Vive La France – part 1

July 14, 2015 //

It seems incredible for someone who loves food as much as I do that I have not really discovered France in the way a true gourmet should have. But this weekend all that changed.

M & I decided to do a road trip. Just the two of us, the car roof down and the open road ahead. Admittedly the run to Calais was a very different experience, but once we escaped the tourist track, we could relax and the weather made it even more enjoyable with the sun shining down on us.

Entrance to the tearoom

Our first stop was to see the wonderful Judy of Tea Together and her jams. What an incredible couple she makes with her husband. They have created a life that is like something out of a film. In the tiny village of St Remy au Bois stands their home and kitchen supporting what looks to be an idyllic lifestyle. All the jams are made traditionally in copper pans and the fruit is brought back over from the orchards of Kent. Somewhere amongst the horses, the chickens, the maran eggs, the hydrangeas, the dogs and the stunningly eclectic house of theirs we enjoyed tea together and came away with the energy and vibrancy that this team instil. Their new tearooms are a destination that you must look up. Just fabulous.

Honfleur harbour

Judy gave us lots of recommendations and we made our way around the coastline to explore a few but knew that we needed to get to our first pit stop in Honfleur so prioritised that which was a good decision as it was twinkling away in the sunset. This port and harbour have managed to retain their originality and charm despite the tourist trade and we enjoyed a simple fish supper before retiring to bed. The next morning we discovered the shops of the local produce including colourful designer tins of local sardines and shops dedicated to caramels – what’s wrong with that? It is the apples/pears and the dairy in this part of the world that is well known and the butter along with the local salt make the most perfect caramels. It all seemed to make sense.

After that we went on the hunt for cheese. We trundled through Pont L’Eveque and Livarot (neither really worth the trip) towards Camembert where we discovered a museum dedicated to the cheese. In a very basic way this museum brought the history of the cheese to our attention. Created in the 18th century by one woman, Marie Harel, the cheese developed with the onset of penicillin and also the unique wooden box it is transported in. It became the most popular in the country after it was given to all the soldiers in the war and now holds AOC and PDO status for all the obvious reasons. A small cheese tasting seemed in order before we carried on our way.

Home for a few days

I had discovered an article on a gem of a place to stay in the lesser known region of Le Perche. We were thankful that it was less known to tourists and made our way to D’Une Ile, or The Island as it translates and an idyllic island it certainly is. An old farm estate has been resurrected by a young Dutch couple who have a design and a chef background each. A set of 9 cottages are each uniquely decorated with pared back simplicity and an eye for detail making it the most perfect place to just stop. The estate is so pretty and the rooms so cool and calm it is easy to forget the world for a few days and embrace the countryside in all its natural glory.

Dinner was served in the courtyard that night – one plate, lots of flavours and regional wines to suit. We fell into bed with a smile in our hearts and slept like babies.

VM the French way

The next few days we made a point of discovering the area. Saturday was obviously market day and here we were able to see how the locals shop. No supermarkets here (give or take the odd BonMarche). Just market stall holders selling wares: cheese, meat, roast chicken, fruit, veg, tomatoes, nougat – you name it they have it. In the UK we talk the talk of seasonal local and here it is their way of life. It always has been. Simple. Unpretentious. Often abrupt. But the shoppers, mostly women, know their stuff. They buy their weekly shop here, armed with a basket and a clarity of thought about what is right to buy now, in July.

Our picnic – the before pic

We returned that day with Le Pique Nique which we installed overlooking the view across the estate. Simple local cheeses, baguette, a knarly tomato, bottle of Rose…and glorious sunshine. It really doesn’t get much better than this. Does it?

…and after!

Tags Camembert, D'Une Ile, France, Honfleur, Le Perche, St Remy au Bois, Tea Together

Categories Cheese, Food

The Art of Elderflower Cordial

June 21, 2015 //

I have worked in the food industry since 1985 and latterly knew the fashions which generally surround the seasonal local story for anyone who is even vaguely clued up on these things. But I don’t think it was until I went to work at Laverstoke Park Farm that I understood what that really meant and how it should be applied to the food we eat.

Since leaving there, my connection has remained with M who continues her quest to make ever improving dairy products from the buffalo milk there and each year is humbled by the gold awards that she receives from the cheese, yogurt and ice cream aficionados. Unlike me, M grew up with nature in her soul. I tell her she is Mother Nature herself in my eyes and she laughs at me. She literally eats and breathes biodynamic principles because she was brought up with parents who taught her to pick and eat the flowers and herbs that nature presents us. She is horrified by the combination of many recipes, like tomatoes and kale salad to name but one as they are simply never in season together so what are we talking about. And now she connects with the buffalo on the farm in such a spiritual way that her cheese emanates the quality of the milk like no other I have ever tasted…hence all the awards.

