Giant lemons and oranges in Mougins
A zesty blend of Terre Madre, lager, blockchains and mojitos
Hello, and welcome to this week’s news and thoughts from The Lemon Grove and me, Bruce McMichael. In this issue, we’ll take a look at street art in the beautiful in Mougins, a hilltop town in Provence, the storied and fragrant region that of southern France.
And in the briefings you’ll find our first note about the upcoming Terre Madre event in Turin hosted by Slow Food International; take a look at a couple of my recently published articles in iGlobenews and Tonic magazine. And this week’s recipe looks at the mighty mojito, one of the world’s most popular cocktails, and super refreshing in these scorching days.
The Lemon Grove newsletter will be published weekly and will over time include much more from podcasts and videos, to classes and lemon-themed merchandise, travel and recipe tips. Thank you for reading and welcome to the journey, and especially to our Founder members and paid subscribers!
Fruity street art puts French town in a culinary spotlight
Seen from the air MOUGINS looks like a swirl, all red roofs and narrow streets on a Provence hilltop. Seen from the ground its an explosion of colour, flowers, art and people. Provence is a special place. Hot days, persistent winds to drive you mad, rosé wine, craggy sea cliffs and glamorous beach life have attracted artists, writers, perfumers, artists and film makers, to its postcodes for decades. It’s a place I have visited many times and will again.
Mougins itself lies just north of Cannes on the French Riviera. Each year, it hosts an open-air exhibition of monumental art works along its streets. For 2022 Italian sculpture and artist Giuseppe Carta has placed more than 60 giant ‘spicy’ works on twenty sites in the town, concentrated around the old village. He calls his creation process Germination: ‘the sudden, almost magical and abnormal birth of large fruits in polychrome resin, bronze or reflective aluminium. Its lemons, peppers, tomatoes, cherries, strawberries, pomegranates, onions and other olives seduce the whole world’.
The show runs until September 25, 2022 so there’s still plenty of time to visit … I wish!
For more information about Mougins, Giuseppe Carta and his creations, click here.
THE MENU ... FOOD, DRINK, INGREDIENTS, PLACES
Thousands of small-scale farmers, producers and food activists from around the worlds will soon start arriving in Turin, northern Italy to celebrate, learn and build community at the biannual Terre Madre Salon de Gusto. Held in mid-September (22 - 26), Terra Madre is the largest international event dedicated to good, clean and fair food and to food politics and is organised by Slow Food International. A huge food festival runs alongside a series of conferences, talks and workshops. I’ve have been twice before, returning inspired and having tried many new flavours, textures and tastes. This year I’ll be back, and will be writing more about it in this newsletter over the coming weeks. Anyone who has read Dan Saladino’s multi-award winning book ‘Eating to Extinction’ will recognise many of the foods, stories and struggles that Slow Food-supported producers create and face.
For more about the event click here.
To purchase Dan Saladino’s book ‘Eating to Extinction’ click here, for The Lemon Grove’s online bookshop.
READ, WATCH, LISTEN ... SOME RECOMMENDATIONS
Boil down Technology, Entertainment and Design and you’ll find the acronym TED, the hugely successful nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where those three issues converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.
Several years ago I was part of the organising committee for my local TEDx events and attended others including in Exeter, where Deeyah Khan spoke on ‘What we don’t know about Muslim kids’; Danny Dorling talked about how ‘Maps that show us who we are (not just where we’re from)’, and Zia Nath performed a mesmerising sacred sufi dance. If you get the chance to either talk at a TEDx event or sit in the audience … do.
Talks are free to watch and can be accessed here.
Here are three of my favourite talks about FOOD. There are dozens more.
Carolyn Steel, How food shapes our cities. Click here to view.
Aparna Pallavi, Why we need to reclaim vanishing food cultures. Click here to view.
Michael Pollan. A plant’s-eye view. Click here to view.
