Ultra Local Produce

The most local product on sale at Tastes Delicatessen at the moment are the gooseberries. Grown in Tom's "secret garden" less than 50 metres from the shop. Yes metres, not miles!

Tom harvests the fruits every year and usually distributes them among his friends and family (and his trusted deep freeze). Last year he started to supply our shop as well; to give those who he doesn't know a chance to enjoy the delicious tart berries.  Gooseberries don't seem to be available in the supermarkets and there aren't any wild bushes near here, so demand is high. Tom is picking at the moment and I have a waiting list of customers to reserve berries for when he comes in!

This year's supply started last week and already customers are returning for their second batch; having stewed them, made jam, compote and fools. There is something pleasing about being able to create a dish using a fruit picked just hours before and I'm sure the enjoyment is enhanced when you know it is unlikely to be repeated until next year.  I really enjoy hearing about the dishes our customers have created.

Today a customer popped in for spelt flour to create a cake with the gooseberries she bought yesterday. She even bought the recipe with her; from Diana Henry's A Change of Appetite. I had a quick flick through the book. Some really lovely looking dishes in there, mouthwatering and beautifully presented. The gooseberry, almond and spelt cake looks fantastic. If anyone else fancies trying it, the recipe is available online at www.sourdough.co.uk. I think I've found a week's worth of Diana Henry dinner recipes now!

Other gooseberry recipes I've heard good things about include:
Gooseberry Curd from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (while searching for that online I found 3 other good looking Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall gooseberry recipes)
Gooseberry & Vanilla Jam from BBC Good Food.
Gooseberry Fool from Nigel Slater.
Gooseberry & Elderflower Fool from the National Trust.
Gooseberry Cobbler from Delia Smith.
And Tom says just stew them with a bit of water and serve with a dollop of cream.

Infusion Society: Class of 2015

Another academic year is almost over. I'm sure the school holidays didn't come around quite so quickly when I was at school!

With the end of the year imminent, it is the end of another round of Eton College Infusion Society Meetings. Once again a great group of enthusiastic final year pupils signed up for the society and met to discuss and enjoy infusions. Here are some of our best bits...

Drew from Drury Tea and Coffee Company showing the boys how to taste tea like a professional.

John from Norfolk Cordial once again wowing the audience with his fruit infusions and stories of how it all began (and how the business is thriving post Dragon's Den).

Tea consultant Malcolm Ferris-Lay keeping the students enthralled with his tales of the tea industry while they compared darjeelings from different estates, including leaves picked from the original bushes transplanted from China to Darjeeling centuries ago.

Always one to spoil the audience, Malcolm left the boys with samples of Hampstead Tea, and the lucky master in charge of the society some of the most expensive tea in the world.






To round up the year our final guest was William Cartwright-Hignett who, as a pupil at Eton College, founded the Infusion Society back in 2000! Will got in touch with me after reading about the infusions society on this very blog! His "homecoming" included a fascinating talk about his career in tea and the technical aspects of taking a tea to the marketplace, as well as the factors which determine taste.  Of course the boys got to try his own brand of tea; Iford Manor.

We sadly didn't have enough time this year for all the speakers who wanted to attend, so have already booked some for next year, including our first female speaker, Esther Thompson who founded Tea Huggers.

Abandonment

I promise I have not abandoned this blog. I know I've not posted for a while, but I think I have three pretty good excuses. Here goes:

1) The shop has been busy. Really busy. Lots of lovely people buying things, organising picnics, planning weddings.... I need every spare moment, and some, just to order stock to keep the shelves full. It's a brilliant problem to have and I'm not complaining!

2) I have a blog post in progress which, although lengthy, is not quite finished. Those of you who subscribe to this blog by email (there is a box on the right to enter your email address) will have seen a sneak preview a couple of weeks ago. It is still ongoing, and will appear soon.

3) I have carried out a major overhaul of tastesdeli.co.uk, our web site and online deli. It is now "responsive" so changes its appearance depending on whether you visit from a PC, tablet, mobile etc. Clever hey? Still more to do, as ever.

