Buy the best and taste the difference

compete with shopping from the craftspeople. Catherine Brown looks at

the findings of a food sleuth

HENRIETTA GREEN: food lover, food sleuth and food critic, regards

shopping as the essence of good food. Buying the best you can afford has

been the ethos of her trawl through the shops and markets of Britain

which has taken her from The Duchy of Cornwall Oyster Farm to the Summer

Isles Smokery in Achiltibuie and has produced The Food Lovers' Guide to

Britain.

In the days when notable British chefs shopped in Rungis in Paris, and

to hell with the cost, few were aware that British producers also had

some foods which were worth buying. Working in PR, and given the task of

finding supplies of good British food for a London hotel, she uncovered

a rich vein of native produce. Why did no one know about it?

Her first foray into food guiding became British Food Finds (1989)

aimed at putting British caterers in touch with British food producers,

and it won her the Andre Simon Food Book Award for the year. Now she has

taken the format of the Good Food Guide and produced a book which is

both a good guide and a good read.

While not dismissing supermarket shopping, she sees this first and

foremost as shopping for mass-produced food. It cannot compete, she

maintains, with shopping from the craftspeople. The farmers and growers

who have persevered with raising old-fashioned breeds of animals, known

for their richness and depth of flavour; growing vegetable and fruit

varieties for taste rather

than appearance and yield; making cheeses with unpasteurised milk by

hand; and boiling up whole fruit in small batches to make fruity jams.

''If anyone tries to tell you that Britain suffers from a dearth of

quality producers,'' she says, ''just don't believe them -- there are

hundreds.''

There are also, she admits, some who have jumped on the bandwagon of

hand-made-and-homespun with less commitment than she would wish. She

does not include those who cut corners for the sake of cost. She is not

impressed with pretty labels and old-fashioned images which front-up

products whose integrity is in doubt. She is not afraid to air

contentious issues.

Take ice-cream: ''Seemingly hundreds of farms make and sell ice-cream.

The reason is simple: farmers want to 'add value' to their milk and we,

the general public, are only too happy to buy a 'farmhouse' product.

Closer inspection reveals that these ice-creams are not any different

from those made in a factory.

''Granted, some do have a higher dairy fat content, but most contain

stabilisers and emulsifiers added to prolong shelf-life and to make the

ice-cream hold together -- not a very 'farmhouse' approach.''

Other issues which she delves into include the business of natural

versus artificial flavouring. The anomaly in our labelling laws which

allows a chemically-prepared flavouring, which is ''nature identical'',

to pass for natural, allowing producers to claim ''no artificial

flavouring''.

''I am not suggesting that these chemically identical flavours are

harmful,'' she says, ''but they are misleading and, more to the point,

they taste synthetic. If I buy a farmhouse ice-cream, for instance, I

want it to taste fresh and to be made with fresh ingredients that come

from a farm, not a laboratory.''

Though her Scottish trawl may not have been as thorough as her English

and Welsh efforts, nevertheless Scotland wins three of her 1993 ''Best''

in Britain awards. ''Best Cheese'' goes to Bonchester, ''Best Miller''

is Donald MacDonald in Alford, ''Best Smoker'' is Keith Dunbar in

Achiltibuie.

Festive shoppers may be interested to know that she awards ''Best

Chocolates'' to Melchoir in Devon, ''Best Cakes'' to Mrs Gill's in

Devon, ''Best Ham and Bacon'' to Richard Woodall in Cumbria, and ''Best

Sweets'' to the Toffee Shop, Cumbria.

To date, this is the best attempt to put Britain's most notable food

produce on the map.

Bonchester Cheese, Bonchester Bridge, Hawick, Roxburghshire (045-086

635); Montgarrie Mill, Montgarrie, Alford, Aberdeenshire (09755 62209);

Summer Isles Foods, Achiltibuie, Ullapool, Ross-shire (085-482 353);

Melchoir, Chittlehampton, Devon (0769 540643); Mrs Gill's Country Cakes,

Unit 1 & 5 Link House, Leat Street, Tiverton, Devon (0884 242744);

Richard Woodall, Lane End Waberthwaite, nr Millom, Cumbria (0229

717237); The Toffee Shop, 7 Brunswick Road, Penrith, Cumbria (0768

62008).

* Henrietta Green's Food Lovers' Guide to Britain, BBC Books, #9.99.