Kitabı oku: «The Allotment Chef: Home-grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories»

Dedication

For MJ, Ellie and Richie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER 1 Crop Idle

CHAPTER 2 By Royal Appointment

CHAPTER 3 The Ealing Project

CHAPTER 4 Read What You Sow

CHAPTER 5 iPods and Asparagus

CHAPTER 6 Chuck Berry

CHAPTER 7 Freezing in August

CHAPTER 8 Gentlemen of the Committee

CHAPTER 9 My Children and Other Pests

CHAPTER 10 Happy Bloody Christmas

CHAPTER 11 Johnny Depp at the Allotment

CHAPTER 12 Do the Mashed Potato

CHAPTER 13 Frozen Vegetables

CHAPTER 14 A Load of Shit

CHAPTER 15 Sodden, Sodding, Sod

CHAPTER 16 Here Comes the Sun

CHAPTER 17 The End is Nigh

RECIPES

Soups, Starters and Salads

Creamy Potato and Parsley Soup

Hot and Chilled Tomato Soup

French Onion Soup

Asparagus Soup

White Onion Soup with Chorizo and Herb Oil

Sweetcorn Soup

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Oyster Mushrooms and Truffle Oil

Toasted Goat’s Cheese Salad

Warm Tomato Tart with Rocket Salad

Asparagus Wrapped in Parma Ham with Toasted Brie

Pan-fried Goat’s Cheese with Serrano Ham, Fig and New Zealand Spinach

Chorizo and Goat’s Cheese Puff Pastry Slice with Broccoli, Mushroom and Tomato

Pan-fried Sardines with a Parsley, Lemon, Chilli and Red Onion Vinaigrette

Crispy Squid with Fennel, Tomato and Lemon Coleslaw

Couscous with Red Onion, Parsley, Courgette and Mint

Salmon Skewers with Marjoram and Red Peppercorns

MJ’s Warm Salad of Spinach, Chicken and Blue Cheese

Panzanella-style Salad with Tomato and Little Gem Lettuce

Warm Chorizo Salad with Rocket, Little Gem, Oven-dried Tomato and Parmesan

Thai-style Beef Salad

Vegetable Dishes

Broad Beans with Fried Potatoes, Garlic and Pancetta

Courgettes à la Francaise

Stir-fried Purple Sprouting Broccoli with Garlic, Ginger and Chilli

Fried Green Tomaytos (not tomaaahtoes)

Pea Purée with Chervil and Tarragon

Stir-fried Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Carrot, Parsnip and Chestnuts

Creamy Leeks Baked with Rosemary and Goat’s Cheese

Beetroot Baked in Foil

Beetroot Sorbet

Root Vegetable Mash

Onion Purée

Root Vegetables Roasted with Garlic, Duck Fat and Thyme

Caramelised Shallots

Roast Potatoes

Vegetable Samosas

Crushed New Potatoes

Garlic Flat Bread

Oven-dried Tomatoes

Main Courses

Pumpkin and Ricotta Ravioli with Sage Butter

Roasted Pepper Stew with Red Onion, Sausage, Tomato and Courgette

Mushroom Risotto with Parsnip Purée and Parsnip Crisps

Smoked Haddock Risotto with Sweetcorn and Spring Onions

Smoked Haddock Fishcakes with Parsley Sauce and Fried Egg

Scallops Baked in the Shell with Carrot, Leek and Shallot

Grilled Cider-cured Salmon with Potato Salad

Whole Roasted Trout with Chard, Bacon and Mushrooms

Fish Pie

Grilled Sea Bass on Stir-fried Lettuce with a Coconut and Basil Broth

Tangy Grilled Chicken with Spicy Coleslaw

Sheila’s Marinated Chicken Drumsticks

Tea-smoked Chicken Breast on Vegetable and Noodle Stir Fry

One-pot Chicken and Vegetable Stew

Mum’s Pork Belly Curry

Lamb Stew with Allotment Vegetables and Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings

Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings

Dilly’s Sri Lankan Curry

Sri Lankan Curry Powder

Slow-roasted Shoulder of Lamb Studded with Garlic and Rosemary

Doug’s Prize-winning Moussaka

Braised Ox Cheek with Dauphinoise Potatoes

Preserves and Sauces

Pickled Red Cabbage

Courgette Pickle

Green Tomato Chutney

Green Tomato Salsa with Spring Onion and Green Chilli

Tomato and Chilli Jam

Aubergine, Tomato and Coriander Salsa

Red Onion Jam

Strawberry Jam

Mint Sauce

Cucumber, Green Tomato and Mint Raita

Pesto

Herb Oil

Flavoured Butter

Granny’s Vinaigrette

Beurre Blanc

Neil’s Sweet Chilli Dipping Sauce

Easy Tomato Pasta Sauce

Desserts and Sweet Things

Steamed Spiced Plum and Walnut Sponge

Roasted Plums

Mum’s Apple Snow

Emergency White Chocolate Cheesecake with Summer Berries

Berries Dipped in White Chocolate

Mum’s Meringue Cake

Crème Anglaise

Warm Baked Victoria Sponge with Red Berries and Whipped Cream

Custard Tart with Rhubarb Compote

Hot Doughnuts with a Jam Injection

Dilly’s Bakewell Tart

MJ’s Fruit Crumbles

Anton’s Pear and Almond Croustillant with Pear Crisps

Pear Crisps

Tarte Tatin

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Photograph by Jonathan Gregson

Photograph by Jenny Heller

Chapter 1 | Crop Idle

If the manuscript for this book ever falls into the wrong hands then it may well end up as one of those dreadful reality TV shows: ‘Tonight, on the Obscurity Channel, a new, totally original show which features celebrities living off the land for a year with no supermarket back-up. Who will you vote onto the compost heap of life?’

