When Jack Monroe lost her job she learnt how poverty isn't just having no heating, fridge or lighting, it's feeding your son one Weetabix with water. Then she started writing about it
I'm a girl called Jack. The "£10 a week food shop" girl. The single mummy blogger. I started to cook for myself and my three-year-old son on an extremely low budget last summer, because the £6 in change I scraped from corners of drawers, coat pockets and my son's money box was all I had to work with.
I had been unemployed since November 2011, and the transition from employed status to job seeking, the delays in housing benefit payments, had left me in rent arrears. Eventually I had to sell everything in my home in a one-day sale to try to clear my debts and get back on my feet.
I wrote on my blog back in July 2012, in a post titled Hunger Hurts, that poverty isn't just having no heating, unplugging your fridge, or unscrewing the light bulbs. Poverty is that sinking, choking feeling when your two-year-old finishes his one Weetabix, mashed with a little water, and says: "Can I have some more please, Mummy? Some bread and jam please?" And you break down in tears, because you don't know how you'll carry the TV and the guitar to the pawn shop, and how to tell him that there is no bread and jam.
With that £6, I went to the supermarket, determined to stop skipping meals. I needed to eat as well as I possibly could, and start to think about myself again. I picked up a can of chopped tomatoes, a bag of carrots, parsnips, potatoes and onions for £1, a can of kidney beans, a bag of rice, a bag of pasta, and some dried herbs, vegetable stock cubes and dark chocolate to make things a bit more interesting. Back home, I put it on the worktop, and started to work out my meals. A carrot and kidney bean soup doubled up as a pasta sauce, and eventually the 9p carrot, cumin and kidney bean burger. I made tomato and bean soup, tomato and onion pasta sauce, and a basic chilli, and I made it through the week.
A few months later, I was referred to my local food bank for help by my Sure Start's children's centre. Supplementing my weekly food shop, which came in at around £10 a week, with five items handed out from the food bank, was a godsend. I began to write more recipes, posting them on my blog. The response was incredible. Families, students, people on benefits or struggling financially said how much it helped to see recipes made using value and basic ranges from supermarkets.
There was also criticism. People called my costings disingenuous, because "you can't buy half an onion". I've lost count of the times I've explained that I'll use one half for lunch in a soup, and the other half in dinner, or double the quantities of the recipe and freeze the leftovers. Then there's the £3.48 bottle of red wine I put in my casseroles and soups and risottos. Apparently, someone as hard up as I was shouldn't be buying £3.48 wine. Not even when I put a stopper in it and that bottle lasts well over a month. Apparently, that's extravagant.
I've never sold it as an ideal life – simply how I coped with mine. I couldn't have carried on, skipping dinner to feed my son, and feeding him cereal with water and cold pasta in the evenings. Something had to change, so I changed it, and I wrote about it.
Life has taken unexpected turns. I have spoken in Parliament on food poverty, attended the G8 summit as part of the Enough Food If campaign, and been interviewed for an Oxfam report on food banks. Penguin has signed me to write a cookery book.
When the first third of my cookbook advance hits my bank, it has already been mentally allocated to paying off rent arrears, nursery fees fallen behind on, and outstanding utility bills, which doesn't leave much left. But for the first night in almost two years, I will go to bed without the worry of debts, bailiffs, final demands and court summons. True, I will go to bed in the one bedroom that I share with my son in a house with five other people – but that one bedroom is safe.
People ask if I will still live on such a tight budget now that I have a cookbook deal and a job. Yes, I will. Because two years ago, I had a £27,000-a-year job and a beautiful home, and I could never have imagined life falling apart as much as it did – and I'll be damned if I'll ever go through that again.
It's not too hard: cook what you know, put out enough booze, and have proper napkins. So why do so many get it wrong?
Since this is a "how to" issue of OFM, I thought I'd write a few notes on how to be a good host. Of course, this should be blindingly obvious, or so you might have thought. But the upshot of the weird 21st-century gap between desire and ability in the matter of hosting – for which, I think, we can probably blame the television chef – means that it very much isn't. Only the other night, I met a friend for a drink, over which she regaled me with the story of a dinner she had recently attended at the flat of an acquaintance. Her host was one of those people who makes a Big Deal about her munificence and talent as a cook, and as a result, my girlfriend was mightily looking forward to supper. Imagine her surprise, then, when at around 10pm – oh, the waiting! – Lady Bountiful finally dished up one dolly-sized bowl of rice to be shared among all 12 of her guests. "Help yourselves!" she cried, as if she had just provided them with a suckling pig and all the trimmings. "Come on! Don't be shy!"
So, that's the first thing. If you're going to go to the trouble of inviting people over – and you don't have to, you know; it's not the law – at least make sure there will be plenty to eat. It might be nice to give them something they wouldn't ordinarily have at home – though it's also the case that most of us would rather be handed a plate of really delicious roast chicken than a badly made dish featuring a split sauce and some 24 carefully "sourced" ingredients, none of which quite go together.
On a related note, don't inflict your own tedious dietary regime on your guests. Just because you don't eat potatoes, doesn't mean other people don't want them. And believe me when I tell you that repeating the line: "Oh, I do adore broad beans, don't you?" over and over isn't ever going to take their mind off their absence. It probably goes without saying that trying a recipe for the first time two hours before your friends arrive is never a good idea. But just for the record: IT'S NEVER A GOOD IDEA TO TRY A RECIPE FOR THE FIRST TIME TWO HOURS BEFORE YOUR FRIENDS ARRIVE. Seven years on, and I still can't forget the curdled expression on the face of a woman (the girlfriend of a friend) to whom I fed a delicious poultry and rosewater confection which tasted mostly like Avon Skin So Soft. Her feelings moved over her face like clouds scudding across the sky, distaste turning first to amazement and then, more crushingly, to embarrassment. She managed three forkfuls, and I felt her pity in every one.
That's the food, then. The second thing is timing. People don't want to be hurried to the table; they can go to Pizza Express for that. But nor do they want to wait until midnight to eat. Reckon on a 40-minute aperitivo session before you all sit down, and give them something to pick on while they drink: anchovies on toast, say, or a few cheese straws. I like olives a lot, but I've noticed that no one else ever eats them. People are as alarmingly blind to olives as they are to litter and graffiti, perhaps because they suspect their host has been serving up the same bowl of olives over a period of several years. (Which they doubtless have, given that no one eats them; it's a vicious olive circle!)
What about the end of the meal? Yes, it's possible that you may not ever want your guests to leave. But it's also possible that a meteor will strike your kitchen just as you're serving your pavlova. Probably, you'll start longing for them to leave some time around midnight. At which point simply say, very charmingly, and more in sorrow than in anger: "And now, I'm going to have to ask you all to leave, for it is way past my bedtime." If you have done your job well thus far, no one is going to mind – or only in the sense that they will leave wanting more.
And that's it, really. We could fuss about drink, but in truth, you just want there to be lots, and of as good quality as you can afford. Candles are lovely, and kind to wrinkles, and flowers are good, too, so long as people can see over them. But I am not Martha Stewart, or anyone even resembling her; all I really care about in the matter of table settings is that there are proper napkins around, and that's a personal fetish of mine that we really can't go into here.
As for how to be a good guest, well, that's easy. Turn up on time. Take pleasure in your dinner, and praise the cook. Get tipsy, but not drunk. Enjoy yourself.
Should you risk the house red? Can you trust the sommelier? What about vintage? David Williams explains all
Avoid the second cheapest
Restaurateurs have long since cottoned on to the practice, and on many lists the slot will be taken by the wine that was cheapest for them to buy, with the price then pumped up. If you're looking for value, you're often better off with the house (aka cheapest) wine: an ambassadorial bottle that most restaurant wine buyers I know take pride in getting right.
This juicy, plummy red is the supermarket equivalent of a good-quality house red at a local pizza place.
If you can't stand the mark-up, BYO
An increasing number of restaurants will let you bring your own for a respectable corkage fee. Wine writer Tom Cannavan has an up-to-date list of restaurants that are amenable to this at wine-pages.com. If you live in London and eat out a lot, you might be able to justify the £99 membership to join byowineclub.com, which gives you BYO access to some restaurants that wouldn't otherwise allow it .
Try this at home (or BYO) Ostler Blue House Pinot Gris Waitaki, New Zealand 2010 (£18.99, Berry Bros & Rudd)
The perfect BYO wine: it comes from New Zealand, too often under-represented on restaurant lists; its luscious quince flavours and texture make it a versatile food match.
