Jenny Linford's book The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour explores the critical part that time plays in food production and cooking. In this extract from the Hours chapter Jenny talks to Hodmedod co-founder Nick Saltmarsh and considers the history of the British relationship with pulses.
The first ever British Dal Festival ran in Bristol from 19th to 25th March 2018. The festival celebrated simple but sublime dals of peas, beans and lentils, alongside sister pulse dishes from Britain’s mushy peas to Mexico’s refried beans.
Professor Colin Leakey was a true pioneer of beans and other food crops. This article, The Nine Lives of Colin Leakey, was first published in Pulse magazine in 2017 and surveys the many aspects of his extraordinary life.
It's wonderful to see Professor Martin Wolfe's pioneering work on agroforestry reported in the The Guardian & reaching a wider audience. Martin is a long-time friend and mentor to Hodmedod, and grows naked barley, lentils, wheat and more for us. His whole farm system approach and drive for diversity at every level are an inspiration to us
Hodmedod won two awards at the 2017 Good Choice! Quality Food Awards. Our Yellow Pea Flour and Roasted Green Peas with Horseradish were both category winners, while our Lightly Salted Roasted Fava Beans were highly commended.
How do you eat your peas? Whole or soft? Parched or mushy? Black or green? Carlin or marrowfat? (We’re talking proper dried peas here, not those Johnny-come-lately immature fresh “garden pea” imposters*.)
After three years of research and crop trials we started harvesting the first commercial crop of British-grown lentils at the end of August. Over the next few weeks six farms in Suffolk, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire and Sussex will harvest a range of organic and non-organic lentils.
We’re over the moon to be one of three finalists for the Best Producer category of the 2017 BBC Food and Farming Awards. It’s a testament to the many wonderful farmers and producers we work with – and to the potential of British farming to produce an ever wider variety of foods.