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CALENDAR Sunday 2 January: Epiphany of the Lord Monday 3 January: Christmas feria or Most Holy Name of Jesus Tuesday 4 January: Christmas feria Wednesday 5 January: Christmas feria Thursday 6 January: Christmas feria Friday 7 January: Christmas feria or St Raymond Penyafort, Priest Saturday 8 January: Christmas feria Sunday 9 January: Baptism of the Lord


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Independently audited certified average circulation per issue of THE TABLET for issues distri buted between 1 January and


30 June 2010 is 22,000. Volume 264 No. 8876 ISSN: 0039 8837


THE ETHICAL KITCHEN


Feed the world ROSE PRINCE


I WAS A John Wyndham fan as a child. The future held a fascination for me and I fully expected the world to be completely altered by the end of the twentieth century, even to the point of having aliens for neighbours. I sup- posed the shortened food supply after this imagined apocalypse would not matter because lunch could be taken in one nutritious pill.


Scientists believe that futuristic technology can solve the problem of food shortage, popu lation growth and climate change. The breakthroughs include nanotechnology, the development of minuscule materials which could revolutionise food packaging and the shelf life of food. Another new way to preserve food includes delivering high-voltage pulses that change the cell structure, and there is also high hydrostatic preservation, where food is treated under high water pressure, deactivat- ing the micro-organisms that develop into moulds. In food production there is the prospect of in-vitro meat, where flesh is grown outside the bodies of domestic animals by adding a growth protein to muscle cells. Genetic mod- ification (GM) will take meat production a step further, not only combining the genes of different species but incorporating components that change the nutrient quality of food. The fact that governments always rush to embrace new science tends to breed cynicism in consumers. Witness the problems that biotech firms have had trying to convince shop- pers not to fear GM food. And looking at the evidence for and against GM technology, I remain a sceptic. My concern is with the motives of biotech companies. Over 95 per cent of GM crops in commercial production are simply Roundup (weedkiller) resistant crops, aiding large-scale


farmers to spray a lot of pricey chemicals on to grain – not a practice that is going to take off in Africa. The problem of feeding billions is urgent, but that does not mean rushing to believe the claims made by the food industry investing heavily in science. I’ll put my money instead on sustainable diets that have been known about for centuries; nourishment with a high vegetable content. In-vitro meat indeed. Ugh.


Bean and pasta broth Serves 4


1.2 litres/2 pints meat or vegetable stock 4 tablespoons olive oil 2 garlic cloves, chopped a pinch each of dried rosemary and thyme 1 x 400g/14oz can cannellini, borlotti or white haricot beans, drained 100g/ 31


⁄2 oz dried soup pasta


salt and white pepper To serve: grated mature hard cheese (Grana


Padano or Parmesan, mature Cheddar) and a little extra olive oil or chilli oil


Heat the stock in a large pan until it boils, then pour into a jug. Warm the oil in the same pan over a low heat and add the garlic. Cook until fragrant, but not coloured, then add the herbs, beans and pasta, and cover with the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Add a little boiling water if the soup is too thick. Season, ladle into bowls and pour a little more olive oil (or chilli oil) over each in a thin stream. Serve the grated cheese separately.


■Recipe from Kitchenella, by Rose Prince, published by Fourth Estate, £26.


Glimpses of Eden


There are three of them. Starting life as rumours of moss and fern in the lime- stone rock, the springs quickly become streams,


which wander unhurriedly from the hills, to meet, when each are four miles old or so, at a loud, three-cornered confluence where the old mill once stood. Purling Magi, they then travel together through farms and fields, curling between constellations of wood, wheat and road like an earthbound comet. Forever pursuing their inscrutable quest, the sea, they bear no name save that of the parishes they pass through. I know their many moods: the ice-cold slender eel of their separate sources, the laughter of the ford where we used


to paddle with our toddler son, and even their roaring spate, which some winters ago swelled to a whale whose tail thrashed a whole house down. I’ve also glimpsed their dreams, the king- fishers, drowsing trout and a badger drinking at dawn. And I’ve shared their memories too, finding beds abandoned to the alders, and lis- tening to an old man’s story of how a German POW taught the local children to swim in the mill pool. How strange then, this cold, frost- bound morning, to reach their cherished mingling place and find only silence and unfamiliar stillness. On the coldest day of the coldest year I have ever known, each stream was a secret under ice. The beck they form, the little river, was frozen.


Jonathan Tulloch 40 | THE TABLET | 1 January 2011


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