The frustrating thing is that my children Ellie (10) and Richie (8) would probably have loved watching this show. Unfortunately for them, though, it won’t become a TV programme, which they are just required to watch. It is a family challenge and they are required to live it!

As you might expect, because I’m a professional chef, food is very high up our list of priorities at home. We spend far more money in restaurants than we do on any other form of entertainment and, at home, both my wife Mary Jane (MJ) and I devote a significant amount of time to cooking. Our weekly menus are always home-made with fresh ingredients. Despite all our good intentions, however, there is lots of room for improvement. We, like most people, buy most of our produce from the supermarket. Our children’s culinary quirks have forced seasonality off the agenda; and we have certainly made no contribution to the world of home-grown vegetables. In fact, my kids think soil is just dirt and, therefore, something to avoid. I have begun to realise that it is my job as a father (and a chef) to give my children a sound culinary education.

The children of chefs are no different to any others. When I had children, I naively assumed that the battles over food that my friends had experienced with their children would simply not happen in my home. I thought my kids would somehow be genetically programmed to yearn for stuffed breast of guinea fowl or rare grilled calves’ livers, while utterly rejecting anything in breadcrumbs that requires deep-frying. I was horribly mistaken. Ellie and Richie have both challenged my patience to the limit with their whimsical likes and, more often, dislikes, which are aired regularly at mealtimes. If one of my social duties is to give my children a love of good food, then who masterminded my own education? (Or was I just a natural?!)

The truth is that I was probably not much better. My mum is a great cook and, certainly, my more adventurous cooking is a result of her repertoire, actually the fact that her wacky cookery used to embarrass me as a child. She would never buy anything pre-prepared that required ‘20 minutes at 180 degrees’. Rather, she made everything from scratch. Worse still was the fact that she wouldn’t cook what I considered ‘normal’ food – the kind of stuff my friends were eating, like sausage and mash and burgers. Oh, no, she was busy fluffing up basmati rice or stuffing an aubergine. This simply was not very Surrey circa 1975. Nowadays, of course, this type of food is de rigeur, so I am immensely proud of her efforts and give her full credit for leading the culinary fusion revolution. I don’t often mention the humiliation my sister Ali and I felt when our friends were served up a pork belly curry …

Two other people who had a profound effect on my culinary development were my grandparents, Dick and Marjorie (two solid grandparent names, I feel). They had a lovely cottage surrounded by a large garden, in which my sister and I would spend many happy hours. Grandpa was retired and spent nearly all his time pruning shrubs, nurturing flowers or tending to the wide variety of produce he grew each year. They were entirely self-sufficient when it came to fruit and vegetables and lived strictly by the seasons. I never once knew my granny to buy anything other than the odd bit of exotica from the greengrocer (oranges, bananas or sometimes grapefruit). Otherwise every herb, salad item, soft fruit, apple, walnut, fig and a vast array of vegetables went from Grandpa’s garden down to Grandma’s kitchen. It was here that Granny, a 1930s domestic science teacher, came into her own.

I reckon Marje spent most of her life in her kitchen. She was always pickling or baking or preserving. She knew every trick in the book about utilising a harvest, and I can still taste her simple and very English cooking now when I close my eyes. Looking back as an adult with children of my own, I can appreciate how lucky I was to have known this way of life and, above all, how living by the seasons, with all that one can grow, is the ideal way to live.

I realise that their efforts were not unique. Growing vegetables was an essential part of life in those days. The post-war years were full of memories of food shortages and rationing. People were careful about waste and made the most of the seasons. Ironically, when considering this, rather than looking back and feeling sorry for a generation for whom a pineapple was a major treat, I start to feel envious of a generation who went blackberry picking when they fancied a pudding!

Seasonal eating was not a lifestyle aspiration for my grandparents; it was a natural law that governed what ended up on the dinner table. As I cruise the aisles of our local supermarket happily buying green beans from Kenya and asparagus from Peru, it dawns on me that, despite cooking professionally for 20 years, I have rather missed or forgotten the wider issues concerning food. My obsession with winning a Michelin star had all but cancelled out any thought of food miles, animal welfare, seasonal cookery or the real joy of picking something and then very simply cooking it. I realise that I should worry far more than I ever have done about where my family’s food is coming from and how it is grown.

Photograph by Paul Merrett

While acknowledging all this as the right way forwards for our family, I would not dare to suggest that I am at the forefront of change. I have sat at many a dinner party listening to people from all walks of life ‘bang on’ about food miles and globalisation, and my standard response has been to consider them the ‘brown rice and sandals’ types, and to turn the conversation to what I considered more ‘foody’ matters, such as current restaurant trends and the latest cookbooks. There is no doubt, however, that food issues are a hot topic and I have to accept that I have some ground to make up; probably the very reason for my belated conversion is that I have spent so much time in the pampered world of fine dining.

