Is bread sauce on your festive menu?

Image credit: BBC Good Food

If you’re not from the UK, you may not have heard of bread sauce. You may be wondering what on earth it is and when you’d eat it.  

If you are in the UK, you may have strong opinions about it. In my empirical research (asking people I’ve seen recently) about bread sauce uptake, it’s a bit of a ‘marmite’ issue. People tended to react quite strongly: either with a ‘erm, no way would that make it onto my plate’ or a ‘oh definitely, it’s a Christmas staple’.

So what is it? Bread sauce is just what it sounds like. Bread(crumbs) made into a sauce. More specifically a thick sauce made of stale breadcrumbs and milk, infused with onion, bay leaves and cloves. It looks a bit like porridge (see photo).

It doesn’t sound that appetising for lunch, does it? It’s so curiously British.

You serve bread sauce the same way as you would gravy and cranberry sauce – it’s an accompaniment. In my opinion, it adds something valuable to the (quite bland) turkey.

I’m in the ‘oh definitely’ camp, and so is Nigella Lawson. So I’m in good company. It’s always there on our lunch table on 25 December, but I’m not sure anyone else at the table covets it like I do.

I keep coming back to it each year, finding its spices and consistency strangely comforting.

Let’s be clear: bread sauce offers almost no nutritional value. But it is cheap. It’s a great way to use up stale bread and other ingredients lying around. You can also make it up to three days in advance.

In case you wanted to know, bread sauce can be traced back to at least as early as the medieval ages, when cooks used bread as a thickening agent for sauces. According to the brilliantly named ‘The Past is a Foreign Pantry’ (subtitled ‘They dough things differently there’), ‘[Christmas] day is made or broken by the quality of the bread sauce.’ So there you go.

The Past is a Foreign Pantry also states that it should ‘taste creamy and mild, and ever so slightly fragrant’. Are you tempted to add to your festive menu yet?

In case you are tempted, here’s a recipe for a slightly more sophisticated version: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/bread-sauce-0

And please note: although bread sauce is not complicated to make, it cannot be rushed.

The Sustainable Food Forum and the Speciality & Fine Food Fair – towards a better food system for a healthier planet

Harvesting opportunities

I’ve been out of my office more than usual these past two weeks. Two major food events have been early autumn highlights for me: the Speciality & Fine Food Fair at Olympia, London, and the Sustainable Food Forum, also in London.

It was such a treat for me to attend these two events, both centred on my number one favourite topic: good food. To me, good food means more than just food that tastes good; I want to know how it got onto my plate. The planet needs sustainable food that is good for the earth and good for people.

But why go to these events, as a linguist? Because I translate and copy-edit for customers in the food sector, it’s vital that I stay up-to-date with the latest trends, innovations and thinking. If I didn’t understand my customers’ challenges, I wouldn’t be equipped to make informed decisions when translating or editing their content.

Meeting the food system innovators and trailblazers

At the Speciality & Fine Food Fair I had the chance to meet innovative and ethical food exhibitors that are blazing a trail with their artisanal products. It was a privilege to see businesses that are experimenting with new ingredients and formulations and to learn about the latest trends.

I had conversations with exhibitors about how they produced their products and got them to market, and about future plans for selling their products more widely in the UK and beyond. Most importantly I sampled several of their mouth-watering products – cold-pressed gins, organic butters and cheeses, ethical and free-range ready meals. Yum! I was impressed with how well organised the event was – registration on the door took seconds and it was also easy to share contact details with exhibitors by simply scanning my visitor badge.

Making food system reform a priority

On 19 September I was lucky enough to secure a ticket with translator colleague Josie Worrall to attend Food Matters Live’s Sustainable Food Forum. This was held in the sublime venue of 30 Euston Square; also home to the Royal College of GPs. Josie and I agreed that the conference far exceeded our expectations. We were treated to seamless event organisation, top-notch food (par for the course, I guess!), and well-lit, comfortable conference rooms and cutting edge debate.

The Sustainable Food Forum was packed with expert-led discussions looking at key policies and challenges in our global food system. Chaired by journalist Samira Ahmed, we quickly got to the heart of the matter in the very first session: we are producing more food than we need, yet we are still hungry. How is this possible?

