Episode 2 Trish Deseine's Doorstep Food

'I'm Trish Deseine, international food writer and cook.

'I was born and bred in County Antrim,

'and for the last 20 years I've been living in France,

'tasting, cooking and writing about the great French passion for food.'

Je prends un petit bout de Chaource.

'I'm now one of France's best-known cookbook authors,

'and was the first non-French food columnist for Elle magazine.

'Now, I'm returning home to a very different Northern Ireland.

'A country finally waking up to the fact that it produces

'some of the best food in the world.'

There's a food revolution going on, and I want to be part of it.

In this series, I'll be showcasing some fabulous local produce.

But just how easy is it to spot local, shop local and eat local?

To find the answer, I'll take a step away from the big retailers

and shop around.

The best value you can get is when you buy direct.

And take a look at some of the wonderful artisan foods

we have here in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is punching way above its weight,

and we need to let people know.

I'll also challenge a family to live for a week only using

food from their doorstep.

I'm not thinking locally, or really where it's coming from.

I asked Gillian the other day, can you grow rice in Northern Ireland?

Meet the Wilkinsons.

Mum Gillian, dad Glenn, son Ross and daughters Grace and Ruby.

Glenn is a personal trainer,

and both he and Gillian are very body conscious and like to eat healthily.

How will they get on with the challenge to eat only local

food for a week?

We're quite healthy at home, so we tend to stick to quite plain foods.

We eat a lot of chicken, we eat a lot of meat and a lot of fish.

I really look upon food as just fuel. It's just sustenance.

It's just something that gets me through the day.

I don't really look at a meal and say,

"Wow, I would like to try that."

I wouldn't have a clue where the food comes from.

Whatever I need, I will buy it.

I'm not thinking locally or really where it's coming from.

It's just you need the food, I'll just grab and just go.

I don't know if this is local.

It doesn't really say on it, I don't think. Or, it says...

No, smoked Scottish pepper mackerel fillets, so that isn't.

I don't want to show my ignorance, but I wouldn't have a clue.

I don't...

Can you grow asparagus in Northern Ireland?

I'm bringing the Wilkinsons to a farm shop near their home

to help them reconnect with food.

Look, Dad! Did you see that?

PIG OINKS

These are Gloucester Old Spot cross pigs,

and they're only about eight weeks old.

-Can we go and get some eggs?

-Yeah.

-How many do you think we should get?

-Six.

-Right, OK. Let's see.

-Oh, they're still warm.

-Are they warm?

Six.

-When you've been out in the fields, did you enjoy that?

-Yes.

Like meeting the animals?

I've been having a little look in through here at some of

the really good Northern Ireland produce there is.

There's lots of oils here.

I thought this might be quite interesting for your fish

and your chicken.

You might just grill it,

and then just add a few drops of flavoured oil.

So, I thought perhaps lemon and thyme.

-And this one, a bit of oomph, chilli and garlic.

-Lovely.

As you know, Northern Ireland has fantastic dairy produce

and this is an amazing range of cheeses.

So, it's Oakwood smoked Cheddar.

-What about this grated into your potatoes?

-Yeah.

Or put over the top and then made slightly crunchy on top?

And then this butter is just amazing.

All that goes into this is cream and a little bit of salt.

And here is some beer that is actually made here at Hillstown.

I just thought this would really interesting,

and you could also cook with it.

Now, I know you saw the piggies out in the field.

But you know what their destiny is, don't you?

Eventually, they end up on your plate.

But that's a tasty way for them to go.

So, here's some black pudding that's made only a few miles from here.

Black pudding and white pudding,

which might be quite nice to try for breakfast.

So, here you have all of that amazing local meat.

Beef and pork from the farm,

and free-range chicken from just a couple of miles up the road.

So, I'll leave you with the butcher and settle up and see you later.

Do you have any steaks?

The Wilkinsons are certainly very concerned about what they eat.

But they see food as fuel, as nutrition.

