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S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 9 20134 5Westcountry Life The Carol Trewin essay

Why chefs and farmers are going native...

livestock with the characteristics ofthe local area,” Peter explains.

The combination of landscape andbreed plays out straight into the fla-vour of the beef on your plate and sothe term Red Ruby increasinglycreeps on to restaurant menus. It’sbecome fashionable for chefs inLondon and further afield to namethe breed of beef served in their res-taurants and those keen to fly a re-gional or British flag find nativebreeds often have the flavour andkudos they seek. I contact a chef I’vewritten about before – Tim Allen atL o n d o n’s Launceston Place, and askhis opinion of the breed. “Rubies eatvery well... Why? Does your dad havea ny ? ” comes back the prompt reply. Ican only look at Flirt and her bull calfwith a weather eye to the future andremind myself that, as CatherineBroomfield, secretary of the DevonCattle Breeders’ Society (DCBS) says,“Farming is a marathon, not asprint.”

It’s undoubtedly the Red Ruby fla-vour that has won over Chris Eden atthe Driftwood Hotel on Cornwall’sRoseland Peninsula, whose restaur-ant gained its first Michelin star lastyear. He likes the lesser-used cuts,serving a sticky-glazed piece of RedRuby feather blade, slow-braised for afull 46 hours, alongside a 200g piece ofsirloin steak. “The beef has fantasticmarbling going through it and fla-vour to match,” he says.

The Devon Cattle Breeders’ Societywebsite points to another fan atL o n d o n’s two Michelin-starred res-taurant The Ledbury in Notting Hill,where chef Brett Graham regularlyserves Red Ruby. He was won over bya sample sent by none other thanLaunceston-based master butcherPhilip Warren. He speaks regularlywith Philip’s son Ian to come up with

new cuts and products. At themoment he favours the Red Ruby’s“second-grade cuts” like short rib,served slow-cooked with a smokedbone marrow and toasted malt crust,pickled walnuts, sautéed mush-rooms, crisp potato and garlic purée.

“T here’s a trend to use USDA orWagyu beef fed on a lot of grain, but Ifind that isn’t right when you’re inEngland,” says Brett. “We live here,we shouldn’t be smashing grain intobeef cattle to make them fat. In the USthey feed them so much grain, it’s noteven that flavourful and almost toorich. I think the Red Ruby’s marblingis as good as it gets.” Praise indeed.

Speaking with Ian Warren, I get thepicture of a family business that haslong been plying its trade (since 1880),shouting the news of good native beefto anyone who will listen. These days,Ian says he can see that native Britishbeef ’s star is in the ascendancy, but itw a s n’t always this easy. In the 1970sand 80s, British farmers turned in-creasingly towards larger continent-al breeds like the Charolais or Lim-ousin. In fact, my father and uncle didjust that, swapping South Devons forLimousins on our Cornish farm.

“South Devons weren’t what themarket required in the 70s,” says Dad.“The South Devon breed had toomany milky strains, because theyhad concentrated on it being a dual-purpose cow – now they’re known forbeef again. The market wanted leanb e e f. ” The requirement was for athicker hindquarter and they feltLimousins were a good bet. Contro-versially, he reminds me that Li-moges, where Limousin’s originate,actually shares some similaritieswith Devon, such as the pasture,cider-making and small family farms.(Cue sharp intake of fresh Devon-shire breath.)

The downside of the continentals,as Ian says, was that the native breedssuf fered.

In the more recent past, Dad hasreturned to South Devons and now toour first Red Ruby, a gift to me and onevery gratefully received, althoughslightly in bemusement as I try tofigure out where to go next. Pattingher down, it’s easy to see that gentletemperament. Catherine says shehappily brings hers into the yard,pushes them about into whateverformation she needs and off they goagain, no help needed.

Our friends the Whittakers at LowerPenhallow Farm on the Roseland alsorecently switched from Dexters to RedRubies, after Vicky said she foundherding Dexters a bit like rounding upsheep, because they were so flightyand nimble on their feet. As theirsuccessful boxed beef business attests,a nice steady Devon herd proved morethe order of the day.

There are plenty of opportunitiesout there for entrepreneurial youngfarmers, chefs or butchers from, in oraround the South West. But, thefuture farming community – made upof both relative newcomer and oldhand – can only be assured by thecontinued support of that most im-portant person, the customer. Weneed more “discerning food shop-pers” as Peter calls them, who takethe trouble to find out where theirfood comes from and support localbu s i n e s s e s.

With each food crisis, whether BSE,Foot and Mouth or the horsemeatscandal, a few more people turn awayfrom the industrial production ofmeat from dubious sources and in-stead to the best they can afford. Fornow, Flirt and I are going to shoutabout the best the South West has tooffer – long may it continue.

Anna-MarieJulyan findsDevon cattleare helping winMichelin stars

Article on localbreeds wins CarolTrewin AwardCarol Trewin’s roles on the We s t-ern Morning News as FarmingEditor and then Food Editor re-flected her personal passions.

She died of leaukaemia in 2009,at the age of 56, and had spent herlast months working on Th eDevon Food Book which made thelink between farming and thelandscape and the food we eat.

