The basics are familiar in every place; it is only the details, or lack of them, that introduce into the British version the unmistakable air of culinary poverty. Their stews are the colour of mud, blood or ochre pigment, and taste of thyme and garlic, orange and almonds, basil and lemon. Ours is the colour of washing-up water and smells of old people.

– Nigel Slater on Stews, in his book, Eating for England

I think Nigel is rather unfair to describe the British Stew in such derisory terms. I have never tasted the kind of stew that he describes; perhaps it is because my Mother always cooked a gorgeous stew from scratch when we were young, or perhaps I simply have no sense of taste. Or perhaps in the generational lapse between Nigel’s time and mine, continental cooking styles have infiltrated the cooking habits of the nation so thoroughly that the unappetising grey mess that he describes has been revised beyond recognition. Stews I remember from childhood were filled with melting, sweet chunks of parsnip and carrot, swathes of caramelised onion and a silky, red jus flavoured with slow-cooked beef, tomato, garlic and Italian herbs.

During my time spent living in Ireland I briefly undertook some training with a herbalist who talked about the tradition of the one-pot meal. A pot would permanently sit atop a range, and whatever was available would go into it, and whatever this was, would feed whoever was there. Such a pot would rarely be cleaned; it was reaching boiling point too regularly for anything unwholesome to develop inside it, and the development of flavour was dependent on the ever-changing mix of ingredients and on the natural stocks deriving from bone-marrow, slowly cooked vegetables and herbs all brewing together. It’s not exactly haute cuisine, but it’s an admirable use of slim resources and a serviceable way to stretch nutrition for miles and waste nothing.

It’s bothered me for some time that my success with Weight Watchers last year depended on anything BUT the one-pot system. Variety and exoticism are important factors with Weight Watchers. The idea is that a constantly interesting menu will provide adequate luxury and pleasure in eating to compensate for the absence of rich foods like butter and cream from the diet. It is a system that certainly works – and, for me, got me thinking in real detail about taste. Before undertaking WW I relied on browned onions, garlic and ginger as the base for almost every dish. But the exotic, taste-bud pleasing nature of WW is also heavily reliant on all-year-round tomato availability; on being able to always buy strawberries and low-fat versions of things like cheeses, meats, etc. WW is unashamedly suited to The Supermarket. But I’d love to transfer my passion for delicious food to a more seasonal plan than what WW have on offer. I’d like to trade in my mangoes in December for something made from English Damsons or Squash. Reading Heston Blumenthal reinvigorated English Food with such exciting culinary potential for me that I want to explore seasonal eating, local market foods and weight loss and maintenance as ongoing exercises in sustainability. I love everything I learned from WW about portion size, the need to vary ingredients and tastes, the necessity of good presentation, exciting flavours and exercise. But it’s time now to make the plan my own.

Mireille Guiliano’s French Women Don’t get Fat is proving to be an excellent help in this regard and I’m experimenting this week with sensible, seasonal eating, more exercise and the joys of the farmer’s market. I’m also trying to see whether my weekly food-budget goes as far when I buy fresh and local ingredients as it does when I buy from The Supermarket.

This time of year is good for stews; leeks, celeriac, turnip, beet, carrot, potatoes, kale and parsnip are abundant. And a lot of digging, hauling, cutting back and heavy labour is required in the garden. All of this work is well supported by a fairly constant supply of stew, and it can just bubble away in the background while I get on with other stuff – this week mostly cold-frame building and garage-preparation*. I am determined this week to establish some really excellent stew recipes that will always be delicious and never fail, that will be nutritious and low-fat, seasonal and fool-proof. Plus, I want the stews to be my own design.

So to begin with today’s stew, let’s start with the ingredients:

Purple-skinned carrots – which remind me in so many ways of bad, 1970s wallpaper!

Green things: Rosemary and marjoram from the garden, leeks from the market:

Homemade butter made from The River Cottage Family Cookbook by shaking double cream in a jar until it separated, squeezing the water out of the pat and moulding in some large salt crystals:

White stuff in the pot with a tsp of the homemade butter: (parsnips, white part of leeks, celeriac and jerusalem artichokes) I began by sweating these things in a tiny bit of butter, to form a flavour base. In many Italian dishes, the sauce base is made from sauteed carrots, onions and celery. I wanted a sweeter, nuttier flavour, so I used these things instead:

and a handful of fennel seeds:

To stop the mixture from going too dry, I added at this point some large chunks of organic beef. The cut was skirt – a cut of beef that can really only be found these days when buying direct from a producer or a really good butcher as The Supermarket doesn’t seem to stock it anymore. The thin strips of fat on skirt melt into the pot, preventing the mix from going dry:

After this, I added in some chives from the garden, the rest of the green ingredients, 4 small onions, (whole with a cross cut across the top of each) a bowl full of carrots, a handful of chestnut mushrooms and 1 1/2 chunky-chopped parsnip:

The smell was really delicate by this point; fennel, marjoram, sweet parsnip, nutty artichoke, melting beef… I decided that tomato would be too strong a flavour to add in, whereas a bottle of ale would be delicate enough to balance against all those other flavours. So I poured in a bottle of beer, put the lid on the pot and went to begin writing this post.

I let the vegetables cook for slightly too long and then, to stop the mix from drying, I added a vegetable broth I had made previously. I wish I didn’t do that, because the veg broth overpowered the stew with a bland, celery-rich mushiness that marred my great plans for this stew. It was still very nice, but next time I make this I’ll add the parsnip and carrot a little later and stew the beef for longer, with those nice flavours that started out at the beginning.

It’s really nice to invent a stew from scratch and all the vegetables make good pickings for the compost heap:

I’ve loved our compost heap lately. It’s like a miracle to me that we put all our kitchen scraps in a big heap and just leave it, then find some months later, this gorgeous rich stuff at the bottom. I’ve dug it into my little kitchen garden patch and I’m excited about how rich the ground looks!

* the builder is coming tomorrow to begin converting the garage!!!