Fuddland

I went along to a fun evening at a local theatre last night: they were staging a Ready Steady Cook take-off called Fairly Steady Cook organised by the Leicester Fairtrade shop Just, with head chefs from two local restaurants using only Fairtrade products in the cooking.

Steve Booth of the Leicester Tigers teamed up with one of the chefs; there was supposed to be a Leicester City player with the other chef, but unsurprisingly it appeared they had pulled out, and instead we had a local international referee [i.e. he lives locally and has refereed at an international level] called Peter Jones. The evening was hosted by BBC Radio Leicester DJ Martin Ballard, who did a good job of keeping things lively despite the initially shy cooks. Booth suffered least from stage-fright and was quite entertaining — preferring to pour the wine into glasses for himself and the other cooks rather than use it for cooking, doing a spot of impromptu juggling and demonstrating a novel technique for peeling carrots: holding them perpendicular to the table-top and slicing downwards. It didn’t look particularly efficient — or safe.

Between checking-up on the progress of the cooking we had some talks about the benefits of buying Fairtrade, including an interview with a very charasmatic Caribbean man over here representing Windward Bananas; I think he managed to convince every single member of the audience that they should henceforth buy bananas produced by his company and his company alone.

In the end the Tigers team won — I think largely due to the majority of the audience being made up of teenage girls who wasted no time queueing for autographs from Mr Booth. As we left we were presented with a goodie bag containing leaflets and samples of Fairtrade products — chocolate and fruit bars, tea and coffee — which made the £5 admission charge a bit of a bargain all in all.

#1

Damian | 2004 / 03 / 11 – 11:57

Is there any other way, possibly “safer”, of peeling carrots. And anyway what’s not safe about peeling down onto the work-top.

I’ve tried other techniques leading to the loss of knuckle skin, this seems flawless to me.

#2

David | 2004 / 03 / 11 – 12:22

Re #1: To make this particular technique safer, use a vegetable peeler, not an ordinary knife [I neglected to mention that what’s he was using]. The danger comes from applying too much downwards force to the carrot, so that it suddenly slips during the cutting motion.

The safest option is to do as I do and not peel them at all — all they need is a good scrub and a quick “top and tail”. They taste better that way too. :)

#3

Daisy | 2004 / 03 / 11 – 17:22

I’ll second the Fair Trade bananas vote, I won’t buy anything else now.

#4

David | 2004 / 03 / 11 – 17:46

Re #3: Doesn’t sound very healthy. Can a person live on bananas alone? ;)

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