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Five perfect Christmas gifts for foodies with a sweet tooth

By on November 6, 2015

We’re now past Fireworks Night (just), so that means that I can officially get excited about Christmas. And no, I don’t care that it’s still six weeks away, I’ve been buying presents for ages!

I have a wicked sweet tooth, and this year there are some truly wonderful presents for dessert-mad foodies that have been newly released by some of my absolute favourite British brands. Forget hampers; if you’re looking for something special, try the five gifts I’ve picked out below…

For families; biscuits from Biscuiteers 

Just round the corner from me in Notting Hill, Biscuiteers was founded by husband and wife team Harriet Hastings & Stevie Congdon after a weekend trip to New York, where they realised that there were plenty of people as passionate about biscuits as they were. The goal? To make biscuits look as beautiful as they tasted.

New themes for this year include a Mexican-inspired collection of Christmas tree decorations, a new look Advent collection featuring 24 beautiful wintry animals including a puffin, penguin, polar bear, wolf and walrus, as well as a stunning new Snowman collection and another for the Twelve Days of Christmas.

My recommendation though is the completely redesigned Nutcracker collection below. Nothing says Christmas like the Nutcracker, and these beautiful all spice biscuits are the perfect way to celebrate. £35 with a minimum of 9 hand iced biscuits.

Same day delivery available in London, next day everywhere in the UK. Buy online here.

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For your partner; chocolates from Paul A Young

Renowned flavour alchemist Paul A Young is this year bringing classic Christmas flavours bang up to date with the highest quality ingredients and a touch of magic only he can bring to confectionery.

After studying hotel catering and management Paul quickly worked through the ranks of the restaurant kitchen to the position of head pastry chef for Marco Pierre White at Quo Vadis and Criterion. He then began to specialise in chocolate, and opened his first shop on Camden Passage in Islington in 2006 with his business partner James Cronin. Since then Paul has been creating products that have won numerous industry awards, wowed customers and earned him the reputation he has today.

2015’s Christmas collection – featured image and below – includes Glen Moray whisky cream caramel, Cherry & Kirsch caramel, Cranberry, sage & cinnamon, Tawny Port, Stilton & water biscuit (amazing!), Gingerbread molasses, Nutmeg, milk & honey, Peppermint crunch and Cinnamon milk chocolate truffle. Hubba hubba.

They’re available individually for £2, or buy in boxes; four for £7.00, nine for £15.50, 16 for £26.00, 25 for £40.00 and 36 for £56.00.

filled boxI also can’t resist throwing in an extra stocking filler idea here; Paul has also brought back the rework of his award-winning, totally legendary brownies, which includes a festive twist. Get down to his stores in Wardour Street, Camden Passage or The Royal Exchange in Bank to pick up a PLUM PUDDING brownie pie for £3.50.

For your best friend; sweets from Smith & Sinclair

I wrote about alcoholic cocktail confectioners Smith & Sinclair earlier this year, having been captivated by their amazing jellies (which are 6-8% ABV!) at Kitchen Table Project’s Artisan Springboard.

Now they’ve launched a new range of vodka-infused pastilles, which offer a British twist on two classic cocktails; Rhuby Mule and Long Island High Tea. Rhuby Mule is a vodka, rhubarb and ginger pastille coated in sour lime sugar, while Long Island High Tea is a vodka, black tea and rum pastille coated in a raspberry infused sugar.

Speaking about the new collection, co-founder and product creator Emile said that they’ve seen a resurgence of ginger in cocktails, and the Moscow Mule is becoming a firm favourite amongst vodka drinkers. “To give it a twist we decided to pair the flavours of lime and ginger with the cutting, clean qualities of rhubarb and the Rhuby Mule was born. Our second cocktail is Long Island Iced Tea, which has been given a high tea makeover with black tea bitters and coated in raspberry infused sugar, reminiscent of afternoon tea and jam. As you can probably tell… We’re after the royal stamp of approval here”.

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Since its whirlwind launch last year as the first food product to be sold on the alcohol shelf, Smith & Sinclair now retails nationwide. You can get the vodka collection as a box of six for £9.99 from Harvey Nichols, Fenwicks or online here.

For your parents; panettone from Selfridges

So, not strictly a British item, but a wonderful gift that oozes classy Christmas cheer as an alternative to classic cakes. You can buy panettone from most good food retailers, but for a really special present – Selfridges can’t be beaten.