And they certainly look at the labels on what they're buying,

but they're not looking to see if it's local produce at all.

So, we've just had a very fine afternoon at Hillstown Farm Shop.

-You could say that, yes.

-And did you enjoy it?

Absolutely the kids loved it.

-The kids liked it, too?

-They got involved.

I think that here, in this basket, there are a few things

you would not be particularly comfortable cooking, normally.

Black and white pudding, we would never use that.

I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Now you are going to...use this

to rise to the challenge of eating and cooking and shopping

only Northern Irish produce for the whole of the next week.

It's going to be good fun.

-Yep. I look forward to it.

-I think we can do it.

-Well, good luck.

-Thank you.

-Thanks a lot.

I'll be catching up with the Wilkinsons later.

When I'm home, I try to visit St George's Market,

where I can easily reconnect with local food,

especially if, like me, you come early.

-Morning.

-Morning.

-Hi, there.

-Can I get a couple of farls, please?

-Yep.

-A wheaten and a plain.

How much is that?

60p each.

-£1.20, please.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

I'm meeting farming journalist Ella McSweeney

to chat about the importance of markets and the joy of food shopping.

How important do you think it is for farmers to sell this way?

I think it's just extraordinary being here.

You can feel the energy yourself. It's early in the morning.

All the farmers and food producers are already here,

set up and selling their produce.

I don't think we can ever imagine the importance for farmers

of connecting with the people

that they are providing food and selling food to.

You know, as a farmer, you could be on your farm

and you can never see the results of what you're doing.

It's a bit like cooking a meal for someone

and them just eating it and not giving you any feedback.

Who wants to do that?

And what about the customers? What are they getting out of it?

For me, food is not just about the end result,

which is consuming and what's going on in my mouth and my tummy.

It's also about the entire process,

and I think, increasingly for people,

they want the process of buying to be as pleasurable

as the process of eating, and you don't always get that

when you're in a huge, sometimes windowless, supermarket.

I think also, when it comes to value,

it can be quite hard to judge value when you're in a supermarket.

The best value you can get

is when you buy direct from either on a farm or in markets like here,

if you're lucky enough to have one, right in the centre of Belfast.

But in terms of choice,

would you not say there is less choice here than in a supermarket?

For me, markets limit choice and I like that. It saves me time.

Just speaking personally, when I go into a supermarket,

I'm faced with up to 40,000 products that I have to choose from.

I actually don't really want that any more. I want choice editing.

I want someone to narrow it down for me

so I don't have to take responsibility

for spending ten minutes in front of a milk counter

wondering which kind of milk I want to buy.

I want there to be a limit

and I don't necessarily want to go into a huge shop

and see a photograph of the farmer.

I'd kind of prefer to see them in 3-D here.

But if you can't get to the market,

online food shopping

is another way of bringing market produce to your doorstep.

Helen's Bay Organic Gardens in North Down

grows a wide range of vegetables.

Owner John McCormick offers a veg box scheme,

providing a weekly delivery of fresh produce to your door.

Do you think a box scheme makes people more creative

in the way they cook?

Not just more creative but it makes them cook.

THEY LAUGH

People leave our box scheme.

They order it and leave it sometimes within a few weeks

cos they discover they don't actually cook!

What advice do you give to people

who find vegetables that they're not used to cooking

in that week's selection?

Some people maybe have never had a kohlrabi before, what would...?

You know, it looks like a spaceship!

We have an advisory section on our website

where we refer to other people's websites,

who actually cook better than I probably cook,

to know what to do with a kohlrabi, or anything else we produce.

What are the benefits of a vegetable box scheme

over buying vegetables in the supermarkets?

Fresh greens that go on top of your roots

would most likely have been cut, if not the day before, certainly -

and quite often, in the summertime -

on the morning they were actually delivering it to you,

so you won't get any fresher than that.

You're also supporting local produce.

You're supporting employment.

You're keeping money within Northern Ireland,

which I think is a really important thing.

