In recent news a so-called revelation was headlined in the tabloid newspapers in England "E numbers are harmful to children." It’s hard not get angry at this headline not just because it’s true, but the common sense evidence that something is badly wrong with the foods we have allowed our children to eat has been around for some time.

Just look at the growing number of children with all kinds of maladies from attention deficit, increases in the numbers of children suffering from a food allergy just because many parents continue to allow and in some cases champion junk food over a healthier plate of real food.

Ill-informed parents believe if it is low in sugar then it is good for their kids,
But if they took the time to read the labels they would realize low in sugar usually means high in artificial sweeteners like Nutra-sweet or Acesulfame K which is about 200 times sweeter than sugar and has in American lab tests been linked to cancer.

Parents give many poorly thought through reasons as to why their precious children are allowed to eat such poor quality, chemically laden, high in salt and fat food.

“My son is a fussy eater”….or “they are teenagers and they are just going through a phase”… “It’s peer pressure from their school friends..what can I do?”

No one is born a fussy eater…it is purely born out of conditioning by the family members around the child from a very early age. Some parent’s pass on their own food dislikes to their child, which again narrows the choices. Kids can quickly learn to negotiate at the dinner table what they will and wont eat.

My own 5year old daughter drinks fruit juices, water or occasional milk or weak cup of tea. She is not allowed drinks with artificial sweeteners or fizzy pop.
She eats a balanced diet of meat, fish, vegetables and fruit because her mom and I cooked her real food. No frozen dinners and trips to Micky D’s are very rare..usually when she visits her auntie. I don’t allow her pudding until she has eaten all of her dinner.

As parents Yvette and I have held firm against the many pressures out there that allow children bad food choices. Making this happen isn’t always easy or convenient but it’s the right thing to do. After working a 12-hour day cooking in a hot kitchen it’s not easy to come home and begin doing some food preparation, but what I feed my daughter is more important than the brand of trainers she wears.

Even good restaurants have sometimes caved in and bought a bag of chicken nuggets to accommodate their customer’s wishes…but how can parents in good conscience sit down to wonderful food whilst allowing their children to eat such harmful rubbish?

I don’t know how some directors of food companies can sleep at night knowing how harmful their products are and yet still they are sold and promoted at young children.

Like many other people my first taste of a Bakewell dessert was Bakewell Tart, which has a short pastry crust, a thin layer of raspberry jam and then almond frangipane and is a standard classic English dessert. However recently I discovered that Bakewell Tart was just an inferior upstart and that the original Bakewell dessert was called a pudding and was invented in the Derbyshire town of Bakewell in the 19th century. Ironically the “pudding recipe” is lighter, tastier and easier to make so I do hope you will try this recipe soon. The only remaining mystery is how the inferior version became so well know throughout Great Britain?

350g (14oz) Puff pastry
75g (3oz) Unsalted butter
90g (3 ½ oz) Caster sugar
5 large eggs
125g (4 ½ oz) Ground almonds
A few drops of Almond essence
3 Tbsp raspberry jam
100g (4oz) Fresh raspberries

1. Preheat oven to 190C (gas mark 6)
2. Lightly butter a 10” quiche dish and roll the puff pastry out until it is about 4mm ( ¼”) thick.
3. Once you have lined the dish with the pastry don’t trim off the excess.
4. Crush the fresh raspberries with a spoon, mixing in the raspberry jam then spread the mix evenly onto the pastry.
5. Cream the sugar with butter and almond essence until it is white and fluffy.
6. Gradually stir in one beaten egg at a time, together with a little of the ground almonds, making sure each egg is well mixed in before adding another.
7. When all the eggs and ground almonds have been incorporated pour the mix into the pastry case and spread the mix gently and evenly with a palette knife.
8. Use a small sharp knife and trim off the excess puff pastry then crimp the edges to give a neat finish.
9. Bake on the middle shelf for 20-25 minutes or until the filling is set and the top is lightly brown.

To Serve
Allow the Bakewell pudding to cool for 10 minutes before slicing and serve with custard or cream.

Chef’s Tips
If you wish you can egg-wash the crimped pastry edge before baking and dust the finished pudding with a little icing sugar.

Unfortunately the number of quality butcher shops seems to be shrinking in the UK even in this current climate of wall to wall cooking TV shows.

Now I’m not talking about the type of butchers where most of its meats are straight out of the freezer. I’m talking about butcher’s who smoke their own bacon, make their own sausages, pork pies, faggots etc and often have won awards for their products. Quality butchers often source much of their meat locally, which is good for the local economy, cleaner for the environment because of the fewer miles driven.

