Archives for August 2007

Mired, or even enmired, has always been one of my favourite words. Doubtless many times I have myself been metaphorically in the mire. But today I was quite literally enmired in the peat bogs of north-eastern Poland, as my wellies sank deep into this unique habitat of the short-toed eagle and spotted crake.

Luckily my producer Jo Mathys and Malgorzata Znaniecka from the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds were on hand to gallantly drag me out...

The area is not only home to various rare species of birds but is, according to some ecologists, one of the last remaining peat bogs in Europe. But the Polish government wants to build a bypass, and a bridge would go near the area where I fell over.

It’s one of those actually rather frequent cases where even if I didn’t have to be balanced and neutral (as the BBC demands), I would find it difficult to make a call one way or the other.

While Malgorzata makes her case with passion, so does the mayor of the nearby town of Augustow, Leszek Cieslik. He insists the motorway route and the bridge over the Rospuda river have been carefully considered and will do as little damage as possible. He makes the point that wherever one builds roads in this part of unspoilt Poland the environment will suffer.

The hard politics of this is that the environmentalists are appealing to European Union rules to stop this route, and the Polish government is having to answer to the European Court of Justice.

Does the EU, in effect Poland’s 26 partner countries, have a moral right to tell Poland where to build its roads? Have your say now or make your mind up after reading my full article. You can also listen to my radio report on PM or the World Service.

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After six hours on the road and nearly 200km to go, I have some sympathy with Poland’s road lobby. I’m going to investigate the Rospuda Valley, where green groups say a unique marshland is under threat because of plans to build a bypass around the town of Augustow, to complete a new motorway. After complaints to the European Union, construction has been stopped until the European Court of Justice has made a ruling.

There are of course dual carriageways in Poland but many roads are two-lane, some of them with narrow hard shoulder areas to each side. After furiously beeping one car that appeared to be heading straight for me, I was gently told the rule of the road here is to swing over on to the hard shoulder to allow overtaking. I think I’m getting the hang of it but it’s a perilous business.

We’ve travelled past beautiful lakes and woods but the most common sight is the back of a lorry. I didn’t know there were so many lorries in the world. At the moment we are stuck behind what appears to be a four-wheel tractor with a flat-bed back. We are the third car in a convoy overtaking it but a people carrier is making a foolhardy manoeuvre and overtaking the other cars as well. (No, I’m not driving as I write this.)

The journey, and my temper, were enlivened by a detour of some four hours to interview a minister. His spokesman assured us he spoke excellent English and did interviews in English. Indeed, his English is fluent. But he would only speak in Polish, pointing out that it was a very beautiful language. Indeed it is, but not many listeners of Radio 4’s PM programme understand it, and that’s who we are doing the interview for.

Of course, I’m perfectly happy for politicians to refuse to speak English out of national pride or caution about their use of language but had I known I would have interviewed another minister in Warsaw in Polish, and saved myself a 6am start and a drive to Augustow that in the end took nearly 14 hours, with breaks.

Anyway, enough whining from me. His argument was that the motorway wouldn’t damage this landscape and the unique peat bog was only preserved in the first place by man’s action in building a dam and canal in1823 and trenches dug during the war.

Many Poles want the road, and I am told don’t like what they see as EU “interference”.

I’ll put that to the environmentalists when I see them, tomorrow or the next day.

In the meantime what about this magazine cover as more evidence of a common Polish attitude towards the Germans... a picture of Hitler standing outside the modern German parliament with the headline, “Who did the Germans steal their wealth from?”

Mark's report from the Rospuda Valley, the first of three on the European Union’s role in environmental protection, will be aired on the PM programme and published simultaneously on the BBC News website on Friday.

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Thanks for all your replies to the posting on tasty Turkish tomatoes and all that flows from them. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I read most of them while lounging by a pool. Although I really did intend to reply promptly, jumping on the inflatable plastic crocodile just seemed more appealing.

Now I am back. The beard came off this morning, and I will have to think about socks and ties again. I am off on my travels this evening and blogging will resume. But first some thoughts about your thoughts.

There seems to be a consensus view. Of course, the greatest number do not always get it right but most of you seem to think the way to eat more flavoursome veg is to grow your own, and if you can’t avoid supermarkets, shop around, eat seasonally and go organic.

I’m not convinced, although happy to be persuaded by science, that simply not using pesticides makes anything tastier. I suspect "organic" has become a symbol for a smaller scale, more traditional way of farming. Some of the points about minerals sound convincing.

I was surprised there was not more reaction in favour of supermarkets: some do stock high quality goods.

But I can't agree with those like Tim Port who say "pay more, and you’ll find what you want". It is true, to an extent, that you can pay for higher quality. I must admit it used to irritate me hugely that the supermarket I used most often in Britain used to have some of its more expensive tomatoes and other fruit labelled "grown for flavour". As opposed to what? Grown for throwing? Grown as a still life model? It’s rather like labelling a book "produced for reading". But that's not my main point: I don’t think any amount of money would find me such a lemony lemon in Britain as the one I had in Turkey.

In France, at the beginning of my holiday, I stopped at a roadside stall overflowing with peaches and melons and vegetables of every shape and size. I asked which were the tastiest tomatoes. The chap in charge enthusiastically suggested a selection: green, orange, yellow, zebra-striped, cherry tomatoes smaller than cherries... They made part of a great hors d’oeuvre on our first night. I would love to say they burst with that real flavour. They were good, but not a patch on those Turkish toms and I suspect nothing like Pete Porchos' Iraqi tomato.

I'll ignore Kevin's charge of going native, and leave aside for the moment whether it's anything to do with EU regulations, but I suspect he may have a point about seed varieties.

Thanks Tania, I will order more puntarelle next time I am in Rome.