Also, there is a personal connection,

and you build up this relationship.

My very, very first customer was a young mum with a babe in arms

and she's still a customer and the babe in arms now looks down on me!

We're incredibly lucky here to have fabulous grass-fed beef.

Glenarm Castle on the Antrim Coast

produces award-winning shorthorn beef.

I'm meeting estate manager Adrian Morrow at the farm

and I'm curious to know why they decided on shorthorn.

His Lordship asked us one day,

why were we not giving our guests Glenarm beef at the dinner table?

And I told him that the beef that we were currently farming,

we were ashamed to serve it because it was so tough.

You couldn't really eat it, as such.

And he immediately asked, he says, "Adrian,

"why are we producing something that we cannot eat?"

And what did you do to improve the beef?

We had heard about some old traditional breeds

that would eat really, really nicely.

So off we went, and we had a few tasting trials

and we ate all sorts of weird and wonderful animals,

and the one that we found that was really tasty was Shorthorn.

How did you change the way the cattle were fed?

We changed the whole farming policy and we went organic.

So we began to use clover, clover was the secret,

and the clover would actually self-nitrate the grasses.

So, after a couple of years,

the grass roots went down to look for nitrogen,

as opposed to sitting on the top of the ground

waiting on the nitrogen coming.

How do you get Glenarm Shorthorn Beef to consumers?

Once we had this wonderful product,

we knew we didn't want to become butchers or distributers,

we wanted to concentrate on that product,

so we needed a processing partner, and we found Peter Hannan.

He had a passion about good beef,

and once he saw what we were doing at Glenarm,

and tasted it, of course,

he said, "Boys, I'm with you all the way."

Hannan Meats sell Glenarm beef,

but also source, produce and supply a range of other local meats.

And many of them have won awards.

There has been a great swing over recent times

onto sourcing more local food,

eating more local food, and one thing and another.

So, it's very important to our customer, it's very important to us.

Our business is about local,

and we have clients far afield,

we have HIX restaurants in London, Fortnum & Mason,

we have customers in Paris and places like that.

But local is very, very important.

I mean, our Glenarm Shorthorn Beef, in my opinion,

is some of the finest beef in the world,

and we're very privileged to be a stakeholder in that scheme.

At the Wilkinsons' house near Ballymena,

I'm determined to get dad Glenn in the kitchen,

cooking something tasty but, for him, a bit off-piste.

So what I thought we could try

is a French dish called iles flottantes.

Have you come across that before?

-Iles flottantes?

-Iles flottantes.

-No.

-It's floating islands.

It's very simple, it's just a gorgeous, thick, egg custard,

with egg whites.

One non-local ingredient missing from this dish is, of course, vanilla.

Put that milk on the heat.

-I need to turn it on!

-Yes, turn it on.

Put it on the low heat while we get on with something else,

and we'll keep an eye on it.

Now we're going to get hands-on with these eggs.

I'm pretty good at separating eggs.

I would probably have about ten eggs a day.

-Gosh!

-With two yolks.

-How's that, Trish?

-That's fabulous.

-Good!

-Thank you.

So just leave this to one side for the moment,

and then I want you to pop the sugar in there and then just whisk it.

-All of it?

-Yes, it's a lot of sugar, isn't it?

It's OK, you can do it!

It will be diluted afterwards with lots of milk,

it's not all going into your body.

That's a lot of sugar!

HE WHISKS

Keep going.

Think that's about it.

So it's basically just milk, sugar - lots of sugar - and eggs.

We're just going to pour the milk in here, give it a bit of a stir round.

That goes back in there.

-So that's mixed in a little bit, we're going back over to the hob.

-OK.

So this is the delicate bit.

You have to stir it continuously.

If you want to stir a little bit,

you can probably feel that thickening already.

-It's very relaxing, is it not?

-It's quite therapeutic, yeah.

-You could get into the cooking now?

-I think I could, yeah.

That's the floating bit, now we're looking at the island bit.

