Video: Fairtrade Cooking Challenge with Acorn House's top eco chef

As part of our Fairtrade Fortnight celebrations we challenged Arthur Potts Dawson, the executive chef of sustainable restaurants Acorn House and Water House, to cook a starter, a main course and a dessert mainly using Fairtrade ingredients.

We also invited Hannah Reed, the campaigns coordinator at the Fairtrade Foundation, to come along to keep an eye on us -- and to taste Arthur's efforts at the end.

In our search for Fairtrade ingredients for Arthur's cooking challenge, we found the following certified products:

Avocados - £2.09 for two - Marks & Spencer
Bananas - £1.29 - Waitrose
Basmati rice (organic) - £1.39 - Sainsbury's
Bart Ground Ginger - £0.93 - Sainsbury's
Bart Mixed Spice - £1.15 - Sainsbury's
Bart Vanilla Pods - £1.98 - Sainsbury's
Billington's sugar - £0.89 - widely available
Cardamom Pods £1.89 - Sainsbury's
Clementines - £1.59 - Sainsbury's
Coffee (Rwandan ground)- £2.69 - M&S
Divine Dark Chocolate - £1.35 - widely available
Earl Grey Tea - £1.39 - M&S
Fruit Passion Orange Juice  - £0.99 - Sainsbury's
Liberation Nuts - £1.00 - Sainsbury's
Malbec red wine - 5.99 - Sainsbury's
Mango - £1.59 - Sainsbury's
Oranges - £1.59 - Sainsbury's
Peppercorn refill - £1.79 - Sainsbury's
Pineapple £2.49 - Waitrose
Pinot Grigio white wine- 4.99 - Sainsbury's
Rowse Honey - £2.19 - Sainsbury's
Swiss organic dark chocolate (organic) - £1.39 - Waitrose
Swiss organic milk chocolate with hazelnuts (organic) - £1.39 - Waitrose
White Rum (organic) - £11.99 Sainsbury's

While Arthur used a lot of the ingredients, he felt most of them were "dessert ingredients" and decided to use some of our back-up non-Fairtrade stuff, such as broccoli, carrots, butter, milk and flour. He thought solely using Fairtrade ingredients wouldn't do them justice.

Being an eco chef at heart, Arthur explained to us how he sees Fairtrade's role on the British scene: "I like to add Fairtrade -- a bit like salt and pepper to my main ingredients, which are mostly vegetables and which are always organic and local," he said.

"I think organic and local food in Britain is supporting a local framework of people in local communities, which is what Fairtrade does in developing countries. So really what we're doing is not only looking further afield to support farmers, we're also looking to our own country to support people that are growing locally here. That's the reason why the carrots and the broccoli as will play a part in the meal I'm going to make today."

At home as well as at Acorn House and Water House, Arthur uses Fairtrade ingredients whenever he can or if it's produce that can't be sourced from within the UK.

At the end of all the cooking, we tasted the goodies and we must admit Arthur's idea of not just using Fairtrade ingredients worked brilliantly. By introducing just the few non-Fairtrade ingredients he managed to create three delicious dishes. Out of ten possible points, Hannah awarded the avocado starter nine points, the pilaf main course, eight, and the outstanding dessert got the grand total of ten points.

In the video, we mention Divine Chocolate and Liberation Nuts, which are two quite special Fairtrade companies, as the cocoa and nut farmers respectively are shareholders. We really like that rather than just selling their produce to Western Fairtrade companies, they actually own nearly half of the companies.

Unfortunately there are no Fairtrade-certified olive oils at the moment, and it's difficult to cook without one. Luckily we found the fantastic Zaytoun Extra Virgin Olive Oil from the Olive Co-op, which sells fairly traded goods from the Palestinian territories including dates, almonds, herbs, soap and of course the Zaytoun olive oil.

If you fancy giving Fairtrade cooking a go, but haven't quite got Arthur's creativity, try the Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook, which is jam-packed with yummy recipes that are relatively easy to make.

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