Changing Food… One Meal At A Time!
Autumn
Jan Fullwood Food Consultant
(aka JamJarJan)
NOTES FROM A CHAOTIC KITCHEN
Welcome to daily life in a chaotic, well-used kitchen…..
A constantly busy, always evolving space: full of cooking, eating and creating (dinner, treats, mess), for work and for play, for family and friends.
Let me introduce myself and my family:
- A Food and Recipe Consultant who is ‘never knowingly under-catered’, I’ll whip up a five-minute muffin mix at a moment’s notice. I’m constantly creating, evaluating and tasting, always cooking, eating and learning something new
- Long-suffering Hub, who just wants a clutter-free kitchen and peace and quiet. Happiest in the garden. He grows, I cook and preserve
- Eldest Cheffy Son and his Pastry-chef girlfriend, who cook catering quantities of restaurant quality food at every opportunity
- Protein & carb-obsessed younger Student Son, currently at uni. Loves food, but cooking not his forte - student survival skills ongoing
We all eat to live. Let me help you live to eat.
Share my learning and experiences to make the most of your meals too.
What's in Jan's Pan?
IN PROGRESS!
OCTOBER 2026
The house is quiet and the kitchen marginally less chaotic and it's back to just we two.
On the first of the month the Chefs spread their wings and flew off. We eagerly await their pictures of each new city, and details of the culinary specialities as they go. They started with pastel de nata in Lisbon, sampled pizza where it originated in Naples, ate pasta worthy of an Emperor in Rome and picked out perfect Parisienne pastries. They are currently sampling the regional sausage variations in Germany but confess that the Currywurst in Berlin was not their favourite.
The week before they went, they didn't stop cooking. We had slabs of meat cooked over fire and pastries piled high as they made the most of a permanent kitchen before their next nomadic 7 months. They self-cater where they can to control their budget, but for 2 globetrotting chefs what better way to expand your food knowledge?!
Student Son is back to fending for himself, but even he surprises me with pictures of his joint efforts in the student house, even making pastry from scratch for a pie and roasting a ham or a chicken to supplement his diet of noodles. Apparently it's a Kiwi thing to eat dried noodles sprinkled with the seasoning bags. There's not much nutritional value there, but he's been chomping his way through packs we sent as part of his student survival foodbox, and with the start of the 21st birthday celebration year he's mainly subsisting on these and beer in true student style.
So the kitchen may be calmer, but there's still plenty going on in this creative chaotic kitchen as I regain control of the fridge and foodstocks, but I'm proud that the boys have picked up a love of food along the way.
Food education is close to my heart, and it was fascinating to be able to visit the Hackney School of Food this month to find out how an inner city garden has given primary school kids the opportunity to experience growing and cooking food first hand, something that not everyone can take for granted.
I also had the opportunity to learn all about the London cure smoked salmon, H Forman and son on Fish Island in the East End of London. A fascinating insight to the production of a luxury product. But salmon is contentious at the moment, and we heard the flip side of salmon farming from fellow food writer Mallika Basu. She gave a frank and honest talk about food writing in today’s climate with AI challenges, the reduction of print magazines and increased competition for commissions. Certainly food for thought, in more ways than one.
AND SHE WORE SALMON PINK
Did you know that salmon skin can be dried and used as a material similar to leather? That’s one of the many things we learnt on a recent tour of premium smoked salmon producer Forman and Sons, a salmon-pink building shaped like a darne based on aptly named Fish Island by the side of the River Lea (surely I should have travelled by boat from Hertford) and close to the area that is now known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park.
The business has survived food, fire and a compulsory buy out, so they have proved their resilience. Their aim is to produce excellent quality with minimal waste
Every part of the fish is used and they have Eve. experimented with ways to use the skin, making wallets, flasks and even a dress. Turns out this is no new phenomenon, when we coincidentally discovered a coat of salmon skin on display as we visited the recently opened V&A East museum nearby after our factory tour. Described as a Gilyak ‘marriage coat’ made by a tribe based in Eastern Siberia it was made from 60 Pacific salmon, weighing 6.8-9kg. A great use of natural resources and essential protection against the elements in dangerously cold environments.
