I worked with a pair of little Sigma cameras ( DP1 and DP2), lightweight, awkward to use and requiring the use of feet to zoom. With their fixed lenses and large Foveon  sensors, they slow me down and produce images reminiscent of slide film. I converted the images to monochrome as a nod to my own photographic past, wandering and looking with no agenda, making pictures for the love of it.

 

Fes, for a brief ten years of the twelfth century, was the world’s largest city. Now, straddling the banks of the Fes River, it still wears the confidence of that history; a solid physical rootedness behind the mountains that keep the Sahara at bay. The Berber is the indigenous people, Muslims with their own language, coming down from the Atlas Mountains to settle in the valley that is Fes. The Arabs came in the ninth century and the French in the nineteenth and so Arabic and French are spoken and interwoven. Once at the centre of seventeenth century Morocco, Fes was a major trading post of the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Historically Fes is a city of refugees, one of the oldest mixed cultures anywhere. There is tolerance somehow, an equality, everyone is trying hard to survive here. The Karaouine Mosque at the heart of medina was founded in 857 by a Tunisian woman to offer education and religious safety to the constant flow of Tunisian and later settlers. Nowadays it is a library, university and mosque still receiving Muslims from afar. The mix is good for the food, abundant produce and farming feed the million or so residents of the city: fresh crunchy salads and charcoaled meat or simple bread, with boiled egg, tuna, onion and chilli sauce, made fresh for fifty pence. In everything, even for the poorest, there are fresh ingredients grown nearby.

At Babrcif, the medina gates, sits the transport terminus, daily awash with taxis and buses, mopeds, carts, donkeys, street vendors, cats and chaos. People are swallowed or spilt to the brim of the dusty Square, as locals drink coffee and smoke outside the cafés. Boys are climbing gates and walking, arms spread, on precarious walltops under the blinding noonday sun. And at midnight amongst the charcoaled giblet sellers, there are shouts of young men playing football, passing the ball between passing cars. This is the border between old and older. This is where the tarmac turns to cobbles and leaves the automotive twenty first century firmly outside the wall and its Moorish arches. Here is truly a portal in time and space.

On the inside, it feels a lot like Dickens, dirty and dark, sinister yet compelling. Full of urchins and poverty. And in the gloom the most vibrant colours glow, on fruit or linen, yellow slippers, hanging pastel bras and rainbows of leather, sequins and silks. Hammered copper and tin catch the sly shafts of light in the mostly sunless maze. The walls are sad and robust, like the elders, like old oaks. So much has happened within the weave of twisting turning paths and alleys. All human life is here, babies are born, men and women fall in love, people and animals live and die. Inside and outside the medina, Fes is a place where day and night, everyone is going somewhere and nothing that can be done standing still, can’t be done better in determined forward motion.

Within the labyrinthine medina, voices warp and echo from somewhere within the nine thousand passages, haunting as the ancient ghosts of this medieval city. In the corners and doorways, and from wooden shuttered booths like caves in the crumbling white stone of the buildings, voices chatter and swarm. Frantic arms gesticulate, rising defiantly above the din to be heard. It is less of a market than a throbbing ants nest, an intense hum of activity. At each turn, the experienced hustling lads hover like wasps around the sweet mint tea of tourist euros offering hammam or manger or hashish, anything for a price and always negotiable. To every stallholder you are my friend or my brudder, and this very special service or deal you are wanting, is for you and only you and one time only, right here, right now. And a barrow passes, its wheel buzzing loudly at the mudguard as all are forced to the wall to let it pass. Luckily, and unlike Marrakech, the Fes Medina’s alleys are too narrow for scooters and their choking fumes.

Warmth that is more than just the North African climate can be felt in the narrow shady lanes that amble and twist and yet there is always a tremor of invisible menace. Cool guys sit in twos or threes, talking sport and watching girls whilst selling cigarettes from a cardboard box. Holy men count beads, still and absorbed on doorsteps and filthy tortoiseshell cats, all skin and ribs, forage hungrily amongst the refuse.  Women greet women and men greet men, with kisses on both cheeks. Never the genders shall kiss. Despite the seedy Arab sexiness, these Moroccans are almost prim, almost innocent. Here women keep house and men work. Surrounded proudly by secondhand shoes or primary coloured ladies outfits (sic), fluttering like newly hanged cadavers on the whitewashed walls, leathered market traders make eye contact. Dark Arabic women look demure and don’t. Children smile and say, ‘bonjour’, and not all of them ask for money.