I'd like you to just beat up these egg whites.

OK?

Don't mind it - whipping stuff, it's OK.

Traditionally you would poach the egg whites in warm milk,

but I'm just going to do it in the microwave.

So you just make little islands.

It's on high...

and just for a few seconds...

DING!

Yeah, that's fine. You can see it's swollen a little bit.

The most important part for that wow factor

is some kind of garnish.

So the caramel's starting to form,

you can see it's getting nice and brown around the edges.

You don't want to stir it, you just swirl the saucepan around a bit.

Put some butter in, see what happens.

It's going to be great on the floating islands,

but also this as a sauce over ice cream or stewed apples

or any kind of compote is just fantastic.

So the caramel's ready. Could you put the islands into the custard for me?

-Certainly.

-I'll come over.

-Floating islands.

-There you go.

Have a little go, see what happens to it.

OK. Do you want to keep going at that?

-That's it. That's beautiful.

-You see. Not bad, Glenn.

And there it is - Glenn's iles flottantes.

Are you proud of that?

I think it's fantastic. Can't wait to try it.

Bonjour, ze Wilkinson family!

This is floating islands, or as you say in French, iles flottantes.

-Would you like to try some?

-Yes.

You have to get right in there.

-Ross, would you like some?

-Yes, please.

-Ruby, would you like some?

-Yes, please.

-Gillian?

-What do you think?

-It's OK.

-Yummy. Do you like it, Dad?

-I love it.

I made it, yes.

Definitely wasn't him!

(Definitely wasn't him!)

Daddy didn't make it.

He did! You didn't see. He did, I promise.

Butter was always on the table when I was growing up,

and nothing beats it on a freshly baked scone.

Butter's back in vogue now,

and there's one small Northern Ireland producer

making big waves with their handmade butter.

Abernethy Butter is the brainchild of Allison and Will Abernethy,

and their highly acclaimed product has been finding its way

into prestigious shops and restaurants across the UK.

This is where it all happens.

Allison, we're here in the beautiful Dromara Hills,

talking about the famous Abernethy Butter.

Can you tell me a little bit about how and why it comes from this area?

My dad would've made butter on his farm,

but he was more into the process rather than the actual product.

And he would've went to shows

and demonstrated the process of making butter.

He took sick one day and he wasn't fit to do it,

and myself and my husband went out to do his demonstrations for him.

And when we were there, this gentleman came over,

he'd been watching us for a while, and he said, you know,

"Do you realise what a fabulous product you have?"

And that got the old brains going.

This churn here we just use for little demonstrations

to show how butter is made.

We'll put some cream into the churn here.

-This is lovely Draynes cream from down the road.

-Yes.

-Just put the lid on.

-That's it?

Yeah, that's it.

That's all we do at this stage.

We just turn that churn around

and I have to speed it up just as we go.

And what makes the butter so special?

The cream that we use is top-quality cream,

and then, when we make the butter,

everything is done completely by hand,

so it's churned and made all the old-fashioned way.

It's washed by hand, it's salted and then patted into the rolls

so it's done all by hand from start to finish

and there's a lot of love and hard work

put into every roll that we make.

And that's our butter ready to eat.

We have our own little twist at this stage.

Take a dollop of butter onto our pats...

Like this...

and we pat out that excess water that we washed it with.

Spread it nice and evenly all over the pats.

Then we start off at the front here and we roll it up like a Swiss roll.

-That's what makes it Abernethy?

-Yes. That's our trademark.

Nowadays, it's sold all across the UK and Ireland

to some pretty prestigious customers, I hear.

We would sell, maybe, 70% of our butter over to the mainland UK

and some of our customers are Heston Blumenthal -

he uses it in the Fat Duck.

Marcus Wareing would use it in his restaurant

in the Berkeley Hotel.

We also supply to Fortnum & Mason and Partridges,

and a lot of Michelin-star restaurants all around England.

