Behaving the Kermit way

A recipe for Mushrooms with Potatoes, Garlic, and Goat’s Cheese

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

New Year’s Resolutions are a depression waiting to happen. Unless you’re under the age of ten when there is still the possibility for change or your doctor has insisted on one, resolve not to make any. Just because the date has changed, it’s unlikely you will suddenly manage to go to the gym three times a week/give up chocolate-gin-fried food/be pleasant to that colleague who masticates his sandwiches with his back teeth visible, or whatever else provokes the less nice You to manifest itself. All a New Year’s revolution generally does is set you up for deep disappointment in yourself.

If your plan is to make 2025 the year in which for the sake of the planet you alter your consumer habits, even that resolution is hard to keep. I realise I bang on about avoiding processed foods, High Fructose Corn Syrup and out-of-season long-distance-flight produce and instead support regenerative farming, local artisans, animal welfare and the best-produced food you can afford. But even here, changing your food habits supposedly for the better can be complicated.

Classic fish farm

Perhaps you’ve decided to reduce your meat consumption by looking to fish for your main protein supply. That comes up against the challenges caused by fish farming to the environment, their own health and ours by the proliferation of antibiotics necessary to the prevention of fish lice and to which fish are beginning to become resistant, along with the accumulation beneath their pens of fish faeces and the dispersal of it into the wider seas.

Dead sea bed under a fish farm

Some of the most horrifying videos surrounding animal welfare relate to the intense farming of chickens. Yet buyers’ social-conscious-elevated preference for roasting a chicken that has at least been allowed a time to frolic - predators willing - in the freedom of fields comes with its own problems. Scratching about in pastures compacts the ground and creates a hardened surface onto which chicken faeces land, readily washed away by rain into rivers where the nitrates and phosphates they contain are released.

Photo by Polly Sadler on Unsplash

The first evidence of this is algae bloom, which blocks the release of oxygen from the waters. It’s not just fish that then suffer but otters, eels, shrews, and the lichen on rocks and trees that feeds ruminants and other creatures. Included are us consumers, through the rise in the reduction in the number of rivers and lakes still safe to swim in and the elevated price we are charged for our supply of clean drinking water.

Spending life indoors not in the open air doesn’t necessarily cause suffering to chickens. In responsible farms, chickens are not caged but run freely around large airy barns. Here, their excrement is easily collected and safely disposed of. Farms such as these are far from mainstream, however. Despite consumer awareness of the cruelty of raising chickens in cages, no country has legislated to ban cage systems, or to encourage bringing hens up indoors yet free to run about.

No-one aware of the pitiful life of a cow on a barren feedlot could surely relish a mouthful of intensively-farmed steak.

Intensively farmed cows chained together to feed

Yet with pasture-raised animals comes the issue of their damaging methane gases released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. On the other hand, allowing dairy and beef cattle, pigs, goats and sheep to roam freely in the practice of what has now become known to consumers as Regenerative Farming, produces manure that encourages the growth of grass which captures carbon in the soil, increases the biodiversity of insects and birds living in it, and reduces the need for pesticides and fertilizers.

Still, the environment problems caused by the methane gases they release are recognised. A feed additive called Bovaer which could potentially reduce cows’ methane emissions by 30-45 percent, for sale in 68 countries and approved in the US, the EU, Australia and Canada, is currently being trialled.

Inevitably announcement of the testing was followed at once on social media by conspiracy theories. Too often we no longer read much beyond a dramatic headline or look elsewhere to back up a story. In the immediate days after the first trial was announced, Brandwatch, the social media analysis company, found mentions of Bovaer on X rose from almost zero to over 71,000. Accusations spread of Bovaer being part of a depopulation plot with links to Bill Gates, along with consumer threats to boycott related supermarket products. Even farmers have taken to social media to declare they don’t use Bovaer.

Added in small quantities to feed, Bovaer works to suppress the enzymes in a cow’s stomach that create the gas. It apparently breaks down in the cow’s digestive system which means Bovaer is not found in milk or meat.

Curiously, consumers leaning towards a “no smoke without fire” response to initiatives by scientists or governments are less suspicious of Big Food Biz’s money-backed drives to sell us food with Enhanced-this and Reduced-that elements they claim protect our health/sanity/weight/planet.

As Kermit the Frog said, “It’s not easy being green.” Or eco-friendly or climate-aware or….(Insert your own Responsible Person Descriptive here). The bottom line is that if those of us in the mostly privileged Global North don’t change the way we consume, climate change and extreme weather events will give us no choice.

If you are inclined to make any life-changing New Year resolutions when it comes to how you eat, and how you’d like to be planet-sympathetic, may I just suggest that you simply decide to eat meat only from animals raised on regenerative farms, and increase your consumption of locally-grown vegetables and legume-based meals. The days of your options being limited to weighty nut roasts are well in the past. A vegetarian way of eating is so much part of life in the Middle East, no-one would dream of calling it vegetarian. They’d just invite you to come to dinner.

Photo Klaus Einwanger, Bruno’s Cookbook by Martin Walker & Julia Watson

Serves 4

250g/8¾ oz fingerling, Ratte, or other waxy potatoes, scrubbed or peeled, and quartered
500g/1 lb porcini or other mushrooms (not shiitake)
60ml/¼ cup/2 fl oz olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons duck fat or extra-virgin olive oil for flavour
1 small shallot, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 tablespoon fine breadcrumbs
½ lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 rounds of hard or semi hard goat’s cheese, such as Crottin or Rocamadour
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

In a large pot, boil the potatoes till just cooked. Drain and reserve them.

Wipe the mushrooms clean with a damp paper towel. Remove their stems, slice off their bases, and roughly chop those and set them aside. Thickly slice each mushroom’s cap.

Heat the oil and the duck fat if using or the extra 2 tablespoons of oil in a large pan, add the mushroom caps and potatoes, and cook sauté them over a medium heat for about 8 to 10 minutes, tossing frequently. Add the chopped stems, shallots, and garlic, and toss continuously for another 2 to 3 minutes. Lower the heat, cover, and continue to cook, another 5 minutes.

Remove the lid. Add the breadcrumbs, stir everything and raise the heat if necessary so the breadcrumbs absorb most of the remaining juices. Squeeze over the lemon juice over it, season to taste, and stir again.

Return the heat to medium-low. Slice the goat’s cheese into 3cm/1¼ inch-thick rounds, lay these over the top of the mushrooms, and cover the pan with the lid. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes to allow the cheese to slump just enough to still retain its shape.

Sprinkle over the parsley, and serve directly from the pan with warm crusty bread to mop up any juices.