Of course, the easy option would be to buy a few books and feast on a few culinary sound bites. There are many very good books dedicated to all aspects of the great food debate and a quick check of the average politician’s fingernails will probably reveal that their new-found food policy came from a book rather than a muddy field. Well, I want my family’s love of food to be a genuine, muddy, hands-on experience – one that we will remember all our lives.

My own family lives a very busy, urban life. Our small city garden is kept as low maintenance as possible. We have a shed for our bikes, a bit of decking and a few shrubs. It’s a lovely place to sit on a summer’s evening, but we have never considered growing anything that might contribute to a meal. In fact, because of our hectic schedules, the garden is mostly ‘laid to AstroTurf’. Our real lawn had started to resemble the penalty area at Griffin Park, the home of our beloved local football team, Brentford FC, from being used for footy training by Richie and his mates. With a good deal of guilt, we replaced it with shiny plastic grass. It now looks, from a distance, like a putting green at Wentworth, and the best we could do there, food-wise, is a bowl of plastic fruit.

The more I think about it, however, the more convinced I am that my grandparent’s generation enjoyed a relationship with food that I witnessed as a child but have conveniently forgotten as an adult. Having discussed much of this with MJ, and she agreed that we might all benefit from a bit of home-grown produce, and adds that, as a family, we aren’t particularly well placed on the ‘those doing their bit to save the planet’ list. We decide we will not only try to grow our own fruit and vegetables, but also start to live a more ethical existence all round. This meeting of minds is encouraging, particularly as MJ has, up to now, been the sort of person who jumps in the car and drives 300 metres to the nearest shop.

MJ suggests we start by growing a few carrots, tomatoes and beans so that our fussy children can start to understand where their vegetables come from, how natural they are and, thus, why they are so healthy. Great point, I agree, but I indicate our lack of green space. Where will we grow them?

What we need is an allotment. We talk this through and become excited at the prospect of sowing cabbages, plucking apples from our own trees and digging up armfuls of new potatoes, marking each harvest with seasonal eating. An allotment will allow me to recreate those dishes of my childhood as well as to create some new ones of my own.

It will not just be about fancy finished dishes, however. Seasonal cookery will mean dealing with an excess of produce at times, so we will also make the most of preserving, jamming, freezing and batch-cooking our bounty, as my granny did. This way we can enjoy raspberries in December or green beans in January. We will cook our food as it finds us. We are two working parents with all the commitments that go with a busy life but, rather than buy out-of-season, vitamin-deficient vegetables from the supermarket, we shall get a cheap, local allotment and grow the real version ourselves.

Photograph by Mary-Jane Curtis

Chapter 2 | By Royal Appointment

Anyone who has taken the life-changing decision to get an allotment will know that, in the last ten years, demand for allotments has escalated beyond belief. Gone are the days when allotments were the exclusive domain of old men, in oversized trousers held up with twine, growing vast amounts of root vegetables. Allotments are in demand from all areas of society: very trendy media types, posh people, very poor people, the arty farty set … and old men in oversized trousers held up with twine. They all want a patch of land to call their own. Perhaps, if someone can find a way of making serious money out of allotments, it won’t be long before supermarkets are knocked down and replaced with more plots of land and rickety sheds.

MJ and I both feel that, with an allotment, the kids will enjoy watching things grow and, as a result, will be more adventurous at mealtimes; we will all spend time together with a common purpose; and we can turn our backs on the devil of the day – the supermarket. This will not be because we are doing something amazing, just the opposite. We are a very normal family, with all the normal hassles of life, and we are just trying to get back in touch with one of life’s most enjoyable and important aspects, food.

So, we register online with our local allotment association and soon we receive details of all the local sites. MJ chooses the three nearest ones and we call all three to check availability. Two have nothing available and a waiting list as long as a ball of garden twine, but the third call is rather more hopeful. A few days later we get up early for our first visit to Blondin Allotments.

It’s a wet and chilly Sunday morning in November. Although the allotments are only about half a mile from our house, MJ and Ellie decide to drive down, which I feel is hardly in the spirit of things; Richie and I go on our bikes.

Our appointment is with Keith, who is the Chairman of the Blondin Allotments committee. Keith has got a beard. This makes him look like an outdoor sort of bloke. I am hoping, however, that I can avoid the facial hair and just settle for a pair of wellies.

We are shown our proposed allotment and told to think about it. It costs £27.50 a year and an (optional) extra £5 gives us access to the association’s lock-up shed, where there is a variety of equipment for general use; it also gives us use of the allotments’ snazzy composting toilet.

Along with these benefits, inevitably there come certain obligations and any new plot holder has to agree to the allotment rules. We ask Keith what the rules are and he replies that he doesn’t have them on him. But, in brief, he tells us they are:

1 The gates must be kept locked at all times

2 Garden waste (from one’s home garden) must not be dumped on the communal compost heap

3 A hosepipe can only be used if it is manned – there must be no tying it to a fork handle and nipping home for tea

4 There will be immediate eviction by the committee if one’s plot is not suitably maintained

We are quite comfortable with points one to three – we will be fine locking the gate, we don’t have any garden waste back home and, in a fit of greenness, we have recently given our hosepipe to my sister – but rule four has a sinister ring to it.