The health-conscious Wilkinson family

has been challenged to eat local for a week,

and I'm curious to find out how they've been getting on.

Well, it's kind of been left to me,

because I do all the grocery shopping while Glenn is at work.

It has been a challenge,

but it's made me more conscious of looking at labels

and determining whether the products are local.

Uh-oh! I can see a foreign invader on the table.

It is a bit more expensive than we were anticipating.

I maybe eat about 8,000 calories a day.

The predominance of my diet would be meat and chicken and turkey,

so the protein side of things,

I can't really foresee there being a problem.

It is hard with certain vegetables. You aren't going to get...

-Sweet potatoes.

-It's hard to get sweet potato or asparagus locally.

I thought sweet potatoes were grown here,

-but apparently they're not.

-OK.

We had a wee go at the black pudding.

Gillian sprinkled it over some broccoli that I had.

It was a bit of an acquired taste

and once you sort of get your head around it,

you're sort of eating congealed blood...

it was OK, wasn't it?

Next time I see the Wilkinsons,

it will be to taste something they prepare for me using just local food.

When I returned to Northern Ireland,

I knew I'd find great fish, lamb, beef, pork -

but I wasn't expecting goat.

Broughgammon Farm on the outskirts of Ballycastle is about many things.

Farming and sustainability are high up on the list,

but also new ideas and a can-do attitude.

-So, Charlie. Tell me about the goats' life in this byre.

-Yeah, absolutely.

We would get the kid goats when they are about six days old.

They all come from dairy farms,

and they're all the billies, so that's the males -

which are no good for milking.

And what would have happened to them otherwise?

Well, previously, they had to put them down, you know.

There was no market for them. And we were sort of saying, look,

in a time when we are questioning global food production

and food security, you know,

we have a perfectly viable food source that's being put to waste.

It's a delicious meat. It's eaten in the rest of the world, you know.

Why isn't it eaten in, sort of, the UK and Ireland?

And so we sort of started with 30 goats down in the caravan.

And it's built to this shed.

This is where those cute little goats,

after their lovely life, end up.

And as far as the meat is concerned, then, it's very lean.

It looks like lamb.

It's sort of sweeter than lamb. It's not as fatty as lamb

and the texture is...

more like a mixture between beef and lamb.

It's much nicer to eat, in many ways, than lamb,

because it doesn't have that fatty aftertaste.

It's a really easily eaten meat and it's just getting people to try it.

Once they've tried it, then, pretty much, they're hooked.

And so how would you suggest cooking these pieces and these joints?

I think my favourite bit is the leg, slow roasted.

Mediterranean flavours -

thyme, rosemary, olive oil, lemon

and I think that is just divine.

Has anyone tried it raw? What about goat tartare?

-Has anyone been brave enough to do that?

-No.

LAUGHTER

I'm not sure I could get that far.

Maybe if somebody produced it for me, I could.

And you don't just sell cuts.

You also make burgers, I hear. Billy Burgers.

We thought we would sell everything directly to restaurants.

It was really difficult to get people to follow the sort of trends

that were happening across the water,

and to do that, we tried to make it more approachable

so we started to go around to all the local shows

and offer the cooked product, so people could actually try it.

And to call it a Kid Burger

was maybe just a little bit questionable,

so we created the Billy Burger and it's gone down a storm.

If you fancy cooking goat,

you could start off with this simple dish.

Today I'm cooking something that is full of flavour,

bang on trend and on your doorstep.

For the braised goat dish, we have goat shoulder, off the bone, diced,

shoulder rather than something rough like neck end with bones in it.

This gives a lovely silky sauce to our braised goat.

The herbs we're using are fresh thyme and bay leaf, nice gentle herbs.

And for some nice flavour underneath the taste of the goat,

we've got some carrots and some onions.

I'll be frying in a combination of rapeseed oil and butter

and deglazing the whole dish with some nice crisp Carson's cider,

and we'll be serving the whole thing

with some lovely, smooth buttery mash.