The rooftops are a safe retreat, though the web continues in the sky with turnings and connections from roof terrace to roof terrace. There are cushions and rugs and endless cloudless space above, the sun blazes harsh and fierce. In every direction there are satellite dishes, carpets hanging, laundry and tiny ant people about their business. From high up, the medina almost seems to make some sense. Cockerels cry out intermittently against the rhythmic hammering of constant repair and renewal, the basin of the medina repeating each knock and tap. A dog is ever barking. Several times daily the call to prayer reverberates throughout the city. To the untrained ear, the hard-wired megaphones seem to sing and answer each other from east to west, across the layered rooftops. Gossip is endemic, the grapevine fast and thorough; they know you’re coming before you do in an everlasting soap opera with regional variations . . . live! Here is an air of perpetual transaction; the staccato flow of give and take between sun baked people from sprawling families, familiar with God and good fresh food, hard lives and so many other opinions.

Rooted deep in the Moroccan psyche, pulses a deep and ancient calmness born from connection to each other, their common needs and a solidly pragmatic approach to survival. The land here is wet and fertile, more mouth watering than an oasis; it’s a huge larder at the top of the Sahara Desert. This is why Fes is here, it is needed. Relationship is primary here and strangers welcomed. Food is respected and valued, little is discarded and everything has a use. It is eaten attentively and served as to a special guest; with gilded plates and silver trays and chilli sauce, cardamom carrots and shredded radish, with humility and perhaps because good hospitality is a tenet of Islamic law.

The way of life for this collection of communities, occupying different regions of the medina (with its sixteen miles of perimeter wall) each with its own mosque, home bakery and fountain, has not changed so much over the past millennium. People here are not so busy arguing with their place in the scheme of things; they are mostly working, sleeping, praying and reproducing. This quiet, insistent continuity is palpable in the fabric of Fes, the structure of the medina is too tight, too set to permit much sudden change . . . and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Fes el Bali is a hard place to arrive in, hypnotic, repellent and magnetic. The air is finer here and warm, the atmosphere rapid and intoxicating. It calls for alertness, and rewards with the minutiae of cameos, unfolding action and a slightly increased pulse. There are always more surprises. It bewitches and entrances before it exhausts; there is nowhere like it. And so it is harder still to leave behind, for in the heart and mind of any traveller, a part feels just like Fes Medina.

Many places around the world are described as well kept secrets. On arrival, as you weave through the densely packed car park, brimming with tour buses, you realise the folly and naivety of your hope to find an undiscovered retreat. Burgenland, at the Austrian heart of Europe however, really is unknown to much of the travelling public. Ask anyone, anywhere (except Austria), and you will more than likely be misunderstood as they mutter directions to the nearest beef-patty theme park, or McDonalds as they are sometimes known.

The federal state of Burgenland was Hungary until 1922, when the residents chose, by way of referendum, to join Austria. On the edge of the recent Eastern Bloc, it has somehow escaped the ravages of industrial progress. Once the Roman country of Pannonia, and before even that, cultivated by the Celts for its good soil and better grapes, it has seen occupation by Germans, Hungarians and Austrians. It has visible clues to later divisions. The abandoned checkpoints of Mörbisch, at the Hungarian border stand now roofless and impotent, being slowly swallowed whole by the twisting undergrowth. I strolled by unnoticed where only a couple of decades ago, several hours of queuing promised no guarantee of a crossing.

With over 300 days of sunshine a year, a perpetual breeze  and an endless supply (and variety) of world class wines, not to mention a good stock of enormous hairy, fat pigs (more on them later), the identity and prosperity of the young province are secure. There is a confidence here, bred from a solid connection to the land and the ancestors. They don’t seem to have a great need for anything extra; in a siege they would have generations of family for company, all living in the one, traditional long house. And more than enough to eat, from rare breed chilies to warm lard, pumpkins galore and dark rye bread. The pace is slow but not idle, chores and tasks, one day at a time. If there is a recession here, it is far from obvious.