‘Food mecca’, aka the Food Hall at Selfridges, stocks a good range of panettone; all specially selected by the team from one of two producers in Italy – Milan’s G. Cova & Co’s or the Fillippi family in Vincenza. There’s a chocolate and pear version, a classic one in retro paper, and even one made with marron glacés (candied chestnuts).

To really wow the folks on Christmas day though, the iconic yellow hat box with Moscato wine is the one to go for. This is the store’s most decadent panettone, made by the Filippi family. What makes their panettone so incredibly moist and rich is the golden selection Turkish sultanas which are soaked for four days in ‘La Ceriola’ Moscato. Only the finest bourbon vanilla beans from Madagascar and free-range eggs are used for a rich, golden crumb. Natural starter cultures – first perfected in 1972 by the Filippi family – produce an extraordinarily light texture and honey-like aroma.

Buy the 1kg version online here, or instore for £27.99. You can get a 100g mini one for just £9.99 as well.

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For work friends; jam from Hotel Chocolat

My last tip is a bit leftfield. I discovered the true quality of Hotel Chocolat’s goods with Celia Brooks on her Borough Market gastrotour earlier this year. We started the day at Hotel Chocolat’s Rabot 1575 (named after the company’s 250-year-old Rabot Estate cocoa plantation in Saint Lucia)  – and we got to experience incredible chocolate butters, pastries, brownies and more. Exploring the store upstairs was a real treat.

For their Christmas range this year, the chocolatier has gone all out, with high quality advent calendars in every flavour, chocolate festive wreaths and stocking fillers galore. But my favourite is the somewhat unusual jams on offer. Specifically, the Morello Cherry Jam infused with Cocoa Gin.

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This concoction of sharp yet sweet Morello cherries harmonises perfectly with punchy notes of juniper, and lemon-zest from the company’s cool and crisp cocoa gin. For foodie friends, this is a total steal at just £5.00 a jar, which you can buy online here.

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For the love of bacon: Battens Farm meat boxes

By on November 2, 2015

When it comes to good meat; I’ve always subscribed to the idea that being able to see, select and pick your own cuts, in-person was the only way to go.

However, after testing one of Battens Farm’s meat boxes, I’ve totally changed my mind.

I’m not sure where that frame of mind comes from; there’s no real reason to dismiss produce delivered through the post if you know where it comes from, and how it’s grown/made. I think it’s a throwback to pre-internet, when the perception was completely different and it was a bit of a stab in the dark to do so. Now because of easy access to information, you can make an informed choice about where to buy from – and get the best from smaller producers or farms because of it.

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Battens Farm, based in Nailsea, North Somerset, is run by the Baker family – who have been working in the meat sector for over 100 years. The 86 acre farm is now being run by the fifth generation of Bakers.

The small abattoir and butchery facility is run by Toby, Russell and James Baker, while the farm (home to their Aberdeen Angus herd) is run by Danny and George Baker. Because of the ownership of both farm and abattoir, their meat is fully traceable, from pasture to plate. It’s this that makes them different to competitors as they’re in control of every step of the process.

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All beef, pork or lamb is sourced directly from their own family farms (Battens Farm or Cherry Orchard Farm) or from a select list of trusted suppliers who only farm in Somerset. Plus, nothing’s ever frozen, it’s always delivered fresh in award winning woolcool insulation and cooling packs, ensuring your meat stays cooler for longer. What ever time of day you get home to your meat box (as long as it is the same day as delivery) it will still be cool, ready for you to refrigerate or freeze.

Choose from one of three ways to buy;

  1. Build yourself a one-off box
  2. Order a regular delivery every 2, 4 or 6 weeks. You can either start from scratch, or pick a size, and Battens Farm will make a suggestion for what going inside. You can then swap items in and out to make it your own. Plus, if you realise you need something different for a weekend meal, you can change it up to 2 days before your delivery is due
  3. Choose from a range of pre-selected set meat boxes. There are loads of options; from ‘tasters’ to steak lovers, slimmers and even muscle building

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I love knowing as much as possible about the food I eat, so I loved the extra info I was sent with my box. As well as more information on the herd of pigs, it also gave some insight into the Aberdeen Angus cattle, which are well-suited to the Bakers’ grass-based system. The cattle are free to graze during the winter months, where grass makes up 90% of their diet. The remaining 10% is homegrown barley and oats, delivered daily (which provides the opportunity to check each animal throughout while they’re happy eating). The meat is stored in a maturation fridge, designed specifically to dry age. This is vital in ensuring the tenderness of the meat, so it’s hung for a minimum of 21 days before it’s sent out.

