Interview – Yellowbelly Food

Heathers of Horncastle is bloomin’ marvelous

April 9, 2011 Samantha Viner Leave a comment

Heathers is a greengrocers in Horncastle. Photo: Emma Chapman

Heathers of Horncastle has been bringing local produce to the people of Horncastle for the last 25 years.

The small greengrocers is run by Heather who started working there when she was at school, within five years she had taken over the business and has since turned the greengrocers into a hub for local produce.

Heather is keen to stock as much local produce as possible, given the arable nature of the county. “We’re just coming into the local season so we are starting to get in local asparagus, all our local greens, local cauliflowers have just started, obviously leeks and all your winter vegetables are still coming in locally, then we buy the rest from Norfolk.

“We have a gentleman that comes from Norfolk with a lot of produce from there and then we obviously have to get it from the wholesalers for all the different things that are imported. To get the full range we have we have to go to a wholesalers, and they currently come from Derbyshire so we order at 4.30pm this evening then by 7am it’s all here in the shop again which keeps it all fresh.”

“If we could get everything local we would, we are just a vegetable growing county, we do during the summer months get all our local tomatoes and the such like but you don’t really get that much fruit grown in Lincolnshire so a lot of it does have to come from Norfolk. We just try and be as British and local as we can be and that’s the way forward for us. That’s what people know about my shop and that’s how I work.”

Competing with the supermarkets is the main problem that greengrocers encounter. “It’s not the produce that’s the problem, it’s the convenience that people like going and doing it all under the one roof so they don’t know what they’re paying, or the quality an flavour difference, we are lucky in Horncastle, I’ve been here a few years so I do have a good following from people that know what we’re about”.

Heather does realise the challenges she faces. “There’s very few [greengrocers], there’s more closing than there is opening that is a certainty. We’ve just gotta get the message across that local is best and it’s just getting people for the convenience and I don’t know how you do that, its just laziness isn’t it but there’s not a lot we can do about that one.”

Drive through ice cream at Daisy Made

April 6, 2011 Samantha Viner Leave a comment

Rum and raisin ice cream at Daisy Made. Photo: Emma Chapman

Daisy Made is a popular ice cream parlour in Lincolnshire. Photo: Samantha Viner

Drive through ice cream is a strange experience but one that has been very successful in Skellingthorpe.

Matt Scarborough now runs the small family business, Daisy Made. “I can’t remember the exact year it started because I wasn’t very old” says Matt.

“It’s been here quite while, must be 18 or 19 years now. My parents opened the business, and when me and my brother got a little bit older my Mum deciced to start making ice cream. We started in a little wooden hut which then became a garden shed as we expanded to sort of this that were in now so it’s grown fairly well.”

The staff at Daisy Made use the milk from their own herd to make the ice cream but sadly have to get the flavourings in from outside the county. Local produce is important in Matt’s eyes though: “it’s a very agricultural county so without promoting Lincolnshire produce I think the county would suffer.”

For Matt and his family ice cream was obviously the next step to take from owning a dairy herd. “We’ve always had the farm here so we’ve always had the dairy herd. It’s the fact that we already had the dairy herd that made the ice cream a sort of logical option and sort of a new direction to go in than what we already had.”

Daisy Made offers a great family experience with not only a rainbow of soft ice cream but also goats, rabbits and guinea pigs to pet.

The rum and raisin ice cream was deliciously soft with huge fat juicy raisins. The rum flavouring was just right and the plentiful raisins added texture. The one complaint? I wanted more!

Lincolnshire is home to award-winning Indian spices

April 4, 2011 Samantha Viner Leave a comment

Mr Huda's spices are sold around the region. Photo: Samantha Viner

You’d never think of Scunthorpe as the home to award-winning Indian spices- but it is.

Maf Huda set up Mr Huda’s Surma Secrets about four years ago. Since then the company has won competitions and managed to get their brand into major supermarkets around the county.

Maf recently sold his restaurant business to concentrate on the Mr Huda’s concept. He said: “running the restaurant, being a chef and front of house you’re always dabbling about with spices and getting them ready for when the customers come in for a meal.

“The constant thing is why [don’t] we provide a ready blend of spices for the customers to create the dishes at home giving them simple to use recipe instructions. People always want to cook what they have at the restaurant because they like the flavours of the restaurant but they cannot achieve that by looking at all the cookery books, because some of them don’t give you all the ingredients and if they do it’s very hard to get hold of and it’s expensive.

“So all that research into it I thought ‘lets do a restaurant style curry paste’. Basically we’re not going do any cooking because in the restaurant when we do the preparation of the spice we don’t do any cooking until the customer orders, so that was a concept where the idea came from.”

The reason the spices are so successful in Huda’s eyes is because they allow the customer to still feel a sense of achievement about cooking a complex dish.

Maf said that “if the customer wants to cook a fresh meal with the chicken and vegetables, instead of adding all the ingredients all they do is add a few teaspoons from the jar and they get this flavour and spices of all the ingredients ready blended. So the customer goes in and still does a bit of cooking, gets the satisfaction of cooking their own meal but they haven’t gone through the heartache of sourcing all the different spices and storing them and grinding them so that was the service that we provide.”

It’s obvious that an Indian company will struggle to source local produce but Mr Huda’s still has the Tastes of Lincolnshire approval. This is because they source what they can from a 15-20 mile radius. When things such as green chilli and garlic are in season they will source them locally. They also source other things from this radius too, including the glass jars, labels and cardboard sleeves.

Mr Huda’s were also part of the reason that Jim Sutcliffe won his Young Butcher of the Year title. His curried goat and mango sausages got him through to the last stages of the competition. Maf said: “our product is like a spice mix where you can use it to make curry itself but you can use it to create flavour.

