Cherry and almond cake

If you are one of our social media fans, you will already have seen tantalising shots  of our brand new Prospector pans, as well as the rather lush cherries that I have already cooked in one.
We are constantly reviewing our range, working out what's missing in our own kitchen and listening to the feedback from home cooks, professional chefs and food writers.
These came about as a result of comments from all of the above - including me.
Update, we have now added a cake tin to the range, which would also work well for this.

Our creative genius put on his thinking cap and I  have to admit the result is not only perfectly functional, but perfectly formed too.  Once again, he has combined beauty with utility.

What I have already found with these - and there will be more to come - is that they are not only useful on the hob, but also in the oven and I am working on a recipe which will see one popped under the grill too. They are equally good for sweet and savoury dishes, versatile, compact and easy to store.

You will also have realised by now that we are great believers in seasonal and local food and enjoy cooking according to what's in season, rather than flown in from other continents.
I appreciate that the political and economic debate about imported food is a vast and polemic topic, with issues such as supporting farmers in developing countries directly through trade rather than aid, air miles, agricultural grants and the globalisation and homogenisation of food cultivation and supply and I leave to experts cleverer than me to continue these discussions.
I am happy to admit that we do not live entirely on local produce and have been known to indulge in mangoes, pineapples, avocados and other delicious imports.

But when local fruit is in season and in abundance, nothing can beat it.  We are fortunate enough to have apple, damson and plums trees in the garden, which where here when we arrived and since then I have added a cherry tree.  The original trees, I guess are pretty old and the harvest is variable but in a good year the crop is sensational.
The cherry tree is prolific, but it's a race with the pigeons and blackbirds as to who gets the lion's share.

  

The bowl of cherries shown above got demolished pretty quickly, but our local farm shop  carries a tempting selection of locally grown fruit, as well as their own fantastic collection of apples and pears, grown in the family orchards.

Last weekend, I could offer no resistance when faced with lush, shiny dark cherries and came home with a large punnet, which I hid from the family in the back of the fridge whilst I figured out what to do with them.

OK, I admit it, I did feel the need to do a quality check on a random sample :-)

I had been avidly reading Ed Smith's supplemental  and yes, I do own up to a little favouritism - have you seen his photos of our pans - and was sorely tempted to do a clafoutis, but having had toad in the hole (recipe coming soon) the day before decided to make something NOT batter based.  I did however heed his advice to stone the cherries and then painstaking extract the kernel from the stones (the noyeux) which have a heady almond flavour, terrifically matched to the cherries.

This is, incidentally a gluten free recipe.

This is what I did with my locally grown cherries.....

2 eggs, 
1 egg white

120g sugar
120g butter, melted and cooled slightly
60g ground almonds
60g ground rice
1 tsp vanilla extract

250g fresh cherries, with the kernels of ¼ of the stones OR 8 fresh apricots

Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC

In a large mixing bowl or food mixer, whisk the whole eggs and egg white with the sugar until it is thick, pale and foamy.
Whisk in the melted butter and vanilla extract.
Fold in the rice and ground almonds

Place the stone cherries and noyeux (optional) or quartered apricots in a 10" prospector pan or cake tin

Pour over the cake batter and place it in the oven.

Bake for 40 minutes (approx) until a skewer comes out clean when dipped into the cake.  If the cake is browning too quickly, cover the top with a piece of greaseproof paper, foil or, as I did, a butter wrapper.

Remove from the oven and leave to stand for around 20 minutes - it will taste far better warm, rather than oven hot.
We indulged ourselves with homemade custard, whipped with Mascarpone cream, but this would be good on its own, with yogurt, creme fraiche, cream or ice cream too.
But to be fair, it would count as one of your "five a day" :-)

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Comfort food in troubled times

The last week or so has been turbulent and troubled, by any standards.  The world may still be revolving on its access, the word seismic has been overworked, but it definitely feels a little wobbly - like an old fashioned spinning top that is losing momentum.

A referendum was called to ask the man in the street (RIP Sid Vicious) to make a judgement on something that he/she was far from qualified to do and the resulting bitter campaigning and final outcome rocked the establishment that set the ball rolling. 

We now have a governing party whose leader has stepped down, and with a backbiting contest to find a successor.

Meanwhile the Opposition are led by someone who claims to have the backing of tens of thousands of party supporters, but who cannot fill his own front bench.

Throw the English football team's dismal performance in the Euros into the mix alongside the nosediving pound and you may feel like pulling the duvet over your head and waiting for Christmas.

I was about to add that nobody died, but of course, that's not true.  We must not forget the senseless murder of the MP, Jo Cox admired and respected across the political divide.

