Plastic Bags, Local Shops and DPVC

In October last year, the Welsh Government introduced a scheme whereby retailers must charge 5p for each single-use carrier bag. This has dramatically reduced the use of environmentally-damaging plastic bags and, because the money can be donated to charity, is also helping good causes.

Here in Dinas Powys, a number of local shops have Dinas Powys Voluntary Concern (DPVC) charity boxes on their counters for the 5p bag charge. From October 2011 to February 2012, a total of £250 was collected from these boxes and donated to DPVC. Additional donations have also been made in the boxes, along with money found in the street with no identifiable owner.

The DPVC collection boxes can be found at Valley View Fruit Stores, Mark Griffiths Family Butchers, the Village Stores, TH & L Jones Chemists, The Green Room, Bank of Flowers and Happy Embroidery.

These stores are supportive of the same aims as DPVC. For example, Jan and Tony Mapstone, of Valley View Fruit Stores, and Mark Griffith the butcher deliver to those in the community who are elderly or less mobile, while the chemist collects prescriptions for those who find going out difficult.

I wrote the above for Depend, which is published by DPVC. The newsletter is delivered to every house in Dinas Powys (I have just delivered my bagful to the Murch Crescent area). 

The bag charge money will help DPVC, for example, operate a minibus/ambulance for getting the elderly and infirm to the shops and hospital. DPVC are based at the Resource Centre, Murchfield Community Hall, Dinas Powys. DPVC are celebrating their 40^th anniversary this year.

There is a new website, where you can find out more about DPVC activities. You can download the Dinas Powys Community Directory and soon you’ll be able to read the rest of Depend (navigate to Media, Downloads):

http://dpvc-dinaspowys.com/

DPVC have also recently joined Twitter: @DPVC

In addition, I tweet about Murchfield Community Hall activities: @murchfield

A previous blog post concerning DPVC:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/dinas-powys-voluntary-concern.html

Wales the True Taste

Wales the True Taste (Cymru Y Gwir Flas) is a brand founded by the Welsh Government to promote food and drink products. A key part of this initiative is the annual Food and Drink Awards. At the 2011-12 awards, held last October in Llandudno, over 1,000 entrants competed in numerous categories. Winning an award allows a producer to use the Wales the True Taste logo (gold, silver or bronze), which has become a mark of excellence within the Welsh food and drink industries. Award winners also take part in a range of promotional activities, such as the showcase held last night (20 March) at ffresh restaurant and bar in the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC), Cardiff Bay.

ffresh is the first restaurant to become a Wales the True Taste partner. They have a commitment to sourcing Welsh products, with around 30% of ingredients coming from Wales the True Taste partners. For their annual spring showcase, ffresh invited some of their Wales the True Taste suppliers to exhibit and served a range of taster dishes from the restaurant menu that feature award-winning Wales the True Taste ingredients.

To start the event, there were short speeches from Janet Davies, from the Board of the WMC, and the Welsh Government’s Deputy Minister for Agriculture Alun Davies AM. Shaun Hill, the Michelin-starred consulting chef at ffresh further extolled the importance of Wales’ world-class food and drink products to the country’s economy and culture. Shaun thinks there is room for expansion in the high-end restaurant sector in Wales, and would like to see more chefs in Wales “getting the credit” for serving Welsh products.

My first taster was Wye Valley asparagus risotto with Hafod cheese. This was a creamy and very satisfying dish. Peli Pabo goats’ cheese and beetroot salad was next, with small balls of the fresh soft cheese nestling on attractive salad leaves. Hafod cheese is made by Sam and Rachel Holden on Wales’ oldest certified organic dairy farm, Bwlchwernen Fawr, near Lampeter (Gold winner in the cheese small producer category). Peli Pabo Garlic and Herb Goat’s Cheese is produced by Y Cwt Caws on Anglesey (Bronze winner in the same category).

My next dish was Welsh Venison Centre faggots, mash and peas. The faggots had a meaty density and a rich liver flavour; just how I like them. The Welsh Venison Centre in the Brecon Beacons was a multiple award-winner in the 2011-12 awards, for its Venison haunch steak, Welsh rack of lamb, and Welsh belly of pork.

The fish course was fillet of Welsh seabass, Puffin potato cake and salsa verdi. This is wild Welsh line-caught seabass (from Pembrokeshire-based South & West Wales Fishing Communities Ltd.). The nature of the product and the skillful cooking (crispy skin and perfect timing) ensured this was a treat; seabass with a full-on fishy taste (and totally unlike a farmed seabass I had recently).