The answers to this question shared a common theme: the global food system is the single most destructive environmental force. Agricultural production generates more emissions than all forms of transport combined. But we just keep producing more meat to satisfy consumer demand. As consumers, we are so used to meat being the centrepiece of our meals, but it doesn’t have to be. A staggering 77% of agricultural land is used for animal production, something that seems crazy when we bear in mind that neither the meat nor the dairy industry would exist in the UK without subsidies.

If we fixed our food system it would pave the way for huge progress in mitigating climate chaos. There are powerful food lobbies pulling the strings, and many panellists argued that it’s time to call out these big players. The Netherlands has introduced a policy to reduce livestock numbers by 30%, the first in the world. Earlier this year, I attended another food systems conference that highlighted some other heartening global food policy initiatives - things ARE being done but we need to do more at every level, particularly at policy level.

Sustainability is not a trend

We often talk about sustainability as if it’s a trend. But actually it’s a must. Food industry coalitions and collaborations are the answer if we are serious about climate action. And the Sustainable Food Forum was a good place to start.

We heard first-hand from producers about how innovations in ingredients and processing may hold the key to a more sustainable food system. We face a doubling in meat production in future, as the world’s population grows. And yet most consumers still make their buying decisions based on taste and price – this means that customer acceptance has to be a priority.

There were some heated debates around new plant-based alternatives and meat analogues, and the extent to which they provide the answer. In my view, they do provide at least a large part of the answer.

It was highly relevant that one of the event’s key partners was ICEX. I attended an interesting presentation by Rising UP in Spain, the Spanish Government’s start-up programme to help international agrifood start-ups set up in Spain. As a Spanish to English translator, I’ll be keen to see how this start-up programme develops.

How can I help?

If you are a food system thinker, innovator or producer, I can help you hit the right note in your English language publications.

If you want to make sure your documents are fit for their intended audience, you need a specialist wordsmith in your corner. One who also cares about sustainability. If you are working hard to attract investment and new business to your region, your communication materials become mission-critical. You can’t afford to miss a beat.

That’s where I come in: as a translator and copy-editor specialising in sustainable food and food policy, I’m already helping my customers get their message across. If you’re interested in exploring how I can help you, click the image below to book a free chat.

City University Food Policy Symposium

Food for thought

Last week I attended the Food Policy Symposium at City University’s Centre for Food Policy and it was eye-opening.

Food systems and food policy are two subjects I find deliciously fascinating.

I think it’s because they feed (geddit) into almost every other area of life and society. They are intrinsically linked to climate change and sustainability challenges, for example.

My takeaways from the symposium: there’s a lot of groundbreaking work being done to tackle food inequalities. But, in the UK at least, most of this is at local level – there’s a lack of political will in Westminster to make the systemic changes that are so sorely needed.

Another takeaway: some literature I took home from the event listed some great examples of food policy initiatives from around the world.

Did you know?

·       Since 2016, Chile has required black warning labels on packaged foods high in energy, sugars, saturated fats and sodium.

·       In 2016, the French government passed a law banning supermarkets from destroying food waste and requiring them to donate it to food aid charities.

·       In 1997, Mexico established its cash transfer programme, Prospera. It provides cash to low-income women, with the requirement that they must vaccinate their children, enrol them in school, and participate in a package of health interventions and diet and nutrition education.

·       In 2007, Copenhagen City Council decided that food served in its public institutions (schools, nurseries, old people’s homes) would be 90% organic.*

All innovative and forward-thinking policies. But which country was conspicuously absent from the list? I’m sorry to report that it was the UK. An initiative by the Mayor of London was a notable exception – in 2019, the Mayor ruled that adverts for foods and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar would not be approved for display on the city’s public transport network.

Another takeaway: things are already really hard, and they aren’t going to get easier any time soon.

Rob Percival from the Soil Association’s talk was entitled: ‘Food policy fit for an age of permacrisis’. The word ‘permacrisis’ was a common thread throughout the day, a word to express the age we’re living in.

It’s woeful just how short termist our responses to these countless challenges tend to be. Every time we fail to address the deep-rooted causes of food poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, we simply kick things into the long grass. What we need to do is balance short-term gain with long-term transformation.

But times of crisis can also be times of change. The many great initiatives happening at local and regional level, especially in UK cities, illustrate this. But we still need that systemic change from the top. We cannot simply allow the markets to decide how things play out and who gets to eat nutritious, healthy foods.

As one panellist said: how can it be right that eating healthy food is a privilege?