MJ asks Keith to what level they expect each plot to be maintained. She points out that we are new to this gardening game and may require a little leniency. Keith, sensing our apprehension, quickly explains that, if any plot is left completely unworked for more than three months, the plot holder receives written notice in the form of an improvement order. Failure to comply leads automatically to eviction. This all sounds a little overbearing to me, but, as MJ points out, with so many people wanting to rent an allotment, it would be wrong to leave a plot in disrepair. And, anyway, this shouldn’t bother us at all because we are so up for the challenge that we can’t imagine a day passing without a quick visit to our allotment.

Keith explains that we will meet many people on the allotments who have been ‘at it’ for twenty years or more so we shouldn’t worry too much. He goes on to tell us that we can expect to find good soil here and that, with dedication and commitment, we will soon be reaping the benefits.

It feels strange to be standing in the middle of a huge field, in which so much produce is growing in the heart of west London. Overhead the planes are lining up to land at Heathrow Airport and, in the distance, I can see cars driving over the M4 flyover. Yet, here we are, in a small part of rural farmland Britain!

The allotments themselves are fascinating: some are beautifully laid out with rows of cabbages, beetroot, onions, potatoes; others appear to be totally neglected. Unfortunately, our plot is in the latter category. It is completely overgrown with brambles and something called cooch (or couch) grass, which I realise I shall have to find out about because Keith seems to feel its effect on growing is only marginally better than a nuclear winter. There is, however, a strip down the centre of our plot that has been cleared and covered with a plastic sheet. Keith tells us this was done the previous year by three Lithuanian students. I am not sure why this small strip among the forest of brambles and weeds was cleared or why the clearers were Lithuanian, but it does seem obvious that the reason we have been offered a plot at all is because it is not a plot at all. It will require serious attention before we start to grow anything. I had assumed that we would be offered a previously cultivated plot which would be ‘good to go’, so this is a bit of a shock. What’s even more of a shock is that MJ doesn’t mind in the least that we are about to accept a jungle of weeds that would be flattered by the term ‘wasteland’. She is chomping at the bit to get digging, which I suppose I should find encouraging.

We agree to let Keith know our decision and he suggests that we look around the whole site to get an idea of what can be achieved. As we walk around we see quite a few people who are already working their plots, despite it being early on a Sunday morning. I reckon there are at least fifteen different nationalities and all age groups represented.

On our way out of the site we meet Sheila who, by all accounts, has one of the best allotments. She is a lovely lady, and she immediately offers us a glass of white wine. As it is only half past nine in the morning and we have not yet had breakfast, however, we decline this generous offer. Sheila is about sixty years old with bleached hair. She is great with our kids, and invites them to look around at what she has grown; she even gamely chuckles as Ellie and Richie pull up most of her carrots and trample through her spinach. In one lovely moment she comes out of her shed and says, ‘Look at my melons’, at which MJ shoots me a glance. Sure enough, however, Sheila has grown melons during the summer, the seeds of which are drying ready for next year. She also has chillies growing, which is a big relief for me as it means we should be able to have spicy food over the next year.

We eventually get home full of enthusiasm. Having initially had reservations about the plot, I am now ready to write to Tony Tesco immediately and tell him that I will no longer be visiting his store. It takes MJ to remind me that our plot is one big, very overgrown patch that may be some time off supporting the family.

Instead, we spend time strolling through our ‘fantasy allotment’ full of all the things I want to cook. Seasonal asparagus, winter kale, hot and spicy radishes (how they used to taste from my grandpa’s garden), strawberries warm from the sun, and fresh green beans. I can picture our plot in the months to come being the envy of all Ealing as we happily harvest our bounty of vegetables. MJ is equally upbeat, and explains to Ellie and Richie the fun that can be had from just being outdoors and at one with nature.

It’s funny how such moments of family harmony can be so quickly shattered by a simple comment, this time from Ellie: ‘But it’s full of weeds and stinging nettles, Mum. When will they clear it up so we can start?’

‘We will clear it up, of course,’ is my happy response to this witty enquiry. But she is not happy and complains that chopping down stinging nettles is not how she intends to spend her weekends. MJ quickly rescues the situation by saying that Daddy will make a start on it while they are at school. I presume that this, also, must be a joke.

Keith had told us that our plot is ‘ten poles’ in size; at the time, I had presumed that MJ knew what this meant, so I had kept my ignorance to myself. Now we are home and discussing the allotment I ask her what a ‘pole’ is exactly. Unfortunately she had presumed I knew what Keith meant and so had decided to keep her ignorance to herself. We look it up in the dictionary. There, under ‘the end of an axis’ and ‘a native of Poland’, is the explanation we are looking for: a pole is a measurement of five and a half yards (about five metres). For some unknown reason this is how allotment folk choose to measure their given space. Ten poles is, therefore, actually damned big – about twenty-five square metres – so MJ suggests we split it down the middle with our friends Dilly and Doug. They have previously expressed a similar gardening urge and we will still have more than enough space to grow what we need as well as having some neighbourly encouragement if we start to flag. Our kids are also far more likely to see the allotment as a good place to go if they might run into Dilly and Doug’s children up there.

