Celebrating Love British Food Fortnight with Yelvertoft cooking guru Milly

Yelvertoft mother Milly Fyfe is a farmer’s wife and writer of our Countryside Kitchen feature.

She lives on a livestock and arable farm with her husband and two young boys.

Ah, thank goodness for rain. Doesn’t the garden look much better for it?!

It’s been a challenging time for the farming community with such dry conditions. The grass just hasn’t grown and so livestock have been given supplementary feed (hay / straw or silage) to keep them full, but this is valuable feed normally reserved for the winter months.

Hopefully now the rain has appeared. it will stimulate some autumn growth and counteract any depletion in supply before the colder months start to creep up.

What’s more is that with the heat of late July and August, farmers and contractors were working through the night to harvest the crops. Mainly wheat and spring barley and some are now into the maize and beans. My husband for example couldn’t operate the baler, used to gather up the straw to make round bales for cattle bedding in the winter.

The heat played havoc with the machine and every time a bale would pop out the back, the string would snap instantly, causing the straw to fall back into a heap in the field.

Thankfully, everything is now safely gathered in, and we can move forward with autumn cultivation work, establishing the crops for 2023.

This brings me quite nicely onto Love British Food Fortnight which commences between September 17 and October 2, celebrating the bringing in of the harvest and food produced across the British Isles. There will be harvest festivals, services, events and campaigns

happening around the country, using the two-weeks as a springboard to fly the flag for British food provenance. Find out more details here: https://www.lovebritishfood.co.uk/british-

food-fortnight-2022

I’m hugely supportive of the campaign, having been a Love British Food hero for over ten years. One of my fondest memories was giving a reading at Westminster Abbey for the Love British Food national harvest festival.

The Abbey was full to the brim with school children,

food heroes, celebrities and royalty all coming together to celebrate farmers, food producers, food hospitality and the like. It was incredible! I even got to have a chat and sat next to Martin Clunes. What a day…

So I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the campaign by thinking about where the food you buy comes from and trying where possible to buy British.

And in homage to the campaign, here is a tasty recipe using plenty of British produce – my own version of a lamb kofta curry. I’ve produced a short how-to video on my no fuss meals for busy parents food blog.

Here’s what you need:

500g British lamb mince

Spice blend of: 2tsp garam masala, 1 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp turmeric,

1 tsp of ground coriander, 1 tsp of chilli powder

1 small onion

2 cloves of garlic

200ml coconut milk or cream (I used thick cream)

1 tbsp of tomato puree

1 tbsp of chilli sauce

400g chopped tomatoes or a can of ready prepared

300ml of beef stock

Serve with Basmati rice and poppadoms

Method:

Mix the mince with half of the spice mix and some fried chopped onion.

Form into firm small balls

Fry the balls on a hob until they have cooked through and gone brown

Remove balls from the pan and make the sauce

Add chopped up garlic, chopped tomatoes, spice blend, chilli sauce, stock and coconut milk.

Allow to reduce down into a thick sauce

Return the mince balls back to the pot and cook for 15 minutes

Serve with basmati rice and poppadoms

Enjoy!

For more mealtime suggestions, follow the no fuss meals for busy

parents food blog at www.nofussmealsforbusyparents.com or on

Facebook/Instagram

Let me know how you get on with this one.