Energy Cafe ‘Charge your knowledge’
Critical Mass Food search
Saturday 14th March
Two search parties set off on the hunt for seasonal wild food…
heading for Lee Valley Park…
and the direction of Epping Forest…
Updates on our findings,wild food cook ups and gourmet recipes coming soon!
How to make Birch Sap Wine
It’s the perfect time of year to collect sap from mature birch trees to make wine…
find a mature birch tree…
boar a hole in the trunk approx 2 inches deep
fit a copper pipe in the hole..and attach a five litre bottle to catch the dripping sap….leave overnight. full update on what happens next coming soon!
Energy College: Charge Your Knowledge!
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The Search for Eggs, Bread and Dairy is On!
Monday 19th January
Wednesday’s All Day Breakfast was imminent! We needed to source as many ingredients within the six mile radius as possible.
Investigating the local free range egg situation was quite revealing: One local supplier gets his eggs from Ireland (a few food miles there!) while Eastern Counties Farm in Waltham Abbey has decided to give up on free range eggs for the time being and offered to sell us 12 redundant Blackrock hens… Business has suffered since Tescos opened, food prices have rocketed and the horrors of factory farmed eggs only tends to stay in people’s conscious for a couple of weeks until laziness draws them to the supermarket again. Hopefully campaigns such as The Compassion in World Farming one will increase demand and help the farm to produce free range eggs again in the Spring. Why can’t the local Tesco’s get some of its stock from there?
Thankfully, the Holyfield Farm on the Crooked Mile, Waltham Abbey is going strong – with 2000 happy hens enjoying life outdoors.
We dropped into the farm shop where farmer Dave served us four dozen freshly laid eggs.
Medium sized makes a very decent fried egg!
Dave and his wife also keep ducks…
and stock locally produced jams, chutneys, Essex honey
and potatoes supplied by another farm. Any advise we can get on local produce is vital for the mapping we are doing… Dave recommended a farmers’ market in Loughton… we must visit!
So we’ve cracked the eggs for Wednesday…thanks Dave! Now bread… thats a challenge!
Our search for small scale, independent bakeries within the six miles wasn’t very satisfying…Greggs and Percy Ingle seem to have the monopoly. They do bake on the premesis, but we’d like to find out where the flour comes from and how its made. A real bread campaign is underway initiated by Sustain. Dave mentioned a watermill in Hertford where they produce flour from their own wheat. Its outside the six miles – but maybe this is the closest we are going to get.
We’ll investigate water-powered flour milling in time for the bread oven we’re planning!
A quick visit to Hayes Hill Farm – managed by Lee Valley. They have dairy cows among other farm animals – but no milk for sale there as its imported out.
If anyone has any tips on where we can source local dairy produce please get in touch!
Harvest: 16th Sept
The fields of white maize and sweet corn in Enfield that we visited in the summer are ready for harvesting, so we went to see David Mwanaka in action. Today, he was picking white sweet corn for Sainsburys, whilst a private customer waited at the side of the field for her fresh order.
For Sainsburys, the vegetables have to be driven all the way to Bognor to be packaged, then brought back to the distribution centre right next to Gunpowder Park which seems a bit crazy. We sampled a few – they are even delicious eaten raw.
Purchase: 17th Sept
Sainsburys in Whitechapel…
We find the day’s last remaining packet of white sweet corn from David’s farm.
Food Co-ops and Community Kitchens at the Broadwater Farm Estate: 13th Sept
Quite a few people have mentioned, Haringey, Tottenham and Broadwater Farm Estate to us in relation to Energy Cafe. Haringey now has a networking group of residents who are concerned with the environmental crisis: Sustainable Haringey
As a major part of this, a mini revolution seems to be taking place at the Broadwater Farm Estate and the adjacent Lordship Recreation Ground. We took a trip to Tottenham to visit the ‘Restore the Rec Community Festival’ to find out more.
The estate is a 1970s social and architectural experiment – approaching it feels like entering someone’s utopian vision. The individual blocks are now characterised by different murals: waterfalls, Bob Marley, John Lennon…there is a community centre and amphitheatre and the recreation ground is a huge piece of land that offers much potential…
Back to Earth Projects are working towards making an environmental centre, community allotment and city farm on Lordship Rec. It will develop “steadily and organically” as they plan to enlist local residents to volunteer or gain training through the work. Its exciting to see how this has become the utopian vision of now…
To begin, Back to Earth have initiated the Tottenham Annual Flower & Produce Show, showcasing and celebrating home-produced fruit and veg, preserves and crafts.
They have also started a Community Kitchen and Food Co-op on the estate. The kitchen serves cheap, international cuisine and an opportunity for budding cooks to train. The co-op sells food produced by Eostre Organics in Norfolk, as well surplus allotment fruit and veg from local gardeners…
…fair trade Palestinian olive oil and soaps
www.zaytoun.org
…and tea from the misty hills of Nilgiri in southern India, traded on an alternative economic system which brings the tea directly from the hills to community groups and co-ops. Tricia, who served us, was keen to supply tea to Energy Cafe. We have made this six mile radius rule for food supplies, but its there for us to question and learn more about the pros and cons of sourcing food locally versus global trading. The issue is not so black and white. It was inspiring to come across a project which cuts out the corporate middle men and has human rights at its core. The growers in India are tribal people asserting their land rights and providing people on housing estates in the UK with low cost tea they drink everyday.
