I know what I did last summer

While everyone else was planning for the BBQ summer, I was planning for Christmas; specifically what we were going to be stocking at Tastes. And while the BBQ summer didn't turn out to be as long or as summery as we'd hoped, I think Christmas is still on the cards.

One thing I learnt a lot about is turkey (the bird, not the place).
Did you know turkeys have a reputation for being dry and needing basting just because we eat immature birds with no fat?
Or that turkeys are game birds whose flavour and texture improves when they are left to hang?
Or that frozen birds are usually injected with water, which does nothing to improve the meat, but does make them heavier (and therefore more expensive)?
Or that "free-range" turkeys might only be outdoors for a few weeks towards the end of their lives?

Everything I've learnt points towards Copas turkeys being best for flavour, animal welfare and the environment, and those are the turkeys we will be selling this year.

The Copas family have been producing luxury turkeys in Cookham, Berkshire (less than 10 miles from Tastes) every year since 1957, when Tom Copas left school & raised his first flock for Christmas.

Nowadays Tom's three daughters & son are more involved in the family business on a day-to-day basis than he is, however the same care and artisan methods are still used and their turkeys have been acclaimed by TV celebrity chefs and discerning foodies alike; "fantastic" (The Hairy Bikers), "a king amongst turkeys" (Tom Parker-Bowles), "seriously pampered" (Daily Mail), "super & flavoursome" (Lydia Slater).

This year they have already scooped a national award for Health & Welfare in Poultry (Pig & Poultry Marketing Magazine Awards 2010), their Free Range Organic turkeys have been commended in the Organic Food Awards and their Free Range Bronze turkeys have been awarded Two Gold Stars in the Great Taste Awards. In the past, Rick Stein has listed the Copas family as one of his Food Heroes, Farmers Weekly named them Poultry Producer of the Year & their turkeys were short listed in the Daily Telegraph Best UK Food awards.

All Copas Turkey flocks are made up of naturally slow-growing breeds sourced from British hatcheries. Over twenty-five different varieties of traditional breeds have been selected for Christmas 2010 to provide both natural diversity and achieve a full range of beautifully finished adult birds, in all weight categories.

Turkeys are raised on a high quality cereal-based diet, rich in oats and free of growth promoters. Fully mature turkeys have the benefit of a deliciously dense meat, along with a natural fat layer under the skin which helps retain moisture whilst cooking - succulence without the need for basting!

In December, turkeys are dry-plucked by hand and hung like a game bird for two weeks in the old-fashioned way. This enables the rich, traditional flavours to develop fully, ensuring the finest taste and texture for Christmas day.

Each Copas turkey comes in its own carry-home box, complete with everything required to cook both the turkey (cooking instructions & a handy pop-up cooking timer) & the gravy (giblets, fresh rosemary & a traditional recipe) perfectly - no matter what your culinary experience.

Chocolate Week

This week is chocolate week and what better time for us to start stocking "probably the best Chocolate in the world".

Ben Tre chocolate took an amazing 3 gold stars (the highest accolade) at the Great Taste Awards this year. The cocoa is grown by a co-operative in southern Vietnam, the unrefined sugar is grown on a family-owned plantation in Peru and the transformation from bean to chocolate takes place at an old-style third generation chocolatier in Avignon, France, using a recipe created by artisan chocolatier Marc Demarquette. It is pretty special chocolate!

To celebrate the success of this 2010 vintage bean, two limited edition bars have been produced. A dark chocolate bar (70%, and dairy free) and a milk chocolate bar (40%). The bars have a wonderful aroma, are richly flavoured and slightly spicy, melt slowly and leave a smooth after taste. And not only that, but they are raising money for Action Against Hunger as well! Action Against Hunger is an international organisation that specialises in feeding starving children. £1 from every bar sold goes to help Action Against Hunger continue their valuable work.

“This chocolate bar benefits everyone from the sustainable, small-scale producers in Vietnam to the five million people Action Against Hunger supports each year. We encourage all food lovers to make a difference by purchasing this very special product,” said Heidi Drummond from Action Against Hunger.

I can mention Thanks Giving though?

I'm not going to mention Christmas again for a while, but I do need to talk about Thanks Giving. I am very pleased to say that this year we will have Libby's Canned Pumpkin in stock. I have been promised that it is on a boat at this very moment and should arrive here next week! And to further delight our North American customers, we will have some Turkeys available for Thanks Giving as well. I am mentioning it now, as the Turkeys will only be available if ordered before the end of October. They will come from the same flock as our Christmas Turkeys; those pampered, free-range, birds currently frolicking in the cherry orchards and grass meadows over in Cookham. If you’d like to order a locally reared, Two Gold Star Great Taste Award winning, Thanks Giving bird, please get in touch.

