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30 June 2015

Peruvian-Style Grilled Chicken

Photo: © childsdesign
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The new Cook Sauces from Capsicana are extremely versatile and can be used in a variety of ways.

Visitors to the Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2015 will be able to try this sauce and others, where Capsicana will be exhibiting on stand V123

The packs each carry a couple of recipes, one very simple, ideal for a quick midweek meal and the other a little more involved for maybe a Friday night or weekend.

In The Artisan Food Trail kitchen we often like to experiment, so we took Capsicana’s Chilli & Lemon Peruvian Cook Sauce, added a few extras and turned it into an extra special marinade for chicken.
The Cook Sauce can also be used as a condiment which we included in a simple dip to go with the chicken.

The trick to getting the maximum amount of flavour to permeate the meat is to get the marinade under the chicken skin as well as on the surface.
Nothing beats barbecuing for a smokey flavour but a hot oven will cook the chicken just fine, still producing a crispy, caramelised, burnished skin.

View recipe

29 June 2015

Muesli Cake

Photo: © childsdesign
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Muesli doesn't just have to be for breakfast, it also works well as an ingredient in baking too.
This muesli cake is sticky, moist, fruity and wonderfully malty. It could be best described as being something like bread pudding and malt loaf.
Could it be considered healthy? Well there's lots of fibre and a generous amount of linseed meal added for omega 3 oomph.
The cake does not contain any dairy products, so no eggs or butter, in fact no fat at all, just the oil used to grease the tin, so it would be suitable for vegans.

View recipe

Photo: © childsdesign

22 June 2015

20 Ways with Pesto (other than pasta)

Everyone knows pesto is perfect with pasta but did you know that you can do so much more with it?
Here are just 20 ideas to liven up your meals and the list could go on…

  1. Mix into minced meat to make meatballs or burgers
  2. Use as a pizza sauce instead of tomato
  3. Mix with mayonnaise and spread on to sandwiches
  4. Pesto butter – mix with softened butter
  5. Stir into mashed potatoes
  6. Add to seafood such as mussels
  7. Great with steamed green/runner beans
  8. Perfect with peas and pancetta
  9. Add to potato salad
  10. Tasty topping for grilled chicken
  11. Add to scrambled eggs
  12. Make a dip – add pesto to mayonnaise and crème fraîche with some capers, lemon zest and juice and mix well
  13. Stir into soups, tomato is particularly good
  14. Add some to a frittata or omelette
  15. Add to hummous
  16. Rub over chicken before roasting
  17. Bake into bread
  18. Mix into salad dressing
  19. Toss hot vegetables in it
  20. Spread on bruschetta

5 June 2015

Fennel & Lemon Butter Dressing

Photo: © childsdesign
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Fennel has such an interesting flavour and is also such a versatile herb.
The seeds, leaves, stems and flowers have a delightful aniseed taste which
we love.

Fennel is the ideal companion to fish and a variety of vegetables both being enhanced with a lick of flavoured butter.

At the time, our garden fennel was a little small to lose any of its leaves to our kitchen and we didn't like the idea of  bits of fennel seed in our butter…
Holy Lama Naturals' Spice Drops to the rescue!

Fennel Seed Spice Drops added just the flavour we needed and was so easy to use.
We adore the bright fresh flavour and aroma.

Our butter was liberally doused over some salmon and asparagus but it would work equally well with purple sprouting broccoli
or pak choi.

View recipe

1 June 2015

The Artisan Food Trail partners with Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2015


The Artisan Food Trail is proud to be a media partner for this year's Speciality & Fine Food Fair, being held at London Olympia from 6th – 8th September 2015.

Speciality & Fine Food Fair, incorporating Speciality Chocolate Fair is the UK’s leading showcase of fine food and drink. This is the must-attend ‘trade only’ event with more than 750 producers, showcasing thousands of new food and drink products and ingredients.

The event is popular with Artisan Food Trail members who exhibit their existing products as well as launching new ones. This is also the perfect opportunity for our members to meet buyers and to forge new business links.

Come to the Fair to discover new ideas and source artisan food & drink products to help your food business stand out from the crowd.

Visit The Artisan Food Trail website to find out more