Tasty Development

Loveyourlarder.co.uk

Sign Ups are now live at loveyourlarder.co.uk. We're going to be sending out an awesome newsletter twice a week featuring some of the best recipes, techniques and ingredients that we can find. You can also join us in our facebook group; www.facebook.com/loveyourlarder.co.uk

Cake Salé

Photo from; http://nyti.ms/91adGw

I've been trying out lots of soda bread recipes recently, and one in particular seems to really stand out every time I make it. When I ask people why they like it so much the response is usually something about it being 'Cakey'. Building on this I thought I'd try adding some cheese to the mix, a few sunflower seeds, some chunks of a really good ham. It was delicious, absolutely amazing. I was imagining toasting it on a sunday morning and topping it with a poached egg and some hollandaise sauce. I was a genius, I didn't tell anyone about my discovery until I could perfect it, patent it, make a fortune! Then I read this; http://nyti.ms/91adGw. Turns out the french have been doing this for years. They'd obviously taken my approach of 'This is too good to tell everyone about. We'll let them think we're all about frogs legs when really we're eating the most delicious sweet bread / savoury cake ever invented!'

I'll let you read the article and use their recipe, not that it's better than mine rather that I'm still keeping it a secret in the hope that one day I can patent it! But before you go read their article, please take a second to visit www.loveyourlarder.com and leave us your email address. We're getting ready to launch the site this summer and we'd love to be able to tell you about it when we do.

NY Times Article and Recipe; http://nyti.ms/91adGw

Real Bread

Jeff, kneading the dough, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from erica_marshall's photostream

There's a reason that dough and bread are slang words for money and it's because people used to value what their baker's produced for them. They valued the ingredients that went into the bread and the skill and time that the baker used to perform the alchemy that transformed these base ingredients into the food equivalent of gold. However during the rationing of the world war and the years following it we became increasingly reliant on industrial scale bread production. The industrial bread baking process uses refined white flour which has nearly all of it's nutrients stripped out of it by roller milling, introduces additives and fungicides to the mix to prevent mould growth and keep the bread 'fresher' (i.e. remaining soft) for longer.

There's a fantastic campaign called Real Bread which has been set up to encourage all of us to buy and eat bread made using traditional techniques from local and sustainable sources. You can read more about the campaign here; http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/ and use their bakery finder to discover where you can buy Real Bread from in your local area. Even better than buying Real Bread is making it yourself and you'll find that they've got lots of recipes which will see you baking a loaf that is not only tastier and healthier than what you can buy in the supermarket, but cheaper too!

We've already got a number of great millers and bakers signed up to sell their flours and breads through the site when we launch this Autumn so if you'd like to find out more about the site we're going to be launching click here to sign up to our mailing list.

Backing up your Blog

Our blog runs on Posterous, and for the most part I absolutely love it. But following on from a Tweet this morning by Christian Payne (from Documental.ly) I wondered how I would go about backing up our blog.

Turns out there's two options, neither of which I can get to download images, but that work well for downloading the text.

Cupcakes!

There's a huge amount to write about the Thinking Digital conference which took place this week, the amazing people and incredibly inspiring ideas. However I think other people can do that better than me, so I thought after all the positive responses we got for the cupcakes yesterday the least I could do would be to share the recipe.

We created two flavours for the conference, each showcasing a different local ingredient - Coffee cupcake with Mocha Icing, made using Pumphreys delicious Daterra Bruzzi coffee and Banana Cupcake with Honey and Cinnamon Icing, made using Chain Bridge Farm's incredible Heather Honey. Once we're up and running you'll obviously be able to buy all these fantastic ingredients through us, but in the meantime you can either get Pumphreys Coffee from their shop in the Grainger Market, Newcastle or through their website - http://pumphreys-coffee.co.uk/. Chain Bridge Honey is available in good delicatessens or they sell a limited range through their site - http://www.chainbridgehoney.co.uk/

It was great meeting you all and I hope you had as fantastic a time as we did. If you'd like us to let you know when the site will be going live click on the 'Join our mailing list' link above and put in your email address.

I hope you enjoy the cupcakes, let us know how you get on!

Tasty Development at Thinking Digital 2010

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/biscuitsmlp/2664933697/ Its the bloody Sage again!, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from biscuitsmlp's photostream

Tasty Development are incredibly happy to announce that they've been invited along to show off their site at Codework's legendary Thinking Digital conference. An annual event, the world's greatest thinkers and innovators gather in NewcastleGateshead to inspire, to entertain, and to discuss the latest ideas and technologies.
We're attending at the invitation of the Institute of Digital Innovation and we'll be demonstrating the idea and technology behind our site on Thursday 27th May between 8-11am. If you're going to be attending then please come by and have a chat with us (we'll have tasty food treats!).
We're really looking forward to some of the incredible speakers and topics that Codeworks have got lined up for this year, so not only is it a good opportunity for us to show off what we've been working on these last few months, but also for us to watch some of the surely inspiring talks.
For more information on Thinking Digital or the Institute of Digital Innovation there are links below;
http://www.thinkingdigital.co.uk
http://idi-uk.org/

Thoughts from the Real Food Festival

The Real Food Festival at Earls Court was even bigger and better this year. Producers, chefs and farmers from across the country had all made the trip to share some of the tasty delights that they had been working on for the last year. For us, at Tasty Development, it was a great chance to meet up with some old friends and also to make some new ones as well as find new businesses who we might be able to help with our site.

It wasn't just about wandering round the stalls trying everything from some Somserset Chorizo to Venezuelan Cacao, there were also demonstrations from top chefs, piglets and bullocks, milking demonstrations as well as a cider bar and wine tasting.

The event is split into two sections with the first three days being aimed at the public and giving them a chance to buy directly from the producers, and then the final day being open to the trade. The trade day was relatively quiet which meant it gave us a great opportunity to have some really interesting conversations with producers and find out some of the issues that they're facing.

We'll certainly be going back next year (Maybe even with our own stand!) but in the mean time we have the speciality and fine food fair this Autumn to look forward to (and the Great Taste Awards as part of it) - Can't wait!

Real Food Festival

Today is the start of one of Britain's biggest celebrations of quality local food - The Real Food Festival. Held in London at Earl's Court, the festival brings together over 400 of the best producers from across the country showcasing everything from handmade farmstead cheeses to slow reared British meats. The Tasty team will be traveling down on Monday to sample some of the delights on offer and meet the faces behind the food. Even if we can't bring you back any of the delicious treats that will be available we'll make sure to take lots of pictures and share some of the highlights with you.

The future of e-Commerce

One of the major hurdles we face in developing a site which aims to connect food producers and customers is how we deal with delivery and ensure freshness. A fisherman's co-operative in Japan has come up with an incredibly innovative solution - the fisherman take photos of the morning's catch whilst still on the boat, upload it to their website with a price, and by the time they get back to harbour they've got their orders and the fish are shipped out. In this way the fishermen cut out the middlemen, meaning a higher margin for them, and the customers get incredibly fresh fish and they know the exact provenance of what they're buying.

http://asiajin.com/blog/2010/04/27/tokyo-bay-fishermen-start-seafood-e-commer...

Burgers, Barbecues and Bank Holidays

They just go together don't they. It doesn't look like the weather is going to be great this weekend (of course it isn't, it's a bank holiday), but all you need for a barbecue is an hour when it doesn't rain to get the coals (yes, coals, not gas) going, cook up a treat and take it back inside to eat. Before you get started there's a few things to consider....

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