A taste apart

A FEW weeks ago I ran a course here at Ballymaloe called ‘How to keep a few chickens in the garden’. It was totally over-subscribed - I was thrilled because keeping hens has been one of my great passions ever since I was a child.

I’ve also had a request for a course on bee-keeping, how to rear a few turkeys for Christmas, how to make butter and simple cheese, and how to grow vegetables. Suddenly, there seems to be a craving to learn forgotten skills, which is music to my ears.

This week, a book entitled Preserved, by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton, with a foreword by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, arrived on my desk. It is perfect for those more and more disenchanted with the quality of mass-produced food and who crave slow foods, cooked or preserved in the time-honoured way.

We are witnessing a backlash against additive-heavy, mass-produced foods. Home-preserving - whether smoking, drying, salting, fermenting or infusing - is a hugely satisfying and often simple process that enables you to prepare food just the way you like it, enjoying the fuller flavour that results from traditional techniques. For example, many shop-bought ‘smoked’ meats have merely been infused with ‘liquid smoke’, a process that undermines their rich taste.

As more of us seek greater involvement with our food in the garden and the kitchen, a new generation is being seduced by modern interpretations of the age-old methods.

This book combines a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to the techniques of home-preserving, with lots of exciting recipes to showcase the results. Preserved includes international favourites such as biltong, pickled eggs, herbes de provence and pancetta as well as familiar delicacies like smoked salmon, kippers, sloe gin and exquisite jams.

Regaling us with anecdotes from the history of preserving - the practice among World War II US pilots of tying cartons of the ingredients to their planes to make ice cream, for example - Nick and Johnny show how to build your own smokehouse, bottle fruit in alcohol, dry herbs and cure ham.

Preserving is alchemy. It is about transforming food, creating dishes that you will enjoy not only because they are cheaper and more flavoursome than shop-bought products, but because you will have crafted them to your own palate.

It is also - as Nick and Johnny’s families will testify - addictive. Once you have tasted your own efforts, you will be increasingly reluctant to return to inferior, mass-produced food.