The second great recipe video featuring Angela Griffin. This one is for mouth-watering lamb wraps
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Recipe Video: Steak Dish with Angela Griffin
A bespoke recipe video by Angela Griffin from Coronation Street, Hustle and Mount Pleasant. This one is for Red Pesto Steak with pasta and peppers!
Recipe Video: Steak Dish with Angela Griffin
Meat Origin Survey
PGI Welsh Lamb and PGI Welsh Beef have launched a survey to canvas consumer opinion about meat origins.
Consumers are being urged to complete the survey to give an insight about whether the horsemeat scandal has impacted their perceptions about meat. The survey asks consumers how much of an interest they took in the origin of meat and if they looked for food origin labels before the scandal compared to now. It goes on to ask if their consumption habits have changed to see if consumers are buying more meat from a local butcher compared to the supermarket.
Pip Gill, of Hybu Cig Cymru – the organisation behind PGI Welsh Lamb and PGI Welsh Beef, said: “We’d like to invite as many consumers as possible to fill in our short poll which will give us a real insight into meat purchasing behaviour and whether this is changing.
“Welsh Lamb and Welsh Beef have been awarded the European PGI status which means that its origin is guaranteed. The stringent requirements mean that, legally, only lambs which have been born and reared in Wales to specified high standards and slaughtered in an approved abattoir can be labelled ‘Welsh Lamb’. The blue and yellow PGI label on every packet of Welsh Lamb acts as a stamp of authenticity so you can guarantee that the product you are buying is exactly as described and is fully traceable. We believe that if consumers are becoming more concerned about the origin of meat, this label provides peace of mind for them. We are activity campaigning to raise consumer awareness of the PGI label to help provide this quality assurance and origin guarantee.”
The survey is available online: http://tinyurl.com/meatorigin
Help Save The World’s Rainforests This Easter
A new environmental campaign has recently launched encouraging chocolate lovers to become checkout-campaigners in their choice of Easter Eggs with the aim of halting the destruction of the world’s rainforests.
The campaign is a ground-breaking collaboration between the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) and Ethical Consumer and has surveyed over 70 of the UK’s top chocolate brands on their use of palm oil or its derivatives.
The campaign is being launched in response to the increasing threat that unsustainable palm oil is posing to the world’s rainforests, and consequently, to the people that rely almost entirely on those forests for their livelihoods.
Having destroyed vast areas of forest in countries such as Indonesia, palm oil companies are now planning to expand in the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Africa. An area the size of Yorkshire is currently being cleared to make way for oil palm plantations. If forest habitats are lost, then numerous wildlife species, including forest elephant and lowland gorilla, will also be under threat.
Simon Counsell, Executive Director of The Rainforest Foundation UK said:
“We’ve launched a guide to foods containing palm oil with Ethical Consumer to raise awareness of the impacts associated with the production of this common ingredient. Consumers should be empowered to make informed purchasing decisions, understanding the impact of the production of the products they pick.”
According to a recent RFUK report Seeds of Destruction, 1 million acres of rainforest in the Congo Basin is currently being developed by palm oil producers, and with 284 million acres of suitable soil in the region, developers are actively seeking large sites now. Palm oil is a core ingredient in many food products and companies are not required by EU law to label products containing it until December 2014.
Tim Hunt co-director at Ethical Consumer said:
“Consumer power has the potential to help save the Congo’s rainforests and its wildlife that is under threat from palm oil production. This Easter we’re asking chocolate lovers to buy their Easter eggs from those chocolate companies that we’ve identified as taking an ethically responsible stance on this critical issue.”
The top two chocolate companies identified in the product guide are: Divine and Booja Booja. Neither company uses any palm oil in their chocolate products.
The bottom three chocolate companies identified in the product guide are Lindt, Thorntons and Guylian. Lindt supplied inaccurate figures while Thorntons and Guylian failed to submit any documentation to the organisations that set international sustainable palm oil standards.
The product guide to chocolate is the first of a series of guides that will rate all consumer products using palm oil. Future guides will include biscuits, cereals and spreads.
The aim of the campaign is to encourage consumers to buy the best rated products, forcing those companies that are not taking their environmental responsibilities seriously to use more sustainably sourced palm oil.
The full product guide can be seen here: www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/palm-oil-database
Cooking with Armagnac
To celebrate its 180th anniversary, the Armagnac house of CASTAREDE has just released a new book, ‘Cooking with Armagnac’ written by Florence Castarède and her father Jean. Castarède is the oldest Armagnac house in France.
The first of its kind, ‘Cooking with Armagnac’ is 68 pages dedicated to this little known brandy and how to use it in a multitude of recipes including a chapter on cocktails.
The authors introduce us to this ‘very individual spirit’ as they call it, with a little history and romance added by the famous Gascon musketeer D’Artagnan, who was an adept of Armagnac, introducing it to the court of Louis XIV. The reader will learn how to drink this fine digestive, the rituals associated with it and the reasons why it is so adapted to its use in cooking.
A clear and simple, no-nonsense presentation, interspersed with full colour mouth watering photographs, lays out chapters starting with a line up of tapas and leading on to starters, sauces, seafood and fish, meat and poultry, desserts and fruits with a finale of recipes from professional chefs.
Recipes such as the traditional Gascon Garbure, a hearty cabbage soup with duck pieces, pigeon and Armagnac casserole, roast partridge with grapes and armagnac, duck with apples, vanilla and Armagnac custard, apple or pear clafoutis with armagnac and even a delicious sweet Armagnac omelette traditionally served as a dessert in the region.
Several more complicated recipes from renowned chefs such as Michel Guérard from Eugénie-les-Bains who presents his tipsy turkey recipe, sushi of sturgeon with Aquitaine caviar by Florence Cathiard in Bordeaux or Armagnac Babas from Nicolas Berger, the head pastry chef at Alain Ducasse’s Plaza Athénée in Paris.
Cooking with Armagnac is priced at €7 + €5 postage and packaging (UK) and is available from Armagnac CASTAREDE, 140 Boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris. Contact Florence Castarede on Tel: +33 (0) 1 44 05 15 81 or email [email protected]
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