This weekend I managed to get out of the smog and down to the pure air of Hampshire to re-charge. On Saturday we went up to the stables to feed her horses and then strolled through the adjacent woodland picking elderflowers as they are absolutely in season right now. I never ever in a million years did this sort of thing in my childhood so I was like a child once more embracing nature’s presents. We filled two bags with the pretty flowers and made our way back to the farm kitchen.

The flowers we immersed into pure water and married with lots of lemons (Juice and rinds) to be left over night to share their magic with each other.

On Sunday we had a leisurely morning and then addressed the flower water. M has the most wonderful folder of recipes that have been handed down to her from two generations with handwritten and illustrated recipes all in her native Dutch tongue. In these days of the internet, it feels we have lost this art. Every page was more inspiring than the last and whilst I don’t speak Dutch, I could glean the precious nature of the folder. You could never get that sense of something special from a computer file. We opened up to the elderflower and elderberry recipes and calculated the sugar, which is a whopping 1kg to 1 litre of liquid in Grandma’s recipe and started mixing the potions. It is a cordial after all.

After bringing to the boil and leaving it there for 5 minutes, we decanted into our many and varied bottles, added slices of lemon and more whole elderflowers and hey presto. The Summer cordials were made. M told me that you can do lots with them such as storing in ice cube bags and then adding to water that way, or making lemon juice ice cubes and adding those in, with some little flowers too. I always like to mix my juices so will be serving with lemon but also ginger and mint to mix it up a bit but either way am dead chuffed that we did this. It was such a fun day.

We rewarded ourselves with a long walk in the farm saying hello to the buffalo, cows, pig, sheep, wild boar and the odd deer before coming back to a simple lunch of M’s mozzarella, seasonal tomatoes and basil. The tricolore salad was as colourful as the peonies plucked from her garden and I just embraced the whole day. Sadly the motorway beckoned, but at least I had three bottles of elderflower liquid gold to bring back to London with me.

Tags biodynamic, cordial, elderflower, Laverstoke Park Farm

Categories Food, Recipes

The Pinterest Phenomenon

June 14, 2015 //

I love Pinterest.

It is such a great way to log ideas, build a briefing note and remember great things you have seen online. And what I like best is that such a visual representation can at one click take you to the website that you originally saw it, keeping track of everything in one funky mood board.

My first foray was when I was trying to find some wallpaper for a cafe I was working on at Silverstone and whilst I didn’t think the examples I picked were very useful to many other people, I still see these images re-pinned all the time. Funny really how quirky orange papers with whisks on or red icons of pots & pans could be desired for anything other than a race track cafe, but there you go! Still, the board I created was sent to my team at Silverstone and my vision was then dutifully executed.

An easy table centrepiece

After that, I created boards to demonstrate other things that I was progressing. One for the Queen’s jubilee so I could keep track of what I had seen for a report I was compiling, and another for an event I was arranging, trying to DIY on a shoestring so contemplating good, cheap, easy to make table centrepieces. The event was rained off in the end, but the board of ideas remains if and when I ever need to resurrect it.

After that, came the design of a new ice cream offer for a stately home and an ongoing project over a couple of years designing my own new house. There is so much online to disseminate when doing that from scratch and just keeping track of what you have seen where would be a nightmare were it not for this technology. Instead, I crafted mood boards for each thing, whether lighting, or fireplaces, gardens or kitchens. And by picking bits from different pictures and piecing it all together I could create something that was never done before. An idea from outside became an internal wall of herbs, a fireplace concept became a feature wall….and so on.

Then came the biggest work project of all, designing a brand new restaurant/cafe and retail concept for Laverstoke Park Farm. And as ever with me, I didn’t want it to be like anything else that existed, rather a place that others would visit to see the next big thing in the food arena. My head was full of ideas. My pinterest board was loaded with snippets. From clever ways to display wines, to unique storage for bread, counter designs to flooring, menus to meat this board was packed full of great ideas which I was formulating into a new concept of my own. Sadly, what seems so clear in my mind was almost lunacy to others, who didn’t have the vision to see that I was thinking laterally not literally. It made me realise that my way of thinking was not the same as others and that people really struggle to get past what is in front of them and to open up their imaginations. But nevertheless, my vision would have been fab!

In the end the project didn’t go ahead, but my ideas remain for another day.

Nowadays, my focus has moved onto innovative packaging and some of that was used to create the picnic concept I mentioned last week. Again, my mind moved towards adapting what I saw into something new. And despite our trials and tribulations, these picnics are thankfully getting good support from customers since their launch. We also use shared boards to log recipes or product ideas and that allows the team to all post different perspectives into one place that can be referred to at any one time.

