We are organising a Foodie Bugle Lecture event in collaboration with The School of Artisan Food, on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire, on Thursday 1^st August 2013, from 6pm till 10.30 pm. 

The Foodie Bugle Lectures are an opportunity to bring together food and drink artisans, growers, entrepreneurs, writers, bloggers and food lovers, to share experience, knowledge and wisdom over speeches, conversation and a seasonal supper of regional and local produce with wine and ale. 

We look forward to welcoming our speakers: Joe Schneider, one of Britain’s leading artisan cheesemakers at Stichelton Dairy; Claire Monk, Head Brewer at Welbeck Abbey Brewery and Matthew McCarthy, Head Baker at The Welbeck Bakehouse.

The three speakers will talk about how they set up their business or activity, how they managed to create their product, brand and identity, find their suppliers and route to market and generate a loyal customer base. If they knew then what they know now, what would they do differently and why? What advice would they give to young artisans aspiring to work in the food and drink industry or set up their own business?

There will be no technology and no power point presentations: just straight talk, from the mind and the heart. 

The evening’s schedule - Thursday 1st August 2013

6 pm - Arrival of guests - drinks and canapes.

6.30 pm / 6.45 pm – A short introduction by Alison Swan Parente of The School of Artisan Food and Silvana de Soissons of The Foodie Bugle.

6.50 pm - First lecture by Joe Schneider of Stichelton Dairy - followed by short Q & A. Follow Joe on Twitter @SticheltonDairy

7.30 pm - Second lecture by Claire Monk of Welbeck Brewery - followed by short Q & A. Follow Claire on Twitter @WelbeckAbbeyBry

8.10 pm - Third lecture by Matthew McCarthy - followed by short Q & A. Follow Matthew on Twitter @WelbeckBakers

8.50 pm – 10.30pm - Supper of local and seasonal produce with wine and ale.

Cost per ticket: 

£30 per person to include supper and drinks.

To book your ticket:

Please click here to book your ticket. 

Further Information

The School of Artisan Food: www.schoolofartisanfood.org.

Follow the team on Twitter @artisanschool

The Foodie Bugle Lectures at The Royal Oak Pub in Leighterton, near Tetbury, brought together an enthusiastic crowd of foodies from a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from retailing to artisanal food production, design, marketing, PR, the media and restaurants. As usual our speakers taught us a great deal about how they created their businesses from scratch, and developed them into brands that are recognised for their excellence and expertise.

We ate and drank the fruits of that expertise at lunch. The Royal Oak Chefs prepared terrines, fresh breads, preserves, pies, pates, Scotch eggs and hams using the region’s best raw ingredients. Guests enjoyed a selection of Bath Ales and wines procured by The Oxford Wine Company and Thomas Panton Wines. Paul Whitbread, the owner of The Royal Oak, and his wife Antonia were our genial hosts.

Here is a brief summary of a few of the things we learned from the lecturers.

Tom Russell, Marketing Manager of Shipton Mill

The mill at Shipton Moyne Wood has been producing flour since the time of the Domesday Book. It is now regarded as one of the leading producers of stoneground and roller milled organic flours in Britain, producing 126 different types of flours for shops, bakeries, restaurants and hotels all over the country. They also run bread making courses at Frampton Mill. 

Tom talked through the great changes that have occurred in bread production in Britain, in particular the Chorleywood method of industrial break making. The renaissance in demand for artisan bread that has been growing steadily over the last few years has brought about a revival in interest for different flours and provenance of good ingredients in general.

He believes that not growing too fast as a business, keeping a very close eye on Gross Profit, not selling to supermarkets, not over-spending on branding and packaging, focusing on core products and providing an excellent service have all been key to the success of the Shipton Mill brand.

His advice to aspiring food entrepreneurs is that passion, belief in the product and understanding the market are very important requirements. Grouping together with like-minded artisans, sharing resources, producing a small but excellent range and choosing suppliers that give you the longest number of credit days were also good bits of advice shared.

Ben Lambourne, co-founder of Pong Cheese

Pong Cheese is a cheese retailer and wholesaler. The business was created by two friends from Bath. Matt March-Smith has been in Internet marketing for the last 12 years running several digital marketing agencies in London, helping brands such as Waitrose, Jamie Oliver and Oli launch into the online space; Ben was a chef and cheese expert for over 10 years, and his CV includes serving cheese in the Houses of Parliament.

