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New stone baked loaves from Staff of Life |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:05 AM
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Local favourite artisan baker Simon Thomas, of the Staff of Life bakery, has greatly expanded his capacity and range by converting a listed former Smokehouse in Kendal into a new bakery with a fantastic 25 tonne wood fired brick oven. The oven reaches as much as 450° C when it is first heated up, according to Simon. "We pile wood to the top of the fire box to start out and after only 3 or 4 minutes of burning we have to put more wood in again".
The impetus to set up the new bakery came when regional food and drink store chain Booths wanted to sell more Staff of Life bread than what they were already taking from Simon's exi ...
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Sharrow Bay head chef moves to Harvey Nick's – for a week |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Monday, September 21, 2009 2:45 PM
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It seems Sharrow Bay has struck up a lasting culinary relationship with Knightsbridge top shop Harvey Nichols. Head chef Mark Teasdale heads south at the end of this week to show well-to-do Londoners what Cumbria can offer on a plate. This is what the press release said:
"Sharrow Bay has once again been picked to showcase its Michelin star cuisine at the prestigious Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor restaurant in Knightsbridge as part of the British Food Fortnight celebrations. Running from Friday 25th September to Thursday 1st October, Sharrow Bay Head Chef, Mark Teasdale, will be joining Fifth Floor Executive Chef, Jonas Karlsson, in the Harvey Nichols kitchens. Using the best of Cumbrian produce, they will display their own distinctive style of cooking through a range of collaborative menus especially created for the occasion. The menus will feature some of Sharrow's signature dishes, such as, their sell-out dessert from last year; the world famous stick ...
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September is Damson Time! |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:38 PM
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There are few crops that do really well in the Cumbrian climate and geography, but the damsons grown in the Lyth and Winster Valleys are a notable exception. These are part of the plum family, but smaller and with a distinctive tart flavour. In September the fruit is ready for harvest, and you can buy fresh damsons straight from the farms. Damsons came to Britain with the Romans - you often find damson trees around sites of Roman camps.
Today damsons are popularly used to make damson gin, and each farm makes it for their own use. At Cowmire Hall in Winster Valley, Victoria and Oliver Barratt produce and sell a damson gin with fruit from their own orchard. The damsons are steeped in cane sugar and then added to gin, blended specially for Cowmire Hall. This ruby ...
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Great food at Westmoreland Show |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Thursday, September 10, 2009 8:00 PM
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How lucky were the organisers – the first stunningly beautiful day for yonks. Unsurprisingly, the sun brought the crowds...and it took me two and a half hours to get from Low Sizergh Barn to the show car park. Never mind, it was a great day, and the food marquee was buzzing.
Newcomer Kendal Cordials here - Mike and Helen Hindle produce a variety of cordials out of their home...I tried the Lime and it was gorgeous. Give these guys a try when you get a chance. We'll come back with more info when we have it.
Some of the other usual suspects...Gerald Fowler of the Chilli Pepper Company, encouraging some young foodies to give his hot stuff a try. In ...
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Keep an eye out for a great new delivery service – for local food! |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Thursday, September 10, 2009 10:00 AM
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It's been almost two years in the making, but in the next few weeks beelocal will start what promises to be a great online shopping and home delivery service for local food – out of Kendal. I met the brain behind the company, David Redmayne, at the Westmoreland Show today, and he was happy to tell me that this clearly quite complex venture is now ready to take off. David has signed on 14 local food producers (so far), who have all installed the beelocal software. This basically means that you will be able to shop online from any of these producers, all from the www.beelocal.co.uk website, and get your food delivered the very next day.
Living in Grasmere, which isn't really near any good farm shop, we are very ex ...
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Cumbria's meat production is sustainable |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Thursday, September 03, 2009 12:17 PM
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It's with great interest I am watching the Future of Food series currently running on BBC 2. In episode 2 George Alagiah investigated meat production and how it can be done in a sustainable way, rather than cause the depletion of natural resources, notably water and oil. A key issue is that the cattle should feed on grass rather than on grain, which could be used for human consumption.
The programme made me particularly happy to live in this region, because of course most of Cumbria's meat is produced exactly according to these principles. Take the Herdwick sheep reared at Yew Tree Farm in Coniston for example.
These sheep are outside all year round, and do not require any extra feed – only what the rough terrain on the fells provide. Jon ...
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Swedish celebrations |
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Cecilia's blog
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By Cecilia on
Monday, June 22, 2009 5:27 AM
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If you want to celebrate Swedish style, you might not go for a sweet sponge cake (and nobody uses fruitcakes for decorating!), but rather you'd serve your guests what would have to be translated as a "sandwich cake".
Luke helped me make one to celebrate a birthday recently – perfect: lunch and cake in one! If you live in Sweden for any length of time, you will be served such a delicacy at some point; usually at a birthday reception, christening, funeral, or any other gathering where expedient food is required. It's a cake - but instead of being sweet it is made up of savoury goodies.
I had not actually ever made one before, but had eaten many, many, so tried to de-construct from memory. Which worked pretty well. The creamy looking substanc ...
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Baking your own bread |
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Martin's blog
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By admin on
Friday, June 19, 2009 6:02 PM
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When Luke was really little, I used to bake bread a lot as it fitted well with the early mornings. Luke now sleeps well at night and doesn't wake up too early, so my bread baking sort of stopped. Now that he is a little older, I have started baking with him instead, normally on a weekend morning whilst we are slowly getting up. I have to confess as a photographer, I find newly baked bread worth photographing each time it comes out of the oven, then I drop the camera, cut it open and put some butter on it whilst it's still warm.
This recipe is really very simple when your in a hurry and just want a nice loaf of bread that tastes good. It's based on a recipe I found in a book called Food of England, by Dorothy Hartley, with one addition, some caraway seeds. I use half a ...
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Why does naturally produced pork cost more |
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Martin's blog
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By admin on
Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:42 AM
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I have watched the progress of Peter Gott with a mixture of admiration and enjoyment. Peter works tirelessly promoting Cumbrian produce and in particular free range pigs and pork. The ones below are from Peters own Sillfield Farm.
I have noticed that when he get the chance to demonstrate some aspect of butchery and talk to the public, he always tries to explain the difference economically between a free range pig, and one reared intensively. I was watching him at the recent Fell Gather at Cockermouth, which was really worth going to and I noticed him holding up a chalk blackboard, with a simple parallel drawn between the two methods. Typically a rare breed sow, reared outdoors, will produce 20 piglets in one year, whereas an intensively bred one will produce 55. And may ...
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Pips in the post... |
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Martin's blog
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By admin on
Monday, June 15, 2009 11:21 PM
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Rather surprisingly, the Citrus seedlings that I planted, after receiving the pips in the post from Ivan Day, are still surviving and doing well. The seeds I got were from a Japanese fruit called Yuzu, sent to Ivan by the husband of the Japanese lady who makes Yuzu marmalade. Ivan shared them with me, I'll have to call him to see if his are still surviving.
As well as planting these seeds, I also planted some lemon pips and some Sevillle orange pips. The bad news is however that Yuzu's take about 15 years before they bear any fruit. The other piece of bad news is that the labels I put in the trays disintegrated and now it's impossible to say what is what. So I guess this citrus secret will unveil itself in time. Figuring out which one is the lemon should be pretty stra ...
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