Recent News From The Ludlow Food Centre

The Ludlow Food Centre, Ludlow Food Festival and AGA are joining together for the foodie event of the year. Friday the 10th to Sunday the 12th of September, weekend of the Ludlow Food Festival, will see this exciting partnership cooking up some real treats.

This weekend in September will host the annual Food Festival at Ludlow Castle. Held every year in Ludlow, the small town holds a great reputation for the most famous and largest food event to occur in the region every year. Being Britain’s first successful food and drink festival, the Ludlow Food Festival has stayed original to its aim and is dedicated in highlighting and promoting high quality food and drink from local producers in the area. This year over 130 local producers will feature at the festival to offer demonstrations, talks, food sampling and more. The Ludlow Food Centre will host three stands at the festival where people will be offered the chance to sample some of the most delicious and unique foods in the region.

AGA’s Peter Hughes will be at the Food Centre over this weekend cooking some of the Food Centre’s award winning food on a live AGA. The unique partnership between AGA’s latest stove and the Food Centre’s fantastic products will offer customer’s ideas on how to cook the region’s favourite foods in traditional ways, offering mouth watering insights into cooking. Tastings of freshly cooked local and seasonal foods will be FREE for customers to sample at the Centre over the whole festival weekend, and all customers old and new are welcome to join in the fun.

The Conservatory Barn Cafe at the Ludlow Food Centre is set to be enhanced, following the recent employment of experienced cafe manager Richard Davies.
Mr Davies, born and raised in Herefordshire, has 19 years experience in the catering industry; ranging from managing 5 star hotels in Birmingham, to running his own Delicatessen in Bath. Starting out as a pot washer in his local pub, Mr Davies has moved onwards and upwards in his profession, and holds exciting new plans for the Conservatory Barn Cafe.

Having created the Castle Cafe in Ludlow, and witnessed its development over 5 years, Mr Davies’ sees his move to the Conservatory Barn cafe as a natural career progression and new challenge.

He says, ‘Having travelled a lot and been involved in numerous aspects of the catering industry, I have been to various countries and experienced their different cafe cultures...this is what inspired me to get involved in cafe management. My vision is to bring that high quality and extraordinary ambience that is felt in cultured Patisseries to a cafe in the UK.’

‘I am extremely excited to actualize my vision into reality. I feel that there is a lot of potential at the Conservatory Barn cafe, with the beautiful venue and space, and not forgetting the amazing food. I have high ambitions that won’t disappoint.’ Being a local lad of the Portlock family of Ludlow, and having worked in Ludlow for 10 years, Richard is elated to be working for another local establishment.

Mr Davies aims to create an animated dining experience for customers with the highest possible serving standards and a captivating new menu. Plans are to introduce an exclusive range of high quality loose leaf teas, cream teas, and cooked breakfasts, with the hope to have achieved this by the end of October.

Following this Mr Davies has plans to create a new outdoor seating area that will embellish the look of the conservatory barn cafe with fresh flowers, grape vines and palm trees to create a truly relaxing ambience.

Ultimately, Mr Davies plans to make the Conservatory Barn cafe award winning, and to eventually join the UK Tea Guild which issues awards of excellence for the industry.

Everything that the cafe sells and serves is available to buy at the Food Centre. Mr Davies expressed that he was delighted at the fact that the centre roasts its own coffee and is looking forward to creating his own blend of coffee to serve at the cafe.

On Friday July 30th a CBBC film crew visited a South Shropshire Food Centre to film a new TV series. Production company Leopard Films came to the Ludlow Food Centre to film a new programme for CBBC entitled ‘Trade You Way To The USA’. The programme will be hosted by Apprentice runner up Saira Khan and is due to air later this year. Two teams of 11-13 year olds arrived at Ludlow Food Centre to take part in an Apprentice like competition. They were tasked with buying £75 worth of produce to sell the following day for a profit. The sale took place in Ironbridge at the Blists Hill Museum taking the theme of a Mad Hatters Tea Party at which they would sell products bought from the Food Centre.

Leopard Films were looking for the best place to film the children buying local, traditional food but also wanted to find a way of filming the food production too. Rachel Ford, Producer of the show said,

‘Ludlow is renowned as a foodie place so was a good place to start looking. When we found the Food Centre we loved it because everything is local and we could see the producers making the food. It’s been great to go behind the scenes at the Food Centre so we can show our audience how the food is made’

The two teams of three school children were given time to select and buy their £75 of produce and then had to face the Food Centre’s buyer, Reuben Crouch, to haggle on price. The aim was to beat Reuben down on price in order to make a greater profit at the sale.

Reuben says,

‘It was a pleasure to be involved with CBBC and help with the programme...I was impressed with the children’s ability to haggle, especially the girls who did a much better job than the boys on the day’

The episode filmed at the Food Centre and Blists Hill will be one of ten shown this year starting in the Autumn. The winning team will be rewarded with a trip to New York as their prize.