I'll be back!

Eton at Dusk

Knowing that the clocks would be springing forward on Sunday morning, and the skies would be brighter at closing time from next week, I decided to take the scenic route from the shop to the car park on Thursday evening.

I turned right outside Tastes Deli and headed for the river, turning right again onto Brocas Street then under the new Rafts Boathouse flats to the Thames riverside.

The waterfront there was pretty and peaceful with the twinkling lights of Windsor and ballet of swans (I did check that and the internet agrees ballet to be the collective noun for swans). I'm not foolish enough to think the swans were enjoying my company or eager to be photographed. I know they followed in anticipation of food, but their company was a bonus.

I wandered along beside the Thames for a bit, then back across the Brocas to the car park. Only added a few minutes to my commute, but a very pleasant way to spend them.

Next week I shall have to work later if I want to catch the sunset. And next month it might even be warm enough to picnic!

Ortiz all the fuss about?

I mentioned Ortiz Tuna in a blog post last week, which lead me to write this post solely dedicated to a fabulous product. We've been selling Ortiz Yelowfin Tuna and Bonito Tuna since we opened our shop in Eton in 2007. It sits on the shelf and generally attracts one of two comments from customers. Either something like "Wow, you've got Ortiz, I love it" after which the customer buys multiple tins (its not easy to find and lasts for years in the tin) or "[gasp] Five pounds for a tin of tuna!". The latter is always from customers who have never tried it. The problem with this tuna is, that once you do try it, other tins of tuna don't really appeal any more. But if you've only ever seen the tuna in its tin (pretty as the tin is), it is very hard to explain what all the fuss is about. So I'll have a go here. But be warned, there is no going back!

Otriz have been catching and canning fish from the Cantabrian Sea for more than 125 years. The company is still family run. They know the best locations and seasons to fish, and choose only the most tender tuna to guarantee the best quality.

They use traditional fishing techniques, which prevents bruising of the fish and are also sustainable, preventing by-catch and damage to the seabed.


Whole fish are filleted and packed by hand. What you'll find inside each tin are chunks of fish, with a firm smooth texture, not at all grey or mushy. The tuna is taken from the belly of the fish and preserved in olive oil, giving it a rich flavour and silky texture.

It is quite delicious eaten as it is or with very minimal preparation. You certainly don't need to smother this fish in mayonnaise.

You can make a simple pasta dish by frying some onions and peppers throwing in some crumbled tuna and freshly cooked pasta.

For a tuna sandwich or to fill a baked potato you don't need butter or mayonnaise, the oil from the fish adds enough moisture.

Whether or not tuna should be included in a salad nicoise seems up for debate. I found an old discussion on the matter in Intelligent Life Magazine in which Simon Hopkinson gives praise to the Ortiz tuna. If you do add tuna to a nicoise salad, it should be Ortiz tuna! It's also delicious in a rice or white bean salad. When fresh green beans are in season I'm going to try Angela Hartnett's Yellow Bean, Fennel and Tuna Salad Recipe.

Lentils

The job of mine comes with a pretty good "benefits package". One is that I get to taste new products. Which, after nine years, I still love. Even when the new product is a lentil. Really. Let me explain ...

Last week, Katy, from Brindisa, came to see me. She supplies me with lots of lovely Spanish foods and noticed that I've been sticking to the tried and tested favourites for some time;  Ortiz tuna (so good it deserves a post of its own), chorizo, serrano ham, El Navarrico Pulses and Peppers and Santo Domingo Smoked Paprika amongst other things. All fantastic. But Katy knew of some other products we don't sell as Tastes, so popped in with samples. First out of her goody bag were some lentils from El Navarrico.