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After my interview with Richard Turner on how to buy great meat, Battens Farm got in touch via Twitter and asked if I’d like to try theirs. I was super keen, and they sent me the most amazing selection to try. The steaks were hands down some of the best I’ve ever had, and curiously, they were rump – which I never order. Yet they were tender as hell and cut like butter.

The chicken, from Castle Mead Poultry, was also great. Castle Mead is run by young farmer Stuart Perkins on his family farm near to Bath. Stuart’s grandparents moved to the farm in 1940 and he is proud to be the third generation to keep the business moving forward. I made Madeleine Shaw’s smoky roast chicken; making a paste from coconut oil, cayenne pepper, paprika and lime, then roasting with some crushed garlic cloves for 1hr 20 mins. Adding some sweet potatoes for the last 45 minutes makes for a perfect Saturday evening meal.

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I’ve still got the sausages and mince to get through (not to mention some phenomenal topside), but the hero of the box so far has to be the bacon. Cue bacon porn below.

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You can see from the shots below the quality of this meat; it’s home cured from Battens Farm’s free range pork, and is utterly divine. This is the kind of bacon you write songs about. It’s available in packs of 6 and 12 slices, and the approximate weight for 6 slices is 350g. This is NOT messing about.

I urge you to try this out. Build your own box here, with 10% off your first delivery. It can be with you next day 🙂

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Trending: porridge pop-up 26Grains goes permanent 

By on October 29, 2015

I invested in Alex Hely-Hutchinson’s bid to fund a fixed location for her pop-up porridge phenomenon 26Grains in Neal’s Yard a few months back. It ticks off two of London’s biggest food trends at the moment; a focused, single item menu and ‘new wave’ healthy, so I knew it would be popular.

Inspired by living in Copenhagen for a year, founder Alex observed the wonderful way the Danes “embrace all the different types of grain for their tastes and textures, and how that can become a beautiful bowl of porridge”. Given that her Mum’s signature dish is porridge (not to mention one of the nation’s favourites), it’s no wonder she chose to turn that into a business of her own. As someone who also gets their passion for food from their Mum, I totally understand that.

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So, powered by a sense of hygge (a Danish word that has no translation but evokes warmth, cosiness, and togetherness – everything 26Grains believes a bowl of porridge to be), Alex set about selling grain-based treats at pop ups across London. They were wildly popular, and 184 backers pledged £16,850 via Kickstarter back in July.

Since then they’ve confirmed their residency at 2 Neal’s Yard, and last month they revealed a new autumnal menu; packed full of traditional-with-a-twist sweet porridge bowls, alongside savoury offerings for lunch made from brown rice and such, a bircher muesli and smoothie bowl.

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Unlike the ever-so-unfulfilling offering at Cereal Killer Cafe, 26Grains bowls are served with almond milk porridge (bar the Salted Caramel Pear option, which comes with coconut milk) and a mound of various toppings packed with goodness. For just £5.60 per portion, you’re getting a decent whack of nutritious substance.

We ordered their classic Hazelnut and Butter bowl, which is served with cinnamon, coconut palm sugar and apple. It was a little over-buttered for me, but still tasted great. The salt (one of Alex’s top tips for making good porridge) makes a serious difference.

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Plus we got the Banana Cacao, served – as you’d imagine – with nibs of cacao, coconut yogurt, and date syrup. This was slightly less sweet, and really was incredible.

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On the savoury menu for autumn is black sticky rice and spiced butternut squash, which sounds incredible, plus an egg and kale dish that’s oat-based, served with avocado & Srichacha. Then finally, Carrot Hazelnut Risotto, which sounds unusual, but I’d imagine is similar in taste to a pumpkin tortellini with hazelnut butter (which is banging).

On top of this, Alex and the team run events GALORE. From Yoga Breakfasts with Deliciously Ella to Grains Tasting evenings; get down there and try it out – all information here.

Photo of Alex via The Magic Elephant.

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A morning with AVM Curiosities’ Tasha Marks

By on October 23, 2015

I’m very lucky that my day job often presents me with wonderful opportunities to indulge my love of all things food. I set Boudicca up to showcase great British producers, chefs, restauranteurs – but also, fantastic new food-related ideas. And nothing could fit better in to that category than Tasha Marks.

Last week, I got to interview Tasha, the lady behind AVM Curiosities (which stands for Animal, Vegetable, Mineral) about creativity and telling stories through sugar.

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Her story is pretty awesome; she studied at University of Sussex in Brighton, and spent a year being tutored by the silverware curator at the V&A. With that came an exploration of medieval banquets of the past, and the start of a fascination with the craft of sugar sculpturing and the decadent dessert halls once created to entertain guests; packed with sugar forests, moving sugar installations and much more.