“Herbs and garlic and coriander and all of that in there but when you want to create a flavour in something like a sausage mix but sometimes you need to give it that bit of oomph what you do is add that into and it creates a spiced mix. What we did with Jim was a curried recipe for a sausage.

“It’s something unique and something not always available so we thought we’d suggest a combination of our spice with a bit of mango because people use apple and that in sausages so he did that with goat and came out tops; it went down really well.

“He made it with goat meats but you could do it with any meat. That was one of the dishes he did for the final stage which gave him the edge of thinking different so out of the norm helped him to get those extra points to win.”

Mr Huda’s Surma Secrets won the best Ethnic Food Category in the whole of the UK when they first started four years ago. They now plan to continue growing the company and hopefully get the spice mix into supermarket chains nationwide while “still keeping the small local stores stocked up too.”

The elite butcher of the Bailgate

April 1, 2011 Emma Chapman Leave a comment

Elite Meats, situated in the Bailgate area of uphill Lincoln. Photo: Emma Chapman

Kenny Roberts’ cheeky conservation and welcoming smile, has encouraged customers into Elite Meats, for the past 22 years.

I went into the shop and had a chat with Kenny about the history of the business, his specialities, organic rain and his television appearances.

Elite Meats has been trading for many years, Kenny says: “It all started many moons ago, I was a Saturday lad and when I left school there was a recession on and no work so my boss said: ‘Would you like to work here as on the YTS (Youth Training Scheme)?'”

This was back in the 80s and Kenny leaped at the chance: “I enjoyed what I was doing”.

The business was sold onto another butcher and then ended up in Kenny’s hands, he explains: “He weren’t much good, and I ended up showing him how to cut meats and he sold it to me 22 years ago. He taught me some good ideas, learnt my own ideas, watched a bit of telly, going to all the shops having a look at what they’re doing and passed the trade on into one unit so that’s how it started”.

Kenny enjoys his jobs and says: “Meeting customers, having a bit of banter, just having a laugh really… that’s the best bit. Christmas is good as well: pocket full of money!”

Kenny only sells free range meats in his shop. Photo: Emma Chapman

All of Kenny’s meat is free range and he prides himself on having the highest quality goods from local producers. “We use local farmers, the beef is from Mr Davidson, he has a little small holding down Skew Bridge, just behind Morrison’s and he just has his cattle, a retired farmer, and just breeds them for me. That’s nice” says Kenny.

“The pork is from Schofields, based near Market Rasen, they’ve won a lot of awards… award winning for the fat stock, because they do the traditional way, breeding the traditional way and feeding the traditional way so they’ve got a layer of fat on. If you go into supermarkets you don’t see a layer of fat on the pork anymore, people always say: ‘How do I get the crackling?’ ‘Well buy decent pork to start with’, that’s what I say”.

: The window display in Elite Meats. Photo: Emma Chapman

“The lambs are from Scayman’s. Dale Scayman he’s a local farmer, we shake a deal with him and he rears good lambs so that’s why we take them”.

When talking to Kenny about organic produce he says: “We can get organic if people want it but I don’t agree with organic because there is no such thing as organic rain. When the rain comes from the sky, it doesn’t say: ‘don’t rain on there’ does it? Nobody has thought about it. Free range is as good as organic is going to get”.

Nowadays many local butchers are losing trade to supermarkets that are popping up everywhere. Kenny however has plenty of trade coming through the door, saying: “We have our regular supply of customers but if they see a bargain on telly they go off and have a look. They sometimes buy but sometimes they wouldn’t even think about buying meat there. If it’s half the price I sell it at, they’re going to try it. But I’m not bothered”.

One thing Kenny is bothered about is supporting the local economy. “It’s a good idea to buy local, it’s good for the local economy, the local traders, and the local producers. It’s a great idea, keeps all the money in one place”.

The application for the Lincolnshire Sausage to recieve PGI status has it’s roots with Kenny. “I started it six years ago, because when I started we had a traditional Lincolnshire recipe the old man had, that was passed through generations. That was a proper Lincolnshire sausage, but now you can buy Lincolnshire sausages anywhere and people don’t know what a Lincolnshire sausage is. So I thought a few years ago, to start the campaign to have Lincolnshire sausage only made in Lincolnshire.”

: Kenny’s Lincolnshire Stuffed Mushroom, as featured on the Secret Super Club. Photo: Emma Chapman

According to Kenny the campaign is doing well, he says: “Cornish pasty got it’s PGI status, the Cumberland sausage got it’s status, and we were just behind them when we put the application in, so hopefully this year or next year, it’s going good!”

Kenny is somewhat of a local celebrity in the area, appearing on several TV programmes including the Channel 4’s Secret Supper Club, he comments: “It’s [a] good bit of PR, it’s good when they choice you out and put your comments on the box or in the papers or radio. It’s nice, I like it”.

Podcast: The Cheese Society

March 22, 2011 Samantha Viner Leave a comment

Kate O'Meara owns the Cheese Society. Photo: Samantha Viner

This week we visited The Cheese Society and spoke to Kate O’Meara about her business. Located on St. Martins Lane, The Cheese Society comprises of a small deli and cafe.

The cafe stocks cheeses from around Lincolnshire such as the traditional Poacher, as well as other’s from around the UK and overseas.

Kate is passionate about local produce and insists that the café uses the best beef in it’s burgers along with quality vegetables. The deli also stocks cider from Skidbrooke which helps to promote the local economy.

Kate talks to Emma and Samantha about the risk of selling her house to fund the Cheese Society and how it paid off as well as the novelty cheese wedding cakes.

We also tried some Lincolnshire cheeses, including Smoked Lincolnshire Poacher and Cote Hill Blue.

You can listen to the podcast and view the accompanying slideshow below.

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