As far as encouragement goes I realise we will also need help and advice in the coming months on what to plant, where, and when. MJ suggests that she rings her mum and I ring my dad, both of whom are keen gardeners. I also promise to ring Chris Williams, an old friend who is a gardener by profession. My relationship with Chris is primarily based around drunken afternoons at Lord’s watching England lose cricket matches so, when I speak to him, he is a bit surprised by my horticultural awakening, but he promises to come over to Blondin to give his considered opinion on the best plan of attack.

Just as we are saying goodbye he casually mentions that I should write up my vegetable-growing experience in the form of a cookery book. When I put the phone down I am struck by the simple brilliance of this suggestion. I have always been the sort of bloke who likes to immerse himself fully in a project. I can envisage sunny days spent toiling on the land and evenings spent writing up recipes cunningly concocted from an array of fruit and vegetables. The more I consider this idea the bigger the project gets. My proposal of avoiding supermarkets, for instance, becomes less about avoidance and more about a total ban: WE WILL LIVE BY THE SEASON AND WE WILL NEVER GO TO THE SUPERMARKET AGAIN.

Later in the day I explain to MJ that it has occurred to me that I could write a book (no need to mention it wasn’t my idea) on our experiences, including a selection of recipes, and that there should be a total ban on supermarkets. She immediately rounds on me saying that the whole allotment idea was a family decision and not one that I can hijack and turn into one of my doomed projects.

She is referring, of course, to my previous mission in life, which was to sell our house and move to Zanzibar (a small island in the Indian Ocean). I had researched the whole thing over a couple of weeks on the Internet and realised that, with the proceeds of the house in London, we could afford a crash course in Swahili, standard class flights and still have enough left over to buy a restaurant with some guest rooms once we were there. MJ could educate the children at home, as well as give English lessons to the island’s adults. My big mistake on that occasion was to say nothing to MJ during the planning stage and then get caught at home with an estate agent valuing the house. I had even costed up the shipping of our furniture before I had said a word about my idea to her.

This time, though, I promise things will be different. MJ may feel right now that she wants an allotment ‘just like everyone else’ but, when we get started, she will soon come round.

Despite our differing opinions on the allotment project we are both itching to get started. MJ gives Dilly and Doug a call and the plan to divide the plot in two is agreed.

A few days after accepting the plot we are sent the keys that open the main gates. I presume the gates are needed to keep the local youths from ducking in, when no one is looking, to steal shovels and trowels; it could, of course, be to keep the allotment folk in lest they start sowing broad beans and Swiss chard in the local park.

The very next morning, at 7am, I am at the allotment to meet Chris Williams. As a gardener, Chris knows lots about plants and, to prove this, he, like Keith, has a beard. As he pulls up in his truck, I walk over and swing open the gates for my first visit as an official paid-up allotmenteer. As we walk down the path towards my patch, Chris points out various plants, to which he knows not only the English names, but also the Latin. We pass plots full of cabbages and sprouts and kale and I can see that Chris is already impressed with the efforts of my fellow amateur gardeners.

Eventually we reach my plot and, almost immediately, Chris’s jaw drops. I ask him if he has spotted an obvious problem and he replies that, in 30 years of gardening, he has never taken on such an overgrown patch of land with a view to doing anything more than turning it into a slightly less overgrown patch of land.

Positive thinking is crucial on such an occasion so I explain that, when we came to look at the site, I saw a man clearing an old vegetable bed with a large bionic lawnmower-like machine. This strikes me as a fairly fast way of digging the ground once we have cleared the brambles and assorted weeds so surely we could use one of these things to ‘plough’ our plot.

Chris has bad news on this front. The rotivator – the name of the machine – is not a good idea where cooch grass is concerned; it chops it up and spreads it out, which means that it effectively re-sows it. It turns out that Chris has driven all the way over just to tell me to buy a spade and dig it by hand.

On the subject of self-sufficiency, Chris is scarcely more help, pointing out that it is doubtful if we will be able to survive; I have freely admitted to him that the first and last thing I have ever grown was cannabis when I was a teenager – and that died before it ever saw a Rizla!

It is almost 8am and it’s cold, so cold that I am beginning to understand why so many gardeners have beards. As Chris and I walk back to the gate, he stresses again that, in his view, the best way to remove all our cooch grass is by hand, and then, as he climbs into his truck, he winds down the window to deliver one final bit of encouragement, ‘If you keep removing every bit of cooch grass that springs up, you will find that, within three years, you will have got rid of the lot.’ With this cheery advice in mind, I walk back up Boston Road in the freezing cold.

Back home I sit down for breakfast with MJ and explain that Chris is a little pessimistic about our chances of survival. She immediately takes the line that, if we just grow as much as we can, that, in itself, will be an achievement. I explain that this would be fine for most people, but that this is now a ‘project’ and the rules of it are clear – we have an allotment and we have to survive independently, with no backup from food shops.

Sensing my despair, MJ suggests that we drive up to Homebase to see what sheds they have on display. Up to this point I haven’t even considered that we will need a shed, but, on reflection, it is obvious. I also wonder if we should look into buying a caravan so that we can spend entire weekends on the plot, but MJ convinces me that we should just stick with a shed for now.