At the scenic hub of this rural tract of Lower Austria is Lake Neusiedl, the second largest self-contained lake in Central Europe, over a thousand kilometres squared as it straddles the Austrian–Hungarian border. But we’re not there yet. Landing in Vienna, the first port of call, especially for those with an ear for classical music, is Eisenstaedt, the metropolitan capital of the region. In the mausoleum of the magnificent cake-like Bergkirche lays the sacred marble tomb of Haydn. This is reached through a labyrinth of passages, staffed by rough life-sized wooden statues in unnerving scenes from the Passion of the Christ. (Hardy pilgrims come here year round.) The noted composer lived here from 1761-1790 and in the grand frescoed space of the Haydnsaal, many of his great works were given their first airing. The resonating chords of the cello sing to the heavens with the renowned acoustics of the hall, deep inside the Eszterházy Palace. His Austrian National Anthem never sounded so at home. 2009 sees the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death with a small raft of events peppering the city and his birthplace at Rohrau (40km away). Here you can see his first piano and his tiny baby Haydn cot in the original house, with a feeble short sighted woman sporting well-worn fingerless gloves as she collects your ticket money at the door.

The fertile country and the lake soon beckon. It is hard to believe that a mere hour’s drive from cosmopolitan Vienna brings you to the northernmost periphery of this vast countrified expanse of water. The pretty shore town of Neusiedl am See is where the well heeled Viennese drop by for a cocktail, or a weekend. Where white-sailed boats glint in the sunlight and windsurfers perform for a comfortably seated lakeside audience. This is the Sea of the Viennese. Food at the admirably trendy Mole West restaurant is best taken al fresco on the long wooden pier, surrounded only by smart Austrians and motorless yachts (no engines allowed on the lake). Featuring wild boar, freshwater-fish soup, game goulash and an ice cold stein of Austrian amber nectar, it is local, modern and very good. The sunsets are truly spectacular and free.

It is good to walk here. Good to hire a bicycle and meander the cross-border perimeter of the Neusiedlersee, now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bring good binoculars and keep an ornithological eye out for the migratory birds passing through. The air is crisp and clean, filled with the rustic flavour of simpler times. The water is balmy and still. The land lies ancient, rich with produce, walnuts glistening ripe and green on the tree (pocket nutcrackers recommended) whilst nearby pigs and deer roam wild in the national park. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, though here it is pretty close. The economy is built upon agriculture: animal farming, superb produce and famous vineyards. The land is spread with wildflower meadows and dotted with pristine Teutonic villages, all white plaster, fairy-tale turreted roofs and not a scrap of litter to be seen. After dark the roads are eerily quiet; the population is small and gathers in pockets around the odd bar, or perhaps just enjoys an early night.

Across the lake in Rust I go to meet the Triebaumers and uncover why the pigs matter. Before I reach my appointment, I hear a rhythmic tap-tap-tapping overhead and look up to see a six foot nest on a (sturdy) chimney, a pair of graceful white storks, brazenly preparing to deliver the latest crop of fresh babies to the unsuspecting citizens below.

Richard and his brother Herbert are the sons of well known Austrian winemaker Ernst Triebaumer. Between them they reveal a microcosm of modern Burgenland, reaping the harvests of beast, grape and vegetables they have sown across the bountiful land. The pulse of the relationship between this historic family of winegrowers, the land, their wines and the famous Mangalitza pigs, is palpable in the brothers smile and easy, rooted manner.

Richard, the elder of the two, left behind a flourishing career as a chef to return to his hometown of Rust am Neusiedlersee and open a thoroughly modern delikatessen,( much like a savvy yet suitably archaic French charcuterie) in a building dating from 1735 at the heart of the country town. His passion is the Mangalitza pig, an enormous curly ginger brute from which he makes aromatic speck, lard, schmaltz and salivatingly rich, thin slices of smoked ham. These creatures come rumbling through the amaranth on the brothers’ smallholding. Richard strokes their ears, rubs their bellies and offers them tasty leaves. He loves them and he kills them himself knowing their names. Primitive, respectful and beautiful.

