June 2010 Archives

Last week, we upset a vegetarian guest, who questioned a parmesan coated canapé and got extremely irritated with the waiter who insisted that parmesan was suitable for a vegetarian. The guest grew angry (and actually left), explaining that parmesan must by law be made with animal rennet.
 
Le Manoir's ethics as well as our staff's knowledge were put on trial here, and I must hold my hand up - we were guilty.

It is not unusual for us to have 50 or even more guests who have some form of allergy, food intolerance or more complicated dietary requirements. Various forms of vegetarianism are the norm, and as a good restaurateur it is our duty to adapt and respond to these new needs and to our guests' rising expectations.
 
We are not in the habit of upsetting any of our guests at Le Manoir, let alone losing one. I contacted the guest myself, apologised for our ineptitude, and promised I would launch a full investigation.

We discovered that for years we have been giving cheese containing animal rennet to our vegetarian guests. So we set about researching cheese made with vegetarian rennet. (Rennet is an animal protein, extracted from the fourth stomach chamber, the abomasum, of young calves - hardly appropriate for our vegetarian guests.)
 
We wanted to find rennet-free cheeses that use alternative setting (fermenting) agents, so as to satisfy the strictest lacto-vegetarians. Most people do not know that most cheeses including parmesan, gruyère, comté, Montgomery cheddar, Stilton and the rest of the familiar names, are set with rennet.  Our research is unfinished.

Our investigation found something alarming: looking into the use of setting agents in UK cheese production, we discovered evidence of genetic engineering. Most cheeses with the reassuring label 'vegetarian cheese' are actually set using chymosin or rennin, an enzyme that can be made by using bacteria or fungi. But about 90 per cent of the chymosin used in the UK, says the Vegetarian Society, is 'made using chymosin produced in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) such as Escherichia coli, Kluyveromyces lactis and Aspergillus niger' - in fact, genetically engineered rennet. 

A copy of DNA from calf cells is inserted into yeast cells. "The chymosin produced by the yeast cells," says the Vegetarian Society, "is identical to the animal protein. The cheese itself is not made using a GMO but rather a product of this, ie the enzyme, which doesn't remain in the finished product." It's hard to follow this argument, but it seems to me to be saying that it is ok for vegetarians to eat processed food that requires an animal product to start the process, so long as no animal product remains behind in the processed food.
 
The legal position is that cheese produced with enzymes of GM origin does not have to be labeled GM. So, unwitting British consumers are purchasing cheese of GM origin. Interestingly, the Vegetarian Society says that products containing GM ingredients are not acceptable because it is impossible to guarantee that such products are completely in accordance with the Vegetarian Society's principles. Yet most vegetarian cheeses are set with chymosin from modified yeast, but are endorsed by the Vegetarian Society. Isn't this perilously near being a contradiction?
 
The Soil Association position is unequivocal: you must not use GMOs in organic food processing. They do not fit with the principles of organic agriculture, as they pose a potential risk to environment and human health. Also once released into the environment they cannot be recalled.
 
At Le Manoir we insist "we never knowingly serve GM products". However, on closer inspection we found that a goat's curd we had unwittingly used, is such a product. Look what is happening without our knowledge: GM 'Frankenfood' produce seems to be creeping into our homes and businesses across Europe.
 
Vegetarians are unknowingly consuming GM contaminated food. Shouldn't government bring in a more comprehensive set of rules, which would prevent the use of any GM or GM-additives, or at least require proper informative labeling, so that the consumer at least knows he's buying a GM-tainted product?
 
More and more the choice of our diet is being taken away from us, and unacceptably modified food is coming in through the back door. Worst of all, under the new DEFRA Minister and GM-enthusiast, Caroline Spelman, our taxes are being spent on campaigns to accept GM trials, and mislabeling by stealth is the consequence.
 

Although most young chefs may not have heard of him, Egon Ronay, who died June 12th, sat at the heart of the British food revolution, no less. When he arrived in England after WWII, Egon Ronay was so appalled by British cuisine that he started his own restaurant, which became hugely successful.

Witnessing the terrible greasy food that customers would willingly eat and pay for with stoical acceptance, in 1957 he decided to create his own restaurant guide (in contrast to the Good Food Guide, which Raymond Postgate had already founded in 1951, but which was mostly written by its readers. The Michelin Guide to the UK was reintroduced in 1974 after a 43-year absence).

