After featuring a number of products that will allow you to showcase your wonderful wares during British Pie Week, we now are turning attention to those utensils which will help you achieve pie perfection.
Steak and ale, chicken and mushroom, apple, rhubarb (something that we’re partial to in all honesty) or four and twenty blackbirds, the pie’s filling is quite important. But perhaps even more so – especially to those passing customers who – is the presentation.
Be it shortcrust or puff, filo or choux, making sure that the pastry is spot on can make or break a pie. And so, ensuring you have the right tools to hand is extremely important.
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Research suggests that 75% of the UK population enjoy tucking into a pie at least once a month and, luckily, British Pie Week is on the horizon.
Despite the rise of exotic cuisines and trendy diets, a good pie is still a favourite of the nation. Be it pork, steak and ale, vegetable or a traditional Bramley apple, a pie, we feel, is to be applauded and placed upon a pedestal.
With people predicting that classic British foods are expected to undergo a renaissance this year thanks in part to the rise of street food and pop-up catering carts, British Pie Week has fallen at a perfect time for those in the catering trade.
Starting on the 02nd March and running for seven days, the week long event will give restaurants, cafes, caterers and producers alike the chance to to celebrate and promote pie par excellence.
We’ll be publishing a few articles over the next few days highlighting products and recipes that will ensure you’ll get the most out of the event and the best place to start is at the front of house.
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Kevin Jenkins, the UK and Ireland Managing Director for Visa Europe, uttered the words that put a smile on the faces of a large proportion of the hospitality and catering sectors where he announced that there was “no evidence of a New Year hangover on overall consumer spending.”
And in further good news, Jenkins also noted that there was a “solid increase in year-on-year spending.”
Data from a number of industries were monitored and once all the information and collated, processed and compared to previous figures, it was the hospitality and catering sectors which reported the strongest increase in spending volumes.
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If you were listening to or watching the news this morning, you may be aware of a story that did the round on the major broadcasters.
Britain is flooded in potatoes.
Normally we’d say this is a good thing: It is National Chip Week after all and therefore we need a healthy supply of spuds. Plus it’s nearly the weekend and there is nothing better than a handful of roasties to go with a Sunday Roast.
The average yield across the main European producers topped fifty tonnes per hectare for the first time recently. In Britain some farmers estimated their harvest to be in excess of 5.5 million tonnes, a three year high.
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Microwave ovens are an important part of any commercial kitchen. Able to perform a variety of functions and extremely user-friendly, these chef-friendly appliances have skyrocketed in popularity over the years.
Did you know that the first microwave oven was released for general not long after the culmination of World War II and was the inadvertent result of research into the field of radar technology?
In 1945, whilst working with an active radar set, he noticed that the resulting microwaves were beginning to melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket. His clothes may have got covered in chocolate, but his discovery would change the way millions cook. In 1947 the company he worked for, Raytheon, built the Radarange range of microwave ovens.
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You can tell that Christmas has been consigned to the history books for a couple of months at least after supermarkets and other retailers were urged to keep daffodil bulbs away from areas selling fruit and vegetables.
In a letter to major stores, Public Health England warned that the flowers could be confused for food produce, such as onions, and that inadvertent consumption of the spring perennial was now an “emerging risk”.
Just for the record, we don’t suggest that you sample battered daffodil rings with your next burger or opt for sage and daffodil bread.
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Not that long ago we mentioned the news story about falling milk prices and the effect that it has having on dairy farmers. Well, the response has been swift.
Members of Parliament affiliated with the Commons Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committee called for the remit of an industry watchdog to be widened, to encompass fairy farmers, Fairtrade weighed into the debate.
Speaking on the issue, which has made the national news on numerous occasions, Barbara Crowther, Fairtrade’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs, commented that:
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Author
Damien Wilde