Herbert has now been handed the reins of the winery by his father. It began its current incarnation in 1972 and spans a modest 20 hectares making 100,000 bottles of wine a year. His calm yet passionate approach is similar to Richard’s; wild herbs and flowers grow between the lush green vines, the grapes are painstakingly picked by hand and the resulting wines, including Blaufrankisch red, have rewarded him with numerous competition wins. He stands between the tended rows of ripening grapes, simultaneously proud and humble; he nurtured them yet they belong to the earth. Nature is allowed to co-exist with commerce and the balance is kept.

“We don’t want to make any more wine. This is enough.”

Everything they have, indeed all that they are, is from the land itself. They grow all their own produce making exquisite fruit marmalades, vegetable conserves with chilli and herbs, full of abundance and creativity. Since 1691  generations of Triebaumers have lived and worked here and the brothers take this sumptuous legacy of tradition and add, just a little, a complement to make it fresh, modern and tantalizing, yet never leaving behind the cultural roots, which are also their own.

This year sees the brothers completing the building of a new winery that looks like it has been there forever. Most of the work was done between them, including the carpentry. While their school friends played football, the brothers would build tree houses in the woods. “Our grandfathers were all woodworkers – they made horse carts. We still have these traditional skills.”  There is an awareness of the past and their personal heritage. Like Native Americans, they honour what they take and respect nature, knowing too that they are at its mercy. To see them at work is to be nudged by lost memories, by a yearning for simpler times, in touch with the sacred.

Added to this rolling timelessness is just a little technology. In the smokehouse where Richard cold smokes hams a text is automatically sent if the temperature rises above optimum.

Before I leave this unexpected Austria behind, I stop off at Vienna’s famous Plachutta restaurant for the national dish, Tafelspitz; the slender, tender continental cousin of Irish Stew. Sublime boiled beef, simmered along with root vegetables and spices served straight from a copper skillet at the table. It really is shockingly good even with the slimy bone marrow, served in a bone, beside it. Emperor Franz Joseph I allegedly insisted on eating Tafelspitz daily. “His Majesty’s private table is never without a fine piece of boiled beef,” I hope he had plenty of greens with his. I silently honour the young Burgenland ox who gave his hind leg for this last meal of mine. In the end I am sad to leave all that rustic abundance behind to return to the greyer skies of our small island.

It will still be here, I know. In this little known region of former Hungary, where the Eastern European traditions have spread and melded with the West, the rhythm of life is as it has always been; plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . . . or however they say that in Austrian.

Biljinder and his father, Kundan (both chefs) are there for ‘when the stomach rumbles.’ They specialise in Chaats; essentially street food, made in-house and daily with prime ingredients including homemade paneer (cheese) and garden fresh spices. Rita’s gets through half a tonne of potatoes each week, testament to the irresistibility of Alu Tikka Chaat – two potato cutlets with chickpeas, tamarind sauce and yoghurt – at under three quid. ‘This is raw Indian, not English Indian food,’ warns Biljinder, and he’s right, the two are continents apart. Here in sunny Southall are the untamed, raucous flavours of hot and tropical India, no cream to soften the bite. ‘And we rarely eat poppadoms,’ he sighs.

The Meat Class

With dangling strings of sausages and great slabs of meat hooked up to mature, The Ginger Pig on Marylebone High Street is everything you could want from a butchers’ shop. Around 18 months ago butchers Borut Kozelj and Perry Bartlett started running evening courses here to educate their increasingly curious customers and to demystify the craft of butchery. I enrolled in the beef class (they also do classes in pork, lamb and sausage-making) and donning an apron joined my fellow apprentices around a pair of well-used butchers’ blocks. With over 46 years of experience in meat preparation between them, Borut and Perry clearly enjoy sharing their knowledge. Borut begins by enthusiastically introducing us to the animal, gesticulating to a map of a cow on the wall showing the basic cuts. The most important thing about butchery, he tells us, is to know your animal. The shapes and cuts of meat are essentially transferable across pigs, sheep and cattle. To understand one is to have an insight into them all.

Talking us through the names and merits of specific cuts and joints, Borut explains the different treatments they require. What is immediately clear is the contrast between The Ginger Pig and supermarkets. Here customers can see the meat hanging, smell it and even touch it if they wish – it’s a hands-on multi-sensory experience far from the sanitised process of picking out plastic-wrapped steaks from a fridge.