If there's no producer, have a beer
The producer's name is the most important information on a wine (or any drink) bottle: it's the most reliable guide to quality. There are many UK restaurants, and not just those at the cheaper end, that, when it comes to wine, may give the country or region, but leave out the producer's name. This is usually a good sign the establishment doesn't care about wine, and I've learnt to retreat to the safer ground of bottled lager, juice or tea.
Try this at home La Vieille Ferme Blanc, Côtes du Luberon 2012 (£7.95, Asda, Waitrose, ocado.com)
This trusted brand from the Rhône shows the value of knowing the producer. Offering good value, this perky, pear and peach-flavoured white is made by the Perrin family, a top producer of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Mind the vintage
If you're tempted to splurge on an expensive bottle, particularly a red from one of the classic European regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, or northern Italy, look for older vintages. Too many restaurants list big name estates for prestige, but only offer bottles from recent vintages that aren't ready to drink. You'd be better off with the house red.
Try this at home Cune Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja, Spain 2004 (£28 if you buy two bottles, Majestic)
The traditional top reds of Rioja are marked out from their counterparts in Bordeaux in that they are released only after a long period of ageing.
Give the sommelier a chance
A good sommelier, of which there are many more in the UK than there used to be, can add to your evening. They get genuine pleasure out of guiding you to their favourite bottles and food matches. You'll need to be firm on your budget (they can get carried away), but why not let them choose for you? At the very worst, it's sure to be better than the second cheapest wine on the list.
Try this at home Quinta do Soalheiro Alvarinho, Vinho Verde, Portugal 2012 (from £14.95, Lay & Wheeler)
The sort of wine that sommeliers love: they can explain that alvarinho is Portuguese for the more familiar albariño from Spain, and that the brilliant Quinta do Soalheiro take 70s favourite vinho verde to a whole new level of white peachy refinement.
The jazz musician's childhood food was a heady mix of his family's Burmese, Indian, Spanish and Jewish roots
My mother was born in Burma but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist.
My grandmother on my father's side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather – a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.
Every day, from age five until my GCSEs, I took a packed lunch– ham or cheese sandwich and an apple – to Grittleton House school, which never had a kitchen. So I'd never experienced a school lunch until I moved to a comprehensive at 16. People complain about school food, but to me it felt exotic. All those chips and bad-for-you foods. Awesome.
I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is – unsociable hours, plus general creativity.
I remember romantically making a version of my nan's Chinese noodle stir-fry when I was 15 for a girl from school, which I spent a lot of time over. It worked out quite well and I remember the feeling of empowerment.
In my bachelor days I had a small upright piano in my kitchen. It cost £10 from eBay plus £70 delivery. It was because I'd seen an old photo of Tom Waits – with dirty dishes, empty bottles, a hot plate, a coffee machine and a piano strewn with lyric sheets – and fallen in love with it. I ate breakfast off my upright, and while something was boiling or baking for dinner I'd nip over and compose. There was grease over the keys and a lot of spillage but it didn't seem to matter.
We recently travelled overnight from a UK festival, where the food was chips, curries and a salad bar, to the Marciac festival in France, where, on arriving, we were offered foie gras, the freshest shrimp, mussels steamed with white wine and cream and glasses of wine at the perfect temperature. The contrast was amazing.
Last night I finished a show at 10.30pm and by 11pm was ordering a gorgeous plate of steak tartare and a bottle of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru at a beautiful cafe next to the Eiffel Tower. I'm sure doctors would have a field day explaining what all this late-night eating does to my body. OFM
Over espressos and cigarettes in 1988, the architect talked about her childhood and where to get hummus in London
In 1988 – six years before her first building was made and 24 before becoming a Dame – Zaha Hadid was a "paper architect" living in a small Kensington flat and working in one room of a converted Clerkenwell school, which she got to through the boys' entrance.
"I am seen as a Martian, but it's good to feel displaced," she said, encouraging me to match her consumption of countless espressos, and Marlboros, while examining her commissions, competition entries and sketches. Although she'd later design a "liquid glacial coffee table" (price £100,000), I met her in an environment of inclined drawing boards and no spare surface on which to place a cup. She talked of her childhood in Baghdad, watching Marsh Arabs passing with gemir (buffalo cheese) balanced on their heads, and a trip with her father to Sumeria, where architecture was born 4,500 years ago.
Hadid studied maths at Beirut University but moved to London in 1972 to study at the Architectural Association. She had to rely, she said, on Bayswater as the only source of Lebanese hummus, pitta bread and really strong coffee.
When we met, her designs had gained attention in a show in New York, not least her plans for a UFO-like "gentleman's club" in Hong Kong, and this led to her commission to design a restaurant interior in Sapporo, Japan, which she undertook with ice and fire themes. "What I find exciting is the degree of manipulation one can impose on any brief," she smiled, passing me another espresso. I dropped a jagged splatter onto one of her compositions of a cityscape. Unfazed, she said, "It's after midday – shall I open a bottle of wine?"
I still secretly hope my stain will one day become a building.
Hot tips from street food specialists Ross Gardner and Justin Unsworth of Spit & Roast
For many traders, street food is a means to a more conventional end: you start out selling from the back of a van and, if you amass a big enough following, you might end up with a bricks-and-mortar restaurant. For Ross Gardner and Justin Unsworth, who quit their jobs last year and hit the road as chicken specialists Spit & Roast, joining the street-food revolution was a step in the opposite direction.
Gardner, once an investment banker, had been cheffing for eight years, while Unsworth has been in the catering and hospitality business most of his working life. They met when Gardner joined the kitchen at Medcalf in Clerkenwell, London, which Unsworth co-founded in 2003. "It was fun but stressful. There are so many things that can go wrong in a restaurant," says Gardner. "So we decided to do something much simpler."
Unsworth describes Spit & Roast as his busman's holiday. He sold his share in Medcalf, they turned an old Transit van into a mobile kitchen and started selling at street-food hotspots, including Brockley Market in south London and Kerb in King's Cross. Rotisserie chicken was their speciality but they have since expanded into deep-frying. Now the pair make maybe the finest buttermilk fried chicken in the capital.
"I don't think we appreciate how great it can be," says Unsworth. "We're so steered by bad experiences of fried chicken in the high street. If you buy really good free-range chicken, marinate it overnight and cook it in fresh oil, it's an absolute treat."
Gardner adds: "You could eat it as a nice sit-down meal with sides if someone's gone to the trouble of making mashed potatoes, greens and a good gravy. But it does lend itself to being eaten with fingers and a dollop of hot sauce."
Buttermilk fried chicken
SERVES 4 For the fried chicken free-range chicken 8 pieces, drumsticks and thighs salt 2 heaped tbsp black pepper 2 tbsp paprika 4 tsp buttermilk 400ml plain flour 200g cornflour 100g vegetable oil
For the Korean hot sauce Sriracha sauce (available from supermarkets) 500ml smooth peanut butter 3 large tbsp rice wine 1 tbsp light soy sauce 1 tbsp
Buy your chicken the day before – we use thighs and drumsticks because chicken on the bone tends to have more flavour. Season with half the amounts of salt, pepper and paprika, and cover with buttermilk. This will tenderise the meat and give it a slight tang. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.
Take the chicken out of the fridge the following day and dredge it. In a large bowl, mix together all the flour and cornflour, and the remaining salt, black pepper and paprika, and dip the chicken pieces in one by one. Scoop some of the flour mixture over the top of each piece and press down with the back of your hand, making sure it's completely coated. Shake off the excess flour over the bowl. When all the pieces have been coated, you're ready to fry.
We use a deep-fat fryer in the van but at home you can shallow-fry in a big frying pan. Fill it with 2.5cm of oil and heat to 150C (it's handy to have a temperature probe to check the heat). You don't want it to go much hotter or the breading will go brown before the meat is cooked. Fry for 10-12 minutes, or until the outside is nicely brown, turning the chicken three or four times. (If you're using a deep-fat fryer, gently nudge the pieces after a few minutes to make sure they're not clumping together.)
Make the hot sauce by mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl. To make sure the chicken pieces are cooked through, heat an oven to 160C/gas mark 3 and cook them on a rack for 10 minutes.
Serve with a dollop of hot sauce. You could also eat this with macaroni cheese or creamy mashed potatoes, with a fennel slaw on the side.
Tom Kerridge treats breakfast as seriously as any dish at his Michelin-starred pub. Here's how he gets the day off to the best start
When it comes to the most important meal of the day, Tom Kerridge, chef-proprietor at the Hand & Flowers pub in Buckinghamshire, is a traditionalist. "Done properly, the full English breakfast is one of the best dishes in the world," he says.
