BigBarn has been going for more than 7 years now. During that time we’ve added 7,500 local producers and retailers to our interactive map, and have become the UK’s definitive source of information about local food. There has also been a huge surge in interest about local food, fuelled by everything from food scares to environmental concerns.

So we’ve decided to take the natural next step in our development by allowing you to start buying food from local producers online. We’ve teamed up with local food consultants F3 and our many partners to create localfoodshop.co.uk. Localfoodshop is a place where all the producers we know about, and even the ones we don’t, can set up an online stall, from where you can buy good, honest, local produce.

More than £3 billion is being spent online on food in the UK every year now, but of course the vast majority of that is going to the big supermarkets. So we decided that it was time to help the little guys fight back. Everyone who sells their products through Localfoodshop will receive 93% of the price you pay. Compare that to the supermarkets.

Localfoodshop has only just opened its doors and we’d like you to be the first people to visit it. It’s not perfect yet, but we’ve already got just short of 200 producers and 3,000 products for you to choose from, so hopefully you’ll find something in your area. But the more you support Localfoodshop, the more it, and, most importantly, the producers on it, can grow. With everyone pulling together, we hope that one day it will become a viable alternative to the supermarket shopping online.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s not such a wild claim. The Times has already written an article about our plans and on Saturday there will be an article about us in The Telegraph. People, including the media, want to unite behind an organisation that’s prepared to fight the cause of local food at a national level.

Ultimately, the success or otherwise of Localfoodshop will depend on you. That’s why it’s so important to us that you’re the first to visit it. Please be patient and let us know what you think. Please also tell your local producers about localfoodshop next time you visit them. Together, we can make it happen.

Apples and pears, apples and pears…I’m trying to think of something innovative to show-case my two favourite fruits (next to my utterly unseasonal new-found love of grapefruit). There are just too many delicious ways to use them; a simple stand-alone salad of hazels, goat’s cheese and pear or a crisp, crunchy one of fennel, apple and radish to accompany fish; poached pears with hot chocolate sauce, apples sliced thinly and fanned onto a sheet of puff pastry, baked for a matter of minutes. It’s only eleven in the morning and I’m starving already – my mind is all awash with thoughts of sweet sour hot apples and pears.

Crumble and I were ancient enemies; I couldn’t get the balance quite right. Sweet to sharp, crumble to fruit, butter to flour. More often than not I end up with a thick, dry wedge of crumble and not enough fruit to cut through it. Finally though, I appear to be winning the battle. Crumble nil, William one.

You can vary this as you please, but you may end up letting the crumble win. Swap the biscuits out for ginger nuts, add some stem ginger to the fruit or change the fruit for whatever you happen to have.

Apple and Pear Crumble

Serves 6-8 hungry people
Prep time: 15 minutes, cooking 35.

Ingredients:

Crumble:
80g butter, chilled
60g rattafia/amaretti biscuits
100g muesli
150g self-raising flour
25g ground almonds
100g demerara sugar

Fruit filling:
500g Bramley apples
250g Cox’s apples
250g Conference pears
75g sultanas
30g dark brown sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

The easiest way to make the crumble is in a food processor. Put all the ingredients except the muesli into the bowl and whizz the mixture up until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Next, fold in the muesli – you don’t want to blend it as you will lose the texture of the lovely oats. That’s your crumble made.

Peel and core the fruit, chopping it into fairly thin slices, a few millimetres thick. In the bottom of a large dish, mix in the sultanas and sugar, folding the mixture gently together so as not to break up the fruit. Pour the crumble mixture over the top, pressing down gently and ensuring everything is evenly covered.

Bake the crumble in the oven for 35 minutes, and then rest for a few, as it will be scorching inside. Give everyone a large spoonful and serve with lots of ice cream, custard or cream. Or all three, if you’re feeling piggy.
© William Leigh

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for pumpkins. Most of them end up candle-singed and smashed, cracked smiles and split faces, thrown away, which is a real shame if you’ve ever eaten one. They are rich, sweet, versatile and incredibly simple to cook with. Use them in curries, roast them and mash them with a fork, turn them into soup. I’ve even seen them deep fried and turned into chips. They work wonderfully well in risotto, their sweet, heady aroma bringing with it all kinds of lovely memories.