With the theory over, Perry enlists a couple of volunteers to hoist half a cow-back from its hook onto the slabs. We take turns in lifting the giant hunk of meat to get a feel for its size and weight. “You need muscles to be a butcher,” Perry tells us. As we get better acquainted with the meat, I soon discover it’s not for the squeamish. The free range beef is from Longhorn Cattle, Britain’s oldest breed, born and reared on The Ginger Pig’s own East Moor Farm in Yorkshire, where it grazes freely on grass.

Our tools of the trade are a couple of dangerously long knives and a common-or-garden hacksaw, which Perry uses to saw through the bone that joins the fore ribs to the wing (middle) ribs and down to the delicate, deep-red marbled meat beneath. Then we are shown how to dissect the beef using the tip of a knife – we must find the right path by staying very close to the bone avoiding waste or damage to the meat. The key is listening carefully as you cut: it’s clear to hear (and feel) the difference as the knife moves between bone and meat. When my slow, stabbing attempts at master butchery are over Perry declares: “I think its dead now!” We name the cuts and go on to French trim a côte de boeuf, complete with string and butchers knots, which is ours to take home. It will be best slow cooked on the bone with the fat left on to intensify the flavour, Perry tells us. All the while the aroma of roasting beef has been spurring us on: Borut has slipped a giant fore-rib into the Aga while we are deep in concentration, immersed in the side of beef. Job done we help ourselves to great big slices of the pink and tender meat, accompanied by chunky chips and a glass of red wine to toast our efforts.

The Fish Course

Billingsgate is a different kettle of fish altogether. The fish market sits in the shadow of the still sleeping office blocks of Canary Wharf as I arrive in London’s Docklands at 6am to join a ‘Catch of the Day’ course at Billingsgate Seafood Training School. The market is in full swing, thronged with men in white coats and wellies. Generations of families are plying their trade here from fresh-faced teenagers to old men who have hollered here for half a century. Inside it is crisp and cold, the floor is freshly hosed and the air smells of the sea. The atmosphere is loud and alive. Fishmongers aren’t quiet or shy with a constant banter ringing through the vast space. “Did you hear about the delivery boy who was attacked at the chip shop? He got battered but not fried,” one stallholder jokes. You get the sense that very little has changed at Billingsgate, which by Royal Charter has been “a free and open market for all sorts of fish whatsoever” since 1699.

Clutching mugs of hot tea, we are shown around the pitches by the market’s chief inspector, Chris Leftwich. Having spent his whole life working with fish, he clearly still loves to share his knowledge. He scoops up a sad mouthed pollock and encourages us to stare into his eyes. “Freshness is easy to spot’” he says. “It should have vibrant, bulging eyes, a slimy, shiny skin and there should be no smell whatsoever, from the blood, when you open the gills.” Fresh mackerel, he tells us, will still be stiff in rigour (which it loses after 36 hours) and have a gold wedding band around the eyeballs. We pass by crates of prawns and mussels, bundles of razor clams and cockles galore. There are electric eels and ugly shark like dogfish, which sit next to cases of cod, haddock and sea bream as well as both farmed and wild salmon on ice. There can be over 160 varieties of fish on sale here on any one day, depending on the season and weather. Chefs from top restaurants, buyers from fishmongers and owners of local chippies congregate here at the crack of dawn each morning competing to get the freshest and best seafood of the day. All catch is traceable to a port, boat and landing time. Quality control is strict in this highly regulated industry, which ensures stocks are sustainable. Although not all of the fish is caught in UK waters, the variety and volume on sale is a poignant reminder that we are an island people.

