St George's Day

Today is Saint George's Day and an ideal opportunity to remind you of all the wonderful English fare on sale here, and to quickly mention...
we also sell Dragon's Blood!

Saved by the packet!

Last Sunday some friends of mine threw a party for their one-year old son, including lunch for fifteen family and friends. I said I’d help with nibbles to fill the gap between the 10am arrival of some of the guests and the 2pm lunch. I hadn’t really considered that to reach them by 10am, I’d need to leave home by 8am, and I wouldn’t be home from “work” until 9pm the night before. Fortunately, for me, “work” involves being surrounded by food, so grabbing snacks, nuts, dips etc wasn’t too tricky. And better still I could even make something fresh using the packet Pao de Queijo Mix. Within 90 minutes of my alarm going off I was up, washed, dressed, breakfasted, and had mixed, kneeded and baked 25 delicious chewy doughballs, wrapped presents, packed all my goodies and was on my way to Sussex. Thank goodness for packets!

Happy Easter Everyone

Hope everyone has an enjoyable long weekend. I’ve been meaning to post a blog entry about this year's Easter Eggs. But I didn’t order anywhere near as many as I needed and the delicious Italian chocolate eggs have all sold out. I didn’t even get a chance to photograph them, let alone put them on our web site. Oh well, in 11 months time I’ll do it all again (but order 3 times as many).

Easy Does it

Dinner with friends. I was meant to bring rhubarb crumble. But I sold out of rhubarb before taking some for myself and the weather has improved so much that custard no longer seems suitable. Figs on the other hand, are always perfect, and never more so than the spiced fig compote from gustosecco. Just add the pack of figs, rose petals, spices and earl grey tea bag to a pan of orange juice with a bit of honey and bubble away to a thick syrup. I rustled up some spelt, oat and apricot biscuits using things from the cupboard and Sharpham Park's recipe, and served them with the figs and a good sized ball of ice cream. It took no more than 30 minutes to prepare and easily served four people, with plenty of cookies left to enjoy the following week.

Coming Soon...

Last week's organisation has paid off and given me plenty of time this week to finalise the sourcing of some new products. We've some exciting new things appearing over the next few weeks. From France we will have some prepared vegetables (which can accompany our prepared frozen meals and also tins of caussoulet and confit de canard), some interesting jams (apple and jasmine, strawberry and violet), candied rose petals which are wonderful as sweets, cake decorations and also in champagne. Four flavoured salts (with truffle, with red wine, with southern herbs and a Himalayan pink salt). From Italy the tinned cherry tomatoes that we couldn't get hold of last year will be back in stock. From our local producers we will have some new soups and pasta sauces. And there is still more which I am working on at the moment...

Organised!

Thanks to the terrible half term weather, and a bit of ruthless filing, my email inbox is now empty! Now just the 2 inch high pile of paper in tray to overcome before it all starts to get busy again (I hope). I hope everyone is enjoying the half term break (and comes back soon).

Getting Better All The Time

Sales from the online deli we launched last November have gone surprisingly well and have motivated me to try even harder. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of online activity. More products have been added to the online shop, more photographs added to the site, our google listing updated, a facebook page set up and everything generally fluffed up a little. If you haven't visited for a while, take a look now, and motivate me further by increasing my hit count!

Valentine's Day

Its not too late to pick up a Valentine's gift from tastes Delicatessen, we've all sorts of suitable presents from traditional boxed chocolates, to pampering "Love" tea and quirky red popcorn. From "little gesture" pink sugar mice at 75p to "big romantic statement" boxes of chocolates at £35, and plenty in between.

Purple Love Week

Purple Love Week takes place this year from 13th – 21st February. Purple Love Week is now in its fifth year and it celebrates shops, large and small, that offer great food. Purple Love Week was founded by Dorset food company Olives Et Al and this year we are organised enough to get involved as well!

Olives Et Al are the lovely people who supply us with most of our loose olives. And during Purple Love Week we will be increasing the range of Olives Et Al products we sell. We will be trying two new salad dressings, a chilli jelly and some more of their roasted nuts. We're also going to be stocking some of their lovely olives in jars. So now you can keep a jar in the cupboard for emergency olive indulgence when the shop isn't open. We have recipe cards with ideas using all of the Olives Et Al products we stock and will be offering tastings throughout Purple Love Week.

We are starting the sampling with Siena Nuts & Seeds: Peanuts, Almonds, Cashews, Pumpkin & Sunflower seeds tossed in rosemary & chilli.

Networked Deli!

Tastes Delicatessen is now on Facebook. Not quite sure how it all works, but am having a go!


The weekly tastings will be listed on facebook.