El Navarrico is a family run business that has been preserving vegetables and pulses since the 1950s.  Today, new generations of El Navarrico continue the traditional processes and define themselves as “craftsmen of the farm”. El Navarrico always guarantee a unique product, treated with the wisdom of time as well as with the best quality systems. Their chickpeas are especially popular with our customers; plump, soft and flavoursome. The alubia blanca make fabulous baked beans, and it isn't until you taste the judion de la granda that you realise why their English name is Butter Beans.

As with everything I sample, I don't just open a packet, taste and make a decision. I take things home, I use them as I expect my customers to use them. And so it was that the jar of lentils came home with me. The first thing I made was an accompaniment to some sea bass fillets. A very simple, quick meal in which the texture and flavour of the lentils really shone. Delicious and so very easy.

For two generous portions:
Fry one chopped onion and one sliced bulb of fennel until starting to brown.
Season and start to pan fry some sea bass fillets (we shared three fillets between two).
Add the zest and juice of a lemon to the onion/fennel pan (I probably should have saved some lemon zest to go on the fish).
Add half a jar of lentils to the onion/fennel (they are well packed in the jar, you'll need to dig in with a spoon to free them!).
Serve lentil mix with fish on top.

Thoroughly enjoyed.

I also wanted to see how the lentils worked in a cold salad. Limited by what was in my fridge on a wet Monday lunch time I made this:

Make up 75g of cous cous with 150ml boiling water.
Fluff it up and let it cool while you chop three cherry tomatoes into quarters and wash and chop a small bunch of watercress. You can add more tomatoes, but I only had three. Rocket would also work well here, but I had a bunch of watercress a customer ordered and didn't collect.
Make a dressing by mixing a tablespoon of basil pesto with teaspoon of red wine vinegar.
Mix cous cous with 200g lentils, tomatoes and rocket.
Drizzle the dressing over the salad, mix in and season.

Really delicious. The bite of the lentil goes perfectly with the smaller grain of the cous cous and the crunch of the vegetables.The shape and colour contrast beautifully and these lentils taste nice. Not bland bulking fillers, but tasty little beads.

There were still lentils left in the jar after making two salads and two mains. They seem never-ending, but in a very good way. Coming to Tastes Deli soon!

Fast Food

I like to cook. But I also like to work in my shop, which sometimes doesn't leave a lot of time for cooking. You've probably noticed by now that most of the recipe suggestions I post here and on pinterest are not really recipes, but more ideas of what things you can throw together to create something tasty. I like to think that still counts as cooking.

This dish is another example of things hurriedly thrown together and tasting great. It's one of my favourite super-fast emergency-dinners made entirely from things I can grab on my way out of the door of my shop!

Boil saucepan of water and throw in really good quality slow dried pasta (it cooks in less than five minutes). I used some squid ink tagliatelle from our new Casa Grande range.
Meanwhile get everything else ready: chop a handful of sun dried tomatoes (or open a jar of the pre-chopped sun-dried tomatoes), flake some of Mike's Smokehouse manuka smoked salmon fillets (I used one starter size pack to serve two of us) and open a jar of pesto.
When the pasta is cooked, drain it and return it to the hot pan.
Throw in the tomatoes, and salmon and a tablespoon of pesto.
Give it a good stir and serve, seasoning with some freshly ground black pepper.

I know I can make this in less time than it takes to get a take away delivered.

Wraps

Here are a couple of very quick and simple meal ideas which I'd forgotten about until I found these photographs on my memory card.

Recipe 1: Chicken Wraps

• Marinate thin strips of chicken in Capsicana burrito sauce over night.
• Fry chicken.
• Add strips of pepper to pan and fry.
• Warm re-fried beans.
• Place beans, chicken and peppers onto soft tortilla wrap.
• Roll up.
• Serve with salad and sweetcorn (optional).
• (Optionally) Take very bad photograph really quickly in hurry to commence dinning (see below)!

 

Recipe 2: Fish Wraps

As above. Replace chicken with white fish.

I actually preferred the second version. The lime flavour in the burrito sauce was much more prominent with the fish, and rather lovely!

