Canapes and Cake

A little while ago, I paid a visit to BBC Radio Oxford to talk to the charming Bill Buckley about vinegars on his Sunday lunchtime show. It was a funny feeling: a mere, ahem, 30 or so years earlier, I went to Summer Fields prep school on the opposite side of Banbury Road. Little could I have predicted that I'd be in a radio studio across the road years later...
For this visit, I thought it would be good to show Bill a couple of ways you can use fruit vinegars and so produced a savoury and a sweet canape and a Gluten Free drizzle cake with a twist. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Urvashi Roe for the inspiration for the canapes and Simon Blackwell for the cake: both British Bake Off Greats.

 

Smoked salmon with fresh herb salad,

Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender vinegar dressing

Use a quality smoked salmon for this dish.

Mixed garden herbs (chives, parsely, thyme) dressed with a little virgin oil

Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender vinegar to taste

Slice the smoked salmon thinly, sprinkle over the herbs and drizzle over the vinegar

Leave to stand at room temperature for about half an hour before serving

Blinis/Pastry cases with Mascarpone and Blackberries macerated in Womersley Blackberry Vinegar

Ingredients:

6 Blinis or Pastry cases

A 250g tub of Mascarpone

Womersley Blackberry Vinegar

Blackberries

Method:

Place 6 blackberries in a smal bowl with a couple of teaspoons of Blackberry Vinegar and leave to macerate for a quarter of an hour

Blend a teaspoon of the Blackberry Vinegar into 100g Mascarpone

Level fill your pastry cases with the blended mixture and top with a juicy Blackberry

Serve

Urvashi Roe did these when we were exhibiting at BBC Good Food last November at the NEC. She made them look really pretty with the addition of edible flowers; sadly my photo does not do them justice, though:

   

Gluten free Lemon Drizzle Cake

 with Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender Vinegar Drizzle

Ingredients for the cake:

125g unsalted butter

75g caster sugar

2 large eggs

Zest of one lemon

175g gluten free self raising flour (we used Doves Farm)

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons milk

Ingredients for the Drizzle:

Juice of 1½ lemons

100g icing sugar

2 tbsp Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender vinegar

Method:

- Pre-heat oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4

- Butter and line a loaf or cake tin (make sure the lining goes well up the sides of the tin)

- Cream together butter and sugar, add eggs and lemon zest and beat well

- Add flour and salt, folding gently until mixed

- Add milk and mix in

- Spoon cake mix into prepared tin

- Cook for 45 minutes until golden and skewer comes out clean

For the Drizzle:

(Make just before the cake is due out of the oven)

 -    Put icing sugar, lemon juice and Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender Vinegar into a small saucepan

-    Heat gently until the sugar is dissolved and the vinegar has reduced the mixture to a viscous drizzle

-  When cake is ready, take out of the oven and pierce it all over with a skewer. Pour the drizzle all over. Make sure the cake is totally cooled before taking out of the loaf tin or it will crumble.

BBC Radio Northampton show

Vanessa Kimbell

The Winter months can be a bit quiet for many of us Artisan Food producers, so this is a good time to try to generate a bit of publicity. So I was delighted when Vanessa Kimbell invited me to join her and presenter Kevin Saddington for their live radio show, "Kitchen Garden" on BBC Radio Northampton on Sunday morning.

We had a jolly good discussion all about the history of Womersley, the making of our fruit vinegars and a couple of recipes too, below. I "met" Vanessa on Twitter and have corresponded with her for many months, finally meeting her properly at the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court last year. I can still picture her first approach to our stand, beaming smile and enjoying all the food treats in the hall. Sure enough, we had a jolly good chat and I discovered Vanessa was once a grower of lavender but, as can happen when handling plants with strong essential oils, she suddenly became so sensitive to it that she can no longer use any at all....which is a shame, since my favourite vinegar dressing is our Lime, Black Pepper and Lavender! The Orange & Mace proved a real winner with Vanessa, though, as you can hear on our soundcloud widget, here:

During the show, Kevin played some appropriate Sunday morning tracks (and Abba's Dancing Queen!) while we all had a taste of our sausage casserole recipe (using our Blackcurrant and Rosemary) which we'd had at home for supper the night before as well as our own Lemon Drizzle cake recipe using our Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper to make it really moist and delicious...

Sausage Casserole with

Womersley Blackcurrant & Rosemary Dressing

SERVES 4

Takes 25 minutes approx.

Ingredients:

·         1 tbsp Vegetable Oil

·         8 Thick Pork Sausages

·         1 Medium Red Onion, cut into thick slices

·         2 Braeburn or other eating apple with the skin left on, cored and each cut into wedges

·         1 ½ tbsp Womersley Rosemary Jelly

·         300ml/ ½ Pint Chicken Stock (can be made using a stock cube)

·         1 ½ tbsp Grainy Mustard

·         2 tbsp Womersley Blackcurrant & Rosemary Dressing

Method:

·         Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the pork sausages and fry for about five minutes, turning them so they brown all over. Add the onion slices and continue to fry until the onion and sausages have turned a dark gold, stirring occasionally.

Turn up the heat, add the apple wedges and stir them in carefully until they have glazed in the pan juices.

·         Stir the Rosemary Jelly into the chicken stock until it is dissolved, then add the Blackcurrant & Rosemary Dressing and mustard. Pour this in to the pan and cook on a high heat for 5 minutes.

·         Reduce the heat and leave to simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes until the sausages are cooked and the liquid has reduced to a syrupy gravy.