Her partner, writer JamesCrowden, said at the time of thebook’s publication: “She reallycared about the industry, aboutfarming itself, the quality of thefood culture and the links with thelandscape. Carol was an outstand-ing food writer and she cared sopassionately for her subject.”

In order to share that passion,the Carol Trewin Young FoodWriters Award was established toencourage others to follow Carol’slead.

This year Anna-Marie Julyan,28, a farmer’s daughter fromCornwall, takes the first prize of£500, sponsored by Exeter Festivalof South West Food & Drink, forher essay, Rubies are Red.

Anna-Marie recently joinedWaitrose Kitchen magazine as astaff writer and says she wastotally thrilled to win.

All of the shortlisted finalistsvisited the Exeter Food and DrinkFestival which Anna-Marie saysgave her the chance to share ideaswith like-minded writers.

“ I was struck by the way CarolT rewin’s writing still resonateswith the farmers and food busi-

nesses she championed and to winan award in her memory means alot,” she says. “I hope to do itjustice in future.”

This year’s judges – Ja m e sCrowden and Marc Millon,Natacha Du Pont de Bie, RosieBarron and cheese maker MaryQuicke – said it was a closecompetition.

Highly commended entriescame from Clare Hornby ofExeter, who wrote about blue-berries; Sadie Phillips of Bissoe,Cornwall, who recounted thechanging role of rural entrepren-eurs and Cornish produce;Stefanie Metcalf of Exeter, whowrote a very thoughtful piece onthe philosophies and practical-ities of local food which looked atthe way its production and mar-keting has evolved in Devon;Fleur Tucker from Torquay, wholooked at Ashburton HusbandrySchool and the vital importance ofeducation at every level in ag-riculture and food production;and, finally, Karen Christian fromChippenham in Wiltshire, whowrote about the quality of SouthWest wines.

Anna-Marie’s essay was praisedfor placing her subject – the im-portance of indigenous localbreeds and the eating quality ofRed Ruby cattle – within a widercontext of taste and marketdemand, not only in the SouthWest but in London.

The Carol Trewin Award is presented every two years.

Six-thirty in the morning and there’san incessant bellowing under my bed-room window – a plaintive roar anddemand loud as a ship’s foghorn outto sea. It’s day four since I’ve beenhome on my parents’ Cornish farmand Flirt the Red Ruby cow seems tohave miss-set her alarm clock.

Usually, she calls for her morninghandful of rolled barley at 9am on thedot. I’m putting this particular earlymorning caper down to her (obvi-ously wicked) sense of humour.

When not in Cornwall, my dailyroutine involves a quick cuppa, traininto Waterloo and bus to the City ofLondon, where I have been workingas a digital food editor for a contentmarketing agency.

It’s a life far removed from thenatural rhythms of farming and typ-ically doesn’t involve me joining myfather, Raymond, to commune with acow. But Yeomadon Flirt, her as-yet-to-be-named bull calf at foot and themor ning’s hullaballoo are all a directresult of the Carol Trewin FoodWriters Award and a newfoundfamily interest in Red Ruby cattle.

I lay the blame squarely at the doorof Peter Greig, owner with his wifeHenri of Pipers Farm, based justsouth of Cullompton. Through theCarol Trewin Award, I was invited tothe Exeter Food and Drink Festival,where my parents and I tasted some ofPe t e r ’s beef and heard him talk aboutthis docile yet hardy Devon breed.

Red Rubies are stocky, mild-mannered cattle with medium-thickcoats of deep burgundy colour. Cru-cially, in an age of ever-increasinggrain prices when feed like soya istransported to our shores fromhalfway around the world, they pro-duce very high quality eating beef ongrass alone. In her Devon Food Book,Carol Trewin made the same pointand described them as one of thecounty’s great icons, suggesting:“Given the forecast global food short-ages, perhaps the Devon’s day hasc o m e. ”

For Peter, that day arrived 23 yearsago when he and his wife startedworking with the breed; he learned tobutcher and they began drawing asupply of Red Ruby beef from smallfarms nearby. Today, the grass-fedstock sold through their website andbu t ch e r ’s shop are raised on Exmoorand come from 25 small local farms.This neighbourly aspect to thePipers’ story strikes a chord with meand possibly other children of farm-ers from my generation, scared offfarming by diminishing returns andfamily farms long sold. Peter saidthat on returning to his native Kent inthe mid-1980s, they were shocked byhow the patchwork of pre-existing

‘We say truesustainabilityis aboutlinking theproductionof livestockwith thecharacteristicsof the localarea’

Former WMN farming and food editor Carol Trewin died in 2009

family farms, the very fabric of thecountryside, was “almost totallygone”.

As he says, “Generations of farm-ing families learned how to do a lot ofthings by common sense,” so theGreigs hastened to one part of thecountry where those family farmsstill existed, the South West. The bestquality beef comes from a breed athome in its natural environment andwhile the South Devons proved diffi-cult for a one-man-band to butcher,more compact Red Rubies fitted thebill perfectly. “I think BSE threw intostark focus the hazards of industrial-ising ruminant animals. It combinedwith our view that true sustainabilityis about linking the production ofAnna-Marie with her father Raymond Julyan and his dog Sweep in the cow shed at their farm near Truro PICTURE: EMILY WHITFIELD-WICKS