A team of three jam and pickle makers at a local food producer are celebrating their win at this year’s Guild of Fine Foods ‘Great Taste Awards’. The jam and pickle team at Ludlow Food Centre won awards in three categories at the prestigious event. Darren Marsh, Tess Slater and Pam Greenham won awards for their Red Pepper Relish and their Wild Whimberry Jam but the big winner was their Hand Cut Seville Marmalade which bagged them a ‘Best in Category’ for their Hand Cut Seville Marmalade.

In this year’s ‘Great Taste Awards’ there were 6000 products entered by 1300 food producers. 300 judges from all areas of the food industry including chefs, restaurant critics and food writers spent a great deal of time assessing each product in a blind tasting before announcing the winners. To win, and gain a prestigious award, the product had to be of the very highest standard and show the skills of the producer.

Darren Marsh, Head of the Jam and Pickle kitchen at the Food Centre says,

‘It’s great to be recognised at one of the country’s largest food competitions, and to win three awards is a dream. We all work really hard to make the most of region’s produce and the seasonal produce from abroad such as a the Seville oranges we use in our Marmalade’

Earlier in the year the Food Centre’s team picked up the ‘Gold Award’ at the World Marmalade Festival held in Penrith so their recent win at the ‘Great Taste Awards’ has confirmed them to be the best Marmalade makers around.

Darren adds,

‘We only buy Seville oranges from a single co-operative in the area surrounding the city of Seville... by using the best quality oranges, adding sugar, water and lemon juice we keep all the fresh flavours in every jar’

The Food Centre’s team now supply other food retailers with their Marmalade, including Fortnum & Mason in London who have sold thousands of jars since first ordering the product in March. They have also started selling the product online and recently had an enquiry from California asking for a dozen jars! The enquiry came from a Professor Dobbs saying,

‘When I was in London I purchased a jar of your 2010 Hand Cut Seville Orange Marmalade; it is the best marmalade I have ever tasted. I wondered if it is for sale in the USA? If not, is it possible to ship to the USA

Darren says,

‘We can’t believe how popular our marmalade has been this year... we just hope that other products can take off in the same way’

A local Food Centre is getting involved in the Real Bread Campaign’s ‘Local Loaves for Lammas’ event that takes place on July 31st and August 1st. The Ludlow Food Centre’s bakery team have created a brand new loaf for the event to celebrate real bread made with British flour. The Lammas festival is an ancient event that has been brought in to the 21st century by the Real Bread Campaign to encourage bakers throughout the country to bake using traditional methods and local ingredients. Ludlow Food Centre’s bakery team (Anna, Brenda, Katie and Louise) have created a tomato and basil loaf that has been affectionately called a ‘Tomato and Basil Scrumble’. The ‘Scrumble’ is so called because of the rustic way it is made, essentially ‘scrumbling’ all the ingredients together and baking without the use of tin. Anna says,

‘it’s nice to experiment but we are so busy it is difficult to find time. The Real Bread Campaign is a great excuse to get creative so we have looked to do something completely different. We have wanted to do a speciality bread like this for a while and we’ve been really encouraged by the sales so far...so much so that we may carry on making it after Lammas’

The Real Bread Campaign is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food Programme which aims to encourage small, artisan producers and multinationals to make bread fun and interesting but most of all to do this using local ingredients. Chris Young of the Real Bread Campaign says,

‘Real bakeries like Anna’s at the Food Centre play a really important role in our local communities, providing not only great, all-natural food but also offering meaningful jobs and other social benefits on our doorsteps. Lammas is a great chance for everyone in the area to get along to show their support and help to make sure that they don’t lose such a valuable asset.’

The Real Bread Campaign is a part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. The Campaign champions locally-baked, additive-free bread and finds ways to make all loaves better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet.

The butchery team at a Shropshire food centre have been spending a great deal of time and effort smoking behind the building. John Brereton and his team at the Ludlow Food Centre have acquired a surprisingly healthy smoking habit by spending time developing a range of smoked meat products. In just the last 4 months John and his team have worked on smoking an alarming array of smoked meat including local, free range chicken and duck, estate reared venison, Gloucester Old Spot pork and even locally sourced trout.

John says,

‘We started by smoking our own bacon and its grown from there. We are now working on more unique smoked meat such as spiced turkey breast, pastrami and even smoked garlic’

The Food Centre invested a small amount of money in a hot smoker with the view of smoking a small range of meats to increase the product range their butchery offered. John had found it difficult to find the variety of smoked meat locally and so decided that it would be best to try himself with meat from the Food Centre’s, Earl of Plymouth Estate.

John says,

‘We use Oak chippings and meat from the Estate whenever possible but it’s the attention to detail that makes the difference. We smoke chicken differently to pork and have tailored the process to get the right length of time and heat for each product. This means that we keep the moisture in the meat whilst still achieving a rich smokey flavour....Everyday is different, we are always having to make allowances for the change in weather such as heat or humidity to get the best product’

John admits that smoking has been a passion of his for a long time and that only recently has he had time to embrace his passion at work.

To keep things seasonal John’s next release will be smoked mackerel that is just coming in to season again now and will hopefully be available at the Ludlow Food Centre soon.

Latest News...