Ben thought up the idea of creating a business that sold both continental and British cheeses online because he wanted to showcase the huge variety of artisan cheeses that are now being created. He views the internet as a faceless, non-judgemental way that consumers can buy good cheese, whereas some specialist cheese shops can seem intimidating.

Pong sends out boxes of cheeses across the country, anything from one single cheese to monthly cheese boxes and towers of cheese wheels for weddings. The company specialises in washed rind cheeses, and in small, packaged cheeses, so there is no cutting involved and no waste. In addition a range of branded condiments and biscuits has been added to the offer.

Phil Woods, assistant cheesemaker at Simon Weaver Cheeses, Cotswold Organic Dairy

Phil Woods retired from his job as a primary school teacher and entered the world of cheesemaking after he discovered that there was a creamery in his village. The Weavers have been farming in the Cotswolds for the past three generations, and in the South West of England since before 1570. They produce award winning brie cheeses as well as mozzarella, feta and hard Gloucester cheeses on their organic farm in Gloucestershire. Phil explained in detail how 10 000 litres of organic milk are turned into 2000 kg of cheese every week.

Artisan cheese making is definitely not a job for the week: strong arms and muslces are required to stir, cut, lift, drain, turn and pierce the curds, whey and cheese wheels at various stages in their production.

This talk was an entertaining and educational masterclass in how a small, rural creamery can produce an interesting variety of award winning cheeses – the would-be cheesemakers in the room were riveted.          

Richard Dempster, Sales Director and co-founder of Bath Ales

Bath Ales is an independent brewery founded in 1995. The co-founders all come from a brewing background. The company employs 250 people, brews 13 different ales, they have created a bottling plant and a brewery shop as well as owning 10 different pubs in and around the Bath and Bristol area.

Richard talked us through the growth trajectory of the business, from its very humble beginnings when three brewer friends got together to make regional cask ales, right through to setting up their own brewery, buying one pub a year every year and expanding the bottling plant. The business moved site several times as the company expanded and more investments were made.

The company now supplies cafes, pubs, restaurants, hotels and supermarkets {both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s}. Future projects include building a 100 barrel brewery and a new bottling plant, as well as creating more craft style brews to meet demand for more hoppy, flavoured beers and to carry on the pub expansion.

The company looks for pubs in good street locations with excellent footfall, and then refurbishes them, introducing a wide variety of beers and excellent food in order to create a foodie destination.

Fact of the day: the company logo of the hare was designed to make the band look female friendly. “Do not alienate 50% of the market!” Richard told us.

The next Foodie Bugles Lectures will be taking place at The School of Artisan Food on 1st August 2013. Click here for details. 

We had been working hard thinking about the branding of our future shop, when we came across The English Stamp Company.

Based in deepest Dorset, Jon and Sasha Dorey’s company is a useful find for any start-up artisan business. For very reasonable prices they can create bespoke stamps with your company name and logo, as well as inkpads of varying colours. You can stamp paper carrier bags, price labels, stationery, envelopes and fliers, and the look is very clean, neat and sharp. Professional!

They also carry a huge range of pre-made stamps, for crafting, home produce and gift making. Their ideas are endless.

Their workshop is inside a converted barn near the Jurassic Coast, and it used to be a dinosaur museum. If you have purchased a copy of the first print edition of The Foodie Bugle you will have read all about Sasha’s truffle hunting adventures. She is a lady of many talents, and trains Italian Lagotto Romagnolo dogs to sniff out truffles from forests in and around the South West of England.

If you want to order a stamp like ours, you can visit their website here.

Follow the Doreys on Twitter @englishstamp and also @ClubTruffle

A great new foodie event has caught our eye and we are diligently reporting it for all our readers and followers.

Kather’s Kitchen’s “Producer on a Pedestal” pop-up dinners showcase the best of the region’s food in the elegant surroundings of 40 Alfred Place in Kingsdown, Bristol, one of the city’s prime pop-up dinner locations.

To each of the three-course dinners a carefully selected food producer is invited, to learn all about how the produce is made. Their food will be the evening’s star ingredient.

Dinners cater for meat eaters and vegetarians alike.

The hosts and Chefs are Katherine Marland of Kather’s Kitchen, and award-winning Bristol-based food writer Clare Hargreaves whose work on The Independent and BBC Good Food has introduced her to a wide range of talented artisans.