If I’m honest there are times when I buy my meat from one of my local butchers and times when due to my busy lifestyle I do a one-stop shop at the local supermarket. Generally speaking when you buy your meat from a supermarket the prices may be lower but so is the quality.

So what else can you hope to get if you buy your meat from your local butcher?
Free advice on how to cook what you are buying plus information about where the meat came from. Suggestions on trying new cuts or dishes you have never tried before and hopefully a better quality.

I like to pose a few questions to the non-vegetarian people that visit my site.

1.) Do you have a favourite butcher shop you use or do you buy all of your meat from a supermarket?

2.) Has a traditional butcher shop become irrelevant?

3.) Do you ever seek advice from your local butcher, on what to cook and how to cook it?

4.) If you don’t currently use a butcher what would tempt you to try?

5.) Do the short traditional opening hours of UK butcher shops prevent you from using them?

As the words of the song go.. “Dont it always seem to go that you dont know what you’ve got till its gone”…

Historically the short operating time of butchers shops was because of the lack of refridgeration. Around 1900 most butchers shops had open fronts. Marble slabs were place in the display windows; these were washed down at the end of the day. Meat storeage in butchers was cooled by blocks of ice, before the invention of refrideraters. The floors were covered in sawdust and salt was generally used for cleaning.

Meat was handled in a more robust way at retail and wholesale levels. Most people would now be horrified at the level of hygene, but the view was that all meat would be washed and cooked thoroughly, so the risk of contamination was small.

The USA doesn’t have many butchers shops because almost all meat is bought from large supermarkets. Quite clearly this could be the same in the UK in the not too distant future.

When I lived in America for almost 14 years I never saw leg of pork joints for roasting because, all legs were made into ham. It was rare to see any other offal other than liver and game was practically unheard of. The choices on the meat counters were fairly static, no shanks of lamb, very little seasonal differences except for certain obvious holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Not that butchers even good ones are all perfect. I personally find it annoying that even if the butcher’s shop closes at say 4.30pm or even 5pm some butchers will long before hand empty their window displays and clean down. How can I be tempted into making a purchase when there is nothing on display? In this highly visual information age butchers need to check out the supermarkets and fight back with imaginative and informative displays. After all supermarkets are constantly looking for ways to personalize there inpersonal products. Things like gourmet sausages and more recently putting the photos of the farmers who raise and supply the meat on the packaging. Now I’m not about to suggest that butchers should do the same because the neither have the time nor the money but they could look for ways to interact with their customers more. Perhaps do some tastings/sampling to let the people try before they buy, maybe even combine with other food and drink retailers to help engineer other food/business opportunities such as a food and wine tasting or even organize a food demonstration as an add on to an exsisting event or festival….in other words do things that supermarkets can’t or wont do to increase business and the locals awareness of the quality of the butcher. I also think we need to convince TV chefs to hilight the importance of quality butcher's on our high streets.

Dear All,

March 2008...and I've been essentially off line for 8 long months.
It started with a decision to buy an apartment last May a few miles from my old cottage address. Then I waited some while to have a phone line connected and many phone calls on my mobile later I got one then I got disconnected. then I made more phone calls and got reconnected...and then disconnected again..God Bless BT.
Well at the moment I have a phone line and hopefully an internet connection in 5-7 days...I've made some good friends in India spent countless hours being promised things..which were then broken.
In the end I contacted OFCOM and complained and BT gave me a new account, money back ...but I am still getting bills I don't owe them...so I will keep you posted.

Other news
I'm still writing my newspaper/recipe column for the Sunday Mercury
and still get occasionally recognised in the supermarket...Aren’t you whatizname? from the Mercury is the usual challenge.

Toasted Foot
In the middle of all this whilst in Southwest France I got scalded rather badly on my right foot. Which kept me off work and even away from my column for 2.5 months. Anyway it’s now fine except for a scar; at least I did not lose any movement as was first thought. Through all this my family have been wonderful and very supportive.

I'm back now and hope to get the dust shook off this blog and add lots more content.

Tesco are about to butcher my high street
Currently I'm trying to help my favourite butchers (of which there are 4 quality shops in Stourport fight Tesco whom plan to build a large store on the outskirts of town. Even though it will add extra traffic congestion to the one way system....even though there are already 3 supermarkets in Stourport (one of which is a Tesco Metro store).

If the butchers go then perhaps the greengrocer and even the florist and the high street will end up boarded up or filled with Poundland stores. Not that I have anything against Poundland, I'd just like to keep the quality master butchers we have that offer a very wide range of quality home products. One of the butchers is licensed to sell game and another smokes his own bacon and makes award winning pork pies.

Since I joined the fight late the deal may have already been done, but in the meantime I have been contacting a few famous colleagues of mine hoping they can help my cause.

