British Food Fortnight

British Food Fortnight runs until Sunday, October 3rd. Taste Durham award-winning restaurant Oldfields serves british food at its best, with locally sourced produce and simple, yet delicious food. Restauranteur Bill Oldfield writes below about why British Food Fortnight is so important.

As a nation, we’re very influenced by the cooking of others. In our multi-cultural environment, we happily embrace food from afar to such an extent that a dish from the Indian sub-continent can become the nation’s favourite. But in recent history, and by that I mean the last century or so, our biggest influence has to have been the French.

It could be because they’re our nearest foreign neighbours or even that their army successfully invaded us ten centuries ago. But the main cause is a man called Escoffier who, some years ago, taught us to cook – or at least, how to cook his way. But the legacy is such that we eschewed much of our tradition. Along with changing the titles of our chefs on their career ladder – sous, chef de partie and so on – we threw out much of our respect for our indigenous dishes.

At Oldfields, in order to champion British food over the years, we’ve had to go to war with the French influence so that we may serve such things as chunky carrots rather than ‘julienned’, use the term ‘gravy’ rather than ‘jus’ and ‘custard’ rather than ‘crème anglais’. And it’s this fight that makes the British Food Fortnight as important as ever.

No matter which style of food you cook, its success is dependent on the quality of the ingredients. But none more so than traditional British cooking where the basic components are messed about with to a minimum and are allowed to speak for themselves.

The modern emergence of farmers’ markets and farm shops, of which Durham has many, along with the drive for recognition of local produce, means that there’s an abundance of quality ingredients for us to use in our British dishes. It’s time we took another leaf out of the French book, and promoted our pride in our British food.

An example of great local produce is the Durham Blue Cheese. But don’t take our word for it – try out the recipe below.

Durham Blue Cheese by the Durham Cow Cheese Company is something we were one of the first to champion since we discovered it a couple of years ago. But now we’re not its only fans as it’s won a number of national awards including ones from Waitrose and Tescos – a fabulous achievement for Julia Cammiss who only started making cheese so recently. Here we’ve used Durham Blue as part of a twist on the traditional Ploughman’s lunch, and it’s a popular dish that’s often on our menu.

Serves two:
A couple of handfuls of bread – torn into bite-size pieces
One very fresh free-range egg
50g of Durham Blue – torn into bite-size pieces
A couple of handfuls of mixed salad leaves
A few pickled onions – sliced in half
Two dessertspoons of Branston Pickle
Rapeseed oil
Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 4). Place the bread pieces in a bowl, sprinkle with a tablespoon of rapeseed oil and toss, adding a little salt and pepper as you do so. Spread the bread out on a roasting sheet and bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until beginning to turn golden. Remove and allow to cool. Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil, lower in the egg, bring back to the boil and simmer for seven minutes. Remove from the heat and place under the cold tap to stop the egg cooking. Place the baked bread pieces, the cheese, onions and salad leaves into a bowl. Sprinkle with rapeseed oil and gently toss. Pile the salad onto two plates. Carefully peel the egg, slice in half lengthways and put a half on top of each pile of salad. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the lot before spooning the Branston Pickle alongside.

Bill Oldfield – Oldfields Noted Eating House, Durham City

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