Currying Favour

Pulses have long been the base of stews, curries and soups. Julie Harding meets the man who brought lentils back to grow in the UK

- Julie Harding

ARUTTED, bare, baked-earth track lined with hawthorn and soft-pink dog roses leads to a Hertfordshire field that contains Britain’s largest crop of lentils. Overlooked by Arbury Banks Scheduled Monument, the site is sufficiently isolated that it feels like a rural idyll, despite its close proximity to bustling Letchworth Garden City, Hitchin and Stevenage.

The fledgling, wispy, vetch-like lentil plants that were sown here only a month before have yet to gather momentum and properly cover the loamy clay soil that looks parched after a raft of endlessly hot days.

‘It won’t be long before they bulk out and look more dense,’ confirms Josiah Meldrum of Hodmedod, a company he co-founded in 2012, with food-systems specialist Nick Saltmarsh and farmer William Hudson, to supply British-grown beans and pulses to the masses. ‘I feel responsible because I’ve encouraged the farmer to grow the lot.’

Eventually, these green plants will develop purple flowers and then 50–60 pods each, less than half an inch long, with three seeds.