Richard answered his own phone
Amongst the people I phoned was the Earl of Bradford who is also a food and travel writer...and bless my socks he answered his own phone!
So stay posted and thanks for reading this.

Dear All,

Sorry for my lack of entries....I have enjoying a last minute holiday for the last two weeks in Majorcia with my daughter Felicia.

I will be back on Tuesday and straight into a busy schedule which includes another cooking demonstration at Royal Show at Stoneleigh on July 2nd.

I’ve been meaning to write a brulee recipe for sometime now but I have waited until butane gas guns are readily available at hardware stores & reasonably priced at around a tenner. Trying to create the “burnt” caramel crust without a blow torch/gas gun is nigh impossible because most domestic grills don’t get hot enough. Mastering Brulee can take a little practise; to learn how set it should be, before removing from the oven...but unlike a woodwork project you can eat your mistakes!

9 egg yolks
250 ml double cream
250 ml milk
1 vanilla pod
90 grams castor sugar
250 grams Fresh Raspberries
few drops of natural vanilla extract
6 ramekin dishes

1. Preheat oven to 120 C gas mark 1/2
2. Place about 4-5 raspberries into each of your ramekins. and lay the ramekins into a roasting tray.
3. Split the vanilla pod and scrap out the vanilla seeds,then put the seeds and the pod into a non-stick saucepan. Add the cream, milk, a few drops vanilla extract and bring to a simmer then turn off heat.
4. In a bowl combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk well until they turn a pale straw colour.
5. Pour the cream mix into the egg yolks and whisk well. Transfer the mix into a clean non-stick saucepan and return to the stove on a medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon making sure your spoon is touching the bottom of the saucepan.
6. Cook gently until the brulee mix starts to coat the back of your spoon, remove from the heat immediately and strain through a fine mesh sieve.
7 Ladle the Brulee mix into each ramekin covering the raspberries.
8. Boil a kettle and pour enough water around the ramekins to cover 3/4 of there height
9. Cook the brullee’s on a lower shelf for 40 minutes until set.
10. Carefully remove the ramekins from the roasting tray and allow to cool down at room temperature.
11. Move to the fridge and allow to cool for at least 2 hours.
12. Sprinkle the brulees with castor sugar and melt with the gas gun, moving the flame around to melt the sugar evenly and quickly.

Chef’s Tips
Caramelising the tops of the brulee can be done in advance, so that the caramel crust is set and hard. Ramakins vary in size so you might find you have too much mix.

Earlier this year I spent the day giving cooking demonstrations to children at Granville Community School in Derbyshire. This came about because months earlier I organized a competition via The Sunday Mercury to encourage kids to cook. Over 100 Midlands schools took part and Granville was judged the winner.

The day was a great success and everyone enjoyed it. One of the dishes I threw together at the end of the day was this Boston cream pie. The finish on the cake wasn't quite my best effort because I was racing against the clock, but the cleaning ladies sure loved it.

If you have ever heard of Boston cream pie you might be surprised to find that it is neither filled with cream or a pie. To answer the question of why "pie" instead of "cake", it is probably because in the past colonists baked their cakes in pie tins, as they did not own cake pans.
If you can imagine a vanilla egg sponge filled with a custard style pastry cream and topped with a thick coating of chocolate ganache. This recipe I adapted from Stephanie Jaworski.

Sponge Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in centre of oven.
Butter and line the bottom of an 8 inch (23 cm) cake pan with parchment paper.
3 large eggs
75 grams (3oz) granulated white sugar
1/2 teaspoon real vanilla extract with seeds
85 grams (3.5oz) self-raising flour
28 grams (1oz) unsalted butter, melted

1. Use an electric mixer to beat the eggs and sugar on high speed for about five minutes, or until they are thick, fluffy and light colored (when you slowly raise the beaters the batter will fall back into the bowl in a slow ribbon).
2. Now beat in the vanilla extract then sift 1/2 of the flour over the batter and gently fold through with a rubber spatula or whisk. Sift the remaining flour over the batter and fold in. Whisk about 1/2 cup of the batter into the melted butter (to lighten it) and then gently fold the butter mixture back into the rest of the batter. Pour immediately into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until springy to the touch. (A toothpick inserted in the middle will come out clean.)
3. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
4. Run a spatula or sharp knife around the inside of the pan and then invert the cake onto a wire rack. Remove the parchment paper.