Kerridge believes the secret is restraint. "If you overkill on a fried breakfast it might ruin your day instead of starting it off brilliantly." Kerridge is devoid of airs and graces and the fry-up is treated as seriously as any main course at his two Michelin-starred pub.
He has worked at classic French restaurants, but when it came to starting out on his own, he went for the kind of place he would choose to visit on his day off.
"I wanted people to know that pubs aren't rubbish, that we can do fantastic food to a really high standard," he says.
For me, it's about finding great ingredients and treating them with respect, as if you were building a wall or making a beautiful piece of furniture.
We use breakfast sausages from Walter Rose's in Wiltshire, but any good-quality sausage that isn't too herby will do. It's better to fry them: direct contact with the oil makes the skin go nice and crispy. Turn them so that they brown all the way round. This should take about 10 minutes.
While you're frying the sausages, put the bacon and tomatoes under the grill at a medium heat. Cook the bacon to your own taste – I like mine quite crispy. Turn midway through.
Take care with the tomatoes
The tomatoes take about 12 minutes. Cut them lengthways, face the cut side upwards and sprinkle each half with salt. There's nothing worse than a semi-raw grilled tomato, so make sure they're cooked properly all the way through and a bit caramelised on top.
Braise the mushrooms in stock
Now you start juggling things a bit. While the sausages are cooking and the bacon and tomatoes are under the grill, fry the mushrooms in a separate pan.
At the pub we use big Portobello mushrooms: they have a lovely meaty texture. Peel them, remove the stalks, and fry in a little bit of butter until brown. Turn the mushrooms and braise them in the chicken stock with thyme and garlic. Cook until the stock is reduced, about 10-15 minutes.
Next, fry the black pudding (we use big thick slices of a really good black pudding from Stornoway). You can do this in the same pan as the sausages. Fry until crispy on both sides. This will take 5 minutes or less.
Save the eggs, heat the plates
Always leave the eggs till last, because there's nothing worse than overcooked egg yolk.
While you're making the eggs, keep everything else warm in a low oven, set at about 110C: this takes the stress out of the whole process. Heat the plates too, and put some bread in the toaster.
Cook the eggs to order: poached, scrambled or fried. I would always choose fried. Heat vegetable oil and a little bit of butter in a clean pan and fry the egg to your taste. I like the egg white just set and the yolk still runny.
Arrange it all on the plate and serve with toast – we use Irish soda bread and sourdough – and sauces.
Brown sauce is best
Some people will want tomato ketchup or English mustard, but for me it's all about the brown sauce. Daddies is a little more spicy and vinegary than HP: I'd go for that. And to drink, some freshly squeezed orange juice and a black coffee. That should set you up nicely for the day ahead.
Tim Hughes, chef-director of the Caprice group reveals the little tricks you need to know for a perfect fillet
Tim Hughes would be handy to have by your side at your local fishmonger. "The more scales on the fish, the fresher it's going to be," he says. "The eyes should be glistening, the gills very red and there should be no smell." He's also up to speed on sustainability: skate, whitebait and eel are no longer on the menu at the 10 restaurants he oversees as chef-director of the Caprice group, including J Sheekey in London's Covent Garden, where he was head chef for seven years. "We're constantly asking where our fish is coming from," he says.
Equipment: The sharpest blade and any tweezers
You need a sharp filleting knife. We use Victorinox knives with black plastic handles and a seven-inch blade (for bigger fish such as salmon you might need a longer blade). They're thin and quite flexible so you can cut around the ribcage without losing any flesh.
You'll also need some fish tweezers to take out the pin bones – but tweezers will do: at home I use my wife's tweezers when she's not looking.
Step One: Remove scales
Your fishmonger will usually remove the scales. If not, scrape them off from tail to head using the blunt edge of the knife, held at a slight angle. Go easy, so they don't go all over the place, and watch out for the spines. Make sure you get all the scales off on both sides – if you don't, the knife could slip and cut your fingers when you're filleting. Then run the fish under cold water and pat dry with kitchen roll.
I prefer to leave the guts in: they give you support and it means you can skip a step. On a flat board, place the fish on its side with its back to you. Arch it upwards slightly and make an incision around the back of the head, just below the head fin.
Step Two: Cut along the body
From the incision you've made at the head, bring the knife all the way along the back bone to the tail, keeping the blade as close to the spine as possible. Make sure you glide the knife, don't saw.
Step Three: Remove the fillet
At this stage, if you're filleting sea bass or gurnard, you'll encounter a small difficulty: the rib cage (at the head end of the fillet) bulges out a bit. You need to break it by sliding the knife down with a bit of force, while lifting the flesh gently with your other hand. Once it's broken, you can remove the fillet easily from the body by cutting along the bottom.
Step Four: Trim and tidy
Lay the fillet down separately and trim around it, cutting away the skin and fat you're not going to eat.
Step Five: Repeat the process
Turn the fish over and repeat the process. This side is always a little harder because you've lost some support. When cutting along the body, I tend to start from the tail end. When you've taken both fillets, remove the guts and use the carcass to make fish stock or soup.
Step six: Time for tweezers
Finally, take out the pin bones from each fillet using tweezers. You'll find the bones running along the middle of the fillet at the head end. Sea bass usually have five or six but you'll find more in a bigger fish such as salmon. The fresher the fish, the harder it is to get them out.
Now try these recipes …
Sea bass tartare with avocado, chilli, cucumber and coriander
Serves 4-6 sea bass fillet (preferably line-caught) 600g limes 3 (1 for garnish) medium-sized red onion 1, peeled and finely sliced cucumber ½ peeled, halved and thinly sliced ripe avocado 1, diced into 1cm pieces mild small red chilli 1, seeded and finely chopped extra virgin olive oil 30ml coriander ½ small bunch, roughly chopped sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Skin the sea bass, remove any dark meat and cut into 1cm cubes. Place in a bowl. Add the juice of 2 limes and leave to marinade for 3 minutes. Add the red onion, cucumber, avocado, chilli and olive oil and mix well. Finish with chopped coriander, lime and season to taste. We serve this in the Oyster Bar with grilled bread or crisp olive bread.
Sea bass with slow-roasted summer vegetables and fried courgette flower
Serves 4 red peppers 2 extra virgin olive oil for cooking courgettes 2, cut into 2cm cubes aubergine 1, cut into 2cm cubes medium-sized red onion 1, peeled and roughly chopped garlic 2 cloves, peeled and crushed fresh oregano 4 sprigs, chopped white wine 100ml tomato passata sauce 200ml good quality pitted green olives 100g, sliced in half basil ½ small bunch, finely chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper whole sea bass, scaled, filleted and pin-boned (preferably line caught) 1.5kg, cut into 4 portions
For the batter for fried courgette flowers iced water tempura flour (available from Chinese and Japanese stores) 150ml sunflower oil for frying courgette flowers 4 (available from farmers' markets or grow your own)
Lightly coat the red peppers in olive oil and put under the grill at high heat until the skin is blackened on all sides. Place in a bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave to cool. Once cooled, remove the skins, cut in half, take out the seeds and cut into 2cm dice. Heat a good splash of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed hot pan, and add the courgettes and aubergine in small batches until lightly golden. Remove from the pan. Wipe out pan with kitchen paper. Add another splash of olive oil and fry the red onions, garlic and oregano until soft. Add the white wine and reduce by half. Add the passata and reduce by half again. Then add the red peppers, courgettes, aubergine, olives and basil. Check the seasoning and keep to one side. Make the batter for the fried courgette flowers by slowly adding the iced water to the tempura flour in a large bowl. Whisk continuously until you get a pouring cream consistency. Season and leave to one side. Finally, heat a non-stick frying pan. Add a splash of olive oil. Season the sea bass fillets and gently cook skin-side down for 5 minutes. Turn over and cook for a further 4 minutes. During this time, pour 6cm of sunflower oil into a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan or a deep-fat fryer. Heat to 160C. If using a saucepan, please be careful as the oil will be very hot. Dip the courgette flowers into the tempura batter, shaking off any excess batter, and gently fry them in small batches until golden brown. Remove with tongs and place on kitchen paper to soak up any excess oil. Season if necessary. To serve, reheat the vegetables; put a good spoonful on to each plate. Place the sea bass on top and finish with the courgette flower.