And that spice in the Turkish coffee: is it Melengic or Mahlep/Mahlab or Marmiar or Malabathrum? I will have to try them all. But the best suggestion must come from Rayner that it was Melange. Spice indeed would be the variety of life. Much more on this if the BBC ever appoints me Arrakis editor. It’s a big job but I could do it.

Thanks you once again for those who liked the article: it really does matter to me. And during the holiday I really wanted to share with you my thoughts on more food topics, particularly the unnecessary decline of the hors d’oeuvre. But I have to finish packing my Wellingtons for a trip to a Polish peat bog, and then prepare for a big meeting in Portugal on the European Reform Treaty. So I will put writing about food to one side of my plate, until there’s another holiday, but I will return to this most delicious of subjects.

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Epiphany came in the shape of a lemon. A mere quarter of a lemon, actually, squeezed in a lentil soup in the town of Cizre, in south-eastern Turkey. And perhaps it was more of a return to faith, than simple revelation.

Just a spoonful of the soup and I could taste the lemon entire, not only the tangy juice but the pith and skin too. Perhaps just the hint of pip. It was like the moment that your months-old cold vanishes, your nose is clear, and you finally taste food again, having almost forgotten what the fuss was about.

I usually steer clear of writing about food, partly because I wouldn’t stop, and partly because it would attract jibes about being a greedy fat pig, which I am. But the holidays are upon us, or upon me at any rate, and perhaps it is time for me to indulge myself, on line as well as at dinner.

Turkish food is a revelation. In theory, it’s very similar to what you find in much of the Balkans, Middle East, and Greece: white crumbly cheeses, olives, lots of vegetables, dips, grilled meat. But it is done with a sprightliness and panache that is often sadly missing from the burnt and gristly offerings from some of those other countries.

Take the meal we had in Diyarbakir, in a crowded restaurant just by the airport, as the fighter jets roared overhead (we counted seven). The groups of diners were mixed, some all men, others couples or families. As far as I could see, they were all Turkish, no Western tourists. Service was at breakneck speed. Small boys ran everywhere, delivering cutlery with the speed and flair of circus knife throwers, hurling baskets of steaming bread in the middle of the table, dealing out plates like cards. Their older brothers and fathers proceeded at a slightly more sedate pace, but were still lightning fast, juggling salads and steaming meats.

Pomegranate sauce

It was the best meal I have had all year, so far. And the second best was had sitting uncomfortably low on tiny stool at a kebab place the night before. Diced tomatoes and cucumber in a pomegranate sauce. Watercress in yoghurt, smoky aubergine puree. A tangy lamb stew. Juicy kebabs. Flaky, puffed-up balloons of sesame-sprinkled bread. Like the Platonic lemon of Cizre they all tasted complex, full not just of flavour, but of flavours.

“Fresh and simple,” must be among the words most overused by food writers, but it is one of the keys to Turkish cooking. That restaurant undoubtedly had skilled staff who knew what they were doing. But they had the incalculable advantage of rather wonderful raw produce.

It reminded me of a recent conversation with an Estonian colleague, who has only been living in Brussels for a few months. How did she find it? She said sadly she couldn’t get used to the Belgian food. As Brussels boasts some top-end restaurants and Belgians generally eat rather well, I raised my eyebrows. It was the potatoes, she said. You just couldn’t get potatoes like at home. Belgian potatoes were not a patch on Estonian ones.

As my friend is rather elegant and sophisticated, I had a few days’ fun mocking her for adhering to the Central European adoration of the potato. But she probably has a point. Where are those potatoes of yesteryear, the ones my dad dug from the garden, still tasting of the earth? Or those roadside melons and peaches of childhood holidays in the south of France - the first time I realised that food could taste that good. The answer is perhaps to grow your own, but I neither have the time, nor, I fear, the required colour of fingers.

When I first came to Belgium, one of the things that thrilled me most was to be able to shop regularly in a market. I still love it. I much prefer bustling though a square, seeking out the right stall, queuing in the open air, than wheeling my “chariot” round the aisles, pointing at what I want. But I have to admit that the quality isn’t that fantastic and it’s more expensive than the supermarket. I was recently banned from doing the shopping for paying a ridiculous amount for a free-range chicken at the meat stall, which didn’t taste a great deal better than the shop version.

Tiny artichokes

When I’ve been to Bulgaria and Romania, people say they fear joining the EU will mean the loss of their fresh food, as new rules begin to bite. But it is one of the oldest members, Italy, that I would say has best sustained its flavourful fruit and veg. Perhaps the third best meal of the year was in a Rome restaurant, with its range of antipasti, lightly cooked spinach with olive oil, tiny artichokes, and that curly vegetable which I can never remember the name of (you keep it in water and serve with an anchovy sauce).

If there is a loss in flavour, who is to blame? Us, for not shopping carefully enough? The European Union and standardisation? Or the demands of the supermarkets for stuff that looks bright and shiny? Or big farms with standardised production? I don’t know, and would be interested in your comments. Am I not right in thinking it took years of breeding and selection to get a tomato to taste even better than the yellowish “plump thing with a navel” that grew in the wild in Peru? So when did human husbandry take the wrong turn and reduce, not increase flavour?

Not just answers to these questions but any food stories from over the summer would be welcome.

Oh, a hint of mystery and exoticism is always welcome in food. So it was fitting we finished that Turkish meal with a coffee flavoured with a spice that I can’t place. It wasn’t cardamom, and I’ve now forgotten the Turkish name... was it Mel... or Mal-something? When I looked it up it just gave me the name of a berry I hadn’t heard of either. It gave the coffee a buttery, almost chocolate-y texture and a very faint mellow flavour, a bit like cinnamon turned down several notches. Well, I’m off to pack. Have a wonderful and flavoursome summer. I will be back in September.

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