A couple of days later Chris calls to see how we are getting on and I sheepishly admit that we haven’t been down to the allotment since I met him there. I do let on, though, that I am up for his book idea and that I have put a proposal in the post to a couple of publishers.

Before he rings off, Chris tells me that his wife, Stella, googled the word Blondin, as she believed it was actually a person’s name. It turns out she is right and he suggests we take a look. Mr Blondin was a famous tightrope walker who notoriously crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1859. He didn’t stop there, though; he crossed it again and again, each time using a different theatrical variation: he carried a man across on his back; he pushed a wheelbarrow across; he did it blindfold; and he even did it on stilts.

Blondin performed at Crystal Palace in 1862 where Charles Dickens declared, ‘half of London is here eager for some dreadful accident’. Nice. Blondin did not grant Mr Dickens his ghoulish wish; instead he pushed his five-year-old daughter across a 55-metre high rope in a wheelbarrow. It took an intervention by the Home Secretary to stop him repeating this particular version.

All of this is very interesting but seems to have little to do with cabbages. Stella, however, had discovered that he eventually moved to England and ended his days on Northfield Avenue, which is the main road just off which are … you guessed it, Blondin Allotments. With a list of achievements like his, the very least I would expect is a large bronze statue. Instead there are 112 amateur vegetable gardeners working on an allotment named in his honour. And now, I am one of them.

Although we are yet to really make an impact on our small section of the Earth’s crust, I am busy reading up on food issues big and small. My new-found passion is fuelled by well-wishers. I receive text messages from my dad, who reads Nature magazine, telling me of a crisis in North Sea fish stocks; I receive emails from friends with pictures of phallic-shaped vegetables (this possibly says more about my friends than it does about my green agenda); and a friend, Greg, drops off a book that he suggests I read. The book, called Not on the Label and written by Felicity Lawrence, explores the truth about supermarket food. It’s the sort of book I would have run a mile from just a short while ago but now I am hooked – it makes fascinating, yet scary, reading. I have never fully realised the impact these large superstores have on all areas of our lives, and, by the time I have read the introduction, I am already a committed eco-warrior!

Feeling particularly militant I drive off to Tesco for the last time. Inside the shop I already feel like a stranger prowling the shelves, despairing at the labels of origin on the beans and tomatoes, and all that packaging, all those air miles. As I drive away from the shop I note those things I shall miss most:

Tesco cheese and pickle pork pies

Tesco Finest vanilla ice cream

Tesco Finest dry-cured bacon

Tesco Finest cider

Tesco pancetta and Parmesan sausages

Tesco Finest cookies

But, despite the loss of these, I make a point of sitting down with the family to discuss the idea of buying all our cleaning stuff, tinned food, dry goods and sundries from local stores, so that we need not physically enter a supermarket for one year as of now.

The trouble with MJ is that she lacks the true heart of a subversive. She will not suffer for the cause and tells me in no uncertain terms that she won’t rule out supermarkets; her reason is that they are convenient – so much for her militancy. She does look pretty fired up when she tells me this, so I compromise by agreeing that dry goods, tins and general ‘stuff’ can still come from the supermarket, but we should start to buy all our meat, fish, bread and vegetables (until our production line begins) from local shops.

As MJ and I continue our conversion to the church of culinary Puritanism, we can’t help noticing that our children are somewhat underwhelmed by the whole thing. Up to this point we have not really canvassed their opinion on the whole allotment ‘Should we/Shouldn’t we’ question, because we have been so sure it will be good for them. They do think it will be great meeting their friends at the allotment, but they are already voicing concerns about having to eat all the vegetables that Dad is so convinced he will grow.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time encouraging, coercing, even bribing and ultimately forcing my children to eat well. Vegetables are often the source of our discussions. On one occasion I explained that they had to eat their vegetables, if only from a health point of view. I went to great length to explain the ‘five portions a day’ rule and pointed out, when they argued, that this wasn’t my idea, that it was actually a government initiative. Still they argued, and, in utter desperation, I told them that, if they didn’t like what I was telling them, they should write to the Prime Minister Tony Blair – or the Queen for that matter – and take up the issue with them.

The next morning I came down to breakfast to find the following letter written by Richie to the Queen:

To call his bluff I made him address an envelope and send it. Then we got back to normal, resuming mealtime conflicts and bribery. Two months passed and then, through the letterbox, fell an envelope addressed to Richie and emblazoned with the royal stamp. We could hardly believe what we saw when Richie opened the envelope. The Queen herself had written back. I’d show you the real letter here …

…. but unfortunately her majesty only gives vegetable consumption advice on a strictly one to one basis and won’t let me print the letter, so you’ll just have to take my word on it (lest she chop off my head.)

The truth is that the letter was actually written on behalf of the Queen by the Senior Correspondence Officer who said that the Queen thanked Richie for writing and that she thought it was thoughtful of him to tell her that I want him to eat more fruit and veg. She then suggested Richie look up information on the web about what children should be eating. Funny, I had never pictured the Queen surfing the ‘net’.