Its nice tea too.
To watch an interview with Anne Gray, one of the co-op initiators, see the y blog:
www.xyzlondon.com/y
A few bicycles and twice as many legs provided the energy needed to power the sound system, announcing the green-fingered winners of the horticultural show at the end of the day…
www.magnificentrevolution.org
Late Summer Foraging in and around Gunpowder Park: 27th August
I have always questioned what makes a weed a weed? Why some plants are desired over others when so many of these ‘weeds’ are beautiful, edible and medicinal. Wild food is the first place to start when searching for food within a 6 mile radius. Its interesting too, in terms of using the land around us as a source of edible energy…when you have the feeling that you have as much right as the birds and the squirrels to help yourself to all these plants and rich pickings…they are free and all you need is the physical energy to go out and get them.
Although wild food has in recent years become a bit of a feature on the menus of the gourmet, many of us have forgotten which plants are edible, how to prepare them or use them medicinally. A herbalist that we happened to meet at Gunpowder Park, mentioned that horsemen in the past, would have known the healing properties of hedgerow plants, so they could use them if injured on route. What fantastic knowledge. Today, other cultures seem very in tune with urban foraging, particularly Turkish people, who I have spotted collecting various wild fruits hanging over into the streets of Dalston.
What seems so great about wild food, is the satisfaction that what you eat is growing in total symbiosis with what else is around it. Obviously, all plant-based food was wild at some point, but cultivated fruits and vegetables have been cross-bred, modified, manipulated by man for ease of mass-production making them heavily reliant on fertilisers and other very artificial techniques. Because of this, the diversity of varieties is just not seen in the supermarket… (although some ‘new’ ones may be creeping in wearing a weird ‘Taste the Difference’ label and a high price tag). If you really want to taste the difference, perhaps it can be done for free by rediscovering some instinctive knowledge about the plants that still find places to grow all around us. Many of them, now classed as ‘weeds’, plucked, mowed and discarded with no regard for their nutritional, medicinal values whatsoever.
We armed ourselves with 2 classic books:
Food for Free by Richard Maybe, Collins 1972
The English Physician, Culpeper’s British Herbal 1814
It was harvest time and we went for a walk in the park hoping to find some wild edible plants – blackberries at least! We found something before we even got there. Bees buzzed on top of a huge lavender crop on the side of the road…maybe not edible, but lavender laden bees would make some very tasty honey… Next to it we spotted a large rosemary bush…could go very well with some roasted allotment potatoes…
Lavender
“…is of a special good use for all the griefs and pains of the head and brain that proceed a cold cause, as the apoplexy, falling sickness, the dropsy, or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsions, palsies and often faintings … Two spoonfuls of the distilled water of the flowers taken, helpeth them that have lost their voice, as also the tremblings and passions of the heart, and faintings and swoonings, not only to be drank, but applied to the temples, or nostrils to be smelt unto…”
Culpeper
Rosemary
“It helpeth a weak memory and quickeneth the senses…. The flowers and conserve made of them, are good to comfort the heart… to burn the herb in houses and chambers correcteth the air in them…. The dried leaves shred small, and taken in a pipe, as tobacco is taken, helpeth those that have any cough, phthisick, or consumption, by warming and drying the thin distillations which cause those diseases…”
Culpeper
At the side of the road here, we got chatting to Fabio, a local photographer and keen jam-maker, who sent us in the right direction to find blackberry brambles, on the fringe of Gunpowder Park
Blackberries
According to Richard Maybe, the seeds of this very common fruit were found “in the stomach of a Neolithic man dug up from the Essex clay…” So this is a truly local species! We all know that blackberries are great for jams, crumbles, pies, puddings and juice, their taste mingles well with apples and elderberries and they are delicious eaten fresh from the brambles. Apparently there are over 400 microspecies of Blackberry in Britain all with slightly different tastes and ready to be gathered from August – October.
The tub now full of blackberries, we crossed the river, further into the park. Its a fantastic way to go for a walk…trying to identify plants and see if they are edible. And so many of them are…
Comfrey
The furry leaves are used. Don’t worry about the fur, Richard Maybe reassures that it will disappear during cooking. Prepare as well-seasoned spinach or make a special fritter: “Leave the stalks on the comfrey leaves, wash well, and dip into a thin batter made from egg, flour and water. Then fry the battered leaf for not more than two minutes…” It has an abundance of medicinal qualities too, including miracle bone-setting.
Rosehips
Gunpowder Park is speckled with these bright orange berries between late August and November. We chose to leave them to ripen for another month. Rosehips contain more vitamin C than oranges which led to 344 tons being collected and produced as a syrup during the war when citrus fruits were scarce. In the Middle Ages the berries were used as a filling for sweet tarts.
