Why it's worth buying organic bananas

It might seem strange on this blog to advocate spending more on an ingredient but frugal eating is not about buying the cheapest food you can find but eating as well as you can on a limited budget.

I spend over the odds for organic milk and eggs, real bread from a local bakery, Italian-manufactured pasta (as opposed to own brand) and some organic vegetables like carrots because there is such a marked difference in taste - and in the case of ingredients like bread they stretch further.

To that list I'm now going to add organic bananas.

I bought them by accident the other day thinking they were Fairtrade and couldn't believe how different they tasted. Even the green ones my husband insists on buying because he hates speckled bananas tasted sweet. Just really banana-y, as you'd expect.

I also recall that conventionally grown bananas are heavily sprayed then treated with more chemicals to ripen them - a practice reported on here in the New York Times and here in the Sunday Tribune, India

Organic bananas are not a ridiculous amount more expensive than standard ones: £1.85 a kilo in the Co-op compared to £1.15 which came to £1.35 for 5 bananas or 27p a banana. You couldn't buy a chocolate bar for that.

What foods do you think it's worth paying extra for? And - as a matter of interest - do you like your bananas green, yellow or speckled? ;-)

Chicken, Za'atar and other stories

It's been a hectic few days since we got back from France. Trying to finish one book, publicising another and launching a student cooking campaign. I'm not sure where the time has gone

It hasn't left much time for cooking that's for sure but this weekend we made best use of the annual Organic Food Festival in Bristol and did our weekend shopping there.

Interestingly it wasn't that expensive. Sheepdrove, our local organic butcher had a special offer on frozen chickens for £5 each which was unmissable so Sunday night's meal was built around that. Because it had been a balmy late summer's day (what on earth's happened to the weather since?) we served it warm having stuffed it with herbs and garlic. We also had a huge platter of yellow and green courgettes (above) I'd lightly fried in olive oil and tossed with some blanched green beans and some new crop Desirée potatoes, boiled in their jackets, all from one of my favourite local organic suppliers Wrington Greens. I tossed the courgettes and beans with a fantastic dried herb mix I'd bought in Nice earlier this summer (a fines herbes blend of parsley, tarragon, chervil and chives) which really enhanced their flavour though fresh herbs would have obviously been good too. (Most of ours seem to have shrivelled up while we were away).

The next day we had cold chicken with the remaining veg, some fried up potatoes and garlic and some mixed leaves from Wrington which are always wonderfully flavourful. And there's a huge batch of stock which I'm going to use for noodles tonight and risotto tomorrow. Ten servings from one medium-sized bird which isn't bad.

The other good buy at the festival was a huge bag of Za'atar, a Middle-Eastern blend of dried thyme, sumac and roasted sesame seeds. This particular one had been imported from Palestine by a company called Zaytoun which also brings in a very nice olive oil. You can use the Za'atar to scatter over flatbreads, dips and grilled meats or simply dunk bread in oil and then in the mix. It was actually more than I needed but I felt I wanted to support the producer so I've been giving small jars and bags of it away to my friends.

The only disappointment of the weekend were some ultra-cheap peaches I bought at the local greengrocer which had that awful woolly texture that imported peaches tend to have even at this time of year. I rescued them by skinning them, submerging them in sweet wine, scattering over a few crushed cardamom pods and chilling them for a few hours but they still weren't wonderful. Which underlines yet again that locally grown food is best, organic or not.

Why it's still worth buying organic

I spent the best part of today at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol, doing a demonstration in the Bordeaux Quay demo kitchen (thanks to all those brave souls who turned up in the pouring rain) then wandering round the stalls.

Thankfully there was little sign of the reported slump in organic sales. Although I would have said the numbers were down marginally on last year there was still an impressively large number of people milling - or rather sploshing - around. (When is it ever going to stop raining?)

The media who love a bad news story are convinced we've all switched to shopping at Aldi and Lidl but I'm not so sure. Those who have been convinced by the arguments for organic food (eloquently expressed on the Soil Association's website) are not suddenly going to stop being concerned about the effects of chemicals on the environment and in the food chain. And as readers of this blog will know it's perfectly possible to cut back in other ways - by buying less expensive cuts, and wasting less food, for example.

I did most of my weekend shopping there and with loads of special festival offers didn't pay over the odds for it. All the lovely veggies above, plus several others, came to just over £8 and there were some great offers on organic chicken and other meat. I also got a litre bottle of gorgeous organic olive oil for just £6.80. If you're within reach of Bristol the festival's still on tomorrow. If not organic fortnight is coming up so you may well find special offers on organic food nearer home.

Finally for those people who attended the demo and wanted the recipe for Mexican salsa chicken you'll find it here and the pea and ham soup here.

The Moroccan spice mix I used in the fish couscous recipe is 1 tsp each ground coriander and cumin, 1/2 tsp turmeric and 1/4 tsp chilli powder or hot paprika. (It's worth making a bigger quantity and keeping it in a jar. Use about 2-3 tsp at a time).