There’s no Pacific salmon at Foreman’s mind you, they insist on the freshest of Scottish fish for their smoked salmon. It is, of course prepared in a cold environment, but this group of enthusiastic food writers was given thin white paper coats rather than a version of the beautiful coat above (bottom middle pic), and I was glad of the scarf I’d been told to take, despite the glorious weather outside.
We effectively spent an hour in a fridge, but the time flew by as we were entertained by charismatic Guinness world record holder, Darren. Turns out he’s a Pin-bone Wizard (cue The Who ringing in my ears here), who can remove all 33 pin-bones and cut 40 perfect slices from a side of salmon in just 1 minute 11 seconds.
Darren has worked for this 4th generation company for 30 years, so he’s had plenty of practice, but it’s a testament to Lance Formans leadership that staff are so loyal. He took the helm of the business his great-grandfather started in 1905, and has continued to uphold the traditions and values he brought from Eastern Europe with him as a Russian emigre, and the ‘London cure’ that they developed, consisting only of rock salt and oak smoke. He has resisted mechanisation preferring to keep to hand cutting, which is why Darren is such an asset.
We also learnt that for them smoking is a means of preservation alone, and their aim is for the flavour of the fish to shine through. If it’s the smoke you want then it’s the pellicle that you will covet, the outer layer that is most exposed during the air drying and oak smoking, which becomes similar to jerky. But if it’s the succulent melt in the mouth flesh you want, it’s the Royal fillet for you. We were able to taste a plateful of delicacies and were surprised to discover a choice of lean or fatty depending on your preference and their proximity to the skin after cold smoking. As you’d expect, the lean is from the top slices with a drier texture, the bottom is oiler with a creamier natural salmon flavour. Darren’s D cut offers a mix of the two.
An on-site kitchen gave them their get out of jail card during Covid, and they developed a range of premium value added products.
Hub and I discovered we prefer the leaner fish, as I brought some home to taste.
The maple-glazed hot-smoked salmon was delicious in a noodle broth dish and we finished off the salmon in a carbonara-style pasta dish with green beans and leeks and a silky egg sauce.
WHAT'S IN JAN'S FRUIT & VEG BOX
Fruit & Veg are very much back on the menu now we are cooking for just ‘we two’, and the veg box is being used to max potential (too much ad hoc shopping rather than using what was already available). An Abundance of autumnal gems is always a great addition to the table:
Black Figs
From my veg box, plus some homegrown ones as part of a foodswap glut (green beans for figs) put to good use in a Fig and goat's cheese salad drizzled with pomegranate molasses, and fig meringues to use up meringue nests left by our Personal Patisserie Chef.
Leeks
I made a Camembert and Leek Galette with a walnut pastry recipe I wanted to try from the Waitrose paper. This free-form pie is so easy to put together.
Butternut Squash
We entertained on the first weekend of October - the weather was still glorious and we sat outside and cooked on the ceramic grill. We did a long slow cook for some pork belly and I prepared salads in advance, the secret to successful entertaining. No-one wants to miss out on their guest’s gossip whilst beavering away in the kitchen. I roasted cubes of butternut squash the night before to accompany our sea bass, then used the remainder in a salad with black beans, perpetual spinach from the veg patch and crumbled feta, combined with a spicy harissa dressing, ideal to cut through the fattiness of the pork.
Purple carrots
I love the vibrancy of these carrots. I used them in a recipe inspired by Ceri Jones in her book It starts with Veg - roll cut and roasted, served with nutty tasting smoky freekeh with the quick pickled onions left from the chefs last burger meal and some ready prepped garlic herb butter (Ceri recommends tarragon).
Leftovers next day were delicious reheated and served with baked feta.
I visited the Hackney School of food and was blown away by the facilities there. If only every child had that opportunity to immerse themselves in food. These primary school children are introduced to all kinds of veg growing in the garden, and (shock horror) they prepare them with real knifes, cooking on hot hobs with boiling pans. No mollycoddling, just the skills to avoid the inevitable cuts and burns - what better way to learn than with practical real life skills.
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