Forthcoming dinners

Friday 21st June 2013

Producer on a pedestal – Tom Calver of Westcombe Dairy

7.30pm for dinner at 8.00pm

£29.50 per person for 3 courses

Bring your own drink

Friday 19th July 2013

Producer details & menus available soon

Producer on a pedestal – Richard Vaughan of Huntsham Court Farm

7.30pm for dinner at 8.00pm

£29.50 per person for 3 courses

Bring your own drink

How to book

There is only seating for 40 guests per evening. To reserve a place email info@katherskitchen.co.uk and you will be guided through how to register your menu choices and make payment.

Further Information

Kather’s Kitchen: www.katherskitchen.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @katherskitchen 

The World Heritage City of Bath was a very different place when Chef Rachel Demuth set up her artisan bakery there over 25 years ago.

“I remember that you could count the number of restaurants and cafes on two hands. There were lots of small food retailers, including a shop that sold fresh, homemade pasta,” she told a gathering of fellow cooks over lunch at her home today.

Now chains such as Wagamama, ASK, Café Rouge, Carluccio’s, Jamie’s and Pizza Express have opened up, driving out small, family owned businesses from high streets where rents and rates spiral ever upwards.

It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Demuths, Rachel’s award winning vegetarian restaurant in North Parade Passage, near Bath Abbey, has thrived for over two decades, and her Vegetarian Cookery School, around the corner in Terrace Walk, has become a hub for learning and inspiration.

Assisted by Chefs and cookery teachers Jo Ingleby and Helen Lawrence, Rachel cooked a lunch showcasing seasonal Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese recipes, such as Gado Gado, a mix of seasonal vegetables and eggs served with a spicy and peanut sauce and cassava chips, a Thai salad of green papaya, cashew nuts, tomato, limes, chilli and jaggery, a Tempeh of pressed, marinated and fried soya bean and a Sambale of coconut, chili, coriander and tamarind, all served with a refreshing cucumber puree and mint drink.

Under the shade of a vine covered pergola, overlooking the hills of Bath and beyond, Rachel and her team served a dessert of Onde Onde – glutinous white rice flour, palm sugar and pandan leaf balls rolled in coconut, served with a warm pineapple and chilli salad, fresh mango and rambutan fruit {similar to lychees}.

These recipes are taught in the Thai and Vietnamese classes, and make use of produce sourced from local Somerset shops: a Thai shop in Weston for exotic ingredients, the Sweet Mart of Bristol and Eades the greengrocer in Julian Road in Bath as well as Essentials on Walcot Street. Salad leaves, herbs and greens are all grown in Rachel's own garden. 

Here she shares her Gado Gado recipe.

Gado Gado with Satay Tempeh

Gado Gado is a classic Indonesian dish which literally means “Mix Mix”. It features green beans and other vegetables, hard boiled eggs and a spicy peanut sauce. Traditionally Gado Gado is served with crispy prawn crackers and a good vegetarian alternative is fried rice noodles or cassava chips to give the dish added crunch.

Serves: 4-6

Dietary: contains nuts, wheat free, vegan option

Ingredients

One block of plain tempeh

Marinade

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 stick of lemongrass, finely chopped

1 tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp nutmeg, grated

½ tsp ground turmeric

½ tsp salt

3 tbsp sesame, peanut or vegetable oil

4 tbsp tamari

Juice of one lime

Apple juice to cover

For the salad

4 eggs-hard boiled, peeled and halved (optional)

500g new potatoes, washed

300g green beans

150g cabbage (white, Chinese or spring greens)

20g beansprouts

Chopped coriander

Chopped red chilli

A handful of prawn crackers or cassava chips         

A handful of toasted or roasted peanuts, lightly chopped

Peanut Sauce

100g crunchy peanut butter

2 chopped red chillies

2 cloves garlic

1 stick lemongrass

3 lime leaves

2-4 tbsp tamarind liquid

Juice and zest of a lime

5g ground black pepper

Sugar and salt to taste

Method

To make the marinade for the Tempeh: place all of the marinade ingredients in a large bowl or Tupperware box and add the tempeh, make sure it is covered with liquid. Mix well so that the tempeh is well coated and leave in the refrigerator to marinade-you can leave it for one hour or up to 12 hours-the longer it is left the stronger the flavor will be.