Now she combines the world of art and food to create wonderful performances, bespoke tasting menus, edible lectures (where she makes goody bags containing edible treats to make specific points at various stages of the talk), limited edition edibles, exhibitions and installations. Most of her work is with sugar, since as she quite rightly told me; confectionery is one of those child-like curiosities that brings people together.

“A lot of people’s passions are either food or art, so I combine the two. Art and food have a mutual relationship. Food breaks down a lot of boundaries in art and art brings status to food.”

One of my favourite pieces of Tasha’s performance work is the edible bubble installation you can see below, which she created for the opening of Savage Beauty at the V&A. A perfect example of her ‘led by research’ approach, it’s based on one of Alexander McQueen’s most famous quotes; ‘‘Fashion is a big bubble, and sometimes I feel like popping it.”

To bring this to life, she created a black pool of edible goo, which was pumped with air to create bubbles as the night went on. Set to a backing track that gradually got more frantic at the evening went on, and the bubbles became more prolific.

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Tasha also worked on the wonderful celebration of toast below, called The Poetry of Toast, which was part of Doug Aitken’s Station to Station: A 30 Day Happening at the Barbican. It took one of Britain’s favourite breakfast items and got people to make something beautiful using templates of quotes from poems about toast from literary history.

“Attendees were knighted with a Victorian toasting fork amulet before being lead to the toast library; where the quotes ranged from Wind in the Willows to Margaret Atwood. Their nostalgia successfully stimulated, they carried on to the toasting station, following the familiar steps before eventually using cinnamon (or chocolate) and a laser-cut stencil to print poetry on their hot buttered toast.”

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Similarly, for the launch of Wedgwood’s ‘Taste of History’ range of teas, she created a tea pairing menu, with sweet items created to reflect the eras each of the teas were inspired by.

To match 1777 (Tea Party), Tasha created the Cornflower Cracknels below. Cracknels are a traditional English biscuit flavoured with caraway seeds and for this adaptation, blue cornflowers have also been added to complement the floral arrangement in the tea. The richness of that blue against the biscuit is just *stunning*.

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According to an interview Tasha did with Four magazine last year, the foundations of food as art were laid in the medieval ‘void’, where fruit, jelly and other sweetmeats were often eaten standing up and away from the dining hall, allowing the room to be cleared for after dinner activities.

“This ‘ceremony of the void’ as it was known, gave dessert a detached quality, which set it apart from other modes of feasting and made dessert the very first form of installation art. What followed was the banqueting age and several hundred years of edible expression.”

Her favourite of these eras though is anything Elizabethan (closely followed by Victorian); “It was the era that saw the birth of dessert as we know it, amazing sugar sculptures and new ingredients being bought from overseas. Plus desserts were much more spiced and fragranced than most of what we have today, think orange flower water instead of vanilla, along with caraway seeds, cloves and ginger, I love those flavours.”

I was SUPER lucky to have walked away from our chat with one of Tasha’s limited-edition sugar sculptures. It’s made with a 17th century ‘sugar plate’ recipe and created using a hand-carved wooden mould. This design was originally created for This Sea of Sugar Knows No Bounds, AVM Curiosities’ large-scale installation for the Istanbul Design Biennale 2014.

It’s a beautiful thing, designed not to be eaten, but observed and cherished. It’s a lovely reminder for me of the simplicity of objects such as this, which engage in a different way than we’re perhaps used to. As Tasha says; “it’s important that we indulge and enjoy all of our senses, perhaps a little less time glued to our mobile phones and laptops.”DSC00702DSC00705 DSC00706

Tasha is currently preparing for The British Museum’s Day of the Dead’s celebrations, where she’s building The Calavera Cabinet. It’s a sugar sculpture shrine embellished with crystallised roses, chocolate Mexican milagros and edible iconography. Below (and in the featured image above) you can see a first draft of the Chilli Chocolate Aztec tablets that will be on show on the altar, alongside one of her crystallised roses.
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You can see it for yourself in the North side of the Great Court from Friday 30th October – Monday 2nd November, alongside chocolate skulls by Conjurer’s Kitchen and wallpaper by Anatomy Boutique in the display.

Photo credits; Savage Beauty at the V&A from Paul Singer, Poetry of Toast by Amandine Alessandra courtesy of DesignMarketo, Wedgewood group photo from Oliver Rudkin, all others Tasha Marks or taken by me.

 

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