She then mentioned that she was going to forward Richie’s letter to Patricia Hewitt MP, the Secretary of State for Health. Well, sure enough, soon after we received the following letter (which the Department for Health is very happy about my showing you here):

By then vegetable consumption was a hot topic in our house – any green thing served was eaten ‘because the Queen says so’. And I hope to keep it as a hot topic.

While bribery and torture can work in getting children to eat vegetables, however, I still hope that the best way to ‘sell’ vegetables to the young is to pick them fresh and cook them with care. A strawberry fresh from the plant and still warm from the sun will always taste better than a bought one, and the same will apply to a cabbage and even the dreaded sprout. My job is to convince my children of this.

Forget AA Gill or Michael Winner. Ellie and Richie are my toughest food critics. Yet, with the allotment now secure, I believe it is only a matter of time before garden-fresh vegetables are getting the Michelin treatment and being eaten with glee!

MJ and I have big plans for the allotment: we discuss dishes we love and note the vegetables we require as we discuss a growing plan. By this time next year we will be ‘grow your own’ bores who turn up at friends’ houses for dinner with a pointed cabbage and half a kilo of broad beans instead of a bottle of wine.

Nothing can stop us now.

Chapter 3 | The Ealing Project

Despite our early enthusiasm, Christmas has come and gone without a single trip to the allotment. We have thought about going but the festive season just kept getting in the way.

Strangely, however, both MJ and I have demonstrated our commitment to the future in the form of Christmas gifts. My main present from the kids is a portable gas stove. MJ tells me that it is for making tea, but I have bigger ideas. We will carry out ‘from earth to pot’ experiments with all the vegetables we grow by eating them as soon as they are picked.

My gifts on the other hand are seriously ‘correct’. I have done most of my shopping on the Centre for Alternative Technology website. MJ is the main beneficiary of this environmentally aware shopping spree and I shall always remember her joyful expression as she unwrapped: her new water siphon especially designed to remove ‘grey’ water from the bath to use on the garden; a reusable J cloth; a notepad made from elephant shit; and a (reusable) string bag for shopping – in local stores obviously. She just looked so happy.

When it comes to the allotment itself, the truth is that, since we got the keys, we have not found, nor made, the time to visit. MJ is retraining as a teacher and I am at the pre-production stage of a TV series called Ever Wondered about Food…, which will be filmed during February. We are both simply too busy, and are perhaps slightly daunted by the task ahead. To compound the situation, the temperature has plummeted to minus two degrees and the thought of digging in this weather is too much to bear.

The trouble is that we are constantly reminded of the allotment. Each time we drive down Boston Road past the gates that lead to Blondin, one of the kids will call out, ‘that’s where the allotment is’ (or ’lotment, as Richie calls it). MJ and I just grimace and mutter empty promises that contain the words ‘next weekend’. It is now two months since we inherited our plot and it’s hard to ignore Keith’s echoing words about eviction after three months of neglect.

That cold November morning we had been filled with so much hope for the future – a future full of vegetables – and I had worked hard over Christmas convincing MJ that my allotment project, including a supermarket ban and a book of our achievements, was a good idea. She had only come around when I had received a positive response from HarperCollins about publishing a book – she couldn’t bear to crush my excitement, I expect.

In early January I had gone to meet a lady at HarperCollins called Jenny who had bowled me over with her enthusiasm for my book. She fully agreed that a supermarket ban should take place and I had confidently told her that I would start right away. This had been somewhat foolhardy as we hadn’t lifted a single nettle, let alone planted anything, and now, another month on, I am beginning to envisage a cookery book with no recipes and no story.

Our weekly trips to the supermarket are carrying on unchecked. At first I had refused to go myself, but now even I am resigned to the fact that, until we get the allotment up and running, the supermarket is our only hope.

Towards the end of February, we have Dilly and Doug over for lunch (no prizes for guessing where the ingredients came from). As we sit around the table, the conversation drifts into choppy waters when MJ mentions the allotment. It comes as a huge relief to learn that they have also not visited their half of the plot and are wrestling with the desire to pack it all in before they start.

At meetings like these, you need a leader, someone who stands up and bangs their fist in defiance of the gloom. I’m not about to lead anyone anywhere, but my wife is made of sterner stuff. She leans on the back of the chair and makes a stirring speech along the lines of, ‘We will conquer this patch of land. Paul’s even going to write a book and he’s never going to a supermarket again – ever. And we are behind him one hundred per cent.’ It does the trick; all of a sudden we are four gardeners around a table ready to dig at a moment’s notice. We all agree that we will get down to the allotment and show our mettle … next weekend.

It is March – and still bloody freezing – when we take our first visit to the allotment. We have now had the plot for over three months and have failed to scupper a single weed. Dilly and Doug, and their children Eddie and Sylvie, join us so that we can divide the one very big plot into two smaller ones as per the original plan. Standing, shivering, in the middle of a frozen jungle that we have been silly enough to pay for, we agree ends and decide that a shared shed shall be the dividing line.

Our plot is so overgrown that it’s difficult to know where to start; the whole area is a mass of tall grass, brambles and nettles. I feel the best way forwards is to go home, make a nice cup of tea and sit down in the warm to devise a plan of attack, but MJ counters that meetings simply get in the way of progress. We have brief words before she grabs the only shovel we own and starts randomly digging like a woman possessed.