To make the Peanut Sauce: in a small food processor (or with a sharp knife) chop the chillies, garlic, lemongrass and lime leaves until they are a paste. Heat the sesame oil in a frying pan and add the spicy paste; stir fry for 5 minutes on a low heat. Add the peanut butter, lime juice and zest, tamarind and black pepper and 2 tbsp water. Stir well and cook on a low heat for 5 minutes. Taste and add sugar, lime, salt and pepper to your taste

To prepare the vegetables: Top and tail the beans and slice the cabbage into thick strips. Cut the potatoes into quarters and place in a pan of cold water-bring to the boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until they are almost cooked. Add the beans to the boiling water for the final 2 minutes, and finally the cabbage for about 1 minute. As you drain the vegetables add the beansprouts-they will cook with the heat of the other vegetables. Leave the vegetables to stand for a couple of minutes and then cool under cold water and set aside.

To cook the tempeh: When you are ready to cook remove the tempeh from the marinade and drain on kitchen towel. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a wok or large frying pan and add the tempeh, stir fry quickly until it is golden on the outside-this will take 5-10 minutes.

To assemble the Gado Gado place the cooked vegetables on a large serving plate and cover with the peanut sauce, arrange the stir fried tempeh on top and garnish with the hard boiled eggs, chopped coriander, chopped chilli and crispy noodles or cassava chips and toasted peanuts.

Alternatively you can thread the tempeh onto kebab sticks and cook in a frying pan, under the grill or on a bbq-just make sure it is coated in a little oil

Further Information

Rachel Demuth’s cookery school: www.vegetariancookeryschool.com

Follow on Twitter: @vegcs

Demuth’s Restaurant: http://www.demuths.co.uk/

Follow on Twitter: @Demuths

The Bath Cookbook Club is a monthly reunion aimed at bringing together cookbook lovers. We discuss a number of different topics at each meeting, all centred around new and old cookbooks, sharing recipes and ideas that inspire us, photography and presentation that we find alluring, food writers that we rate and publishers whose work we follow.

We bring together like-minded cooks, foodies and readers to chat over good tea, coffee and cake, comparing and contrasting ideas, recommendations and referrals. 

Membership is completely free and everyone chooses and pays for their own food and drink at the till.

Details of the next Bath Cookbook Club meeting

Date of the next meeting: Tuesday 25th June 2013

Time: 11 a.m. onwards {the meeting will probably last a couple of hours or so}

Place: Society Cafe Bath. 

June's Topic: Book and recipe swap ~ we all bring in a book and recipe {or several} that we no longer need-want and swap with someone else.

Bring: Notepad and pen.

To confirm you are coming: please e-mail me, Silvana at info@thefoodiebugle.com

Like-Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @TheFoodieBugle to find out about our events, or sign up to our Newsletter: 

It has been two years since the launch of The Foodie Bugle website and three months since the publication of our first print edition. In the last few months we have been very busy liaising with excellent British food and drink producers, as well as producers of stationery, homewares, gardenwares, toiletries and linens. Our aim is to create The Foodie Bugle Shop, both online and on a high street somewhere in a beautiful market town.

So, as well as meeting with web designers, photographers and producers, we have also been meeting estate agents and spending long hours on the internet looking for a suitable brick-and-mortar site for The Foodie Bugle Shop.

If you would like to stay updated with news of our shop launch and our second print edition please sign up for our Newsletter here {we will not inundate you with spam, promise}.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Silvana and John-Paul de Soissons

The artisans who read The Foodie Bugle would be well advised to buy “Coming Up Roses” by Quadrille, the story of how Cath Kidston grew her floral-vintage-homeware-accessories-clothing empire from a small high-street shop in Holland Park in 1993 to a global lifestyle brand with turnover of £70 million per annum, 61 shops in the UK and 58 shops in Asia twenty years later. And her expansion plans have only just begun!

Just like“The Branded Gentry: How a New Era of Entrepreneurs Made Their Names” by David Hopper and Charles Vallance {published by Elliott & Thompson}, there is much that can be learned from entrepreneurs who started their ventures from scratch. Whether you love or hate the mountain of retro-vintage wares that Cath Kidston produces, this “Marmite brand”, worshipped by some, hated by others, is hugely successful, the story of its unlikely trajectory riveting and applicable to all manner of industries.