Of course, things could be worse, we are not at war and the sky has not fallen in, so let's look for reasons to be cheerful.

The Welsh football team have put in their greatest performance since 1958, when a young player called Pele put paid to their progress.

All credit to the whole team - many said before the tournament that it was Gareth Bale and 10 other blokes heading to France, but those 10 blokes have more than proved themselves.  As have the Welsh fans, who have conducted themselves admirably and of course, proved to be the best singers there.

And whilst they beat England, you have to cheer on the Icelandic team, drawn from a nation of just over 350,000 people.

What I'd give for a Wales v Iceland final :-)

As for the Netherton crew, last month, we were fortunate to have been invited to the official opening of Finnebrogue's new facility in Downpatrick, just outside Belfast, where the guest of honour, ceremonially cutting a string of sausages, was Arlene Foster, First Minister of Northern Ireland.

This is a remarkable success story and we are delighted to be associated with some of the team who made this happen.

We love owner Denis Lynn's philosophy:

Offer something truly different and unique. Really understand your competition and work out how to do it better.

Once you know how to do it better, then sell the story. Nobody will buy your products unless you can articulate your unique selling points.

Deliver both margin and volume. Avoid getting into the commodity trap by selling cheap basic products at low margins just to get volume through the factory.

Never Stop. Innovation is continual. Keep working on the next big thing and put as much energy into long-term as short-term.

Get a reality check: It is easy to get caught up in the world of innovation and product development, but unless you connect back to the real world, and the customer, then you can drift off course. Listen to the customer.

Don't innovate for innovation's sake. Ask good questions and listen to real people.

He has followed his own advice to create truly wonderful products and we believe that our aims are the same.

                         

We came away from the launch with a sackful of their top quality sausages, with which to create some new dishes.

This caused much amusement when our rucksack passed through the scanner at Belfast Airport - how many sausages!!!!!

In the interests of national harmony, I have used our English pan to cook Northern Irish sausages, made with Welsh Cheddar to produce a hybrid of two of my favourite comfort foods; shepherd's pie and bangers and mash.  Because this is made with pork, rather than lamb I have named it the Swineherd's Pie.

2 onions, peeled and chopped

1 apple, cored and chopped - no need to peel it

1 pack of Asda Extra Special Pork, Welsh Cheddar and spring onion sausages

300ml dry cider

4 medium potatoes

100g strong cheddar cheese.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC

Put 1 tablespoon rapeseed oil into an ovensafe frying pan and put on a medium heat.

Once the oil is warm, add the chopped onions and cook gently for 5 minutes.

Chuck in the apple and cook for a further 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel the skin off the sausages and discard.

Once the onions start to take on a little colour, put the sausages into the frying pan and break them up with a wooden spoon.

Cook for around 5 minutes.

Pour over the cider and simmer for 20 minutes.

While the sausage mix is cooking, peel and chop the potatoes and boil until soft.

Drain and place back on a low heat to drive off any residual moisture.

Crush with a potato masher or fork - this is not going to be a smooth mash, so don't overdo it.

Stir in the cheese.

Pile the potato mix on top of the sausages and place the pan into the oven for 20 - 30 minutes, until the top is golden.

Pour yourself a glass of cider and tuck in!

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Rich curd tart

Rich curd tart

So much has been written about the traditional Yorkshire curd tart and its little sisters, maids of honour, that there seems little point in covering ground better done by professional food writers and historians.

For me, a curd tart is simply a reminder of childhood, one of my mother's baking day staples and my father's favourites for his bait box, as we called his packed lunch.

All those years ago, no one regarded it as a special dish, a heritage recipe or even realised in our rural enclave that it was very much a regional dish, rarely ever encountered outside the county boundaries.

Chronologically and geographically it was a different world.

In fact, it was only when I went to university that I realised that we even had our own vocabulary, incomprehensible to the rest of the country. Whereas everyone else simply had tangled hair, mine was full of cotters!

I still make my mum's recipe for traditional curd tart, but can't resist tinkering from time to time and concocted the following, more as a dessert than a simple teatime treat.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC
Make a shortcrust pastry using 6oz plain flour and 3oz butter

Remove the handle from a 10" glamping pan or use an ovenproof 10" frying pan or remove the oak handle covers from a 10" frying pan. Alternatively use a 10¼" prospector pan. 
Of course, the new 10" pie dish is ideal.
Grease lightly
Line the pan with the pastry.

