventures in Journalism and each time we put one up we will tag it here on the website. I hope you enjoy them…

The Rich Tradition of Minehead Herring Fishing Minehead fishermen Michael Martin and Paul Date have once again been reliving an ancient tradition that used to see the Somerset harbour town exporting more than 4000 barrels of herring a year to the Mediterranean. The pair were not exactly improving the nation’s balance of payments by earning foreign Euros - in fact they were finding it difficult to sell their ludicrously cheap haul - but they had just landed a large quantity of the delicious fish which for a long time almost disappeared in the Bristol Channel.  “This is a really good year,” said Mr Date, speaking about his small fishing boat after returning to harbour with what looked like an entire shoal of the silver darlings, as the fish used to be known.  “The herring are normally finished by now,” he added. “You can get them right up up until Christmas time - but that’s no good to us because everyone is too interested in eating turkeys.” This weekend Mr Date and Mr Martin were selling the fish for less than a pound each - an out-and-out bargain because they were full of delicious roe.   The Historical Significance of the Bristol Channel Herring A century ago local families would buy 100 herrings for six old pence (2.5 pence) to salt down for the winter. But catches gradually declined and during the 1970s the herring all but disappeared, with the blame laid on over-fishing in the Atlantic and North Sea. But the port was once famous for its herring - a diarist called Collinson, writing in 1791, noted that a few decades before he visited town some 4000 barrels of herring were shipped annually to the Mediterranean.  “But all this is now nearly at an end,” lamented Collinson. “The trade is lost - the herrings have left the coast - and there are at present only five or six vessels belonging to the port.” Now the herring are back and a few people are travelling to Minehead specially for the delicacy.

Classical landscapes, seas full of marine life and popular coasts, high hills, wide green valleys, famous beef cattle and special cheeses, all fused with an exciting new way of cooking and a predominance of ingredients from the surrounding countryside.  I could be talking about South West England, but in this food article I am focussing on Tuscany - partly because of all the many similarities and also because the average Italian cook (professional or amateur) embraces his or her region’s traditional dishes and raw ingredients just that little bit more enthusiastically than we do here.  The people of that long thin Mediterranean country are world-famous for it. Their adherence to local tradition, to the recipes their mothers and grandmothers followed, to the ingredients the come from the nearby valley or mountainside, is both fascinating and exciting to behold. The Italians really do take localness a lot further than we do - although to counter that you could argue that we embrace the new and the exotic more readily than them. Some chefs might dispute this, but can they tell the difference between butter made from milk produced near the coast and the stuff made high in the hills? The Italians can do that with their olive oil.  Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be in Tuscany talking to two professional chefs - both passionate about the cuisine that you will find in an area stretching from the coast near Pisa, right up to the mountains towards Florence.  And I was surprised by the similarities that exist between the Tuscan region and our Westcountry peninsula - and by the differences I’ve already hinted at. For example, both Guido Lotti, executive chef at the amazing Grotta Giusti hotel ( www.grottagiustispa.com ) 40 miles inland, and Umberto Toscano who holds the same position at the historic and lavish Bagni di Pisa hotel (www.bagnidipisa.com) just a few miles from the coast, were able to wax lyrical about village specialities from where they were born and bred. Dishes which they still cook (sometimes with their own twist) in their upmarket hotel restaurants today  It was also Guido and Umberto who explained how olive oil will vary depending on the geographic location of the olive groves. So where they might steer in the direction of a dish from their immediate locale, they would select the right olive oil depending on its geographic provenance.  An oil from a grove near the sea, for example, will be a lot lighter and more fragrant than one produced in the hills. The lowland oil would be much better drizzled over a fillet of fish or stirred last minute into a seafood soup. The latter will be stronger and more peppery, so you might use it in a daub of wild boar or with some other kind of game. Which brings us to the recipe we publish today. I “collect” fish soups wherever I go in the world and so have tasted some of the best, and worst. Not surprising to me is that the examples from Italy are superb, and I do recommend trying this one. By the way, I often ask myself why we have no real tradition for a seafood soup in a fish-rich region like the Westcountry? If you go to places like the Tuscan coast, or to Marseille not far to the west where they make the famous bouillabaisse, what you learn is that these dishes were flavoursome blasts of nutrition made by fisherfolk who wanted to feed themselves. They were created from the bits and bobs - the odd species in the catch that no one wanted and the teeming nameless tiny fingerlings caught in the net - all left unsold after morning market. Why chuck ‘em away when you could bung the lot into a big pan and feed the family? In the recipe below you get a hint that this soup is a peasant dish when you see that there is a big slice of bread going into every bowl. Stale bread at that (or toasted). “This fish soup was made by fishermen as a result of them not selling certain fish in their catch,” I was told by Umberto. “A lot of the fish don’t even have names most people will know - they’re just the little fish. The poor people will buy these or the fishermen will have them - and put them into a pot with tomato soup. and that’s it.  “We have interpreted this traditional soup in a lighter way,” he went on. “The regional one should have complete fish in it, not filleted - also it was cooked for much longer. “The sauce is prepared before the actual fish soup - before we put the fish in. It is a tomato sauce with some fish in it like calamari - and garlic or chilli to give it flavour. You pass that though a sieve or liquidise it. It is tomato sauce plus… And then you put in the fish you’ve chosen - so you work with the fresh fish that are coming in every day. If you come here in two months time it might be different. But there will be four or five different fish in it - sea-bass and so on.  Umberto added: “You can find this sort of fish soup in almost every part of the coast of Italy. They are quite similar - but they can be different when it comes to using fresh tomato or not. Maybe it will be white without tomato. There is always bread but it’s not always at the bottom of the bowl - sometimes you will serve it separately with garlic grated on it to put on top. It is there to give the soup a bit more body.” Up in the hills, Guido Lotti who was telling me about mountain food.  “My grandmother was cooking in our home and it was very very good, and the same with my mother. When I was four I made my first omelette and burned my finger,” he laughed. “The food in Tuscany is simple and non-complicated. Ingredients are pure and simple and natural and also the way we cook the food is simple. So you can really understand and feel the original quality of the food you are eating.  “We have a lot of different oil - up in the mountains it is stronger - good with wild boar or wild rabbit. Down at the coast it is more floral and is not too strong, so it is better with the fish. We have a lot of good vegetables - it is perfect for them - we have a lot of sun. Tuscany is a micro-world all of its own - a place with different temperatures from the coast to the hills. So you get the complete offer.  “Very typical and simple is the pappa al pomodoro - a soup where we use old bread with basil and tomato and fresh vegetable stock, all cooked very slowly together. We eat it in winter and summer - in winter hot, but often summer we have it cold with lots of olive oil.  “Ribollita is another vegetable soup with lentils and beans - two or three different types. We grill the bread last and put together the soup with cavilo nero in its season.  A lot of the dishes we make here in the hills are all about slow-cooking.” Thinking about it I have never met anyone who doesn’t like Tuscan food, vegetarian or otherwise. And the fact that it’s just a quick two hour flight from the UK  means that it’s not too big a journey to pick up some authentic tips in a landscape and environment that’s not a million miles from our own.   Light “Cacciucco” as made by chef Umberto Toscano of the Bagni di Pisa Hotel Ingredients (per 4 persons) For the fish stock 150gr. celery 150gr. white onion 100gr. fennel 2 cloves of garlic 1 lemon fishbones from turbot, sea-bass etc, without head 1.5 ltr cold water or with ice 20 grm extra virgin olive oil For the cacciucco sauce 500 gr. peeled tomatoes 4 cloves of garlic 1 red chilli  parsley cuttlefish and squid  100 gr. white wine 20 gr. extra virgin olive oil 500 gr. fish stock 10 gr. salt For the dish 120 gr. fillets of sea-bass 120 gr. steamed octopus (40 min per kg.) 120 gr. fillets of grouper (or other firm fleshed white fish) 120 gr. cuttlefish 120 gr. squid 4 large prawns 120 gr. fillets of turbot 40 mussels 40 small clams 1 clove of garlic 500 gr. fish stock 10 gr. salt 4 toasted slices of bread rubbed with garlic Method For the fish stock: Wash the fishbones of turbot, sea bass etc. Sauté with oil, garlic, celery, onion and fennel, add any fish scraps you have to hand, sprinkle with lemon. Cover with very cold water and cook over low heat for 30 minutes, skimming if necessary. Then filter it through the strainer. For the cacciucco sauce: Fry in a pan chopped garlic with chilli pepper, parsley and add the chopped flesh of the squid and/or cuttlefish. Add white wine and let evaporate, after add the fish stock, the peeled tomatoes and cook for 40 min. Add salt to your taste. Then filter through the vegetable mill and finally to the thin strainer. For the dish: Put in a pan the cacciucco sauce and add the fillets as follow: 30gr each of grouper (or other firm fleshed white fish), octopus, turbot, sea-bass, cuttlefish and squid. After 10 min of cooking add prawns, mussels (cleaned) and finally small clams. Cooked for 10 min. Serve it in a dish with a slice of roasted bread rubbed with garlic. Add parsley.