His Egon Ronay guide lasted until 1985, and became an influential and revered guide in Great Britain. He relentlessly fought mediocrity, poor service and food, on all fronts whether it was the local café, restaurants, and the busy airport or motorway cafés. On that level, I know that he was a force for good and I feel he helped many young British chefs to regain their confidence, their identity, their creative force so as to change the dreadful landscape of gastronomy.

This is when Egon Ronay came into my life. In 1977 my wife Jenny and I had just opened our little restaurant in Oxford. Our restaurant was different, because I was completely self-taught; I never had worked under a chef, not even for one minute.

Sous vide (which the poorly informed call boil-in-the-bag), is back in the news. Not via Heston Blumenthal's magic but because of Gordon Ramsay, who overnight became a pioneer in demystifying the technique of sous vide for his gastropubs, and doing so attracted negative national press attention. Gordon is nearly right when he says "there is not a chef in this country who doesn't use sous vide". But to be fair to the other chefs they use sous vide in their own kitchens.

I never thought that I'd find myself giving some support to Gordon, but on this occasion I think he's taken a bum rap. Maybe his most obvious mistake was not to come clean immediately, and make his use of sous vide a virtue. Interestingly enough no one seemed to care about the provenance of his ingredients or the quality assurance scheme that he used.

One lesson to be learned from this is that it is sometimes better to be one step behind rather to rush forward to be in the vanguard.

I understand the rationale behind adopting sous vide, and if one considers what's coming (immigration laws to be tightened up, maybe 48 hours non opt-out to follow, resulting in shortages of skilled labour, escalating food prices and wages etc.), one may feel tempted to protect one's business. Most Michelin-starred restaurants are fine, but elsewhere craft is rarified, and there is already a lack of good chefs able, let's say, to turn out a decent coq au vin.

The Chelsea Flower Show is not known for food. As I was cooking at the Smallbone of Devizes kitchen at last week's Chelsea, Jamie Oliver was turning out pizzas at the next-door pavilion, and Ronnie Wood, minus guitar, was entertaining just opposite.  (I was standing dangerously on one leg, owing to the other one being broken - my surgeon would have been seriously alarmed.)

When one thinks about the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea show one automatically thinks of a blaze of flowers and beautiful micromanaged displays. Food plants have always been the poor cousins of the flowers and shrubs, and cooking demonstrations rare or absent. But this has changed.

I have vivid and painful memories of Chelsea, as I put my team and myself through horticultural hell in 2005. As ever my aim was to achieve the impossible. It was to build a huge garden inspired by Malaysia, making a major feature of exotic herbs and vegetables. But we had only six months to do it, from concept to realization. (You can still see elements of this garden at Le Manoir still today.) If you ever contemplate doing this, and if you want to keep sane, give yourself at least a year or two!

My partners and I received a silver medal, and I imagine it was the first time a chef was involved in making a garden at Chelsea and using such vegetables. What is exciting today is that the food revolution is touching and changing Chelsea. In the tent Medwyns of Anglesey and UK Horticulture won gold medals for vegetable displays, and W. Robinson & Sons took a silver flora medal for food plants as well. I loved seeing vegetables and the growing of food being at the heart of Chelsea. My British friends are the greatest gardeners on earth, and via the Empire had the world's largest variety of plants - but these did not include the humble vegetable. Now it does.

To me the most heartwarming exhibit involved the Eden Project in making the Places of Change garden, the largest ever made at Chelsea.  It was made by the efforts the unemployed and former offenders -   "some of the most socially excluded people in our society."

"But, Raymond," the sceptic in you might ask, "what is the point of going to Chelsea? What does the life cycle of a plant matter to a chef?"  And I reply: You might be enlightened by the miraculous life force of a plant from seed to table, and reconnect yourself to the soil and earth around you. You might learn, for example, how companion planting can use flowers to protect vegetable crops.

Chelsea itself is now addressing our own real problems - waste, water use, light and energy - for example, the RHS website now has a section dedicated to sustainable gardening, telling how gardeners can save water, grow environmentally sympathetic plants, even encourage biodiversity in an urban front garden, and another entire section on food plants. The change from being the first event in the elite's lavish summer "season" to being open to all with the (admittedly still high) price of admission is notable - even if the gaudy colours of the gladioli in the Great Pavilion are a little distressing; and though some of the vegetables shown there were of the grown-for-giants style, I'll be testing - and tasting - some of the prizewinners.

Garden Organic, the leading organic growing charity, shares the values of my own heart, and has a two months free membership promotion now and is running a "One Pot Pledge" campaign to get everybody growing vegetables.

The RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show from 6-11 July will have a grow your own veg section.