J Sheekey and J Sheekey Oyster Bar, 28-35 St Martin's Court, London WC2N 4AL; 020 7240 2565, j-sheekey.co.uk
Matt Hayes is head chef at the Wolseley where they make 200 portions of cucumber sandwiches a day. So if anyone knows, he does …
The British have long associated elegance with understatement. Take cucumber sandwiches – basic and affordable but still a sign of luxury. They're an essential component of afternoon tea, something in which Matt Hayes, head pastry chef at the Wolseley on London's Piccadilly, specialises. They make 200 portions of cucumber sandwiches a day.
"People love the combination of soft bread, crunchy cucumber and lightly salted butter. Our guests would definitely be horrified if they weren't there," says Hayes.
Thin, uniform slices of bread are key so ask a baker to slice the bread. Source British cucumber and use good-quality, lightly salted butter.
Cucumber sandwich
SERVES 4
thin sliced white bread 8 slices cucumber 1 salted butter at room temperature salt and pepper to taste
Lightly and evenly butter the slices of bread right to the edges.
Peel the cucumber and cut to the length of the bread. Using a peeler, thinly slice the cucumber until you get down to the seeds, turn the cucumber and repeat the process until all the flesh has been removed. Discard the seeds – they will make the bread soggy. Place the strips of cucumber evenly on the bread and lightly season. Top with a slice of bread.
Leave the sandwiches for around 10 minutes – this stops the cucumber slices sliding around when you cut them up. To retain moisture and avoid the bread drying out, leave a slightly damp cloth on top.
Carefully remove the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles. For a twist, you can also add chopped mint and a little creme fraiche. thewolseley.com
Nigel Slater introduces Observer Food Monthly's How To issue. We ask the experts how to fillet a fish, make perfect mash and full English, and eat on just £10 a week
Have you ever wondered which is the easiest way to perfectly fillet a fish? Or make the smoothest mashed potato? Maybe you have dreamed of having the know-how to produce the most authentic fried chicken, full English breakfast, or the dexterity to roll an elegant piece of sushi. And what is the trick to cutting the most elegant cucumber sandwich or feeding yourself and a child for a tenner a week?
This month, in our special How To issue, we have asked the experts to answer all those questions for us. We may not have answers to every kitchen question you ever wanted to ask, but we hope we can shed a light on a few useful tricks and techniques.
The biggest cookery show currently on our television screens involves neither the antics of a household name celebrity, nor is it dominated by professional chefs. There is no campaigning and good causes, no one wagging their fingers because we don't do things their way. It is simply a programme where we are invited to watch gentle people make cakes. Well, more than cakes, actually. They make buns, tarts, gateaux, bread and doughnuts. They make petits fours and cheesecakes, tortes and cupcakes, scones and the occasional bap. It is food that most of us would like to eat. No. Scratch that. This is food that most of us would love to eat, the sort you only make for someone you love. And that, plus the extraordinary pairing of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood is why the show remains one of our favourites. Yes, The Great British Bake Off is back, and that makes me a very happy man.
We also have Jamie Cullum, Jay Rayner and Rachel Cooke, not to mention a few ideas from me for the perfect summer lunch with seafood and seasonal fruits. Bring your own buttercup meadow.
It's easier than you think, says Yuki Gomi. And don't forget your hairdryer
"They love the precision." But sushi isn't too tricky to make at home, says Yuki, "if you have a few essential tools and ingredients. I buy everything in UK supermarkets."
For OFM, she is making ura hosomaki, small sushi rolled "inside out", concealing the black seaweed (nori) within a rice exterior. It combines marinated mackerel with shiso (a Japanese leaf that looks like a nettle, tastes like mint and grows easily indoors). An easy introduction to homemade sushi.
Get yourself a starter kit. Bamboo mats are available in supermarkets and you won't need any equipment you don't have already, just a saucepan, baking tray, clingfilm and a sharp knife. Plus a bowl of water to dip your fingers into – to stop rice sticking to your hands.
Japanese brands such as Clearspring are available in supermarkets and make sushi rice, wasabi, rice vinegar and nori (seaweed) squares. For specialist items including tobiko or powdered seaweed, try London's Japan Centre or the website kazari.co.uk. Lastly, make sure your fish is the best quality and sustainably sourced. Interview by Mina Holland
Shime saba and shiso ura hosomaki
A small inside-out roll with mackerel, shiso leaves and white sesame seeds
Makes 4-6 rolls (24-36 pieces) For the sushi rolls a sushi mat (if using a bamboo mat, cover it tightly with clingfilm to stop the rice sticking in the grooves) a bowl of cold water to stop rice sticking to your hands marinated mackerel 2 x 100g fillets (see below) nori 2-3 sheets sushi rice 4-6 handfuls (roughly 320-480g) white sesame seeds 4-6 tsp shiso leaves or coriander leaves 6-9 cut in half lengthways
For the marinated mackerel mackerel fillets 2 x 100g fillets sea salt 2 big handfuls (60g) rice vinegar or brown rice vinegar 400-500ml (or sufficient to cover the fillets)
For the sushi rice Japanese rice 3 cups water 3 cups rice vinegar or brown rice vinegar 120ml sugar 3 tbsp sea salt 1 tbsp
Step one: Marinade, soak and slice
To marinate the mackerel, place fillets on a flat plate, sprinkle salt on both sides and rub in gently. Leave for 1 hour and then rinse under cold running water and pat dry with a paper towel. Put fillets into a deeper dish, cover with the rice vinegar and leave for 45 minutes. Remove mackerel and pat dry.
Run your finger along the fillet and remove any bones with tweezers. Then slice the mackerel into pieces as long as a nori sheet and 1cm wide.
Step two: Wash and cook the rice. Plug in hairdryer
To cook your sushi rice, first wash it several times in a sieve until the water runs clear. Drain the rice then soak in cold water for at least half an hour (1-2 hours gives the perfect result). Put rice into a pan with an equal volume of water and bring to the boil, put the lid on and reduce the heat then simmer on the lowest heat for 8-10 minutes (set a timer). All the water should be absorbed. Next, put the rice into a flat-based bowl, carefully add the rice vinegar, sugar and salt and cool down the rice with a hairdryer on a cool setting.
Step three: Work the mat
Take your bamboo mat and cover it tightly with clingfilm to stop the rice sticking to the grooves of the mat. Take a nori sheet and, following the central line running across it, cut it in half before laying half a sheet along the bottom half of the bamboo mat.
Dip your fingers into the bowl of water and scoop up a half handful of rice. Put a thin layer of rice all over the nori sheet, leaving the bottom 1cm of the sheet clear. Make sure you distribute the rice evenly, pressing down gently.
Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of white sesame seeds over the rice - these will end up on the outside of the roll. Hold the left side of the nori with both hands and flip over on the mat, so that the rice is facing down. Place 3 shiso leaves over the area without rice, and top this with a line of mackerel.
Step four: Ready to roll
To roll your hosomaki, hold the mackerel and shiso leaves with your index fingers and start rolling with the mat from the bottom edge, little by little. Keep rolling 3 or 4 times, each time opening the mat to make sure it is tightly rolled. There should be no gaps between the rice and the filling.
Step five: Slice and wipe
Remove the sushi from the mat and place it on a clean, dry chopping board. Cut into 6 pieces with a sharp, wet knife, quickly and smoothly. Wipe the knife clean with every cut.
Step six: Serve!
Serve with soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger.
Sushi at Home: The Beginner's Guide to Perfect, Simple Sushi (Penguin, £18.99). To order a copy for £15.19 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop. yukiskitchen.com
Olli Dabbous tells how to make the sinfully rich mashed potato that wows diners at Dabbous. Warning: contains three packs of butter
Two weeks after Dabbous opened in January 2012, it received a rare five-star review from Fay Maschler in the Evening Standard. More rave reviews followed, and suddenly the restaurant had the longest waiting list in London.
One thing Ollie Dabbous didn't want to do was let the hype affect his food, which is clever without being tricksy, and often quite restrained. It's all very well impressing people with exotic combinations, he says, "but it's even more powerful if you can deliver something they've had 100 times before and they think, wow, I didn't know it could taste that good."
Enter the Dabbous mashed potato, which appears as a standalone dish. In general, he says, the food at the restaurant is "very light, very clean, probably quite feminine". This dish is the opposite of all those things: sinfully rich, full of butter, served with unctuous roasting juices on top. "A lot of dishes here are pretty," he says. "The mash is deliberately quite ugly. It's not attention-seeking. It's no frills."
