Food is Fun at this month’s Exeter Festival

Above: Cooking up a treat

Above: Cooking with Michael

Wafting through the early spring woodland, the tantalising scent of frying bacon fills the air. An often quoted antidote to vegetarianism, the scent brings walkers and their dogs crowding round from the furthest corner of the nature reserve. Mingling with the smells of the woods, after a morning’s foraging and exploring, the experience definitely sharpens the appetite like no other.

Some of the East Devon Junior Rangers and myself have ventured down into Holyford Woods, near Seaton, to enjoy a morning cooking in the great outdoors. As the bacon reveals, we’re not limiting our menu to the wild larder (there’s slim pickings at this time of year) but rather we’re enjoying a sunny Saturday morning exploring the nature reserve in a slightly unusual way. There’s home-made bread, we’re preparing fresh burgers to a recipe by a local celebrity chef, and the bacon is part of a soup made from early spring nettles to wash it all down.

I’m pretty keen on food and cooking, an obsession which began when I was quite young. My mum would get me to make simple elements of family meals and even dinner parties, and slowly my repertoire grew. Looking back, perhaps I was blinded by the compliments, as by the age of 14 I was preparing all the evening meals for my family and held the kitchen in totalitarian control.

However, it was natural history which motivated me professionally, and until last year I thought these two passions would never cross…

Winding back to March 2007 and I was in the frantic final stages of securing funding (before the year end) for an exciting project I was sure was going to cause a stir. Food 4 Thought was dreamt up one evening when I was tinkering with a shoulder of lamb, thinking: "I wonder how many people do this?" A few months later and Michael Caines and myself were making a film about local food and farming for the Key Stage 3 Geography curriculum, focusing not only on farming and food production but on cooking the food too.

The sensible, bookish part of the course looks at the issues of food miles, consumption and sustainability, while the second half of the film is a celebration of great local producers and some mouth-watering ways to cook with the ingredients. The project has now been distributed free to all secondary schools in Devon and has been very well received, not only by geography teachers, but biology, citizenship and food technology specialists too.

The film is accompanied by a ten-week programme of learning materials and lesson plans, prepared by Amanda Roff of Uffculme School, and culminates in a video essay. It’s true, gone are the days of cramp-inducing handwritten sides of A4 to prove a student’s grasp of the subject. The course shows the students how to prepare a short film clip, intended to get the message across to peers within a minute or two – the YouTube generation has infiltrated the classroom!

A few people asked why the Local Authority was putting officer time into such a project; worthy as its message was, surely this was someone else’s responsibility? The thought never crossed my mind. As my role is to increase understanding of East Devon’s countryside, this seemed like the most cost-effective way of getting the message into every secondary school in the county. It was also an effective way of celebrating a few local examples of rural business, banging the drum for local enterprise to an audience of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.

Working with a celebrated local food hero was an important factor in the success of the project. Not only was it Michael’s influence which helped secure funding, but his enthusiasm and energy for the subject pushed things forward way beyond the initial brief. It’s a bit like being in the path of a benevolent tornad working with Michael, picked up in the storm of energy.

Through him I was introduced to the team behind the Food is Fun area at the Taste of the West Festival taking place in Exeter’s Northernhay Gardens this April. I couldn’t resist getting involved.

On the Saturday of the Festival, Michael Caines and I will introduce a screening of the Food 4 Thought film, after which I will be giving a demonstration of the three recipes Michael cooked on the film. So if you are interested in seeing what has been creating a stir in geography lessons, come along and get involved. On the Friday morning, I will be showcasing a taster of the next project to come from the team.

Fish and fishing is the next issue we will be looking at, working with Natural England’s Marine Conservation team to reveal what is going on in our seas. Coastal conservation issues, such as the potential need for Marine Protected Areas, will be introduced alongside alternative recipes for fish species which are a little less popular than the big three: cod, salmon and tuna.

At the Festival I will be attempting to blur the boundaries between cooking and ecology and introduce three less glamorous fish, both in the flesh, in the sea and in the pot! A little knowledge about how certain species live not only provides a fascinating insight into their life strategies but also gives you a good idea of how to prepare them, too.

But, back in the woods, this is where the core of my work is carried out. This year the programme of events offered by East Devon District Council’s Countryside Service contains all the old favourites, rockpooling, pond dipping, reptile rambles and their ilk, but foodie events such as outdoor cooking, picnics and wild food cook-ups are also creeping into the mix.

Last autumn I took Radio 4’s Open Country programme on a rockpool ramble, which culminated in us preparing a simple paella with a few of the creatures we found living amongst the seaweed.

I’d drawn the line at preparing spatchcock Dartford warbler, or to be a little less trite – I’d draw the line at anything with a detrimental impact on the very things the Service is trying to conserve. But if the quickest way to people’s hearts is through their stomach, then I’ll try anything to encourage people off the sofa and out into the great outdoors!

JAMES CHUBB