The tour over, we head into the calm upstairs and are placed in the cool dry hands of CJ Jackson who heads up the Training School. The classroom’s individual workstations sport neatly arranged implements: filleting knives, pinboners, scissors, descalers and the intriguingly named haddock brush. Class tutor Ethne Neame begins by introducing us to the gurnard, prawns, sea bass and mackerel that we will be working with – the ingredients will depend on what is on offer downstairs. Our stated mission is to lunch on bouillabaisse, which will be the fruits (de mer) of our coming labour. Ethne launches straight into the demo, slicing open the belly of a ripple-skinned silver mackerel to reveal the blood red innards. She is a fast-paced teacher but is careful to make sure we are all keeping up. Demonstration over, she sets us up at our own stations and begins to explain the correct method for skinning the spiky red gurnard. In no time I’m whipping off the prehistoric top fin, severing the head from the spine with scissors, then pulling back to skin the fish in one deft movement. It look and feels like a leathery banana, I think, as I drop its gurning head into vegetable stock, together with prawn shells and an array of fish bones and skin. The potion bubbles away as it transforms into a delicious fish stock. I remove the gills from my gurnard, use the pinboners to extract stubborn bones then add my naked gurnard pieces into the simmering bouillabaisse that has started to take shape.

Ethne goes on to guide us through de-scaling and filleting a mackerel, an underrated fish that is high in the ever-popular brain-expanding omega3 and in relatively abundant supply. After gutting and cleaning, we marinade the whole fish in a mixture of red chilli, honey, olive oil, soy sauce and sesame seeds (this strong-flavoured fish easily handles such robust flavours) and wrap it in tin foil to enjoy at home later. Bowls of saffron-scented bouillabaisse are ladled out to the class, a satisfying end to a very early start.

The Breadmaking

Still, man cannot live by meat and fish alone and so I go to the Oxford home of the Degustibus bakery. I am greeted by the one man phenomenon that is Dan Schickentanz. Leaving behind a career in law to make bread, he came to the UK, via the US, from his native Germany in 1990. “You can tell a German,” he quips, “but you can’t tell him much.” The renowned artisan baker is now a regular at farmers’ markets, purveys fine sandwiches to lunchtime crowds from his outlets in the City of London and Marylebone and supplies top restaurants with his traditional handcrafted breads. He is an engaging, curious mix of chemist, artist, engineer and showman, the perfect combination for teaching the rudiments of bread making.

Named after the Latin proverb ‘de Gustibus non disputandum est [One cannot argue about taste]’, good taste is fundamental to Dan’s business, where he espouses the virtues of hearty yet light sourdough and rustic breads over mass-produced refined loaves. For him bread should be simple, healthy and robust.

As we tuck in to buttery Danish pastries, baked that morning by his sidekick Andy, Dan explains some of the core principles of breadmaking to the group. It is all about the 3 T’s: time, temperature and texture. With a furrowed brow, he outlines the baker’s formula (100 % flour, about 55 – 75 % water and perhaps 2 % salt and yeast – it all depends!) which he at once qualifies with the greater importance of the hidden ingredients of enthusiasm, understanding . . . and even love! He bombards us with ratios and percentages, quickfires mental arithmetic questions at us and explains the action of the yeast and the structural importance of gluten for making bread. “The story of yeast is like a Californian beach party,” he says, “you have heat, alcohol and proliferation!” Dan is a man of many metaphors; “The recipe is a pattern but you can choose to make your clothes from silk or nylon.” The consistent underlying message is that a baker must understand the ingredients and how they work together to create the ancient staple that is bread.

For an easy start we get to work on a basic bread mix, using the flour (⅔ white to ⅓ wholemeal), dried yeast, salt and Dan’s cherished ageing sourdough mix (known as a starter) that awaits us in glass bowls. There are no flour improvers or fats added here; just water goes in to complete the mix. Soon we are elbow deep in dough, like children making mud pies in the chemistry lab. Once the dry ingredients have absorbed all the water we tip out the tacky dough onto stainless steel worktops with just a sprinkling of flour to stop it sticking. We begin kneading by pulling the dough gently towards us with the heel of one hand whilst turning it in quarter turns, in a circular motion, with the other hand. It is done in a gentle, rolling movement to invite the air into the dough. There’s no need for brute force or exhaustive kneading; a few minutes is plenty. We leave our smooth dough balls to prove (the time-passing process that allows the yeast to work its alchemy so the bread rises) under Dan’s “amazing see-through bread proving device,” aka the upturned bowl.