When I cut open a pumpkin the smell brings me instantly to autumn; even a squash in September can invoke those little thoughts of sparklers in the garden, sausages on sticks and bonfires, smoke and cold air hitting my nose. For me, they signify a turning point in the year, and a barrage of edible delights to come. This month all the greats start to come into season too; root vegetables come into their own, we’ve got mushrooms a-plenty, walnuts, chestnuts and hazels, my favourite game bird, the pheasant, and all of our brilliant British orchard fruits, my particular obsession being the pear. It’s a wonderful culinary run up to Christmas. I love this time of year � I can get the big pots out and start making stews again, slow cooking red-cabbage, hearty, rich dishes designed to comfort and fortify.

This week I’ve written a recipe to show you a new way to use up that pesky pumpkin. Don’t throw it away, eat it! You can easily double up the quantities for the recipe to serve four. If you don’t feel like making the rosti, then just cut the pumpkin into large chunks, sprinkle it with the chilli and roast it for forty-five minutes or so, then mash it with fork.

Sausages with Pumpkin Rosti and Wild Mushrooms

Serves 2

Ingredients:

4 sausages
500g pumpkin
1 medium to large potato
50g butter
Half an onion
2 chestnut mushrooms
a handful of wild mushrooms
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
Glass of red wine
Pinch of chilli flakes

Preheat your oven to 180. I tend to roast my sausages in the oven just for ease; doing them in a pan gets a bit messy sometimes. They should take about 40 to 45 minutes. Pop the sausages on a roasting tray and put them in the oven. Slice up the onion and chestnut mushrooms and put them in a pan with some olive oil over a low heat. Let them caramelise slowly for about twenty minutes.

While they are doing that, cut up the pumpkin. Do this carefully; sit it flat on a surface and insert a big knife into the top, cutting down through it. Skin it and take the seeds out. You can reserve the seeds and toast them at a later stage if you wish. Grate the pumpkin. Peel and do the same with the potato. Mix the two together in a bowl with some salt and pepper. Melt the butter and add it to the rosti mix. Try not to great the potato too long before you want to cook as it can turn black and become rather unappetising.

Check on the onions; they should be soft and golden by now. Add the vinegar, let it bubble for a moment or two, then add the wine and the chilli flakes. Leave it over the same moderate heat to reduce to a rich syrup. Take an oven-proof frying pan or round roasting dish and place it over a medium heat. Melt a little butter in it and pop in the pumpkin-potato mixture. It should be between 1 and 1 1/2 centimetres thick; leave it on the heat for a few minutes, then pop it in the oven. You can make individual portions if you have chef’s rings or very small frying pans; doing it whole is just as good. The rosti will take about 20-25 minutes. You can flip them half way through if you like.

In a separate frying pan, melt some butter or olive oil over a high heat. Check your wild mushrooms for dirt, and then throw them in the pan, allowing them to colour for a few minutes. When they are done, fish them out and pop them in with the onion and mushroom mixture. If this is still quite liquid turn the heat up for a few minutes and let it boil right down � you are looking for something with a texture more like a chutney than a sauce.

If you’ve done one large rosti, cut it into wedges and serve with sausages on the side and a spoonful of the mushroom and onion mixture on top. The sharpness of the onions, rich sausages and sweet pumpkin set each other off wonderfully.
© William Leigh

As far as we are concerned we define ‘local’ as being ‘as local as possible’. Many Farmers Markets have a rule that everything sold should come from within 30 mile radius of the market, in some cases this includes the ingredients. As a result the only marmalade you can buy at some markets is onion marmalade.

We think this is silly. We want local food producers to compete with the big retailers and meet the needs of local consumers. If someone goes to the supermarket instead of going to the farmers market because they have marmalade on their shopping list, the farmers market has lost a customer and the local economy has lost the income.

We want suppliers to source a complete range of products from producers as close as possible and be able to pass on the ’story’ of the food. Cheese is a classic example we have more varieties of cheese than the French but not every part of the country has a cheese producer. Not yet.

We want to encourage local trade and demand and help farmers react by growing more produce and a wider range, improving the diversity and sustainability of agriculture throughout the UK. Bedfordshire Blue coming soon!

Do your bit by looking for producers on BigBarn and shopping locally wherever possible. You will get better, fresher food and probably save money.