SERVES 8
new potatoes 1kg (Ratte, Desiree or Maris Piper) water 2 litres salt 49g milk 200g unsalted butter 750g
Choose your spud
We use a French new potato called Ratte, which has a buttery texture, but you could also use Desiree or Maris Piper. Wash the potatoes but don't peel them yet. Place them in a pan with cold water and 40g salt and bring to boil then simmer gently for 1 hour until completely cooked but not falling apart. Drain the potatoes and then peel them with a paring knife as quickly as possible.
Push, but not too hard
Bring half the milk and half the butter to the boil in a wide pan, then remove from the heat. Sit a mouli or a potato ricer on top of the pan and pass the potatoes through into the hot liquid. The key is not to push them too hard – you don't want to stretch the gluten. Adding little cubes of butter to the potatoes will help them go through much more easily.
Mix well. Melt the remaining butter in a small pan and whisk it into the potatoes with the remaining 9g salt and finally the remaining milk.
Sieve, but keep it quick
Pass the mash through a sieve, twice. At the restaurant we use a fine drum sieve, which allows you to put all your body weight behind it, but you could use a normal sieve at home. You want to do this as quickly as possible so you can serve the mash while it's still hot.
Evin O'Riordain made his first homebrew six years ago. Now he's making some of the best beer in Britain at his own brewery
Britain is full of breweries. According to figures from the Campaign for Real Ale, there are now 1,009 in the UK, more than double the number a decade ago. A nation with one of the richest brewing heritages in the world has fallen back in love with beer.
But how easy is it to set up on your own? Evin O'Riordain, founder of the Kernel, based in Bermondsey, London, knows better than most. Opening in 2009, he has become one of the most respected small brewers.
Brewing begins at home
O'Riordain, 38, began homebrewing after a trip to New York in April 2007. Trying it out himself was crucial to discovering how to reproduce the intense, citrus-hop flavours he had enjoyed in the US. "It took me a while," he says. "The first batch was decent, but it was only after about 12 brews that some started coming out really well."
Make new friends
O'Riordain also learnt some key lessons as a member of London Amateur Brewers. There are brewing faults you might miss, he says, such as diacetyl (a buttery taste caused by a flawed fermentation) that others are more sensitive to. "It's important to have people who critique your beer in an honest way," he says. "The first rule at London Amateur Brewers was: don't say anything nice. Be slightly harder than you would be normally, so we can dig out what's happening. How do we fix it, make it better? That's how you improve."
But don't forget your old ones
Having been a cheesemonger at Neal's Yard Dairy, O'Riordain knew people in the food industry and those contacts helped him find a site for the brewery. "Neal's Yard let us know that there was an arch going in Druid Street, next to where they were," he says.
At first, he brewed once a week while continuing to sell Gorwydd caerphilly at Borough Market on weekends. "The only way people knew about us was word of mouth. That first year, Neal's Yard sent 10 bottles to all their favourite customers at Christmas. There's quite a few who are still customers now." He has since repaid that kindness to fellow brewers: last year he donated his first professional brewing kit to fellow Bermondsey brewery Partizan.
Find the right kit
O'Riordain bought his brewing equipment from Porter Brewery Installations, whose smallest kit – containing everything you'll need to get started, and producing 400 litres of beer with each brew – costs £10,600. The Kernel started on a slightly larger, four-barrel kit (600 litres a brew), which costs £15,100. The price includes a demonstration brew, crucial for those whose experience of professional breweries is non-existent. If you're short of funds, it's possible to start even smaller: down the road from The Kernel is Brew By Numbers, who began with a tiny kit in a Southwark basement, which allowed them to build a reputation before any serious investment.
When it comes to flavour, keep it simple
The New York trip helped O'Riordain decide the sort of beer he wanted to make: clean-tasting and hop-forward, unlike most of those then available in the UK. "American hops have a certain intensity," he says. "You use a very clean yeast and it becomes a platform for the hops."
Experimentation has its limits, he believes: "There's something very engaging about it, but the results aren't always there."
The costs can mount up
High rents can be a problem when looking for a space. "Initially it's a bit tough, but as long as your rent is fixed for the foreseeable future, you can plan for it."
O'Riordain also spent £15,000 refitting his arch: this included electrics, flooring, plumbing and drainage. The most basic bottling equipment costs £500 and even the bottles for his initial brew cost £200.
Then there's beer duty, something that is partly offset by small breweries' relief, which gives a sizeable tax break to smaller breweries. It's one reason why it's important to have people around you who understand the financial side. "I rely on my accountant," O'Riordain says. "We're making enough money to survive, to pay everybody who works here a good wage. That's the bottom line."
Bottling is a tedious business
Initially The Kernel bottled by hand, which means labelling, cleaning, filling and capping each one. "It's the banality of it that sticks out," says O'Riordain. "You get to know the person next to you very well when you're bottling." He now has a bottling machine, which cost £65,000.
Trusting people pays off
The Kernel's approach is about transparency: the brewery is open to the public on Saturday mornings, they don't advertise, and deal directly with many stockists. Even the labelling is functional: sparse black printed on brown paper.
Remarkably little promotional work has been done, considering the brewery's level of success (he's now brewing four times a week). "It's to do with having a little bit of faith in humanity," says O'Riordain. "We don't tell people what something is going to taste like: people can make that decision themselves."
Not all modern brewers are so laidback and there are other, more obvious routes to success. Fraserburgh's Brewdog has used humorous, sometimes aggressive marketing to make its point. It's worked: Brewdog recently opened a new £8m brewery and has 11 bars in the UK and one in Stockholm.
Justin Piers Gellatly, who made his name as the in-house baker at St John, on the essentials for soughdough – takes a week, lasts for ages
Any discussion of the best bread in London always begins, and often ends, with the sourdough from St John restaurant. The in-house bakery was run for more than a decade by Justin Piers Gellatly – he left earlier this year to work on a variety of projects, including a cookbook. Gellatly started as a chef at St John, but soon found that he was spending his days and then nights with the bakers. "When it comes out of the oven you can hear it crackling," he says. "I just wanted to do it."
Gellatly believes that anyone can make their own bread at home and, for a sourdough loaf, the process begins with a tangy starter (sometimes also known as a mother or leaven). It will take about a week to create, but with care and regular feeding it can last you for the rest of your life. The starter at Poilane in Paris is said to be at least 150 years old.
The ingredients
rhubarb 30g, finely sliced (ideally with a mandoline) water 100g organic strong white bread flour 50g organic wholegrain rye flour 50g
"The rhubarb has natural yeast and acts as a catalyst to start the fermentation," explains Gellatly. "But people also use grapes, tomatoes or sometimes they put in a bit of yoghurt just to start the process: it's a sure-fire way of getting it right. But I've never had one fail with rhubarb." An accurate set of digital scales is essential.
Day One
Place the finely sliced rhubarb in a bowl, then pour on the water and mix the flours so it becomes a thick paste. Leave for 24 hours loosely covered with clingfilm somewhere warm.
Day Two
At around the same time the following day, mix in 50g water, 25g strong white flour and 25g rye flour and leave somewhere warm, again loosely covered. "If there's a little bit of skin on top just mix that in," says Gellatly.
Day Three
Repeat as day two.
Day Four
You should start seeing the beginning of the active fermentation. Then repeat as day three.
Day Five
By now, the starter should be bubbling away and smell tangy. Mix it to combine and then pour 30g of the starter into a larger bowl. Pick out any bits of rhubarb and discard, as the rhubarb has done its job, but it should have all broken down by now anyway. Whisk in 125g water and stir in 30g rye flour, 30g strong wholemeal flour and 80g strong white flour until well incorporated, loosely cover and leave in a warm place.
Discard any leftover starter. "The reason you are doing this is because if you have too much of the original starter in there it will feed on the flour too quickly and it will become dormant by the time you are ready to make bread," says Gellatly. Alternatively, pass it on to someone else to make their own one.
Day Six
Same as day five.
Day Seven
MAKE BREAD! "You can follow whatever sourdough recipe you like," says Gellatly. "One of mine is in The Complete Nose to Tail cookbook, but I'm sure that Paul Hollywood has got one in his book. You can also use the starter in other breads, combined with commercial yeast. So if you wanted a nice sandwich loaf, put some starter in and it will add a nice depth of flavour, some background tanginess. But generally it's for the sourdoughs, the big boys."
Caring for your starter
You now have a living, breathing starter – but don't be scared. "It's very robust," Gellatly assures us. After making a loaf, you will need to replenish your starter with half and half flour and water, in equal quantities to the amount that you took out. If you don't plan to make bread for a while, you can freeze your starter, or even better dehydrate it. Alternatively, just begin this process again from scratch.
Breads, Cakes, Doughnuts, Puddings by Justin Piers Gellatly is published by Fig Tree in spring 2014
From student years in Pizza Express to romance at the Quality Chop House, milestones can be measured in passing food trends, says Rachel Cooke
• Read more of the best food writing in Observer Food Monthly, this Sunday
A press release informs me that Browns is 40 years old. Forty? It gave me quite a jolt. It's horrible now – last time I had the misfortune to visit one of its 27 branches, the chicken was rubbery and the chips were cold – but when I was a student in Oxford it was quite the thing. Good-looking waiters in white aprons, generous jugs of Pimm's, crisp side salads in wooden bowls with a choice of dressing including – the wondrousness – blue cheese. In 1988, these delights we had not much seen before.
Nostalgia washed over me, warm and plangent. Being able to measure out my life in restaurants (as opposed to coffee spoons) makes me feel old. Oh, the trends that were there: the fads, the failures and, before that, the paucity. It's almost touching to think of it, the way we used to eat, though there's not a person alive who'd go back. And so, in the manner of one of those really annoying high-concept novels – only shorter – I thought I'd get this strange timeline down for your delectation. My life in restaurants. Do you remember? I bet you do.
1 The first restaurant I went to was not really a restaurant at all, but a Dining Room. It was in the Wasdale Head Hotel, Wastwater, to which my father used to take me as a girl. I had to put on my best lilac kilt for dinner. The starter was always the same: a tiny glass of fruit juice or – push the boat out! – celery soup. The main course was meat, roasted. Pudding was fruit salad or trifle, though either way, what you mostly ended up with was a lot of tinned mandarin oranges.
2 When I was eight, I was allowed, for my birthday, to take some friends to the Berni Inn at the Norton roundabout in Sheffield. Every Berni Inns dish came with three button mushrooms, and every adult always had an Irish coffee at the end of their meal. I couldn't understand their delight in this delicacy, which seems, looking back, to have been almost sexual. But now I'm 44, I really get it: the pleasure of all that boozy warm froth on one's upper lip. Nice.
3 Abroad. I went to the Loire first, in my newly married mother's Datsun. This was the first time I tasted proper cheese, butter, yoghurt and fizzy water. Later, we went to Gascony, where I ate at what I then considered to be the world's best restaurant: La Rapière, in Mauvezin. Confit de canard and prune and Armagnac ice cream. Nothing like that at home.
4 University. See above. Plus, Pizza Express. Hard to believe now, but in 1988, I thought doughballs as exotic as David Sylvian (which is to say: very exotic indeed).
5 To London. I arrived in 1991. It was the era of 192, the insufferable Notting Hill media watering hole, and of Terence Conran; Quaglino's, which we might call his restaurant zenith, opened in 1991. I went to the former once and what I remember is many, many puy lentils. I did go to Quaglino's, too. But, embarrassingly, not until 1998.
6 To Glasgow. I lived close to the Ubiquitous Chip. Langoustine and haggis: what was not to like? Scotland seemed to be ahead of London in several foodie ways, and I longed to visit the Altnaharrie Inn, which had Michelin stars, a stern, no-choice menu featuring foraged foods – the prescience! – and could only be accessed by boat. Sadly, the closest I got was Ullapool, where I reported on a drugs cheat at the Highland Games and ate nothing but a Cornetto all day.
7 Back to London. All was now very earthy: St John, Moro; chops and chickpeas. But I was working such long hours that I spent most of my time first in a Wapping sandwich bar – its owner cleaved to sun-dried tomatoes like a soap star to a bubble perm – and then in a branch of Cranks in Canary Wharf. Sort of like The Good Life, but minus the anaesthetising nettle wine.
8 2013. Just now, my favourite restaurant is the Quality Chop House in Clerkenwell. I'm spoony about it because I was wooed there by T, but the food is the tops, too – grown-up and delicious. Not a bad marker for the mid-point of my restaurant eating life. And I'm clearly not having a midlife crisis, else I'd be somewhere more modish: queuing on a sticky pavement outside Meat Liquor, probably, while worrying quietly about my trainers.
The use of food banks has tripled in 12 months, as even people in work struggle to feed themselves and their families
Tucked away on the New King's Road in Fulham, west London, there is a delicatessen called Bayley & Sage. It's the stuff of foodie fantasy: heaps of purple artichokes spill over piles of grooved and polished heritage tomatoes the colour of a newly painted post box. It suits the neighbourhood, with its infestation of four-by-four baby buggies, macchiato-sipping au pairs and tree-lined streets of neatly appointed red brick villas. This is not a place of want. Surely nobody here can be in need?
Then again, this is 21st-century Britain, and here plenty and hunger sit far too comfortably side by side. Just a few minutes' walk away on Studdridge Street is Christ Church. To aficionados of the decorative arts it is famous for its glorious stained glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones; to those with hungry mouths to feed, it is better known for the food bank that operates here on Friday afternoons. The tomatoes they hand out won't be heritage but canned.
"The area does look affluent," agrees Daphine Aikens, who has run the operation for three years and is just one of the thousands of volunteers in this country now helping to operate food banks. "But we're surrounded by social housing and people come to us from all over the borough." This food bank is one of 350 run nationwide by the church-based charity the Trussell Trust, which is opening them at the rate of three a week. It operates on a voucher system. To get a parcel of three days' free food, applicants must first be referred by a recognised agency: the local jobcentre, for example, the Citizens Advice Bureau or their GP, which hands out the vouchers. Under the trust's rules, nobody can have more than three vouchers in a row. The charity says it wants to provide breathing space for those in acute need, rather than become a solution to a chronic problem.
Aikens is seeing many more people coming to her door with those vouchers. In the second quarter of this year, she says, they saw a 250% increase compared to the same period last year. Her own experience is backed up by nationwide research. A report, co-written by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty, that was released in May found that 500,000 people in Britain had resorted to food banks to feed themselves this year, three times more than in the previous 12 months. Campaigners are certain they know why it's happening. The complex calculus of modern living and expenditure is no longer adding up.
Between 2000 and 2011, food prices rose by 43%, while general prices rose by 28% and incomes stagnated or even fell. If you're on a low income, food price rises have simply been amplified. On top of that have come draconian changes to the benefits rules, combined with infuriating administrative incompetency.
"The government shies away from the truth of just how much trouble a bureaucratic welfare system can cause," says Chris Mould, chief executive of the Trussell Trust. He says his charity is meant to provide a safety net, "but it's hard to hold that line as an organisation working in support of the state, rather than becoming a substitute for it". He is unapologetic about the trust's Christian motives. "We are motivated by the challenge Jesus gave to his followers," he says. "We do this because we should, and not in a trade-off with the state." Sadly, the state doesn't appear to be listening. As far as they're concerned, it's fine for churches to fill in the yawning gaps.
Chris Johns, director of Oxfam's UK Poverty Programme, is even more explicit. The need for food banks is being caused not just by changing benefits provision, but also by the way government agencies temporarily remove benefits for perceived misdemeanours: a failure to sign the right paperwork, or apply for the right training scheme. Then, having stopped their benefits so they can't buy food, the same agency gives claimants a food bank voucher. "They are being given the vouchers by the people who are sanctioning them. It's almost beyond description," Johns says. "Food banks are clearly fitting into a hole left by the welfare state."
Not that the government will acknowledge this. Last month, the work and pensions minister Lord Freud, a former investment banker, said that it was not possible to make a connection between changes to benefits rules and a rise in demand for food banks. "Food banks are absolutely not part of the welfare system that we run," he said. "We have other systems to support people." The real issue, he said, is the provision of free stuff. "Clearly food from a food bank is by definition free and there's almost infinite demand." And all this despite the fact that it is agencies run by the DWP – jobcentres – which are recognising the need by handing out the vouchers.
Challenged on this, a spokesperson for the DWP pointed out that "referrals from jobcentres only make up a very small proportion of overall numbers".
The stream of people arriving at Christ Church with a voucher just need food. A week ago this food bank staged a collection outside a major local supermarket and amassed three tonnes of the stuff. Supermarket customers buy the food they donate; the supermarket then gives the charity a shopping voucher of their own, equivalent to a third of the food's value, so they are not profiting from the donations. As a result the shelves, in a back room dominated by the famed stained glass windows, are full. There is no refrigeration, so along with tinned food there are bags of pasta and jars of sauces, and other basics such as shampoo, and nappies for those with kids.
Aikens admits that coming to a place like this is not easy for many. "People are reticent," she says. "We give the food freely but they have to be prepared to walk over the threshold and say I need help." Does she ever despair at the problems people get themselves into? "I constantly say that we mustn't be judgmental. I think a place like this is about the basic imperative of caring. A civilised society cares about its most vulnerable members."
Waiting quietly at a table in the reception area is Debra Lonergan, mother of three teenage boys, who is also her husband's full-time carer. The benefits agency has told her that they have just noticed she was overpaid £600 back in 2009 so they are stopping her money for a month. "I've been telling them I'd know if I'd received an extra £600," she says, desperately. "I don't owe them anything." She is working to get the problem sorted, but for now she has a practical issue. There's not enough food in the house to keep the kids fed. Her GP gave her the Trussell Trust voucher. "This is my first time at a food bank. It's daunting. I didn't know what to expect. I had the image of queuing up Russian style, but it wasn't like that." Instead, each applicant sits down with a volunteer who offers them a cup of tea and goes through that list of exactly what they need. Debra tells me she wants to work, is desperate to, but that home circumstances just make it impossible.
Jacquie Bunce says the same. She has been signed off as unfit to work because of serious depression. Her benefits were stopped after she failed to turn up for a medical she says she was too unwell to attend. "I need to work," she says. "I want to work." But she just can't find employment. "Everyone's embarrassed about coming here," she says, looking around the room. "I'm not happy to be here. And if I was working and could give to the food bank I would." Instead she finds herself needing to take. "The government are happy to let it happen. They're not in touch with the real world." Jacquie is well dressed, wears her jewellery with pride. She acknowledges this. "Of course some people cheat the system. There are always people like that. But don't look down on someone because they've got a big telly. They may have had all that before they found themselves out of work."
Aikens agrees. People are quick to make assumptions. She has given talks in fee-paying schools and recognised kids in the assemblies, whose family have sought help from the food bank. "Maybe the kids have a scholarship for the fees but there's no money at home for food," she says. "We have a number of people who come here who are in full-time work but they just don't have enough."
I travel north from the manicured streets of Fulham to a light industrial estate on the outskirts of Hull, and the warehouses that are home to the non-denominational charity Real Aid. It started here in 2001 with a focus on development work in places like Sierra Leone, but in 2007 the floods in Hull made them realise there was need closer to home. "We were seeing people in our own community living in poverty," says the charity's director, Lindsay Killick. So now, as well as working abroad, they run an operation gathering in food, and distributing it to other organisations in East Yorkshire and Humberside.
They also run a food bank in nearby Bridlington aimed specifically at working families. "Working families find it harder to come and ask for help," Killick says. "Generally, they've not been in this situation before." The solution: they charge a small fee for the food. "Charging £1.50 can make it easier." For that they may get upwards of £15 worth of food, but it feels less like charity and more like an equitable exchange. It gives the lie to Lord Freud's claim of a "something for nothing" culture.
Killick shows me round the warehouse, stacked with pallets of food liberated from supermarkets and producers. They have a local farmer who sends them half a tonne of potatoes every week, a donation worth £250. Other stuff comes from Asda's national distribution centre in Wakefield. In all they shift around 400 tonnes of food a year. Not that getting hold of it is always easy. Big players like the Trussell Trust or the waste food charity FareShare have access to some of the biggest supplies. It seems the food bank world is becoming crowded. "It's not so much competition as protectionism. We'll approach a company for donations and they'll say they're already giving to another organisation." He tells me that a supermarket where they once did a collection received a complaint from a much larger charity which thought that was their pitch.
What about demand? "We have a waiting list for groups and community centres wanting to join the schemes." And that demand is only increasing. In April, responsibility for crisis loan funds moved from the DWP to local authorities. The local authority in their area then drew up a list of "partners" to whom people in need could be referred, if they didn't qualify for a loan. "We're now on that list," Killick says. "We weren't asked to be on that list. We just get people turning up saying the council told me to come down here."
I travel with the Real Aid delivery van to Unity in the Community, a bustling centre in Orchard Park, a district of Hull which has seen better days. Low-rise social housing is punctuated by 60s tower blocks marked for demolition. This area is one of the most deprived in Britain. Volunteers help unload bags of fruit and vegetables, catering tins of tuna and ravioli and beans, and separate them out into equal parcels.
"We don't use vouchers here," says Dennis Woods, who runs the centre. "We don't want personal information. We don't want to put them in a difficult position." They just have to hand over £1.50. And if they don't have it? He takes a deep breath. "We sort them out." Nobody in need leaves empty-handed. The centre also provides training in skills such as IT to help people get back to work, advice on benefit entitlements and many other things. As in Fulham, the growth area here is the working poor.
I meet grandmother Ann Jones, a tidy, self-contained woman, who is waiting patiently in the reception area for her bags, which she will unload into a shopping trolley. "I come here for my daughter. She works full-time as a carer. She went to university, worked hard. But with rent at £550 and school dinners costing £80 it's just hard to make ends meet." Ann says she doesn't like doing this, says it's an embarrassment. "I've worked hard all my life. You're 65 years old and coming in for a bag of food. I was ashamed. But at the end of the day we all need a bit of help." Her bags have arrived and she takes me through what she's been given. There's a huge can of tuna. "You can do a lot with that. Tuna pasta, fishcakes, tuna bake. Sometimes there's flour so I make cakes with that." Is the cost of meat a problem? "Of course it bloody is. Everything's a problem."
There are pensioners here, who have worked all their lives and now can't manage on what income they have. "My state pension only pays the rent," says Ann Fleming. "This is a really useful service because it's basic and healthy things. And I don't feel so bad about taking it because you're paying £1.50." Alan Martin has been using the service since it opened. "In this world we should not have to rely on things like this but we do."
It takes a couple of hours, but soon the 35 or so parcels of food are gone. There is, of course, a familiar rhetoric that surrounds all this: a narrative in which a robust welfare state merely gets people addicted to benefits and handouts, and that a food bank is just handouts in protein and carbs. We can argue about the validity of that argument, and politicians and experts from all parts of the spectrum often do. But anyone travelling across the landscape of food banks in Britain today, as I have, will quickly come to the same conclusion. This isn't just about problems with a broken benefits system, however acute they may be. It's also about working people who have tried their best to make ends meet. It is about people who believe in paying their way but who are now so unable to do so they need free food.
South America's best known chef is on a mission to highlight the indigenous foods of the Amazon – and to transform Brazilian cooking
Manaus, Brazil, where the Rio Negro and Solimões rivers meet and the Amazon as we think of it begins. It's a city built on long-gone fortunes from the rubber trade and home to the world's most remote opera house, the inspiration for Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. I am here with Alex Atala, flame-haired, heavily tattooed, No 1 cook in South America and the only chef to appear on Time's list of 100 most influential people on the planet earlier this year. From druggy, bad-boy beginnings, Atala is now a serious figure on the global stage with an appetite to parlay his fame into influence.
We are at the start of a six-day trip into the area to meet members of the Baniwa, the Baré and other indigenous peoples that Atala's ATÁ Institute is working with, and to get a flavour of the Brazilian foods he is championing: Amazonian fruits, fermented manioc, ants. But first, a visit to a local restaurant where they are killing a 30kg turtle in our honour.
Like many river foods here, smaller turtles are caught and grown on farms. "I am super-excited about farming turtles," Atala tells me, although I am more conflicted, both about eating and farming them. We arrive to a spread of local produce: stunning arrays of exotic fish and fruits, turtle offal in its shell, turtle meat in stew.
We start with bodó, a prized prehistoric fish with no internal skeleton that can live for hours out of water in its armoured skin. Atala cracks one like a coconut and an intensely gamey, faecal stink saturates the airless room. I smile weakly and attempt to move away. I feel feeble, faint. Inside, the bodó is hollow, black, with a thin coating of grey flesh clinging to the shell. After 10 minutes of shuffling it around the plate, my appetite long fled with my sense of balance, I shudder and swallow a small piece. It's time to make room for turtle.
Bodó flesh has a murky taste marginally less grim than it smells. Stewed turtle flipper has a disturbing fishy flavour and the texture of tough rubber shoe. I retire depressed, defeated, not as well suited as I'd thought to the challenges of frontier food.
I am not alone. When Atala came to Europe in 1989 and started cooking (he thought it would pay better than the painting and decorating work he was doing), he didn't much like the food either. "I had never tasted salmon," he says. "Truffles, foie gras, caviar, I didn't like. It was the same emotion as coming as a kid to Amazonas to fish and hunt with my grandfather and father. I didn't enjoy some of the flavours and textures. They were just too strange. But at a certain point I started to feel nostalgic for the taste."
It was his reaction to truffles and foie gras that was to shape his life. Atala worked in kitchens in Belgium, France and Italy before he realised: "I couldn't cook French food as well as a French chef, or Italian like an Italian cook. But I also came to understand none of them could cook Brazilian food as well as me."
He returned to São Paulo and started to combine European techniques with indigenous produce. Success came quickly, his restaurant DOM opened in 1999, is currently ranked six in the world and is heavily tipped as a future number one. "A giant among chefs," says Noma's René Redzepi.
"The difference between being good, very good and exceptional as a cook," says Atala, "is in having the flavours in your memory. If I tell you mozzarella tastes of Italy and miso speaks of Japan, then tucupi [fermented manioc juice] and ants are the taste of Brazil."
Atala was speaking about ants the first time we met, in Copenhagen two years ago. It was a compelling mantra that would take me to Manaus: "Ants don't taste like lemon grass and ginger. Lemon grass and ginger taste like ants!"
Atala's own ant epiphany came courtesy of Dona Brasi, of the Baré people, one of the 23 ethnic groups who inhabit the region of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, our next stop, 1,000km deeper down the Rio Negro, close to the border with Colombia.
"Which herbs did you put in this dish," he asks when first trying her food.
"Ants," replies Dona Brasi.
Atala repeats the question: "I would like to know which herbs you used in the recipe."
"Son, there are only ants."
Dona Brasi is cooking during our stay in São Gabriel at the Instituto Socio Ambiental (ISA), an NGO working to protect and promote indigenous culture. Its founder, Beto Ricardo, is also a founder of ATÁ with Atala and others, working to support small producers around the country.
Our rooms look out over the white waterfalls of the black river, everywhere an explosion of colour. The Baniwa have 300 words for jungle landscape and you can see 200 shades of green from the window. We eat on the terrace to the roar of rushing water, a pair of iridescent hummingbirds hovering in the corner. Over a meal of Dona Brasi's toasted manioc, spiky tucupi dressing and fish ribs, I feel my concerns about Amazon food fade away. Sweet, sour, hot, cold, crunchy, moist, fatty – this is brilliantly balanced cooking, at once intensely foreign and familiar.
As we eat, Atala tells a story about how he came to work with the anthropologists. About 10 years ago, he says, he bought a piece of land to farm manioc and was keen to build a relationship with his indigenous neighbours. Aware of malnutrition, he sent a "staple foods basket" to all the families. Feeling good about his role as philanthropist, he returned to find rubbish everywhere. Maddened, he gathered them for a lecture on sustainability. "But Alex," they responded, "for us, the packaging of fruit is its skin; for a fish it is the scales. You sent us plastic." Chastened, Atala realised, "playing God isn't simple" and for future work with indigenous people he would seek expert help. In the meantime, he sent his neighbours biodegradable baskets.
Dona Brasi is making manioc flour at her farm deep in the forest. More commonly known here as cassava, manioc is a building block of Brazilian food, 80% of the indigenous diet from 200 varieties of the root.
Clearings are made by fire for manioc to be ready for harvest within months. We watch as fresh root is dug, the pulp later squeezed in narrow sleeves. The liquid will be reduced over fire to become tucupi, the intensely umami-rich base for stocks and soups or to be mixed with ants for Dona Brasi's dressing. The starch will become tapioca. The flour, farinha, will be used as a staple, and for chibé, a fermented drink with water. This is a versatile food for half a billion people though largely unknown in the west.
Dona Brasi toasts manioc pulp in a giant shallow pan over a mud-walled fire, constantly moving it around with a long paddle. The heat and smoke is intense. She mixes flour with fermented root – everything ferments here within hours – and adds tapioca. The starch pops and forms a crust. We eat it as beiju, a sophisticated flatbread with a delicious gummy crunch. Dona Brasi loads up with farinha. The rest of the extended family will stay here for a few days until the fields are dug, the flour, tucupi and tapioca made.
"Thank God we have fish so we can eat chilli" – Baniwa saying.
Before we cross the river to the Baniwa village, I ask about ATÁ's work in the Rio Negro (ATÁ means fire in the Tupi language), helping to support a state-of-the-art chilli-processing house and promoting the product. "The Baniwa pepper is emblematic," Atala says, "not only as a flavour but as a culture. The way the women work the land is very specific and sustainable. It is used in initiations and is seen as a sacred plant."
At least it was before the Catholic missionaries and evangelists intervened. Some 90% of indigenous people here have taken on evangelical faith. Communal malocas (longhouses) are gone, replaced by squares of tiny houses surrounding a central church. "The missionaries took away our communities when they took away communal housing," Max, a leader from FOIRN (Federação das Organizações Indígenas do Rio Negro), later tells me. "We stopped being collective and became individuals. Sometimes I even have to buy fish from my brother."
There are, though, pockets of resistance. FOIRN has built a maloca in the centre of São Gabriel. "This is a symbol of how my grandfather lived, and his ancestors lived," says Max. "There is significance in every pillar, every root, every straw."
"For us at ATÁ," adds Atala, "we can be an important support, for local culture, for social benefits, for economic benefits, not only money. We don't change lives, we change communities." São Gabriel's ISA representative Renato Martelli Soares puts it this way. "The Baniwa have cultivated this pepper through centuries," he says. "It is high in diversity and quality. With this project, we focus on the relationship between man, food and fire, between humanity and its environment."
On our way to the Baniwa fields, there's a sound like a waterfall. Except it's not. It's a wall of rain hitting the forest canopy and heading our way fast. We are about to learn a savage lesson in how the rainforest gets its name. The Baniwa pick large leaves to use as umbrellas. In seconds, we cannot see the people in front of us but we march blindly on, crossing streams on slippery logs until our guide, too, accepts we are lost.
Later, soaked like Glastonbury refugees, we regroup in the village. Each family brings food to a communal meal according to their means. We share densely flavoured soups spiked with cubiu (wild tomato), tucupi and Baniwa chillies. We eat mysterious fish smoked over an open fire and drink many styles of chibé. There is an extraordinary diversity of taste and fermentation from something as simple as flour and water.
A few days later we return to São Paulo and I get to eat at DOM. All the raw flavours of the Amazon are on our menu, including Atala's signature filhote river fish with tucupi and tapioca, although here the broth is almost oriental in its richness and depth. The menu walks us through Brazil – flower ceviche with native honey, wild boar with manioc flour and, of course, gingery, lemon grassy ants, served with pineapple (recipe: "take 1 pineapple and 4 saúva ants; place a piece of pineapple on top of a serving dish and top with an ant. Serve immediately"). This is brilliant cooking from an imaginative chef, and I remember our talk by the Manaus waterfalls about memories being the difference between being good and being exceptional.
"As Brazilians we grew up with the feeling that everything becomes worse," says Atala. "Then one day we started to believe in the future, that things are getting better. But there is still no health system, no education, people are so close to the rocks."
It is this idea that Brazilians no longer need to wait for a leader to tell them when to act that drives Atala's thinking. "Food is the crossroads between culture and nature," he says. "ATÁ is not an institute for chefs or for recipes or for food or for foodies. This is an institute for change. I really believe we can start to make things happen. I am famous in my little food world, one of the top 50 chefs, but I don't want to look back in 10 years and think that I didn't use my voice."
While he talks, I am reminded of my last day in the jungle, when we met FOIRN. Felipe, a young chef from Manaus, had been mapping Amazonian mushrooms for ATÁ and was showing the indigenous leaders his results. But why did you stop eating the fungi, he asked. "When I was five," an older man said quietly, "a missionary woman told me I was stupid, incapable of learning. She told me there was no nutrition in our food and I needed to eat white flour. I was unhappy, angry, but we gradually lost the memory of what was good."
History has proved the missionaries wrong. Now, thanks to Atala and others, Brazil's indigenous food is finally being celebrated around the country – and the world. DOM: Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients by Alex Atala (Phaidon, RRP £35).To order a copy for £28 with free UK p&p click here
Alex Atala is one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people on the planet and the number one chef in South America. He champions the people and produce of the Amazon and here he travels to São Gabriel da Cachoeira, near the Colombian border, where his ATA foundation works with the Baniwa people. The chilli they grow is used in Atala's Sao Paulo restaurant, D.O.M., ranked sixth in the world
Alex Atala is one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people on the planet and the number one chef in South America. His work championing the people and produce from the Amazon is key to his achievements: Observer Food Monthly joined him as he travelled to Manaus and São Gabriel da Cachoeira