While we’ve been getting our hands messy Dan has advanced a few steps ahead of us. He cuts a fist sized ball of dough from the main bulk, gradually working and flattening it until it dangles from his hands, stretching under its own weight. He flips this expertly into the air, catches it and continues with the stretching, until a round(ish) pizza base is formed. We tamely follow suit, without the flipping, to create our own misshapen pizza bases, which will be our lunch. Andy brings out a sumptuous spread of toppings for our imperfect pizzas: bowls of fresh herbs, slices of mushrooms, plates of hams, mozzarella and homemade chunky ratatouille. I decide to create my first calzone, layering one half of the base with torn pieces of mozzarella, strips of Parma ham and rich tomato purée and folding it over to pinch it into a light Mediterranean pastie.

During the hour or so we need to allow the dough to prove for a second time (until it has doubled in size), we tuck in to a leisurely lunch of spectacularly delicious pizza and green salad not to mention the succulent, juicy calzone which was barely of a size for everyone to get a taste. Keen to return to admire our rising dough, we gently knead once more before shaping into rough loaves and allowing them to relax for 10 minutes. Then, after a light spray of water (to keep the crust supple as it expands in the heat) we dust them with flour before they are taken off to the ovens – Dan cooks electric, because, as he says, “it does not smell, is not dirty and does not explode.” To complete our intensive training, Dan leads us in creating the rustic looking plaits, grissini and focaccia (with fresh rosemary) that we will bake to take home. The breads are placed directly on the oven sole (a hot flat shelf), where around 30 minutes later they will be recovered with a long handled wooden paddle known as a bakers’ peel, and our senses will be engulfed with the unique aroma of fresh baked bread.

Some time later . . .

I am lucky enough to have a local market (which I have ignored since moving to the area) brimming with fresh produce, fishmongers and butchers, and even pots and pans. Since my classes, this has become a regular haunt. I take such pleasure in feeding friends and family simple food with great ingredients – nothing tops a steak and onion sandwich with still warm bread, thinly sliced rib-eye and an organic onion with a pile of rocket and baby spinach on the side. I will often breakfast on a couple of kippers or lunch on lightly grilled mackerel with nothing more than olive oil, rock salt and some crushed garlic; it’s enough! I continue to experiment with my bread making, trying strong white flour mixed with seeds and grains, or adding a little milk (organic, semi-skimmed of course) for a crunchy crust. Leaving the dough for two hours or more on the second proving, for example, creates a much bigger and thoroughly aerated loaf, sublime with some warm brie and a smattering of red chillies. I found an extra room in my house. It is called the kitchen.

Where to enrol

The Ginger Pig (020 7935 778; learnbutchery.co.uk) 8-10 Moxon Street, Marylebone, London W1U 4EW. Butchery classes run from 6.30-9.30pm on a Monday and Tuesday. Courses cost £95 for the pork, lamb and sausage making classes or £120 for the beef class, which includes supper and a joint to take home.

Billingsgate Seafood Training School (020 7517 3548; seafoodtraining.org), Office 30, Billingsgate Market, Trafalgar Way, London E14 5ST. ‘Catch of the Day’ classes take place from 6.15am – 2.15pm on weekdays and cost £185. Classes on Saturdays, which don’t include a market tour, take place from 9.30am – 2.00pm and cost £95. All classes include breakfast, lunch, prepared fish to take home and a cool bag.

Degustibus (01235 555 777; degustibus.co.uk) Unit 10 Fitzharris Trading Estate, 70 Wootton Road, Abingdon OX29 8JU. Courses cost £195 per person and take place from 9-4.30pm on Saturdays. Fee includes course notes, breakfast and lunch and lots of breads to take home.

When I see these dismembered animals, from Albania, Spain, Sicily and France, not the developing ‘uncivilized’ world, I am pleased. Not because they are dead but because the communities that kill and eat them are being honest about where meat comes from. It is an unsentimental industry with lambs and goats, cows and pigs slaughtered and butchered with little more consideration than apples being picked. Yet if we did not harvest them, there would be no sweet farm animals to prick our consciences.
I eat meat, including hearts and testicles, it is in the nature of the work and to refuse would be almost coy. From choice I go for recognisable, unprocessed meat. I can taste the difference in organic and humanely killed animals. They tend not to have suffered a terrified, tissue-hardening adreniline rush just before their ineviatble demise. I ask myself if I would kill to eat meat, and I hope I would. Burgers, sausages, pies and ready meals take the pressure off. Eating the ear of a pig makes you think, it is somehow more barbaric than a rib or chop.
These pictures, I consider quite beautiful in their own way. If they at least make you conscious, aware that meat does not grow in packets, washed and ready wrapped, then I am satisfied.

