To start

Handmade breads including honey and walnut bread, a ‘Easy Slider’ Bun with Kelham Island’s Easy Rider, organic sourdough spelt, rye and white bloomers with butter

Marinated and grilled vegetables including courgettes, artichoke hearts, chargrilled peppers, olives finished with Yorkshire herbs and Ribblesdale Buffalo milk cheese (V)

Vegetarian Birthday Dinner

Handmade breads including honey and walnut bread, a ‘Easy Slider’ Bun with Kelham Island’s Easy Rider, organic sourdough spelt, rye and white bloomers with butter

Marinated and grilled vegetables including courgettes, artichoke hearts, chargrilled peppers, olives finished with Yorkshire herbs and Ribblesdale Buffalo milk cheese (V)

Cooking for your Christmas day lunch can be a stressful affair so its good to keep things simple.  Some planning and preparation goes a long way to ensure that you spend time with family and friends rather than the kitchen.

I will be making this delicious and simple pate for our family Christmas meal.  As well as being simple and actually better made in advance it has all the elements of our cooking ethos: local sourcing, belly pork and streaky bacon from Moss Valley Fine Foods with locally foraged windfall apples from this years bumper harvest.

PJ taste are excited to announce another evening of food demonstrations, hands-on fun and convivial dining in association with Green Directions.

We have an an exciting opportunity in the form of a vacancy for an experienced professional to contribute to the continuing development of PJ taste.  Being responsible for running a section of our food production, development and event delivery the role will be challenging but varied.  Our aim is to be the premium caterer of choice for the supply of creative locally sourced food and events in Sheffield and Yorkshire.

Going head to head in the Demonstration Kitchen on Saturday 21 September 2013 were Toby Foster with recipes by PJ taste and Paulette Edwards with assistance from Silversmiths.  Peter from PJ taste designed the receipes for Toby to show how simple it is to cook great tasting food from local ingredients.  A couple of interesting twists in the shape of fruit leather and handmade cider made an appearance too – details below.   Here are the receipes and Toby’s schedule to produce all within half an hour.

We have been looking forward to making Chorizo for some time, inspired by Rich Stein’s programmes and latterly by a laid back approach to the art from Mark Sargeant on Saturday Kitchen.  The final catalyst was a call from Mike at Coppice House Farm who rang to say he had some excellent Glouster Old Spot reared in the Rivelin Valley.  We took a whole piece of shoulder which Mike had boned and rolled and the stage was set. 

Writing now on the 7th July, three days into a veritable heat wave, its easy to forget that at the same time last year things were quite different – here’s a local weather snippet from 7th July 2012:

“Just been to (what should have been) a tractor-pull event near Buxton in the Peak District. Needless to say the place was a mudbath and we just escaped from the car-park before the rain made it nearly impassable despite the 4×4.

One of the joys of discovering the wild things in our midst is that each month brings new possibilities.  For me June’s highlights in Sheffield include Wild Rose flowers, the first Elderflowers and fresh Yarrow leaves, all of which are common in the green (and not so green) urban spaces of this great city.

Its all about the blossom!  Finally this year a warm interlude, uncharacteristically gracing the May Day Bank Holiday, triggered the buds to blossom on most of our urban shrubs and trees.  It’s a lovely time of year as new colour is painted back into our perspectives.  For the urban forager it’s a chance to bottle some of the scents and preserve some of the colour by trapping these ephemeral blooms in syrups and jam.

I love a new project and my latest adventure is to grow the maximum number of edible flowers I can this year.  Things started in earnest yesterday with the delivery of my wild flower seeds ordered from sararaven.com.  An enticing package was eagerly torn open and out spilled an array of coloured coded seed packets and a really useful leaflet – “how to sow your seeds”.  Game on.

We enjoy making interesting food from local ingredients – this way we believe it tastes better and helps to feed the soul!  To conincide with this years National Farmhouse Breakfast Week we are launching a new Breakfast Meal Deal.  As well as a great value highly nutritious breakfast we are offering a range of free dishes for you to add.

Hidden Gems.  Sheffield has an array of fantastic local food producers who are working away from the mainstream mediocrity of Supermarket Britain to produce real food.  We feel it is important that the flavour, health and environmental benefits are shared with a wider audience which is why we are putting the spotlight on a different producer each day.  Todays producer is Sheffield Honey – taste the product in our Apple and Rye Cake and cinder toffee or browse the shop for honeylicious Christmas  gift ideas http://tinyurl.com/cjvwlax

It’s true that the summer has been nothing to write home about – at least if you are a sun worshiper penning a postcard from Sheffield.  Nature though is a resilient thing and despite the rain badly affecting some mainstream crops there is still an abundance of foraging opportunities out there in Sheffield’s wild hinterlands.  So why not get out for a walk with a focus and pick up snack on the way?  In this and forthcoming pieces I am looking at the best seasonally available wild foods and finding exciting ways to prepare and preserve them for eating enjoyment into the winter.

In this post you will find a super pork loin recipe, recommended eats for peak nutritional performance for each meal of the day and a nutritional bombshell regarding the dangers of vegetable oil!  But first do we really have two brains?

We prepare delicious hot specials daily at 249 Glossop Road (West Street).   Why not come down between noon and 4pm one day soon and quote @SheffieldFood for a FREE hot drink. (offer valid until end Feb 2012).

Not that I am bitter but Tesco’s recent loss of £5 billion in their share price in one day gave me some cause for cheer.  But just a bit.

Why so?  Well it indicates that people are exploring alternatives to this one stop monolith and choice is good.  Choice keeps the retailers keen and ensures that competition exists in the market place.

We want to promote the choice of the best local food made with care and designed to excite and stimulate.