Butternut Squash and Potato Pie with Tomato, Mint and Sheep’s Milk Cheese
GOOD FOOD FRIDAY!
Looking for inspiration and recipes for eating in season this winter? Check out ARC2020.eu‘s new feature “Good Food Friday”! This week, Christian Heymann who runs SpeiseGut, an organic farm and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) – which delivers right to ARC’s office – and Luisa Weiss, who writes the food blog ‘The Wednesday Chef’ and wrote the LA times best-selling memoir ‘My Berlin Kitchen’ are chatting about what Good Food & Good Farming means to them.
Good Food Friday : SpeiseGut and the Wednesday Chef
As we approach December, thick mittens and winter coats have been pulled from storage throughout most of Europe and many of us have bemoaned the disappearance of all the soft, colourful fruits from our markets. Eating seasonally is effortless when tomatoes, zuchinis, strawberries and peaches abundant, inexpensive and in their prime. As the days get shorter and much, much colder, it takes a bit more creativity but not much more effort to pull together delicious meals from the fresh ingredients growing nearby right now. Today, we talk to two people who live in Berlin and work with food: Christian Heymann who runs SpeiseGut, an organic farm and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) – which delivers right to ARC’s office -and Luisa Weiss, who writes the food blog ‘The Wednesday Chef’ and wrote the LA times best-selling memoir ‘My Berlin Kitchen’. If you are hungry for more, you can also give her interview with Jamie Oliver from last week a listen. Christian and Luisa share some reasons to get excited about winter produce and some recipes to keep you busy and well fed this weekend, making sure you won’t get bored of the vegetable some consider a German national symbol of sorts: the potato.
ARC: Christian, is growing organic vegetables in an area where you are surrounded by Agro-industry a political act to you?
Christian: While it is certainly a fundamentally political act, it isn’t necessarily so in terms of our everyday life. But as we do our practical work it is still a political process, whether it be city politics, like how can I get a field of land in the first place, or issues like GMOs.
ARC: You specialize in older, rarer varieties. What are the challenges in growing/selling unusual vegetables?
Christian: The cultivation of old varieties is not more challenging than others. Quite the opposite – they can usually adapt to the ground and get along much easier than today’s hybrid varieties. What about selling? Easy. Grab the consumer on the field and let him try – they will be surprised
ARC : What are the biggest challenges in growing winter produce?
Christian: Winter vegetables are mostly big eaters. Cabbage and pumpkin like a lot of fertilizer and water. You need to find the balance here of how much is just right and what the plant needs to keep it’s true taste. […]
Read the entire interview on ARC2020.eu