2oz butter

3oz sugar

3 eggs

8oz curd or cottage cheese

Grated zest of ½ lemon

2oz raisins, soaked for half an hour in a little rum

1oz candied lemon peel

2oz ground almonds

Grated nutmeg

Beat the butter and sugar, add the eggs and beat thoroughly.
Stir in the remaining ingredients and pour into the pastry case.

Bake for 30 mins, until set.

Serve cold.

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Warm summer salad

When you think of casserole dishes, the first things that come to mind are comforting stews and hearty winter dishes, but this might help you to see your casserole in a new light and dust it off on a summer's day.

WARM SUMMER SALAD
2 sweet potatoes

1 onion

¼ cauliflower

1 small red pepper

8 cherry tomatoes, quartered

150g baby spinach

100g salted peanuts

Ottolenghi tahini and parsley dressing

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC
Peel the sweet potatoes and cut each one into 6 - 8 chunks, depending on the size of your potatoes.
Cut the onion into 8 segments.

Put the potatoes and onions into the casserole dish and pour over the olive oil.
Mix well to coat the vegetables and roast in the oven for 30 minutes.
Break the cauliflower into florets ad add to the casserole and return to the oven for another 15 minutes.

Leave to cool to room temperature.
Dice the pepper and add to the dish with the tomatoes, peanuts and spinach.
Toss gently to mix.

This would be fine served with a vinaigrette, but is brought alive with Yotam Ottolenghi's superb parsley and tahini dressing.

We ate ours accompanied by sesame and garlic flatbreads and an ice cold rose wine.

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Whitchurch Food festival

Food Festivals come in all shapes and sizes

First of all there are the large, corporate events held in vast venues, such as the Good food Show at the NEC.  These are great for spotting celebrity chefs and the perfect place for a celeb selfie.

Then there are the traditional festivals, all based on the original one first held in Ludlow over 20 years ago and now a twice yearly event at the Castle.  Here the focus is on local producers, alongside some splendid and varied entertainment.
Shrewsbury Food Festival burst onto the festival scene in 2013, we were there, and it has been growing like Topsy ever since.  This is an amazing outing and this year's event takes place verrrry soon. Come along and say "Hello", watch the chefs rustle up appetising grub in our pans on the Wenlock demo stage and get to use the pans yourself in the Chef's School .

Some festivals are hosted in buildings, from church halls to engine sheds - check out the Severn Valley Home and Garden Fayre in Highley, some are in marquees and some are just a row of exhibitor gazebos in a muddy field.

Every craft fair in the land will now have someone selling something delicious and homemade.

Which brings  me round to Whitchurch Food Festival - relatively new, still quite small, brought together by 3 volunteers and a councillor - and a delightful day out.
This was my first visit to Whitchurch, not as a visitor, but a sidekick to the irrespresible Chris Burt, executive chef at Momo.No.Ki, the Peach Tree and Havana Republic in Shrewsbury, on stage and demonstrating how easy it can be to create great lookout, great tasting food.....all cooked in our pans of course.

We had huge fun, as you can see in the photos and this was the first public outing for our new collaborative range of pans in conjunction with Fat Punk Studio - take a walk on the wild side
http://www.netherton-foundry.co.uk/Fat-Punk

This festival, like all the others in the county, was a fabulous endorsement of the talented array of artisan food producers across Shropshire - we are hugely lucky to have all this great food on our doorsteps.

A huge thank you to everyone involved at Whitchurch Food Festival, see you again next year.

And massive thanks to La Triestina for taking time away from their stand to take our photos

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

Orange and thyme cake

This is, entirely incidentally, a gluten free recipe.  We are fortunate in our household in that we do not suffer from food allergies and intolerances. The worst it ever gets round here is a fussy teenager's attitude and we can only hope that that is no more than a "developmental phase", aking to toddler tantrums.
However, we do know the problems that restrictive diets can pose and the poor choice that is so often offered to sufferers.  So whilst we enjoy this cake simply because it tastes great, I can also recommend it heartily if you are catering for someone with coeliac or gluten intolerance.

Not only does this demonstrate that gluten free can be delicious and part of a mainstream diet, it also highlights the versatility of our frying pans.......... they can be used for so much more than a fried egg or a steak!  It's a cake, cooked in a pan, but I'm not sure that makes it a pancake!
We eat this cake as a dessert and it's great to carry it to the table in the pan.

