Farm Shops Can Make Sourcing Food a Snap

Alan Leizerman
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read
Aged Shorthorn RIbeye with Rosemary Swift Potatoes and Courgettes

I’ve recently taken the oath to “Live Happerley.” I have been attempting to feed my family only foods that I can definitively trace back to the source. The Living Happerley lifestyle makes the case that exploring the origins of your food invites you to savor it more, raising the level of enjoyment.

I can tell you first hand that it’s true, and I think I’ve figured out why.

As a career chef who has spent the majority of my hours on this earth in professional kitchens, I knew in an instant where to start sourcing my ingredients: in my local farm shop, the gateway to local produce.

UK farm shops,I love these places! They are much different than their distant relatives where I come from in America. Often just hubs for corporate produce companies to sell their wares naked instead of inside plastic packaging, they don’t hold a candle to the UK’s pride in their quality produce. To be honest, I have been blown away by some of the flavors here that I wasn’t expecting.

Like the strawberries. Truthfully, I have never had a better strawberry than a British strawberry. I’ve also eaten tons of potatoes in the States, but I had no idea the variety of deliciousness that was waiting for me here. Same with apples. And tomatoes. And damsons. And lettuce. And cherries. And greengages, and on and on.

Don’t even get me started on the superiority of lamb here. That will be another article entirely, one that deserves to be set to music from the world’s finest philharmonic orchestra with a chorus of angels singing “Hallelujah!”

Rowberry’s Farm Shop, Chaddesley Corbett

So here we are, at my favorite local farm shop, Rowberry’s. Besides the summer’s bounty of fresh produce, this place is fully stocked with almost everything else you need in your kitchen- a butcher with an associated counter stocked with fresh pork pies, sausages, rolls, terrines, and the like, a cheese counter overflowing with local cheeses, a full line of local beers and ciders, local jams, honeys, and plenty of other everyday sundries. The staff were all more than happy to offer help in sourcing my food, as most things they sell are grown within the perimeter of the market.

I only set-out for vegetables for dinner, but I was inspired to buy my first cut of meat in over a year after speaking with the butcher. Rowbury’s raises their own Shorthorn cows in the fields around their business. A local abattoir comes each Thursday and returns with meat ready to be broken down by an expert staff of butchers. The steaks are aged for a month and I have to tell you, as a chef who has cooked tons of meat, I’ve not seen quality like this in quite some time. I picked two marbled and deeply hued ribeye steaks and collected some onions, courgettes, potatoes, and rosemary as well. Naming the farm was too easy!

Next, a bottle of Dunkertons Organic Cider from apples picked, pressed, and bottled at their orchard in Pembridge, Hereforshire. and a bottle of rapeseed oil from Hillfarm (Hill Farm,Suffolk) as I wasn’t sure my olive oil at home would tell me much about where the olives came from. How am I going to source salt and pepper?

Get to Know your Food

Getting home to cook, I found myself preparing my ingredients with more attention than usual and a bit more excitement. They were no longer nameless, faceless groceries-they were a living chapter in a narrative whose ending I was now in control of. It was up to me to tell the journey from provenance to plate. Is this the enjoyment I am supposed to get from sourcing my food?

I say yes. I can see that getting to know your food in this way does bring a distinct level of satisfaction that I wasn’t aware of before. Besides getting to know more about the ingredients and the places they come from, my wife and I found ourselves slowing the meal down to really notice and enjoy it. We finished the meal happy knowing that our dinner supported local farms, kept money in the local economy, was low on food miles, and filled the afternoon with a bit of adventure.

Living Happerley, not a bad way to spend an evening!

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