And to zing up the dish a little bit,

I'm going to be making a very quick and easy apple and onion pickle

with cider vinegar, salt, sugar and a little peppercorn.

So, a little bit of oil and some butter. Wait till it sings.

I've got two pans going -

one for the carrots and onions and the other for the goat.

It's really important this is very hot, so that the meat browns nicely.

And some carrots...

followed immediately by the onions.

This pan is slightly lower heat than the meat.

We want this to get nice and soft before the meat goes in.

Leave that for a while.

Give it a shake.

We're sealing the meat,

caramelising it and giving it a nice taste on the outside.

It's very important not to crowd the meat in the pan.

Give it plenty of space so that it gets nice and brown and caramelised.

My meat is nicely brown now.

I'm going to pop it in the big casserole with the vegetables.

Give that a swish round and then when it comes back up to heat,

we're going to put some cider in to deglaze the pan.

A little bit of salt and pepper. Not too much at this stage.

We can season it right at the end.

And then some bay leaf

and some fresh thyme.

So that's up to the boil now.

Lid on, and into the oven at 150 for about 40 minutes.

While the goat is braising in the oven,

I'm going to make a very easy pickle.

The water is not boiling,

it's almost boiling, and I'm putting in a tablespoonful of sugar

and a teaspoon of salt.

Give that a bit of a stir so it dissolves.

And then some cider vinegar...

just to echo the flavour of the cider in our goat,

and then some very thinly sliced rings of onion,

or you could use shallots,

and very thinly sliced apple.

Let that rest for about an hour, and it'll keep in the fridge

for about two or three days after, as well.

My mash is ready. The butter is melting on that nicely.

Pickle is ready to go. Now it's time for supper, and my Broughgammon goat.

Mm, smells incredible!

There's nothing like an Irish stew,

especially when it's made with goat.

Mm.

The Wilkinsons have been trying to eat and shop local for a week now,

and I'm back to see how they got on

and to see what they've cooked for me.

This looks so crispy and golden. What have you made me?

I have made you traditional fish and chips.

I got the fish from St George's Market

and we have County Down potatoes

and we have some pea puree, which is just peas and natural yoghurt.

And everything is local?

-Everything is local from the farm shop.

-Time to dig in.

It looks lovely and fresh and flaky.

Mm!

It's really tasty. And what about the chips? How are they cooked?

They were cooked in the ActiFry,

so just a tablespoonful of my garlic and chilli oil

from the farm shop for 45 minutes.

It's really good. Really light and fluffy.

And how did this week go, with the eating and shopping locally?

It was tough at times but our everyday produce that we use,

it can be sourced locally very easily, like fish, poultry,

-meat, that was easier to get.

-And Glenn? How about you?

-Did you do any cooking at all?

-To be honest, no.

-No?

Gillian, what was the highlight of the week's shopping?

Well, I think the fun thing -

Glenn and I had a date day,

so we normally go and have a nice lunch somewhere in Belfast,

but we decided we would go to St George's Market,

which was quite an experience for us to see all the local produce

and how much of it, the vastness that there is there

-and what is available.

-Glenn, what about your training programme?

Do you think your abs have suffered this week from this new diet?

I don't know about my abs but I might have some flabs now

after the sort of... especially the black pudding, Trish!

But, no, seriously, we are going to run with it.

We are going to embrace it as a family.

It's been a brilliant experience and we've had great fun.

It's been great craic.

And, you know, healthy fish and chips from Northern Ireland,

sure, you couldn't beat it.

The Wilkinsons have an almost forensically functional approach

to their food and cooking,

so I'm really glad to see them reconnecting with local producers,

going to St George's Market.

I'm pretty sure there'll be a lot more local produce

going into those beautiful bodies.

Well done, the Wilkinsons.

'Next week, restaurants are on the menu.'

Just an amazing dish.

'Do they champion local? And who are the food heroes

'at the heart of the Northern Irish food renaissance?'

It's been a great year. It's been a real whirlwind.