There was no grand masterplan at the start of the venture, as Catherine Isabel Audrey Kidston MBE explains in the introduction.

“When I set up Cath Kidston in a small shop in Holland Park in 1993 I had no idea what a journey the company would take on. Besides needing to make a living I had just one ambition: to sell practical, cheerful products for the home with a distinctive modern vintage look. I felt confident there was a gap in the market but I never dreamed the business would grow to the size it is today.”

Her comfortable, rural life in Hampshire came to a grinding halt when her father died from a brain tumour, aged just fifty. This instilled in the young Cath {just nineteen} a sense of earning her own money and never being dependent on a man. Her uncle is the former Chairman of Christie’s, Charles Allsopp 6^th Baron Hindlip, the father of Kirstie Allsopp, but there is no doubt that her early London years must have been really hard and the vulnerability of her little fledgling shop is made palpable in the writing. There was no family trust fund cushion to protect her from the tax man or supplier invoices: the hours were long and a diagnosis of cancer in 1995 meant a realignment of focus. “It was going to be all or nothing from here on in!” she writes. The vintage market was taking off, and she landed her first book publishing deal for a book entitled “Vintage Style”.

From that point on there is much to be gleaned as to how an intelligent, hard-working and determined young woman set about ensuring she kept her head above water and her business afloat. From finding the right locations for her shops, not taking on debt, hiring employees, setting up business structures, IT departments, managing costs and making sure that her products were always relevant to the zeitgeist and consumer fashions, this book describes the inner workings of the empire. Highs, lows and everything in between, creating and sustaining a multinational retailing chain is not a bed of roses.

Having worked for a short spell with the interior designer Nicky Haslam helped Cath's understanding of how to get free editorial coverage from magazines – the company has never paid for advertising, but has featured in all the leading lifestyle magazines.

Despite trading in vintage textiles, furniture, decorative items and kitchenalia, which wealthy London customers lapped up, the business did not make a decent profit for a while, and no one could have foreseen how the brand was going to grow. Gradually, over the years, book deals, department store collaborations and an ever-changing array of designs created the “stealth brand” that become instantly recognisable.

“Today more than 50% of British women {aged between sixteen and sixty-five} are aware of the Cath Kidston brand” writes co-author Sue Chindler.

Of course, expansion to the next level required leverage, and this investment came in the form of a partnership with US investors, but a foray into the American market proved to be unsuccessful, and placed the whole company in jeopardy.

What Cath Learnt

Stay true to your idea

Learn to say no

Don’t confuse a distraction for an opportunity

Trust your gut

Don’t worry about speaking up

Know what you don’t know

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Good people are not always the right people

You’re more of a fighter than you think

Stay focused

Luckily, extremely successful expansion in the Far East put the brand back on track, and after negotiating a deal with venture capitalists TA Associates, Cath Kidston became Creative Director of her company, selling a 60% stake of it to private equity.

Whatever product you produce, design or sell, this story is invaluable for any business owner or start-up entrepreneur who wants to look at the inner machinations of a successful and established business, learn from the mistakes and disappointments of others and keep developing and growing. This is a beautiful book – filled with archive photography of the very first products and images of the patterns that cover handbags and umbrellas up and down the high street today. Just like Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston has taken a uniquely British aesthetic and created a compelling lifestyle package around it, changing a whole generation’s perception of English country house shabby chic.

“When you are self-taught you always worry that you will be found out,” she writes in the book. Thankfully she has not been too proud to let us all take a peek behind the office door, providing a helpful guide and reference manual in so doing. Highly recommended.

Further Information

Cath Kidston: www.cathkidston.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @Cath_Kidston

Quadrille Publishing: www.quadrille.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @QuadrilleBooks

The sequel to “Ginger Pig Meat Book” {Mitchell Beazley, 2011} has just been published, and it focuses on recipes from the Yorkshire farmhouse from where Tim Wilson started his butchery empire. “Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cook Book”, co-written by Fran Warde, designed by Pene Parker and photographed by Kristin Perers is a worthy successor – from the kitchen of Grange Farm this book is an excellent guide for those people that belong to the DIY school of kitchen skills.

Curing, preserving, smoking, pates, terrines, wild food, preserves, pastry, puddings, pickles and chutneys: this work offers nearly 300 pages of education and information about the sort of country farmhouse cookery that Britain excelled at the end of the 19^th century right up until after the Second World War. Hearty, comforting, tasty and warming, you will find the recipes useful, simple and achievable. 