Marsh Thistle
Prickly pink thistles grow all over the park. This one looks like a marsh thistle. “…the young shoots have been used like Burdock in some European countries.” Richard Maybe. The prickles and the tough outer peel are removed, and the stalks then used in salads or boiled. Perhaps it can be used to make a type of Dandelion and Burdock cordial…
Dandelion
Here is the companion for the Burdock drink. A plant everyone recognises… its flyaway seeds ensure that the yellow flowers appear in abundance almost all year round. It is incredibly versatile: the roots can be dried, roasted and ground into ‘coffee’, cooked as a vegetable ( Japanese style) and the leaves and heads used in salads, sandwiches or boiled like spinach. Culpeper confirms the plant’s virtues as a cleanser of the liver and diuretic:
“You can see here what virtues this common herb hath, and that is the reason the French and Dutch so often eat them in the spring: and now, if you look a little further, you may see plainly, without a pair of spectacles, that foreign physicians are not so selfish as ours are, but more communicative of the virtues of plants to people.” (In French the plant is called: pissenlit).
Elder
A couple of summers ago we made Elderflower cordial and champagne, but we’ve never gathered and made anything with the berries which are in season now. They can be fermented into wine, added to apple crumbles and blackberry jelly… Richard Maybe gives a recipe for a kind of spicy ‘Daddy’s Sauce’ called Pontack Sauce: “a relic from those days when every retired military gentleman carried his patent sauce as an indispensable part of his luggage.”
Hawthorn Berries
Further into the park we recognise many Hawthorn bushes, but had no idea that they were edible: “The young April leaves – called bread and cheese by children – have a pleasantly nutty taste”. Richard Maybe recommends them as a useful addition to spring salads, sandwiches, pies, potatoes and nuts. The little red berries, which are out now, look like they might give you a tummy ache, but can actually be made into a jelly with crab apples and taste great with cream cheese.
“If cloths and sponges be wet in the distilled water (of the hawthorn flowers), and applied to any place wherein thorns and splinters, or the like, do abide in the flesh, it will notably draw them forth; and thus you see the thorn gives a medicine for his own picking, and so doth almost everything else.” Culpeper
Crab Apples
We spot loads of tumbling little apples near the meridian line monument…They are crab apples, but not featured in either of our books.
Jelly or wine seem to be the most common way of using them.
Tansy
Finally we found this golden flower shining out of the long grass and teasels. It used to be a popular kitchen garden herb: “the juice was used to flavour omlettes…and there was a delightful medieval bubble and squeak. made from a fry-up of tansy leaves, green corn and violets and served with orange and sugar.” We took some home but were a bit scared to try it.
“Let those women that desire children love this herb, it is their best companion, (their husbands excepted). Culpeper
Although feeling very satisfied and much more learned after a day of foraging, I realised it was a very time-consuming way of getting a decent meal or store cupboard together: it could almost become a full time job – as it was for primitive man. But it does give a real hands-on sense of how food and medicine fits into the whole ecological system and how our bodies are neatly designed for this extremely therapeutic activity which gave me an acute sense of general elatedness.
Then again, a tiny punnett of blackberries will cost you £1.49 at the local shop.
It would take less than 5 minutes to pick these from a good bramble bush round the corner.
Tropical White Maize and Sweetcorn Straight from the Fields of Enfield
Whilst browsing through a recent copy of The Jellied Eel magazine we found a small article about David Mwanaka – the farmer who has planted some special African vegetables alongside the wheat fields of Enfield. We went to investigate.
David recently opened a farm shop at 619 Hertford Road in Enfield to sell the exotic vegetables as well as grass-reared meats and goods from Zimbabwe, David’s mother country.
Inside the shop, he showed us a huge pile of bags full of mustard leaves (tsunga), freshly picked from the fields. Apparently they are simply boiled for 15 minutes and taste delicious. We didn’t even know you could eat them… The mustard field itself is a delightful sight.
Having worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe, David couldn’t find work when he moved to the UK six years ago. Not deterred, he was inspired to become the first producer in the UK of white maize and sweetcorn – a favorite dish in Zimbabwe. There is a saying in South Africa: “put the pot on to boil before you go to pick the maize”. The vegetable is at its best on the day it is picked, so importing it is just not the same.
David also plants pumpkins, for their leaves, in and around the rows of sweetcorn. Its a very traditional technique which you won’t find in large agribusiness fields in the UK. The climate here isn’t quite like sunny South Africa either, so how did David manage? He tested a range of different varieties until he found the ones that liked it here. The maize can be boiled or roasted and eaten on the day of harvest or left on the stalk to dry in the sun (in hot countries!) to be milled into flour. Nothing is wasted and the husks are saved for composting. The sweetcorn is best cooked on a flaming grill….a potential event for Energy Cafe at harvest time in late August, early September.
David’s enterprise has become so popular, that during harvest, people form a long queue daily, outside the farm shop, waiting, their pots boiling at home, for a fresh white maize supper…