Serve with your choice of rice or potatoes and veg

Sausage Casserole with Womersley Blackcurrant & Rosemary Dressing

Lemon Drizzle Cake

 with Womersley Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper Vinegar Drizzle

Ingredients for the cake:

125g butter

75g caster sugar

2 large eggs

Zest of one lemon

175g self raising flour

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons milk

Ingredients for the Drizzle:

2 tbsp lemon juice

100g icing sugar

2 tbsp Womersley Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper Vinegar

Method:

- Pre-heat oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4

- Butter and line a loaf or cake tin (make sure the lining goes well up the sides   of the tin)

- Cream together butter and sugar, add eggs and lemon zest and beat well

- Add flour and salt, folding gently until mixed

- Add milk and mix in

- Spoon cake mix into prepared tin

- Cook for 45 minutes until golden and skewer comes out clean

For the Drizzle:

(Make just before the cake is due out of the oven)

-    Put icing sugar, lemon juice and Womersley Lemon, Basil, Bay & Juniper Vinegar into a small saucepan

-    Heat gently until the sugar is dissolved and the vinegar has reduced the mixture to a viscous drizzle

-          When cake is ready, take out of the oven and pierce it all over with a skewer. Pour the drizzle all over. Make sure the cake is totally cooled before taking out of the loaf tin or it will crumble.

Note: For a Gluten free cake, use Gluten Free flour and add extra milk.

Lemon Drizzle Cake (right) with the rest of the day's baking

BBC GOOD FOOD SHOW, THE AFTERMATH

In case you were ever in any doubt, it is pretty exhausting doing five days of exhibition at the NEC, but it is also very rewarding...
I arrived very early on Wednesday morning to see what an amazing job our Wendy and Mark had done in designing and assembling our new stand specially for the show. Together with some well disguised kitchen cabinets, Wendy had also brought some aromatic fresh basil, rosemary and geranium to make it all look a lot fresher. This is how it looked half an hour before the first day began:

We exhibited in the Food Lovers area which was a really great part of the hall to be in, since we were with all the artisans and other food producers, rather than competing with appliance and hardware. Also, we had a great position so we saw a lot of people over the five days, all keen to add a touch of fruitiness to their vinegar!

One of the joys of being a producer of a food ingredient with which many are unfamiliar, is that it gives us the opportunity to have a lot of conversations about food, meals, matching flavours, suggested uses and just to discuss how very versatile our fruit vinegars and dressings are. And, at the NEC, we could really give vent to this to thousands of visitors. Also, we took all four of our herb jellies: Rosemary, Geranium, Apache Chilli and Lavender. These proved to be more popular than ever, and led to one customer commenting that "this is the best thing I have ever tasted from a jar!"

We also reintroduced our pouches of olives at the show. My parents used to add two of our flavours to olives and put them in jars: Green olives with our Strawberry & Mint and Black Olives with our Blackcurrant & Rosemary. Needless to say the samples were wolfed down, but the pouches also proved very popular, so we hope to start making these in earnest for you very soon.

"Womersley" is a difficult word to pronounce until you are familiar with it, so it was a joy to meet several people who know the village where I grew up in Yorkshire (and where our story began) as well as a few called Womersley. (If you want to know how to pronounce it, say the "o" as you say the "o" in "woman").

FREE PRIZE DRAW RESULT

We were delighted to get lots of entries in our free prize draw and can report that Mrs Stewart of Newport Pagnell was the lucky winner of 4 Wensleydale Cremaery Cheeses, one of our beautiful slate display stands and some olives, jelly and vinegars. 

 ------------------------------ 

SATURDAY

As a bonus on Saturday, we were joined by Urvashi Roe and Simon Blackwell from BBC Great British Bake Off who both did recipe demonstrations using our fruity vinegars. I will post Urvashi's later, but here is Simon's delicious recipe which he used to make two cakes: after barely a few minutes, they were all gone!

Simon cuts the cake...

Vegan Lemon Drizzle Cake

     By Simon Blackwell 

Ingredients:  
  
  Cake:
            200g  Self Raising Flour
            125g  Caster Sugar
           ¼ tsp  Salt
           ½ tsp  Bicarbonate of Soda
           200ml  Soya Milk
           100ml  Corn Oil
           2 tbsp  Golden Syrup
           ½ tsp  Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender Vinegar Dressing
                     Rind of 1 Lemon

 Drizzle:
                     Juice of 1 Lemon
           2 tbsp Womersley Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender Vinegar Dressing
               25g Caster Sugar
 Approx 1 tbsp Icing Sugar to thicken

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C/350°F.

2. Line the base of a 7 inch cake tin with baking paper.

3. Sift flour,salt and sugar into a bowl and make a well in the middle.

4. Dissolve bicarb into the milk and then pour into the well.

5. Add corn oil, syrup, Womersley Foods Lime, Black Pepper and Lavender Dressing and lemon rind.

6. Beat until the mixture is a smooth lump free batter.

7. Pour batter into the lined tin and bake in the lower middle part of your oven for 25 minutes until golden brown, and until a metal skewer comes out of the middle of the cake clean.

8. Whilst the cake is cooking, heat the lemon juice, Womersley Foods Lime, Black Pepper & Lavender Dressing and sugar until the sugar has dissolved to make a lemon syrup.

9. When you have removed the cake from the oven and it is still warm, prick all over with a cocktail stick and drizzle some of the syrup over the cake so that it soaks into the sponge.

    
Save half back if you like to drizzle over the cake just before serving.

I got a slice!

Many thanks to Simon for this recipe and for entertaining us all on Saturday afternoon. Also, thank you to Callie Blackwell for the slice photo.