Puffin Produce Ltd grow potatoes and other vegetables (e.g., leeks, cabbage) in Pembrokeshire. Their red-skinned Rudolph Potato won gold in the Vegetables category of the recent awards. They are bred to be so tasty that you don’t need to add butter or salt. As well as being on the menu, Puffin had an attractive display of their vegetables on show, which included Rudolph potatoes, small Maris Pipers and gigantic baking potatoes.

The final dish was bread and butter pudding with Baravelli’s lemon and Brecon gin marmalade. This was my first chance to taste the marmalade that won the Wales the True Taste Product of the Year in the 2011-12 awards for Mark and Emma Baravelli (The Little Deli, Llandudno). A small blob was sitting by the side of the pudding on some crème fraiche, so its intense sweet-tangy flavour could be savoured alone.  

Among the exhibitors, The Carmarthenshire Cheese Company were promoting their Boksburg cheeses. The Bronze-winning Boksburg Blue was a very creamy, relatively mild though very tasty, soft blue cheese. I particularly liked the Boksburg Smoked Cheese, which had a striking depth and complexity of smoky flavours.

Gorno’s gourmet Italian sausages had some fine-looking examples on display and cooked up some samples. My favourite was the Piccante Calabrese. The Black Mountain Smokery displayed some classy smoked food gift hampers, which included their Bronze-winning traditional smoked salmon. Capital Pâtés & Terrines of Caerphilly had some interesting pâté flavours (and colour combinations).

Subzero° Ice Cream (with chief ice cream maker Kevin Jenkins) displayed a range of their ice cream desserts, made in the Rhondda mainly for the catering industry. I finished my highly enjoyable evening’s browsing with a small cone of their rich Gold-winning Luxury Vanilla Dairy Ice Cream.

The ffresh showcase highlighted some of the great food products of Wales. Many more companies, large and small, that supply high-quality artisan foods can be found via the Wales the True Taste website. In conjunction with retailers and restaurants that source locally, these products are becoming more accessible and more widely known. Now is a good time to be exploring the food of Wales.

ffresh restaurant and bar: www.ffresh.org.uk

Holden Farm Dairy: www.hafodcheese.co.uk

Y Cwt Caws: www.ycwtcaws.co.uk

The Welsh Venison Centre: www.beaconsfarmshop.co.uk

South & West Wales Fishing Communities Ltd: www.welshlinecaughtfish.org.uk

Puffin Potatoes Ltd: www.puffinproduce.com

Baravelli’s: www.baravelli.com

Carmarthenshire Cheese Company: www.carmenthshirecheese.co.uk

Gorno’s: www.gornosausages.co.uk

Black Mountain Smokery Ltd: www.smoked-foods.co.uk

Capital Pâtés: www.capital-pates.co.uk

Subzero Ice Cream: www.iamsubzero.com

Wales the True Taste Food and Drink Awards: www.walesthetruetaste.co.uk

Pieminister: Courgette and Chickpea Filo Pie

British Pie Week is drawing to a close. This is one of the more successful British food weeks, in part because it has transcended its promotional origins (Jus-Rol Pastry, General Mills) to take on a life of its own. There are pub pie promotions, for example, and various pie-making competitions around the UK.

My contribution to the blogosphere during British Pie Week 2012 is an attempt at a Pieminister Courgette & Chickpea Filo Pie, from the recipe in Pieminister: a pie for all seasons (Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon, 2011; pp. 94-95).

The recipe calls for onion wedges and courgette slices to be cooked up in olive oil in a large frying pan. Garlic, freshly chopped rosemary and thyme, and some chilli flakes are added, followed by a drained tin of chickpeas and halved cherry tomatoes, chopped rosemary and thyme, and some balsamic vinegar. This is all added to an ovenproof dish, with olive oil-brushed filo pastry - “scrunch it up loosely so it looks like a rose” – on top. This is an instruction that invites creative expression.

In my hurry to get started, I cut the red onions up too finely. The recipe calls for wedges of red onion, which effectively match the size of the courgette slices and halved cherry tomatoes. I’ll get it right next time, as I will be doing this surprisingly tasty pie again. During the summer, I will ramp up the fresh herb content with a selection of thymes from the herb garden (only the rosemary out there at the moment). I’ll also get more artistic with the filo.

The recipe suggests that the pie is good with hummus. They’re right. I served the pie warm with some cooled home-made hummus (another tin of chick peas, tahini paste, crushed garlic and the juice squeezed from a big lemon) and a green salad.