In August, I am heading off to Denmark and believe it or not, Pinterest is great for planning holiday trips too. I can see all the great food places to go, link to some good sites with ideas on what to do and piece together the places that I want to see. I always like an element of research when travelling as I worry that I am going to miss something and what has been great is that once the Denmark board was created, I was getting new ideas via pins sent back to me from other people who have pinned the same things as me. This push back is a clever tool in the same vein as the Amazon: people who bought that also bought…. but without the hard sell.

And the latest news is that Pinterest, along with other sites such as Google, Twitter and Instagram, are developing the ‘buy button’ so that now it will be easier than ever to shop online. This Harvard Business School article is an interesting read on the subject and I will watch this space on that one.

Meanwhile, my holiday plans progress and any new project ideas will be brought to life on my profile. If you are interested in keeping an eye, then I am here.

Tags concepts, ideas, pinterest

Categories Design, Marketing

New Ideas

May 31, 2015 //

I sometimes wonder if it is ever possible to come up with something genuinely new in the food world. Of course, there are unusual flavour combinations defined as fusion food, or a merging of two things into one, like the cronut. We are now so engaged with food that all we can do is merge ideas into something which gives added value or a quirky marketing message, rather than create new news.

I know that my mind works on the combinations, connecting the dots in an unusual way. I like to open myself up to seeing what is out there and some time after, whether it’s in the bath or in a subconscious dream, I come up with something that I think will make a difference in my little food retail world. The hardest thing is to figure out whether it is madness or something that would actually catch on.

So when I proposed a new way to do picnics to the team at Melrose and Morgan, it was with trepidation. Over the past few months, we have honed and developed that initial thought into something that we launch on Monday and that is really exciting for me.

The Cheese Board including M’s baby buffalo brie

The idea came from a wide variety of thoughts and experiences. It was a nod to the fact that we all like to bespoke our food these days, that a picnic can feed a lot of people and you need to offer choice, and something that is flexible for my team to talk about in the shops. We pulled the concept together under a ‘PicMix and Match’ banner, creating a range of boards: cheese, meat, fish, vegetarian, sweet, including products from new suppliers to us including a baby buffalo brie from my friend M and wonderful cured meats from Cobble Lane Cured. They all come parcelled up so ideal for one or two, or you can stack them up together to build a really great picnic for lots to share.

I guess the idea is, as I said in my introduction, not a new one. But the really interesting thing for me was to see the concept in my head evolve, whilst working with the team, into a new design that I am so excited about. The trays themselves were difficult to source, as I find most packaging is. You really have to wade through a lot of samples to get both the sizes, quality, spec and price just right. But that was nothing compared to the outer wrap which hung the whole concept together.

There is no doubt if you trawl the internet and review Pinterest for packaging that cardboard engineered wrappers have evolved over the years. You can see some of the products that inspired me on my board here. But there is a very long journey to be taken from having something in your mind to figuring out how to deliver hundreds of them into your shop within a couple of months.

Clever local map idea from N

Our in house designer really did embrace the brief and brought it to life quickly. My marketing colleague spent many an hour folding bits of A4 paper into strange origami shapes that looked like mini handbags to see how we could design the mechanic. N had a brainwave for the inside print and the Chairman figured out how to seal the boxes properly. What none of us had fully appreciated was the role of the engineer in all this. Sadly my A level Physics allowed me to see where the fault was, but not how to solve it. We were able to stack up the boxes with the right weight inside, but as we ‘travel tested’ (read swinging stacks of cardboard trays in an outer around the office) the handle was not holding the weight. It was my sheer pig headedness that forced us not to drop the idea. We could easily have resorted to what we did last year, but one of the things I love about Melrose and Morgan is the fact that they have been leaders in their field from the very first shop which opened over ten years ago. So I kept on pushing.

Three weeks ago we had our final meeting. We had the contents sorted, the margins calculated, the inner trays sourced and the supplier on board to deliver the outers. Samples were sent. Cardboard mock ups were coated, different thicknesses and finishes on hand and we stacked up the boxes ready to fling around the office. I have to admit I was barely peeking out of the corner of my eye fearing that the handle would once again give and my concept would be thwarted. But wait. One small swing and all looked fine – two, three….in fact we gave that outer the time of it’s life and yes. It was fine!

One week later we were sending a sample to the Evening Standard which resulted in this. And at the end of last week, we had all our staff trained and excited about selling this new picnic selection.

So please, pop in or call us at Melrose and Morgan and enjoy a new PicMix and Match. It is something I am very proud of and I hope you will be too.

The back of the outer with our favourite London picnic spots

Tags cheese board, meat board, picnic, vegetarian

Categories British, Cheese, Food, Retail

Vive La France – part 1

The Art of Elderflower Cordial

The Pinterest Phenomenon

New Ideas

Recent thoughts

Categories

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