The Dried Food Revolution
When we were kids in the Sixties the biggest gastronomic treat imaginable was a Vesta ready meal. Chow Mien, Prawn Curry – they came in a box like a treasure chest and inside were unprepossessing sachets of, yes, dried food. You followed the instructions, added water and off you went. These were the days before Chinese or Indian-style restaurants and Vesta was as exotic as it got.
Forty years on I found I still had an appetite for dried foods so I started
to make them myself. Starting in 2004 with a very basic dryer I began to
experiment with the drying process on different foods from nettles to bananas.
Immediately I was hooked. Drying concentrates flavour, preserves vitamins,
is economic with energy and once the food is dried all you need to keep
it is a sealed container – no refrigeration, no freezing, no waste.
In global terms this is hardly a major discovery. Food cultures from the Middle East to the Baltic dry vegetables, grains and fruit. Elsewhere you find dried meat and fish. In all these places drying is a traditional and necessary method of preservation – perhaps the oldest known to humankind. The results are used all the time and form an essential part of the regional cuisine.
Here in the UK – more than anywhere else in Europe – it seems we want chilled or frozen food - from humble peas to entire gourmet meals. We don’t mind the fact that the chilling and freezing processes, chilled transportation, chilled bulk storage and our fridges and freezers are energy-hungry. Nor do we seem to care that these foods have short shelf-lives and significant proportions of them are just wasted.
Gustosecco has a menu for change.
We want to show you how good dried foods can be from ‘quick-slow’ ready meals like our risottos to dried foods as ingredients such as spice and seasoning mixes including our Dukkah. We’re searching the cuisines of the world beginning with the Mediterranean and the Middle East to find dried ingredients that deserve to be part of every imaginative cook’s repertoire and recipes for meal accompaniments that taste delicious.
To these we add our own imagination and as many local ingredients as we can – from nettles to wild garlic, edible flowers, wild herbs, vegetables from small independent market gardeners and fruit from local orchards. Using these ingredients and the best we can find from the traditional drying-cultures of the world all we add is time. The time it takes to dry to perfection.
We hope we’re leading a revolution in the kitchen back from the fridge and freezer to the store-cupboard. Not for the sake of it but for the taste of it. We hope you enjoy our products and we’d like to hear from you with your comments on our food and any suggestions you have on how we could expand our range with ideas from your own store-cupboard or from your travels abroad.
Enjoy.
Richard Mabb