I was going to say that most pies made this week will be meaty, so I thought I would do something a little different by cooking this vegan recipe. However, before posting this I noticed that Nicki of yourlastmouthful.com fame (Cardiff foodie website and blog) has also cooked this very pie, and appears to have done a better job of it than me! So, instead, I’ll say this is one of the easiest recipes in the Pieminister cookbook to cook, and it is deservedly popular.

After just a few recipes, I am inclined to think that Pieminister: a pie for all seasons is a good cookbook, in that you quickly start trusting the recipes to deliver for you.

See also:

Pieminister: Homity Pie:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/02/pieminister-homity-pie.html

The Pieminister book:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2012/01/pieminister-wheres-lard.html

The Blacksmiths Arms, Llanmaes

One strand running through this blog during 2012 will be a tour of village pubs in the Vale of Glamorgan. Some have become fairly well-known outside the area, for example, The Plough and Harrow at Monknash, while others have not. There are some hidden gems.

The village of Llanmaes lies just north of Llantwit Major (Llanilltud Fawr) in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan; it’s the other side of the B4265 to Llantwit Major (and a footpath from that road means it is an easy walk from Llantwit Major). Llanmaes has a 13^th Century church dedicated to St Cattwg (St Cadoc) and a pub: The Blacksmiths Arms.

The food is traditional, with some original twists. There is an oriental influence, and a creative use of cheese and nuts.

We often skip starters at pubs, but not here as they sounded so intriguing. The choices included Venison & Chilli Pate and Breaded Camembert Wedges.

I had the Stilton and Mushroom Knot. Crisp filo pastry parcels (literally knotted) sitting in a Chinese restaurant-style sweet chilli sauce prepare your taste buds for something oriental, but when you bite into them you get a hit of creamy Stilton with mushrooms and walnuts. The parcels shared a plate with salad leaves with a dark balsamic drizzle. This was an entertaining plate of food (in a good way), and a substantial starter.

My companion went for the Ginger and Lemongrass Chicken Sticks. These were skewered chicken breast fillets marinated in ginger and lemongrass, served with salad leaves and a Caesar dressing. The dressing came in its own pot (there was much more than required). The flavouring on the chicken was subtle; and apparently it could have been stronger.

Main courses on the current menu include Sirloin and Ribeye Steaks, Pork Medallions, Steak and Ale Pie, Stuffed Chicken Roulade, and Stilton and Vegetable crumble. There are also fish dishes, including Piri Piri Salmon Fillet, Whole Sea Bass, and Garlic and Ginger Swordfish Steak; salads as main courses; and interesting pasta and noodle dishes, including Hoi-Sin Beef and Teriyaki Chicken.

I went for Lamb Shanks with Vegetables and Minted Braising Liquor from the today’s Specials Board. The lamb was melt-in-your mouth. Not a youngster this time of year, but I really liked the slow-braised muttony flavours coming through. The rich minted gravy was a dream, especially concentrated on the greens under the shank (was that flipper shape deliberate, I wonder). The tomato added colour, rather than taste, while the vegetables served in a separate bowl – batons of carrots, peas and mange-tout - were fresh and well-cooked.

My companion had the Mushroom, Cranberry & Brie Wellington. This vegetarian wellington dish was an original creation. The golden puff pastry contained sautéed mushrooms, spinach, cranberries and hazelnuts, topped with Brie. This was served with a bowl of chips – good crunchy pub chips - and a share of the vegetable bowl.

Desserts include Wild Fig ice creams.

There is an admirable policy of sourcing locally and seasonally. Main courses peak in the £8 to £12 price range.

A good range of beers can be found on the handpumps; The Blacksmiths Arms has an entry in the Good Beer Guide 2012. There’s a pleasant seating area out front (the road’s not busy; it’s a quiet village). Yes: I’ve noted it as a potential summer pint stop off (handily just off the B4265)!

The interior has been remodelled, but with a good feel for what a traditional pub should be. The word ‘gastropub’ is bandied about on the website (not my favourite word; I like a pub to be a pub). However, there are locals at the bar and it certainly feels like a Vale of Glamorgan village pub. It’s probably referring to the creative spin the kitchen puts on their dishes.

The Blacksmiths Arms do Sunday Roasts, Tuesday is Steak Night, and Thursday is a themed night (each month food from a different country's cuisine is served). You get the impression the chef likes his work.

Next stop: The Six Bells in Penmark.

The Blacksmiths Arms, Llanmaes, near Llantwit Major, CF61 2XR, Vale of Glamorgan

Tel: 01446 795996

http://www.blacksmithsarmsllanmaes.co.uk/

See also:

Plough and Harrow, Monknash

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/04/plough-and-harrow-monknash.html