*Exclusive*
In the (well-ventilated) open air in the East End of Glasgow I’m observing three city chefs demonstrate their ability to overcome the vagaries of cooking out of doors while creating winning tasty and attractive seasonal vegetable-centred dishes. The fresh, locally-grown produce they get to play with is simply stunning – and enough to surprise anyone still unaware of Glasgow’s resurgent culinary image as the Dear Green Place.
We’re in the fourth year of the Veg Cities Chefs’ Challenge and the three finalists, shortlisted from an initial 14 entrants from restaurants, delis and cafes across the city after judging visits, cook on barbecues and open fires with fresh produce supplied in a ‘mystery’ box of donations from seven of Glasgow’s numerous - and burgeoning - community and market gardens. Not everything is char-grilled: the chefs pickle, steam, boil, roast, fry, bake and marinate too. The produce was in the ground just hours before being prepared.
Chef Niall Allan of Sprigg in the city centre is busy putting together an autumn salad (left) of lightly pickled Black Futsu squash slices topped with squash cubes parmentier-style, green tomatoes, gently barbecued fresh apple slices straight from the tree and oven-roast baby turnips finished on the barbecue all served in a light Glasgow honey dressing.
Beside him Jamie MacDonald of La Bonne Auberge is creating two dishes: a half squash filled with sauteed swede, broccoli, rice infused with pickled fennel seed and garnished with pickled radish (right), watercress, dill; and a flatbread spread with a mooli and apple remoulade with wholegrain mustard and lovage topped with a salad of roasted tomato, apple, brocolli.
Meanwhile John Traynor of La Pastina deli whips up no fewer than three dishes: barbecue courgette flowers stuffed with turnip (left), green tomato and with lovage verdie dressing; broccoli and beet burnt ends, raw radish; and carpaccio of pumpkin and apple with pickled fennel seeds and geranium leaves (below).
But the Glasgow Chefs’ Challenge is more than just a story about cooking gorgeous, often surprising, hyper-fresh local produce in the open air. It’s about showing what can be grown here in this city - notorious for its poor diet-related health stats - to put vegetables on a par with meat and fish on the plate, whether prepared at home or in a café or restaurant. Which is why I’ve been a supporter since its inception.
Its importance is especially heightened this year as Glasgow prepares to host COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in November.
The inaugural competitions in 2018 and 2019 were held in the City of Glasgow College and 19 chefs from some of Glasgow’s top independent restaurants got to cook on professional stoves. But times, as we all know, have changed and this year’s, as last year’s, live cook-off was held out of doors in the newly-named Wash House Garden in Tollcross in the city’s east end. I love the new name (it was formerly Greenheart Growers) as it echoes the site’s original purpose as the communal washing green for the adjacent former steamie once used by residents of the tenements in the area.
Moving the cook-off to this progressive and highly productive community site speaks to the current zeitgeist of angst about climate change, food insecurity, empty supermarket shelves, price hikes and other food issues post-Brexit and the pandemic.
Cooking on the same ground that the vegetables, fruits and herbs are grown in, with contributions from other community and market gardens from across the city, takes the competition to its very roots (pardon the pun). It highlights the potential of fresh, locally grown produce to deliver maximum nutritional benefits and affordable prices, reduce food miles, create a sustainable food system and boost the circular economy while contributing to the city’s commitment to being carbon-neutral by 2030.
Glasgow was actually the first Scottish city to rise to the Veg Cities Chefs’ Challenge (backed by celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver). The Glasgow competition is organised by the Glasgow Community Food Network (GCFN) in partnership with the UK-wide Sustainable Food Cities network, whose joint aim is to see citizens from across all sections of society get access to fresh local produce.
It runs concurrently with the Glasgow City Food Plan, the first of its kind in Scotland. Backed by Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board, among others, it aims to make healthy, affordable food accessible for everyone living and working in the city.
Glasgow currently has three market gardens, around 90 community gardens and growing spaces and 32 allotments sites. Organisers want more growing spaces on the city’s vacant and derelict land and for public services to buy and sell healthier and more sustainable food and support local businesses.
The Glasgow Veg Cities Chefs’ Challenge 2021 took place just weeks before the city hosts COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, when hundreds of global climate activists and campaigners could descend on the city and seek out hyper-local, high-welfare, ethical, sustainable and affordable food experiences, presumably from the smaller independent outlets who are not tied to the central buying policies of the larger hospitality groups.
People don’t think of Glasgow as somewhere you can grow superb, healthy fresh food that has zero food miles": Grant Reekie on the Glasgow Veg Cities Chefs' Challenge 2021
“Glasgow’s called the Dear Green Place, but people don’t think of it as somewhere you can grow superb, healthy fresh food that has zero food miles,” said the Glasgow Chefs’ Challenge organiser Grant Reekie (below left) of GCFN (who is also an MSc Gastronomy graduate from Queen Margaret University). “Springburn and Blackhill [donator gardens to the cook-off] and aren’t places naturally associated with gourmet ingredients, but we are out to prove how wrong that is.
“The whole point of the Chefs’ Challenge is to show what Glasgow is doing and how it’s possible for every citizen to eat more vegetables if we have enough land and resources to grow them and more shops, restaurants and cafes to sell them.
“We’ve noticed real growth in the number of brilliant gardens and growing spaces that contributed this year. The harvest donated was simply fantastic.”
He also adds that many chefs go on to source from those gardens allowed to sell produce commercially. When I asked if he’d like to see growth in the competition, he said: “We’d love to see markets like Patrick Farmers Market expanded out into every part of Glasgow as another way to get these locally grown vegetables onto dinner plates.”
The Wash House Garden is run by Max Johnson (above, right) who, in addition to organising a weekly veg box scheme and supplying local cafes with fresh produce, has built an events and workshop space. He aims to offer community meals and guest-chef pop-up restaurants for locals.
He worked tirelessly - and with matching enthusiasm - with Reekie to provide everything necessary for the competitors to produce top veg- and herb-centred dishes for the judges of whom I was one, along with Julie Lin, chef-patron of Julie’s Kopitiam Malaysian street food cafe in Shawlands, and Gary Maclean, Scotland’s national chef and executive chef at City of Glasgow College. Our remit was to mark on three criteria: veg-centredness, creativity and taste.
We were hugely impressed by the chefs’ skills in producing good-looking innovative dishes with flavour, texture, and colour. Chef MacDonald’s delicious baked squash dish almost tipped the balance but in the end, we plumped unanimously for chef Traynor’s courgette flower creation as the winner.
Stuffed not with ricotta or mascarpone or pine nuts, but with good old Glasgow turnip.
ENDS
The Three Judges: Gary Maclean samples Niall Allan’s autumn salad; Julie Lin picks some pak choi; and the three of us in the Wash House Garden before the cook-off begins!