Is it too soon to mention Christmas?

Would you believe it, we're almost ready for Christmas? That's what happens when you start planning in July! It's all quite exciting, but now the ordering is complete, we can sit back and wait a couple of months before the stock room fills up with tinsel covered stock. This year we are expanding our Christmas range quite dramatically and trying to stock everything we are legally allowed to (so sadly no fine wines*). We’ll have fresh, locally reared, free-range Turkeys available to order, all the vegetables to roast including stalks of brussel sprouts, chestnuts, cranberry sauce, Christmas puddings, brandy butter, mince meat and mince pies, sides of smoked salmon, whole cheeses such as Baby Stilton and Mont D'Or, alongside an extended selection from our usual range of artisan cheese, whole hams (Serrano and British honey roast), pickled onions, crackers, Italian panettone, handmade fruit cakes, brandy snaps, mulled wine syrup, and more.

And then we also have some great gifts, from sugar mice, candy canes and gingerbread men, to gift bags and boxes of chocolates and confectionery, and of course our usual range of fabulous preserves, oils, vinegars, biscuits, teas, coffee... We'll also be offering our popular hampers and gift boxes, along with gift baskets.

But I don't want to wish the autumn away, so now the orders have been placed with our suppliers, that's the last time I am going to think about Christmas for at least a month.

*But the Eton Bridge Wine Company has moved even closer to us so you can always order your wine from Mark and pick it up when you collect the turkey.

Summer is for Weddings

I love a good wedding, and I really enjoy making unique wedding "cakes" from beautiful artisan cheeses. I like the giant logic puzzle that the task involves, finding a cheese that is "just right", not to big, not too small, not to mild, not too strong, not too yellow, not too grey, not too soft, not too hard, but "just right". I like combining all those "just right" cheeses to create a balanced cheese board and I like meeting the couples that love cheese so much, they are making it a feature at their celebrations.

It feels as though the big wedding/civil partnership season is drawing to a close. We've had a good "season" with plenty of orders for a variety of differently themed weddings. Far more than in previous years. I can't deduce that the fashion for cheese wedding cakes is growing. We have done a lot more (i.e. some!) marketing this year, we're now selling cheese wedding cakes online and we've also built on our reputation, providing cheese towers for couples who attended weddings where we had provided the cheese in the past. Now I just need to get photographs of the cheese towers we made this summer online, in time for next summer's orders.

There must be another family gathering in the winter months? Cheese Christmas Cake anyone? New Year's Eve Cheese Tower?

County Delicacies Closed

Just heard that another of the independent delis in Berkshire has closed. Sadly County Delicacies in Reading shut its doors for the last time last Thursday. If anyone East of Reading is looking for their fix of Barkham Blue, or Wigmore or something else delicious, do pop into Tastes in Eton (or give us a call). If you are missing something we don't currently stock we'll do our best to source it for you.

Getting Smarter!

I'm trying very hard to keep abreast of modern technology. We do have a facebook page, and an online shop. We don't twitter (yet) and haven't quite managed to get the GPS stamp part of facebook to work (apparently "they" need to do something).

Each time I think I'm getting there, something new comes along! Pleasingly the new google GPS type thing available on smartphones seems to work automatically without any effort from me. That is the sort of technological advance I like.

Thanks to Graham for showing me what Tastes looks like on a smartphone.

Britains favourite topic of conversation

Can you believe it is the middle of August? It is incredibly dark and wet in Eton today. And people running with umbrellas aren't all that likely to pop into the deli for a delicious morsel. I've had to resort to paperwork and photographing the rain!

Update

This week I've been working on the Tastes Delicatessen web site. I've resisted the urge to redesign it (although I was tempted) and have forced myself to concentrate on adding new stock to the online shop. There is so much still to describe, it is a daunting task, and it is easy to get side tracked by one particular product. But I remained focussed and now have more than 150 products listed (which isn't even 10% of what is available in store, but is progress in the right direction). If you’ve been buying things from the real or online shop, do pop by the web site and leave your product feedback.

Go local with The Times

The "Go local" campaign is coming to an end next Friday (13th). So anyone who has been collecting the tokens to save £5 at Tastes Delicatessen, should pop along or place their order online within the next week.