]]> http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/20/meat-is-harvest/feed/ 2 http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/19/jewish-manchester/ http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/19/jewish-manchester/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:51:47 +0000 Roderick Field http://fieldafield.com/?p=441 The sun shines down on North Manchester’s small, well-established Jewish community, just a stone’s throw from Victoria Station, a couple of miles north of  the vibrant city centre. In a story that has parallels across Europe, the UK and The United States, this ‘quarter’ grew from its proximity to the railway station; emigrants fleeing poverty and persecution over the last century headed West, and settled where they arrived.

The proud black Homburgs of the Orthodox Jews on Leicester Road speak of another era. Outside Brackman’s Bakery, the place to meet and exchange news over a smoked salmon bagel for the last 84 years, they mingle amongst the constant flurry of activity. In the array of Orthodox to more liberal eateries between here and Kings Road (the two main streets that form the heart of the enclave), I have the thrilling sense of being an outsider in a strange land. There are signs in Hebrew, and subtler signs in the people. Many women wear wigs to hide their real hair. Under the kippah, (skullcap) young boys sport sparse, dangling ringlets in deference to a biblical injunction not to shave the corners of the head. Besuited men display tzissit (stringlets), hanging from ‘any four cornered garment’ to keep the wearer ‘on the straight and narrow.’ These are the clues to a people living by the Talmud’s dictate, following a 5000 year old religion that has honoured and kept its roots wherever it has found itself.

Across the community’s clique of restaurants and delicatessen, a rabbinical supervisor from the Manchester Beth Din is present full time. Kosher eating, rich with ceremony and ritual, has strict and ancient laws which make specific demands on all elements of food preparation. A lettuce can take fifteen minutes to wash as eating insects is not simply unpleasant but prohibited by God. Before eating Challah (bread), the most sacred of foods,  hands are washed three times and a complex prayer recited. Wine can only earn the kosher stamp if Jews perform every stage of the process, from pressing to serving. Meat and dairy cannot be mixed in the kitchen or on the plate. This enforced attention to detail makes for a truly wonderful eating experience, in taking the comfort of Jewish penicillin (hot chicken soup by the tub from Shefa Mehadrin) or sampling paper-thin beef Carpaccio at the gourmet Rimonim

Despite a reputation for being a ‘closed’ neighbourhood, non-Jewish patrons are made very welcome. Whether Eastern European, Sephardic or Israeli by descent, hospitality is understood and a pithy education in what to eat, how and when, is offered everywhere, with warmth. For me, the simple foods with peasant roots are the most tantalising. At J.S.Kosher, (a legend in every Manchester Jew’s childhood), steaming, tender salt- beef with gherkins and coleslaw, or crispy, nutty falafel with homemade hoummous are staples I would never tire of.  The only complaint owner Michael Issler hears is ‘too much food on the plate!’  Within this solid tradition, a forward looking trend seeks to serve strictly kosher versions of more familiar snacks. Minestrone and a sandwich, or the light  moist rice croquettes in Italian herb, basil and tomato sauce are top sellers at nearby Manna, which focuses on the vegetarian aspect of the menu; no meat allows them to serve dairy. ‘You don’t have to eat kosher foods to eat kosher,’ smiles the owner, Jeremy Libbert. Only the mezuzah on the doorframe (for the eagle-eyed) hints at its adherence to the rules. It is a thoroughly modern European style cafe.

As I head back to London, nibbling at slices of Ox tongue from the epic Titanic’s deli, I feel a sadness. The sense of community and the sacred respect for food is something lost to the urbanite English. I already miss the ceremony, the attentiveness and passion of the people. I remember the salt-beef sandwich shop in Golders Green (run by two old boys in their eighties) and make an appointment with myself to get there soon.

]]> http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/19/jewish-manchester/feed/ 2 http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/18/headlong/ http://fieldafield.com/2009/12/18/headlong/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:32:44 +0000 Roderick Field http://fieldafield.com/?p=423

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