Paul Merrett - The Allotment Chef - Home-grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories

Although we are yet to really make an impact on our small section of the Earth’s crust, I am busy reading up on food issues big and small. My new-found passion is fuelled by well-wishers. I receive text messages from my dad, who reads Nature magazine, telling me of a crisis in North Sea fish stocks; I receive emails from friends with pictures of phallic-shaped vegetables (this possibly says more about my friends than it does about my green agenda); and a friend, Greg, drops off a book that he suggests I read. The book, called Not on the Label and written by Felicity Lawrence, explores the truth about supermarket food. It’s the sort of book I would have run a mile from just a short while ago but now I am hooked – it makes fascinating, yet scary, reading. I have never fully realised the impact these large superstores have on all areas of our lives, and, by the time I have read the introduction, I am already a committed eco-warrior!

Feeling particularly militant I drive off to Tesco for the last time. Inside the shop I already feel like a stranger prowling the shelves, despairing at the labels of origin on the beans and tomatoes, and all that packaging, all those air miles. As I drive away from the shop I note those things I shall miss most:

Tesco cheese and pickle pork pies

Tesco Finest vanilla ice cream

Tesco Finest dry-cured bacon

Tesco Finest cider

Tesco pancetta and Parmesan sausages

Tesco Finest cookies

But, despite the loss of these, I make a point of sitting down with the family to discuss the idea of buying all our cleaning stuff, tinned food, dry goods and sundries from local stores, so that we need not physically enter a supermarket for one year as of now.

The trouble with MJ is that she lacks the true heart of a subversive. She will not suffer for the cause and tells me in no uncertain terms that she won’t rule out supermarkets; her reason is that they are convenient – so much for her militancy. She does look pretty fired up when she tells me this, so I compromise by agreeing that dry goods, tins and general ‘stuff’ can still come from the supermarket, but we should start to buy all our meat, fish, bread and vegetables (until our production line begins) from local shops.

As MJ and I continue our conversion to the church of culinary Puritanism, we can’t help noticing that our children are somewhat underwhelmed by the whole thing. Up to this point we have not really canvassed their opinion on the whole allotment ‘Should we/Shouldn’t we’ question, because we have been so sure it will be good for them. They do think it will be great meeting their friends at the allotment, but they are already voicing concerns about having to eat all the vegetables that Dad is so convinced he will grow.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time encouraging, coercing, even bribing and ultimately forcing my children to eat well. Vegetables are often the source of our discussions. On one occasion I explained that they had to eat their vegetables, if only from a health point of view. I went to great length to explain the ‘five portions a day’ rule and pointed out, when they argued, that this wasn’t my idea, that it was actually a government initiative. Still they argued, and, in utter desperation, I told them that, if they didn’t like what I was telling them, they should write to the Prime Minister Tony Blair – or the Queen for that matter – and take up the issue with them.

The next morning I came down to breakfast to find the following letter written by Richie to the Queen:

To call his bluff I made him address an envelope and send it. Then we got back to normal, resuming mealtime conflicts and bribery. Two months passed and then, through the letterbox, fell an envelope addressed to Richie and emblazoned with the royal stamp. We could hardly believe what we saw when Richie opened the envelope. The Queen herself had written back. I’d show you the real letter here …

…. but unfortunately her majesty only gives vegetable consumption advice on a strictly one to one basis and won’t let me print the letter, so you’ll just have to take my word on it (lest she chop off my head.)

The truth is that the letter was actually written on behalf of the Queen by the Senior Correspondence Officer who said that the Queen thanked Richie for writing and that she thought it was thoughtful of him to tell her that I want him to eat more fruit and veg. She then suggested Richie look up information on the web about what children should be eating. Funny, I had never pictured the Queen surfing the ‘net’.

She then mentioned that she was going to forward Richie’s letter to Patricia Hewitt MP, the Secretary of State for Health. Well, sure enough, soon after we received the following letter (which the Department for Health is very happy about my showing you here):

By then vegetable consumption was a hot topic in our house – any green thing served was eaten ‘because the Queen says so’. And I hope to keep it as a hot topic.

While bribery and torture can work in getting children to eat vegetables, however, I still hope that the best way to ‘sell’ vegetables to the young is to pick them fresh and cook them with care. A strawberry fresh from the plant and still warm from the sun will always taste better than a bought one, and the same will apply to a cabbage and even the dreaded sprout. My job is to convince my children of this.

Forget AA Gill or Michael Winner. Ellie and Richie are my toughest food critics. Yet, with the allotment now secure, I believe it is only a matter of time before garden-fresh vegetables are getting the Michelin treatment and being eaten with glee!

MJ and I have big plans for the allotment: we discuss dishes we love and note the vegetables we require as we discuss a growing plan. By this time next year we will be ‘grow your own’ bores who turn up at friends’ houses for dinner with a pointed cabbage and half a kilo of broad beans instead of a bottle of wine.

Nothing can stop us now.

Despite our early enthusiasm, Christmas has come and gone without a single trip to the allotment. We have thought about going but the festive season just kept getting in the way.

Strangely, however, both MJ and I have demonstrated our commitment to the future in the form of Christmas gifts. My main present from the kids is a portable gas stove. MJ tells me that it is for making tea, but I have bigger ideas. We will carry out ‘from earth to pot’ experiments with all the vegetables we grow by eating them as soon as they are picked.

My gifts on the other hand are seriously ‘correct’. I have done most of my shopping on the Centre for Alternative Technology website. MJ is the main beneficiary of this environmentally aware shopping spree and I shall always remember her joyful expression as she unwrapped: her new water siphon especially designed to remove ‘grey’ water from the bath to use on the garden; a reusable J cloth; a notepad made from elephant shit; and a (reusable) string bag for shopping – in local stores obviously. She just looked so happy.

When it comes to the allotment itself, the truth is that, since we got the keys, we have not found, nor made, the time to visit. MJ is retraining as a teacher and I am at the pre-production stage of a TV series called Ever Wondered about Food …, which will be filmed during February. We are both simply too busy, and are perhaps slightly daunted by the task ahead. To compound the situation, the temperature has plummeted to minus two degrees and the thought of digging in this weather is too much to bear.