Newsletter 05: for fortnight beginning 1st March 2010

a satisfied customer

Firstly, thanks to Dinah Ellis from Weymouth who emailed us this:

‘I just wanted to say what excellent value we think your “Winter Warmer” box is, and how we are enjoying using the delicious meat it contains. The larger quantities suit us, as although there are only two in the household most of the time, we can split the finished dish or cater for larger family visits.

An idea for breast of lamb: my Mum taught me to use it for curries, as it can take a good long cooking time - the flavours get into the meat, and the fat renders out. An over-night cooling, and then the fat can be removed from the surface easily. Yum!

We used the diced mutton to make a slightly spicy Moroccan-style stew, with roasted (Riverford) veg added and your chorizo ...Served it with couscous, and it fed 9 piggy people. We had (I’m ashamed to admit) added a bit of bog-standard chorizo from elsewhere, and boy, did it compare badly!

I was roasting up the beef bones prior to stock-making, and it smelt so delicious my daughter thought I was cooking some elaborate mid-week meal! And the chicken carcasses are great too - plenty of bits left on the bones, makes me feel quite proud of my filleting technique! (Don’t change a thing!). Once again, thank you all, from farmer to packer. '

I shouldn’t blow my own trumpet, or preach to the converted, but it is great to hear from a customer who really gets stuck in. Thank you, Dinah.

I will be interested to hear what Dinah Ellis makes of our version of Italian cotechino sausage. Cotechino is a classic northern Italian cooking sausage - semi-dried to intensify the flavours it isn’t normally found in the UK outside Italian delis. Even then it is usually sold precooked in foil bags. Ours needs to be simmered for about an hour. If you aren’t going to use it immediately this can be done in the vac bag, in which case it will keep for several weeks in the fridge so long as it remains unopened. Uncooked it can be used as part of a bolitto misto; once cooked it can be sliced into a dish of lentils - either way the ideal accompaniment is a nice sharp salsa verde. Somehow the piquancy and acidity of the sauce and slight gelatinous texture of the sausage makes for one of those perfect culinary marriages. Alternatively, it isn’t that far removed from some of its French cousins so try it in a cassoulet or as part of a choucroute/sauerkraut dish. Lastly, if you like the lentil theme, gently fry a base of onions, carrot and celery, add a splash of red wine vinegar, lentils, chopped tomatoes, dried oregano, bay leaves and stock. Simmer until the lentils are soft, whizz half of them up and return to the saucepan with some diced, cooked cotechino. Stir in a few tablespoons of chopped basil and flat leaf parsley. The sausage does have a substantial garlic element but if it is to your liking add a few more cloves, finely chopped, at the end of the frying stage. The result - a meal in a soup.

The taster this fortnight is our homemade onion marmalade. Wiltshire Tracklements much lauded version is celebrating its tenth anniversary and during that decade numerous imitators have jostled for space on the shelves. Words such as caramelised, balsamic and shallot have crept into the name of what should be a combo of onion, vinegar and sugar. Ours is just that and in the lonely hearts column it is looking for a sausage with a GSOH. Cotechino might fit the bill but a good quality pork banger would definitely get a second date. Lay the sausages out on a tray, smear on the onion marmalade and cook in the oven. Voila!

Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks, some of the cuts of meat will be coming out of the boxes with different packaging. We have invested in a shrink wrapping device which will give meats the same shelf life as vacuum packing without sucking all the juices out. The packs do look a little mass produced but, other than that, it ticks all the boxes. It gives a longer shelf life than the sealed trays, takes less space, resulting in smaller, denser boxes with better thermal qualities and uses far less plastic. It should be win, win, win for you, us, franchisees and hauliers but any feedback and thoughts will be gratefully received and considered.

Ben Watson