As this is really the extent of our garden tool kit my choices appear to be limited to standing in one spot and shivering, or standing in another spot and shivering. Eventually I decide to make a fire with the kids. One of the points of this mad folly is to give the kids a bit of outdoor life, so we collect as much wood and dried grass as possible and are soon all standing, hands held out, around a blazing fire like some 1970s workforce at odds with our employers.

As the day wears on, it becomes increasingly obvious that we need some sort of plan if we are going to defeat this tangled, weedy corner of Ealing; even MJ, when she joins us around the fire, has to admit as much. MJ, Dilly, Doug and I decide to concentrate on a small area that will eventually be the spot for our shed. The next two hours are spent pulling up brambles and digging down six inches until we have a relatively flat space.

A shed is a vital addition to an allotment; everyone who has an allotment has a shed. It means we can begin to buy some tools and store them on-site, and also that we will then have somewhere to shelter from the more extreme weather.

Sheds, of course, are joked about as some last domain of male authority, a place where a bloke can go when everything gets too much. I have never thought of myself as the shed type but, as I look at the patch of cleared ground, it is easy to get excited about the structure waiting to stand there.

We are the allotment that is furthest west so our shed will be like an outpost in the other west. The wild one. I start to ponder the whole shed thing and realise that I could really get used to having a shed. I then consider the five things I need in my shed:

1 A radio – for football results, the Today programme and Woman’s Hour

2 A kettle – for making tea

3 A camping stove – to boil the kettle (to make that tea)

4 A chair – well, you can’t stand during your tea break; it might have to be collapsible

5 A barbecue

The other thing every allotment worker has is a compost heap. These come in various guises. Some are simply piles of vegetation left exposed to the elements; others are elaborately constructed from old wooden pallets; some are even the more modern type – a green plastic drum with a removable lid.

We have the latter variety – MJ had accepted the council’s offer of a subsidised compost bin and had given it to me for Christmas (ooh, lucky me!). After some discussion, we decide to put the compost bin at the outer edge of our plot. MJ feels that it might pong a bit during the summer, so we shouldn’t put it too near to where we will be working.

It’s worth mentioning that, as well as a shed and a compost bin, there is something else that marks a gardener out from the crowd – his or her wardrobe. It includes: stout sensible boots; lightweight practical trousers with lots of pockets; thermal shirts (preferably with a checked pattern); waterproofs for wet weather; and thick socks. This is the type of clobber you will find yourself wearing should you take up the challenge to ‘grow your own’. Incidentally, this is also the sort of clothing over which I seriously considered divorcing my parents when I was young, so I have tried to avoid it at all costs!

The following Saturday, nursing a monster hangover, I go to watch Brentford crush Barnsley (3–1). Over a Friday night beer, Chris, his wife Stella and I discussed all things horticultural, and I awake to find not only that I have a serious headache but also that I have in my pocket a list of tips on: growing tomatoes, killing slugs, types of weedkiller and building sheds. It seems that I can’t escape the allotment, even while drunk!

As the haze clears, I remember talking enthusiastically about the task ahead. Chris listened intently as I told him that we have begun the ground assault. He agreed that a shed is absolutely vital and pointed out that we will also need to start thinking about garden tools.

Stella asked if we had planted anything and I had to admit that, so far, I have only thought about clearing our space because that, in itself, is such an immense task. She suggested taking it bit by bit. Her view is that we might be spurred on once we have something in the ground. This is probably very true but the thought of actually planting anything has seemed further off every time I have considered it.

It had taken Dilly, Doug, MJ and me the best part of a day to clear a relatively small patch for the shed, so I am already beginning to redraw the ground rules of our project. I consider pushing back the whole self-sufficiency thing to next year, by which time I hope all the weeds will have been removed. Stella’s suggestion, on the other hand, will allow us to clear and plant a certain area and then move on to the next section.

After the match, despite still feeling a bit rusty, I join MJ, Ellie and Richie for a spot of digging with some new shovels. We all dig for a solid three hours until at last the base for the shed is fully dug and we can lay down the reclaimed paving stones that will act as the foundations for our yet-to-be-purchased Homebase shed. This small measure of progress is encouraging and we soon begin to tackle another small corner of the plot just as Stella had suggested.

It fast becomes apparent that weed clearing is, quite literally, the tip of the problem. The patch of land that is now free of brambles and nettles has all sorts buried in it – we have uncovered glass, metal rods, bricks, medicine bottles (why?), gardening gloves (six pairs), shoes, rusty beer cans (lots of these!), and other assorted rubbish, and it feels as though we have inherited a landfill site rather than an allotment.

I am sure there are some who would feel that all this preliminary work makes the eventual harvest more rewarding. MJ and I, however, reckon eating vegetables minus the graft is just as rewarding, and we can’t help wishing we had inherited a recently vacated and lovingly cared for plot that had only just been dug over and maybe had a mature pear tree in one corner.

Back at home the allotment is also having an effect on our daily lives. As the project develops I am finding myself thinking more about our life in general. Every news bulletin seems to include some further evidence of the environmental destruction of the planet. I have long been aware of this but now, as I begin to live in tandem with the earth (well, I have dug a couple of holes), I realise that there is possibly a bigger effect to be had from the allotment than simply putting food on the table.