Summer blog
Interesting piece in ”Commercial Grower” 23 August 2007 about an initiative by the leading seven supermarket suppliers to increase the market penetration for fresh herbs. Apparently the average annual purchase rate is 3.8 times a year. Goodness knows, raising this abysmal figure can’t be a Bad Thing, sales of growing plants this year has been literally a wash out and, as I so often say, I wouldn’t bother with Farmers Markets at all, were it not for the opportunity to park in the middle of Bristol and buy some decent coffee. Of course in these days of multinationals, one never knows who has taken over whom, but at least one of those seven companies is entirely foreign-owned which raises the question, Whatever became of the British Herb Trade Association and why has it been left to this partially alien splinter group to seize the initiative?
Launching the new marketing group, Matthew Prestwich, grandson of the near-legendary Richard Stevens, euphemistically remarked “Historically, as an industry, we probably haven’t worked together enough” Am I the only person who fell off his chair, laughing at this masterly piece of under-statement? Members of the BHTA have never shown any inhibitions toward stabbing one another in the back and since my departure with severely lacerated shoulder blades, I am told that the pot-producers (no silly, not that kind of pot, otherwise we would still all be there and making a fortune) have also dropped away like autumnal leaves leaving a core of medicinal growers, who face the nightmare of unrestricted imports. So anything that will push market uptake will reflect like a glow of sunshine on our industry as a whole and if the BHTA can not or will not do it, then let’s thank the new group and wish it well.
All the same, that average figure of 3.8 purchases a year probably means that a microscopic section of the population buys weekly and the rest purchase a sprig of parsley to garnish a bit of something dead when the boss is coming to dinner. If Sarah Raven on the telly, Sophie Grigson at the Herb society and all those gormless Sunday newspaper columnists stuck for anything else to write about, can’t wean the public off pizza ‘n chips, I can’t see this new group making the slightest bit of difference.
The RHS “Garden” was recently packed with writers complaining about the BBC gardening presentation in general and the dreadful background “music” in particular. As everyone knows, I loathe gardening programmes even more than the repetitive thistles-in-the-knees, back-straining-in-the-mud activity of gardening itself, but I was tempted to watch “Gardeners World” the other day because Sarah Raven was doing superfoods (or something). Ms Raven is intelligent, good looking and doesn’t sound like a chav (so what’s she doing on the programme, you ask) But the main interest is the way in which she has evolved views so at variance with those of her father. Anyway we will never know which particular pearls she was casting before the watching swine because the poor woman was totally drowned out by an imbecile whistling deafeningly in to the microphone. This not only trivialised what she was saying but implied that it only had an appeal for the limited sector of the populace that is both educationally sub-normal and tone deaf. I turned over to watch some people getting shot on the other channel which was far more fun and probably more informative as well. Does the beeb really reckon we are still entombed the Bevin years of great-grandfathers memory, a thankfully long lost world in which cheeky chappies in cloth caps whistle jauntily in their allotments when they get out t’mill and watch black and white televisions in the working mens’ clubs? No of course not because this drivel is paid for by the exorbitant bang-up-to-the-minute colour licence fee. So I guess they are just being patronising.
In the same journal, my friend Linden was putting the boot in to mega-turnover seed companies which turn out mucky seed packets apparently mislabelled using an antique typewriter. To avoid ending up in a libel court she didn’t say who she meant, so we would all have fun guessing except the culprits are so glaringly obvious that the pleasure is somewhat limited. The mystery is how they stay in business. All the same, we are told that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and I agree that some of the most fly-blown kitchens around the Mediterranean for instance turn out the most delicious food, but in the case of the naughty seed merchants, their seeds don’t germinate either.
I was telling an editor about the embarrassing talk I gave in Sicily which fell apart when I couldn’t read my notes. It transpired that I wasn’t pissed, but had been reduced to my last legs by a combination of pleurisy and diabetes. In spite of that, thanks to the Mediterranean Garden Society, it was a week of unrelenting and glorious gluttony “At least you went out with a bang” the editor said. Well, I’m not dead yet and I cursed that I had just learnt a wondrous new Arab/Italian fused cuisine, which I was immediately barred from eating lest my kidneys silted up and my legs fell off. Once I got over the shock, I realised it was a challenge which raised my interest in food in a way I hadn’t experienced since the late, great Elizabeth David said one couldn’t get fresh basil in England. That one remark was the inspiration for Arne Herbs. So I have been wading through Anna Martellotti’s “I Ricettari di Federico II” , the authenticity of which has wound up the pedants amongst the food-historians something rotten. All good stuff.
On the other hand, the six diabetic cook books I bought (thankfully second hand) were all American and virtually each and every “Diabeedies” recipe within them contained the instruction to open a packet of some sinister ingredient from the supermarket. Totally disgusting, clearly the Almighty decided this god-fearing nation thoroughly deserved its diabeedies and visited these books upon it as a punishment from on high, but on the whole I remember American food in the early sixties as a joyous experience. Admittedly of those who made the greatest impact, my friend Mary in Pennsylvania who was and is, a brilliant cook, lived part of her life in Italy and my old landlady at Yale, whose meat loaves are still a blessed memory, was of English birth and shopped in the ethnic ghettoes where no sane American would ever tread. This leaves the suspicion that one had to be a foreigner to cook properly, but it is not so. I leave you with the thought that one of the most blissful gastronomical moments of my life was eating Georgia hog and waffles with maple syrup on the Atlanta Greyhound bus station at four o’clock on a grey morning surrounded by Cuban refugees from Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs debacle.