Newsletter 02: for fortnight beginning 18th January 2010

apologies...

Firstly, it might be a little late and best forgotten, but we did have a few problems in the run up to Christmas so if you were adversely affected, I apologise. A combination of staff illness and setting unrealistic targets meant that we were always playing catch up. Mistakes were made but hopefully, thanks to everyone, particularly franchisees and people at Wash HQ, most of them were rectified. In box numbers, we sent out approximately four times our weekly average as well as having to fit a whole selection of different products into our already crowded packing room. Of course, slightly tongue in cheek, if we were busier throughout the year, we would be in a better position to cope with, what would be a less pronounced, seasonal upturn. It might only be January but you won’t hear a worse sales pitch this year.

The New Year has also started off with a few problems. I don’t think anyone can blame us for the weather but as things stand we have a cold room empty of pork and chickens. We only have an inch or so of snow but all our meat is due to come from North and East Devon where there is considerably more. Fingers crossed.

The freebie/taster this fortnight is mustard breadcrumbs. I know I sound like a scratched record (haven’t heard one of those for a while) but breadcrumbs really are great. We also have a bakery so we get a crust or two of stale bread. This recipe, cribbed from an American cookbook called ‘Sunday suppers at Luques’. It has, so far, yielded poorly in terms of meatbox recipes, mainly because it is based on the ultra healthy, Californian good life. It does have a good contribution on the braised beef/ short rib front but other than that, meat offerings are thin on the ground. Whatever - these crunchy, piquant crumbs are for adding texture to roast pork or flavour to soups and salads. You can also use them for topping off a gratin or coating a chicken breast.

The winter warmer box has started off a little slowly so contents are largely unchanged. For my classic ‘warmer’ recipe this fortnight I thought I would go for a mutton rogan josh. According to Wikipedia ‘rogan’ means oil and ‘josh’ is hot (or passionate). I’m not sure whether that is hot in temperature or spice terms but either way it isn’t much of a definition. Neither Larousse nor Davidson make a contribution and none of the recipes I have been able to find call for an intense level of either form of heat or any uniform combination of spices so I reckon rogan josh is a free for all. I started off by mixing an equal amount of our captain’s masala curry paste with yoghurt and marinated 500g diced mutton in it for a couple of hours. Frying a couple of finely sliced onions seemed like a good start as did adding a few spices to complement the turmeric and cumin in the paste. Cardamom pods seem to be one of the few spices ubiquitous to all rogan josh recipes, to which I added garamasala, cloves, chilli, cinnamon, bay leaves and mustard seeds (for alternative, more rounded, heat). Once these looked a little toasty I chucked in the mutton and marinade and stirred it around until it had all caught a bit of heat. I did feel a call for ground almonds at this point but as the paste has cashews in it I thought that was nutty enough. This was followed by a tub of chicken stock and 1 ½ hours in the oven at 140°C. Most recipes seem to call for tomatoes (either tinned or puréed) but in the spirit of Riverford I went with a selection of vegetables - squash, green peppers, peas and spinach - to build up some texture. Just before serving a roughly chopped fresh tomato and a handful of chopped coriander finished it off nicely. It started off as a rogan josh and ended up as a mutton and fresh vegetable curry but either way it was a pretty good use for a lb or so of diced mutton.

Ben Watson