150g butter

150g sugar

70g ground rice

50g ground almonds

30g polenta

Grated rind of 2 oranges 

3 eggs

Juice of 2 oranges

2 sprigs fresh thyme

2 dessert spoons runny honey

Heat the oven to 170ºC
Lightly grease a 10" frying pan
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs and the orange zest and beat thoroughly.
Fold in the polenta, ground rice and ground almonds and spoon into the pan  - if you are using one of our oak handled pans, remember to unscrew the wooden handle covers before you put this in the oven
Place in the oven and bake for approx 25 minutes - the standard skewer test will let you know when it's cooked.

While the cake is cooking, put the  juice, thyme and honey in a saucepan - a milk pan is ideal.

Heat gently until the honey is dissolved into the juice

Turn off the heat and leave to one side to allow the thyme flavour to infuse into the juice.
Add a splash of Curacao or Cointreau if desired.

Take the cake out of the oven and whilst it is still warm, strain the orange syrup and pour it evenly over the cake.

Serve warm with clotted cream, Greek yogurt or ice cream.

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

On meeting a hero

Where, how do you start when writing about a hero?  Especially if that hero is a writer, a person whose command of language can transport you to places you've never seen and evoke such base yearnings that you would blush to admit..... albeit cravings of the stomach, a greedy longing that makes the categorisation of gluttony as a sin justifiable.

Before I even get to see Diana Henry take her place in the Orangery at Bristol,Food Connections, a serendipitous meeting brings home the impact that her writing has.
I was fortunate enough to procure a ticket to recording of an interview by Sheila Dillon for a future broadcast of the BBC Food Programme entitled, Diana Henry, a Life in Food.
Just in case you are reading this on another planet, here are some of the Diana Henry books pulled from my shelves.

This meant an early start; on a good day the trip to Bristol can take an hour and three quarters, but the M5 is a fickle and variable conduit and the same  trip can seemingly last all day. Add into the mix the fact that I wasn't entirely sure where I was going and plenty of leeway seemed a sensible precaution,

As it was, the motorway was blissfully free of traffic - so bizarre for a holiday weekend, that I feared I had the wrong day - and the directions provided on the cathedral website were disarmingly simple to follow.
Needless to say, I was ridiculously early.
And this is what led to my chance encounter with Helen.  I only know her first name and regret not getting to say good bye properly later that morning, but it was a genuine  pleasure to meet her and I can only hope that she reads this and recognises herself
She joined me at the window table of a coffee bar overlooking the College Green, where the advertised event was to take place and we fell into conversation about the city wide Food Connections and quickly established that we were attending the same event.
One thing led to another and I explained that I had come down from Shropshire - Helen was a Bristol resident - and "let slip" that we make pans.
"Aha" she said you are the company that Diana mentioned in her Christmas guide, where she said "Look out, Le Creuset".
My word, that was Christmas 2014, so you can see why I was so struck by the power of her words.

But, less about us and more about Diana Henry....
The recording was happening inside a wonderful wooden framed marquee, which was very atmospheric, resplendent with twinkling fairy lights, but which must have been a nightmare for the sound recordist. External noise which caused heads to turn included the throaty roar of a Harley Davidson motorbike, what sounded like the erection of scaffolding and the overhead pass of a helicopter.

Sheila Dillon, another hero, introduced Diana on to the stage and conducted an interview, which drew the very best from her interviewee, the conversation flowed, the facts and reminisces were skilfully elicited and praise was given with the lightest and most sincere touch that even the most self deprecating interviewee could soak up its warmth, without fear of  an overheated blush.

Diana Henry is a truly talented writer, and setting  her in the same pantheon as Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, as Sheila Dillon did, is to site her exactly where she belongs.
Her sheer love of and joy in food, ingredients, travel and writing were evident and so readily shared. It would take a joyless soul not to be carried along with the flow of her words and the undercurrent of  gentle passion as she described how she came to write, how she writes in the middle of the night when she doesn't have to distracted by putting on a load of washing and about moving to London and discovering so many wonderful ingredients carried the audience on the journey with her.

She is truly enamoured of the written word and unstintingly generous in her praise of others' writing.
Her excellent and eclectic choices of inspiring writing were  beautifully read out by Becky Ripley and Sam Woolf.
Becky coaxed the words off the page and sent them skipping and dancing joyfully amongst the audience, whilst Sam's sonorous voice filled the tent with ripples and echoes of meaning and emotion.

I especially enjoyed the Seamus Heaney poem, Blackberry-Picking and one of Marina O'Loughlin's restaurant reviews.

Time past too quickly and the event was over too soon, but the icing was still to be applied to the cake and I got the opportunity to thank Diana in person for all the support she has given us and to say "Hello", in person to Sheila Dillon.
Thank you both for an uplifting, inspiring and thoroughly enjoyable morning.

© Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2016

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk