This week sees the end of British Food Fortnight, the event designed to promote food reared, grown and created in the UK. It also sees the end of our own experiment, begun last month (Caterer, 1 September, page 36) to see how three kitchens managed when they tried to source all their food locally for a month.
Both the fortnight and our experiment raised interesting questions about where our food comes from. Perhaps most crucial is whether in the commercial environment, with its own financial pressures, there's more value in sourcing locally even if the produce is more expensive - if indeed British produce is always more expensive.
One landlord who took part in the fortnight is Alex Duxby-Watkinson, owner and head chef at the Mare & Foal in Crediton, Devon. He used recipes suggested on the British Food Fortnight website - and his punters have loved them. "The Hunter's Pie with venison, pheasant, wild boar and hare is delicious," he says. "I'll definitely be using that in the future. The customers appreciate that the ingredients have all come locally." The pub is in an area where there are plenty of shoots, so there's a local appeal. That, he hopes, will drive repeat business.
But for our three kitchens, the experiment also asked how well the supply chain was actually geared up for people who want to source local food. For some it's easy, for others harder - and in all cases this isn't the end of the experiment but the beginning. Here's how they got on.
Nottingham City Hospital
When we left them, the hospital catering team were about to introduce milk from a local dairy. They've just started to test the milk but there's a concern that because it isn't quite as cheap as milk from the national contract suppliers, they may not be allowed to list it because of competitive tendering.
But because the milk comes from nearby, rather than from around the UK and abroad, it's fresher, a fact they may be able to use to offset the extra cost. "Hopefully we'll get a better shelf life and save through less wastage," says Perry Lewis, food production manager.
The new chef's menu, set up to add flexibility to both the food and the ordering process has been a huge success. Lewis reckons about 10% of the patients opt for the special, with positive feedback all round. "We were able to buy 600 duck breasts from a supplier that was clearing stock," says Lewis. "We've bought rump steaks, salmon and lamb cutlets already - food that we would never have been able to serve before." They're currently looking at legs of lamb from a local company.
The approach is also working for vegetables. On the menu it simply states "seasonal veg", and means they can take a variety of different stock from different suppliers. "It's proving cheaper than what we were paying before," confirms Lewis. "It challenges the chefs mentally as well. They could do what they were doing before blindfolded. This freshens everything up."
The hospital is also trying to reduce food miles. By looking at buying fish solely from Grimsby, Lewis hopes to reduce transport costs.
That can also be achieved by reducing the number of deliveries. "We're still not running at full storage capacity in one of our new kitchens, so for dry goods we can order by the pallet load," he says. "We know we get through about 170kg of tuna a week, so it makes sense to buy in bulk."
This makes savings on their budgets. But as well as efficiency drives, part of what has made these changes possible are the caf operations run at the hospital, which each might add nearly 8,000 to the bottom line. This is crucial if NHS trusts want to protect their procurement strategies from budgets that continue to be cut.
Last month's announcement that a large number of trusts were over budget led to health ministers once more warning that overspend would need to be corrected through cuts in procurement - and with current thinking, good food and drink are less vital than medicine. If public health caterers want to make changes to the way they source their food, creating extra revenue streams might be the only way to defend their spending.
- Nottingham City Hospital 0115 969 1169
The Fountain at Clent
Getting more local British food on the menu has been a hard task for Richard Macey, landlord and head chef at the Fountain in Clent, Worcestershire. Most challenging was finding local suppliers which can offer the kind of service a food service operator needs. "There's still the old-fashioned mentality among many farmers," he says. "I appreciate that they have to be profitable but they also have to move with the times."
A particular problem was delivery. Having obtained various contacts from the websites of the Soil Association, Heart of England Fine Foods (HEFF - the regional food group for the area), and Taste of Worcestershire, he asked the farmers whether they would be able to deliver locally produced fruit and vegetables. Often their answer was that he would need to collect from the farm gate.
It's not all gloom, though. He's met a fellow publican and farmer, Rob Whitby, who supplies wild boar which he has reared down the road in Clent. From local cheese supplier Malvern Cheese, Macey has also added several new cheeses from the surrounding area to his cheeseboard: Herefordshire Hop, Anstey, Snodbury, Lightwood, Elgar and Severn Vale. The variety from that area alone is fantastic, and Macey sells the selection for about 5.95 (cleverly, in recycled wine boxes) with some Brie, Cambazola and Cheddar.
Now the game season has started Macey himself has been shooting and brought back several braces each of both wild duck and wild rabbit - "not all shot by myself", he laughs. Contrary to the fear that the onset of winter makes cooking using British produce even harder, Macey believes this is the time when our food comes into its own.
"It's the drum food as opposed to the piano food; you can be more aggressive with it," he says. He'll cook rabbit with marjoram and roast vegetables and the duck with a classic partner of black cherries. He's also now offering Shropshire Fidget Pie, made with rabbit, wholegrain mustard, apples and white sauce. "I haven't cooked that in 10 years," says Macey.
However, one fact that emerged from the shoot makes depressing reading. Apart from a few wild duck that the gamekeeper sells on to friends like Macey, nearly all the shoot - well over 400 birds on that particular Saturday - are taken to Poland to be processed and sold on the European market, where they're more profitable. "Businesses around here just won't pay for them," says Macey.
But there are other green shoots of change. One of his suppliers, Bikold, has met with HEFF to try to list more locally produced lines, and Macey has also been in contact with Graham Collier, who is starting a network delivering local fruit and veg to people at work plus some businesses. The scheme is still being set up, but Macey says it looks promising. "I would definitely like to get involved," he says.
- The Fountain 01562 883286
Swinton Park
One of the easiest things head chef Andy Burton has done is replace the yogurt from France with one from a dairy close by. Burton heads up a kitchen with its own garden which, along with the North Yorkshire country estate where the hotel is based, provides most of the bounty for his menu.
This yogurt switch was partly because the kitchen had more soft fruit from the four-acre kitchen garden at one stage that they knew what to do with. Making them into compotes meant they could replace the yogurts from France, which came with a fruit pure. Now the yogurt arrives in big buckets with the veg.
When you have your own garden you have to ride the sparse periods by making the most of the gluts. Peas and broad beans have now died back, but the apples are coming through thick and fast - all 15 varieties of them. "We're making chutneys like there's no tomorrow," says Burton.
Sometimes when there's a surplus he also takes it to barter with at the farmers' market. "I usually go down once a week and spend about 50 with one guy anyway," he says. "It's keeps up good relationships and means that if I ever get in trouble he'll drive up here and deliver what I need."
The kitchen has also been buying in whole Swaledale Saddleback pig carcasses. He buys one a week and after a training session with the local butcher, the brigade now do all the butchery, making use of every cut, such as heads for stocks, cheeks for terrines. "It makes the young chefs appreciate wastage," he says.
Burton is trying to source as much fish as possible from the UK but specifically from Whitby and Hartlepool, his most local ports. Crabs occasionally come from the South Coast, along with sea bass, but kippers are smoked in Yorkshire and he also buys Scarborough Woof, a sort of dogfish. This has been sourced from Moorsfresh, which buys only from the day boats.
The garden produces parsnips, Jerusalem artichoke and other root vegetables at the moment, plus curly kale all the way through to December, but Burton admits he'll have to buy stuff in later in the season. "It makes cooking more difficult, but it is my favourite time of the year," he says.
- Swinton Park 01765 680900
Contacts
For information and recipe ideas on British Food, go to www.britishfoodfortnight.com.
For online supplier directories, try www.localfoodworks.org.uk, www.regionalfoodanddrink.co.uk, www.alotoforganics.co.uk