STOP PRESS ... READ ALL ABOUT IT - VIENNA . BLOCKCHAIN & LAGER
iGlobenews is a Vienna, Austria-based website covering diplomatic and political issues, current affairs and international affairs. Put together in mid-2020 by a team of graduates of the city’s Diplomatic Academy, the website has published three of my articles including the latest about Blockchain technology and whether it can be used to boost food safety and fight food fraud.
Read the article here, and search for ‘Bruce McMichael’ for my previous contributions.
ALSO, check out Tonic, the independent magazine which styles itself as offering ‘A Heady Cocktail of Drink, Travel & Adventure’ … sounds like a life. Issue 3 was recently published and contains one of my features about family history and brewing innovation in the mid-1800s Viewhich led to a revolution in lager production. Other articles include how gin found a home in the Finnish olympics of 1952. Chilled tales of grapefruit, impeccable can design and understanding international tastes. A feature on limoncello, a drink when well made could be served to the gods. The best is made with lemons from the Amalfi Coast, and Capri, Sorrento. These are places of rugged beauty and impossible glamour.
Order your copy of Tonic here.
RECIPE OF THE WEEK
MOJITO … A POTENT MIX OF LIME, MINT & RUM
The cocktail’s origin is shrouded in mystery and suspense. Cuba’s globally famous and beloved cocktail of mint and rum was a favourite of writer Ernest Hemingway placing its creation in the hedonistic days of 1920s Havana. Some drink historians offer up British pirate/ naval hero Sir Francis Drake as the creator, giving the mix a 500-year history. Where he got the soda water as he raided the Spanish Main and Caribbean islands for gold and treasures of native South Americans, already plundered by Spanish conquistadors. But that’s enough about the misty past; what does a mojito conjure up today?
Tradition says the drink has five ingredients: white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint. You can swap out the rum for vodka, but where’s the fun in that?
Served in a highball glass, it’s a delicious combination of citrus, sweetness and minty herbaceous flavours, which all combine to complement the rum.
So why do some bartenders steer away from mojitos? Well, they are fiddly and time-consuming to make, all that muddling and sticky sugar getting on their hands and around their bar area. If you hear one say, ‘Sorry, we’re out of mint’, you’re probably in a bustling bar.
The mint and lime give the drink a breezy, refreshing flavour, while soda water lightens your mojito with a fizzy crispness.
Mojitos taste like a fizzy mint lime drink that’s a bit sweet. You can’t taste the rum (which makes it dangerous!), and it’s incredibly refreshing and easy to drink!
Soda water and club soda are terms for the same product. It’s water that’s been artificially carbonated. Try not to use sparkling mineral water as the taste can be dominated by natural minerals and will have less fizzy zest. However, if that’s all you have, it’s fine to use.
To make a Virgin Mojito, simply leave out the rum. Simple!
Ingredients
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp granulated sugar
Small handful of mint leaves, plus an extra sprig to serve
60ml white rum
Soda water, to taste
Pinch black salt (to taste, optional. Popular in India)
Garnish
Lemon or lime slices
Mint sprig
Muddle (crush in a pestle and mortar, or bowl with a rolling pin) the lime juice, sugar and mint leaves. Add ice to a tall glass. Add mint mix first (black pepper is added here is used) and then the rum combining with a long-handled spoon. Top up with soda water before garnishing with mint and a slice of lime, and serve.
Making & flavour tips
Firm but gentle muddling will reduce possible bitter flavours from the lime membranes seeping into the drink.
Using sugar syrup rather than granules will remove any grittiness from the drink. To make sugar syrup; over a low heat, dissolve 300g caster sugar in 150ml water. Leave to cool. Decant into a sterilised bottle and keep in the fridge until you need it. If using caster sugar, the grain will help crush the mint leaves but will take longer to dissolve in the soda water mix. For a sweet diversion, swap out the sugar syrup for a pineapple, ginger or lemongrass syrup.
Use a golden rum for greater depth. For a full-on tropical experience how about using a coconut rum!
A lovely read and that mojito looks wonderful! I’ll have to make some soon! 💚