Pastry Cream:300 ml (10floz) milk
4 large egg yolks
50 grams (20z) granulated white sugar
45 grams (2oz) self-raising flour
1 tsp real vanilla extract with seeds
100ml (3.5floz) Double Cream
5. In a medium-sized stainless steel bowl, mix the sugar, vanilla and egg yolks until well creamed and the sugar is no longer grainy.
6. Meanwhile in a saucepan bring the milk to boiling over medium heat.
7. Pour the milk into egg & sugar mix and whisk well.
8. Place the egg mixture back into a heavy bottomed stainless steel saucepan and cook over medium heat until boiling, whisking constantly. When it boils, continue to whisk constantly for another 30 - 60 seconds until it becomes thick.
9. Remove from heat and pour into a clean bowl and immediately cover the surface with cling wrap to prevent a crust from forming and allow the pastry cream to cool gradually.
10. In a separate clean bowl whisk the double cream until stiff peaks and fold into the pastry cream when it is cold.

Chocolate Glaze:
200 grams (8oz) dark (70%) chocolate
180ml (6.5floz) double cream
10. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Set aside. Bring the cream just to a boil in a saucepan over medium heat. Immediately pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for a 3-5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Set aside for a few minutes until it has thickened to pouring consistency.

To Assemble:
With a serrated knife slice the cake in half horizontally. Remove the top half and set it aside. Place the bottom half on your serving plate, cut side up. Pour or spoon the pastry cream onto the cake, spreading to make an even layer. Place the top half of the cake (cut side down) onto the filling. Pour the glaze onto the centre of the cake and carefully spread the glaze, with a spatula, to the edges of the cake and over the sides. Decorate with fresh berries if you wish.
Chef’s Tips
Refrigerate for 1.5 hours before serving so the glaze is well set and flavours mingle.
To taste this dessert at it’s best, don’t serve this cake straight from the fridge allow 10 minute before portioning. Cut the cake with a warm sharp knife to help give your portions nice clean edges.

Sunday I will again be firing up the Barbie and showing the audience how versatile outdoor cooking really can be once you master the basics. Last week I cooked a complete 3-course Sunday roast, starting with a hot smoked salmon served with a pineapple salsa. Followed by Roast Chicken and Roast Lamb with all the trimmings.
I rounded things off with an Apple and Custard Flan served with Toffee sauce.

June 3rd Barbecue demonstration will be more traditional BBQ foods, Smoked & Braised Brisket of Beef Sandwiches with homemade Barbecue sauce.
Cajun Belly of Pork with Bean Casserole. Lemon and Honey Roast Chicken. But then on the wilder side Vanilla Ice-cream with Balsamic Strawberries and even Pizza. So perhaps this might be your last chance for a while to see me unravel the mysteries of the art of Barbecuing.

In the last couple of weeks a lot of my time has been taken up with trying to get flooring laid in my new apartment. Hopefully by Monday this will be all done and I can have more time to blog.

Just wanted to say a big thank you to the great people that turned up to watch the my cooking demonstration last Sunday. The weather did not co-oporate but thankfully we were indoors. It was amazing how many of you stayed for 3.5 to 4 hours.

Did anyone get to hear me on the Radio last Friday?
Thanks to BBC Radio Shropshire.

If you unable to come and watch me perform a Barbecue Master Class at Barnett Hill,Worcestershire this Sunday, perhaps you might want to join the festivities at the Asparagus Festival..
The 2007 Asparagus Festival will take place from Sunday 27th May to Sunday 3rd June in the heart of Worcestershire’s Vale of Evesham – the traditional home of English asparagus.

Based at the historic Fleece Inn, in the tiny village of Bretforton, the Festival has grown out of the historic asparagus auctions, which have taken place in the area for generations.
A must for the asparagus lover, the Festival offers the opportunity to taste, buy and learn about one of the country’s most sought after delicacies.
While the asparagus auction officially opens the event on Sunday 27th May, the focal point of the festival is ‘Festival Day’ on Monday 28th May, which this year will include cookery demonstrations by Rachel Green – TV’s Flying Chef, a craft fair, farmers market, silver band and tutored asparagus tasting.

Local hotels and restaurants across the Vale will also be getting in on the act and offering a range of delicious asparagus menus to tempt the palates of visitors.

The week of festivities is brought to a close at Bretforton Church on Sunday 3rd June with the annual asparagus service.
For more info on the Asparagus Festival, contact Nigel Smith at the Fleece Inn tel: 01386 831173.

Asparagus Tips

Storing
If you plan to keep your Asparagus for a few days, keep it fresh by placing in a jug or vase with 1inch of the stems in water.

Trimming
Often thicker Asparagus spears need to be trimmed because they are too woody, but you can keep them for soup or sauces.

Cooking
Boil thin stalks for 2 minutes medium stalks for 3 minutes and thick stalks for 4 minutes in salted water.