There is little new ground covered here: pork and walnut pate, Beef Wellington, soda bread, bread salad, three bird roast, apple and mint chutney, custard tart, Queen of puddings {and so on} are all recipes you will find in other cookbooks as well, but what wins through is the overall combination. Excellent presentation, good writing and well laid out recipe techniques form the backbone of this compendium, and its didactic intentions far exceed ambitions to create any new fancy footwork in the kitchen.

The illustrations of beef, pork, lamb, poultry and game cuts are highly commendable – to be able to shop for meat properly, cooks need to know the different parts of the animal and how they should be cooked.

As a gift for a keen foodie who is looking to widen and deepen a culinary repertoire into country cooking, it’s worth its price of £25. Before you give it away, make sure you enjoy its voyeuristic tour of kitchen designer Plain English’s chic, chalk white kitchens. The countryside has never looked so gleamingly clean and organised.

Further Information

The Ginger Pig: www.thegingerpig.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @GingerPigLtd

Mitchell Beazley: www.octopusbooks.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @Octopus_Books

Follow Fran Warde on Twitter: @franwarde

Follow Kristin Peres on twitter: @KPerers

“….we live in an age of super-consumption, but by producing more food for ourselves or witnessing the labour that goes into food production, or by buying direct from the producer, we will attach more worth to what we eat and will waste less. Being truly self-sufficient requires hours and hours of hard labour that few of us could manage. That said, we can all strive to produce more and consume less. By learning how to bake bread or produce a comb of honey we have, in a small way, loosened the chain of dependence on others that has been winding itself slowly around us for the last 500 years”.

“The Modern Peasant” by Jojo Tulloh, published by Chatto & Windus.

Taking inspiration from Patience Gray and her seminal work “Honey From a Weed”, first published in 1986 {and my most valued book}, Jojo Tulloh, the food editor of “The Week” magazine, has created a very interesting work that looks at the contadino lifestyle of the a new urban generation. But how can you live a self-sufficient lifestyle in the city, where space is at a premium and resources cost so much money?

Well, without rose tinted glasses, she has pulled off a “D.I.Y food guide” that is both bold and intelligent, analysing how it is possible to find artisan bakers, foraging fields, beekeepers and community food growing initiatives in a metropolis that not so long ago people were longing to escape in favour of the rural idyll. No great techniques or barriers to entry exist in the endeavour of semi-self-sufficiency, it is a craft open to all those who wish to try.

I first came across the author’s work in “Lost in London” magazine, which has now been published as a book by Anova. Just like “The Modern Peasant”, it successfully fills a gap in the market for those who want the joys, tastes and happiness of the smallholding lifestyle but do not have the plot. This book is relevant to all town or city dwellers, regardless of where they live, how much or how little land they own and how much time they have at their disposal to make, bake and grow. It offers an approach, an attitude and a philosophy of life that rebutts consumerism and materialism in favour of frugality, creativity, thoughtfulness and sustainability.

The work is divided into various chapters that showcase the various urban artisans the author has met who have inspired and informed her thinking: bakers, brewers, fruit and vegetable growers, foragers and preservers. It comes with recipes {of course}, but you will be relieved to note that it is sans photographie. This adds gravitas to the writing {sorry to food photographers reading}. There are charming illustrations by Lynn Hatzius.

It is a book to savour slowly, making you concentrate on the excellent prose, the commitment and the practical tools that will empower you to make everything from nettle and walnut pesto, to your own salt cod, puntarelle and blood-orange salad, ricotta, rillettes, yoghurt and pickled onions.

“This is a book that celebrates the city as a centre of food production in which old ways and new go hand-in-hand. For the past 200 years there’s been a stark choice: move to the country, eat better food, breathe cleaner air and drink purer water, or stay in the polluting, exhausting, maddening, dynamic city and be dependent on imported food. Now things are changing. The smells of bread baking and beer brewing assault me as I cycle through the city, our senses are being reawakened and the city has never been a more exhilarating place in which to live.”

You will not put it down, I guarantee you. And when finished you will want to show it to your friends.

Further Information

Jojo Tulloh: www.jojotulloh.com

Follow on Twitter: @jojotulloh

Chatto & Windus: www.randomhouse.co.uk

Follow on Twitter: @ChattoBooks