Lavender Honey Flapjacks: The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food (Book Review)

Honey Flapjacks with The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food (Book Review)

Lavender Honey Flapjacks:

The Modern Peasant

– Adventures in City Food –

(Book Review)

The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food by JoJo Tulloh

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Chatto & Windus part of Vintage Publishing (30 May 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0701186682
ISBN-13: 978-0701186685

RRP: £16:99

Honey Flapjacks with The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food (Book Review)

Few review books that have been sent to me have intrigued and inspired me as much as The Modern Peasant has; as a resident of the countryside, and not a city dweller, I was interested to see how JoJo Tulloh, the author of the book, would be able to convince me that city dwelling could be in the style of a peasant, with foraging, locally produced ingredients and free harvests to be had throughout the year. By the time I had read the first two chapters and I had perused the numerous recipes, I was convinced that even city dwellers can be cheese makers, yoghurt makers, foragers and they can indeed become a modern peasant. The book opens with an evocative chapter, The Archetypal Modern Peasant – In Patience’s Kitchen; in this opening chapter, JoJo explains that the book begins with an act of pilgrimage, to the kitchen of her culinary heroine, Patience Gray (1917-2005) who is most famous for her auto-biographical book, Honey from a Weed, and that the culinary ethos of Patience, as well as a visit to see her farmhouse was the driving force behind JoJo’s book. Having read the book from cover to cover over the space of just a few days, I decided to try one of JoJo’s recipes, as part of my book review. The book is not so much a cookbook in the conventional sense, but more of an “urban handbook for country-style living” and JoJo writes with a verve and passion that immediately draws the reader into her city “peasant’s” life.

Honey Flapjacks with The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food (Book Review)

There were many recipes that I bookmarked, but, it was the simple and homely Honey Flapjacks that I eventually made, based on the fact that  had some crystallised home-made lavender honey to use, and as JoJo herself suggests in the recipe introduction, it was an act of thrift that appealed to me. The book’s contents is divided into the following chapters:

Preface

The Archetypal Modern Peasant: In Patience’s Kitchen

Baked

Fermented

Planted

Reared

Foraged

Pickled, Preserved, Salted & Smoked

The Practical Peasant’s Year

The Archetypal Modern Peasant: Recipes from Patience’s Kitchen

The End

Contacts

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index

The recipes are varied and include many basic techniques, such as making bread (sourdough) pastry, preserving and home-curing; recipes that inspired me to bookmark with a view to make are: Salt Cod with Peppers and Black Olives, Dandelion and Burdock Cordial, Dandelion and Bacon Salad with Hot Vinaigrette, Aubergine with Walnut Miso, A Spring Pizza of Spicy Sausage and Nettles and Potato and Porcini Gratin. As you would expect from a book that extols the virtues of foraging, there are lots of vegetarian recipes, as well as some tasty meat and fish ones too, but they are all achievable and use easy to source (or pick) ingredients. Expect to find ingredients such as nettles, walnuts, plums, blackberries, sorrel, mushrooms, dandelions as well as the usual allotment vegetables and locally reared pork and chicken. JoJo takes time out to visit numerous local producers, and detailed accounts of her visits to bee-keepers, cheese makers, bakers and small vegetable producers are part of the charm of this book. She also makes her own cheese, and there are recipes for Ricotta, Simple Goat’s Cheese, Simple Lactic Cheese or Cow’s Curd Cheese as well as Yoghurt in the “Fermented” chapter, and I am very keen to try making her goat’s cheese and ricotta when I have time.

Honey Flapjacks with The Modern Peasant – Adventures in City Food (Book Review)

Although the book is clearly aimed towards urban living, I enjoyed the book immensely, and I suspect that it will appeal to country and city folk alike. Apart from the interesting content, I am always keen to investigate the “Bibliography” in a book such as this; and the old favourites are all there, as JoJo seeks inspiration and guidance from Eliza Acton, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Dorothy Hartley, Richard Olney and Alice Waters, which, for me, only adds to the weight and integrity of the book. The “Contact”s pages have useful links to suppliers and artisans, mainly in London, but with the odd foray into provincial counties, and  California too! Although the book has no photos of illustrations, I did not miss them curiously enough; the tenor and passion of the text enthralled me from start to finish, and the underlying message of celebrating cities as new centres of food production, without the need to “up roots” and move to the country, made perfect sense and was well argued.

Conclusion & Rating:

JoJo seeks to bring a new culinary and gardening heart back to the city, and she achieves this in some style in The Modern Peasant. Lavender and Lovage gives this book a well-deserved 5 stars, and would recommend it to any reader who lives in a city, town or village, as the writing is evocative and the recipes are innovative, a sort of “Urban Culinary Chic”. This is a book that will make its way to bed with me many times, for late night reading, as well as accompanying me in the kitchen, as I follow the recipes throughout the year.

Lavender Honey Flapjacks Recipe:

Lavender Honey Flapjacks – Inspired by The Modern Peasant

(Inspired by JoJo’s recipe, I changed the ingredients to what I had available and what I had to use up; a concept that I am sure JoJo will approve)

INGREDIENTS:

3 tablespoons lavender honey

125g salted butter

a pinch of sea salt

75g soft brown sugar

250g jumbo oats

METHOD:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and line a 20 x 25cm baking tray or tin, I used a Pyrex dish, with baking parchment.

Melt the honey together with the butter, salt and sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat until it is bubbling. Add the oats to the saucepan and mix well, until it is all amalgamated.

Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and press the mixture down quite hard with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the mixture is just browning around the edges. Using  a  sharp knife , cut the flapjack into squares or bars, and allow to cool in the tin/tray before turning out.  These will keep well in a cake or biscuit tin for a few days and are perfect with a cuppa!

Lavender Honey Flapjacks

Press Synopsis:

Inspired by those who were bold enough to make that leap, but firmly rooted in London, food writer Jojo Tulloh wondered if some kind of peasant-like self-sufficiency could be achieved for city-dwellers; looking around her she found she was not alone.Beneath Victorian railway arches, on inner city roof tops and on borrowed land, a new breed of food producers were baking bread, making cheese, keeping bees and growing vegetables. Inspired by their success, Jojo watched and learned.

In this evocative and illuminating book, Jojo shares her knowledge of this fast-changing culinary scene. Alongside vivid stories from her visits to producers and tips for baking and pickling, fermenting and foraging, she presents fresh tasting, achievable recipes for modern peasants – sourdough pizzas of nettles and sausage, celebratory paellas of squid and home-grown peppers, chutneys, jam and pickles – and in doing so shows how a food philosophy that takes the best from past traditions can put flavour and excitement back into everyday cooking – even amidst the roar of city life.

Also by JoJo Tulloh:

East End Paradise: Kitchen Garden Cooking in the City

Freshly Picked: Kitchen Garden Cooking in the City

 I am entering this recipe into Tea Time Treats for September, as the theme is: 

Oats, Flapjacks and Tray Bakes