Introducing Birch Syrup

Last week I met Ross, a tree tapper, amongst other things. He owns a forest in the Voru region of Estonia, and uses traditional methods to extract the sap from his birch trees to create a delicious birch syrup. At the moment he is the only person in Europe to do this commercially. It is hugely labour intensive, but Ross clearly loves it and the resulting product is worth all the effort involved.

Birch syrup is made in much the same way as maple syrup; rising sap is extracted from the trees in the spring and converted into a syrup using a process of evaporation and reverse osmosis to remove the water. Ross powers his equipment by burning the wood from naturally fallen trees.  He believes the other carbon emissions from his production (transport, bottles etc) is less than that which his forest absorbs, making this a carbon neutral or possibly even carbon negative product.

 

The finished product is unique and delicious.  Depending on when the birch sap is extracted from the trees, the resulting syrup tastes quite different. The early syrup is ideal on pancakes, porridge, or anywhere you might use honey or maple syrup. It is delicate and sweet, with an intriguing woody, caramel, liquorice like flavour.  The syrup extracted later in the season (and by later I only mean a matter of weeks) is used more like a savoury condiment. It has an even greater depth of flavour, is more robust, though still sweet, minerally rather than woody and more savoury than a maple syrup.  Late birch syrup can be used in sauces, dressings and gravies, to flavour home made beer, mixed into gin for a dirty martini or as a substitute for good balsamic. Late birch syrup is almost entirely fructose, giving it a very low glycaemic index. It also contains lots of minerals including calcium, thiamine and magnesium.

It takes around 120 litres of birch sap to create each litre of birch syrup (far far more than with maple syrup which requires only 30-40 litres) and the sap can only be collected for a few weeks each spring, when the birch trees are using sugar to produce new leaves. You can see why this, one of the oldest sources of sugar known to man, is rarely harvested nowadays! Ross only taps his trees every three years and only extracts around 10% of the trees sap each time. This way his forest continues to thrive.  It is coming up to harvest time right now, and Ross is readying himself for a frantic period of tapping. But before he heads back to Estonia, he delivered some birch syrup to Tastes, where it is now on sale. 

The Philosophy of Best

Last month's awards season inspired blog post was one of the best yet in terms of stimulating conversations with customers and suppliers alike.  Customers have delighted in seeing some of their favourites mentioned and some have been tempted to try new things. The lovely people at Stockans, were so pleased to have been most popular savoury biscuit that they are sending me a box of goodies so I can offer samples to customers soon (I'll let you know when).

What I enjoyed about writing the post was that I got to mention a surprisingly large number of  products we've been selling for years and years. Things which were new before I started announcing new and exciting things on facebook and twitter. It was a great opportunity to mention some old favourites, but also showed how hard it can be for new products to "break through".  Which could be seen as a downside of a loyal local customer base. Once they find something they like, customers return again and again and again. Usually extending their shopping to other non-competing products, but never replacing the original. Fortunately the compact size of the shop means I don't really have many competing products, everything I have is the best in its (sometimes very small) field!  Which reminds me...

Each summer we are visited by lots of Japanese students, who almost without fail will ask "what is the most popular ...". Which is a question I've only ever been asked by the Japanese students or people wanting to source lines for their own deli. I'm not sure if that is a Japanese cultural thing, or just because most of the students I see come from the Eton College Summer Schools where they are learning English from the same people. Or maybe they are all aspiring deli-owners!

At first, I didn't think they were asking the right question. Why would they want the most popular tea? Why not the best tea? Or the smokiest tea? Or the most refreshing tea? Or the lightest tea?

But they might have the right idea. Best is so subjective and we rarely have more than one version of the same thing; we think they are all the best they can be. I couldn't objectively answer "which is the best".  Describing exactly what you think is best in a foreign language is tricky. So why not choose the most popular. Hundreds of local shoppers can't all be wrong! Its taken me years to realise this, the value of the crowd.

I shall update you on the 2015 best sellers next year. To see your favourite product excel just come along and buy lots of it ;) Online sales count as well!