On Saturday 4th May 2011, we are having a visit from a group of folks from the Midlands Food Bloggers for lunch. Given that we have chatted with a few of them on Twitter, we are quite looking forward to putting faces to names. After lunch they will be coming up to our home to learn and experience some techniques we use at Staffordshire Fine Foods such as; curing, brining and smoking. Weather permitting, it’s a trip into some of the village woods to do a bit of foraging and back to the house for some impromptu hedgerow cooking.

There are generally three types of food bloggers; food geeks, food lovers and the other type which we never talk about. The one thing we all share are a unique passion about food, whether it is cooking, producing, recipes, details of food shows or the occasional book review.

It’s official, we are going to make it. The current record for the World’s most expensive sausage stands at 20 pound sterling. It’s quite a difficult task to put luxury ingredients into a sausage without overpowering the flavours or losing textures. We have found three ingredients we can use and a method for getting the best out of all of them, but that’s going to be our secret until launch day. The first batch of sausages will be produced by the third week of June 2011.

The real challenge is whether we keep the ingredients to all British or use the finest foods the world has to offer. We want to go for the all British option, but may have a couple of sourcing issues with just one of the ingredients, we shall have to wait and see.

A final challenge is to come up with a good name for the World’s most expensive sausage. Any ideas?

Officially this was an ordinary hot sausage sold by the United Nations Development Office in Sweden. The asking price? $130. The most expensive luxury sausage was £20, more of a fair game we we think. This was made in the UK and contained champagne and truffle amongst the ingredients. If you get the regular six sausages to a pound, that’s £120 per pack.

The key would be to make a sausage from luxury ingredients and to make them all sing together as a creation of worth. Expensive sandwiches have been made using sour dough bread, truffles, foie gras and kobe beef. Would flavours get lost or overwhelm even?

Another challenge is to get this done with local ingredients or even from what we would have commonly had to hand in times gone by. Imagine the Victorian Era, before two World Wars ravaged British food. At that time we had a great period of decadence and some very fine ingredients. With modern access to such fantastic ingredients, the options are fairly unlimited.

The Worlds most luxurious sausage or sausage range … watch this space

After a process that has taken close to two and a half years, the Cumberland sausage has finally been granted Protected Geographical Indication by the EU on the 22nd March 2011. This means that the term “Traditional Cumberland sausage” can only be use by producers in the area set out in the application. This looks like it stretches from the tradtional northern country of Cumberland to the whole of the newer merged county of Cumbria which also includes the old county of Westmorland and some bits of Lancashire which got stranded on the opposite shore of Morecambe bay.

In the same month, an application was put forward to gain the same status for Scottish Wild Salmon. We wish them good luck. This shows a real re-emergence of pride over the great local food that Britain produces.

As many of you know, we make a range of our own ingredients in-house. The sale of these products has been limited to the restaurant menu so far. However, this is about to change on the 15th January 2011. To start with, Chef Daniel will be creating a range of 6 homemade sausages. Following on from there, we will be developing our home smoked range, traditional and modern charcuterie, pickles, sauces, fudge and gifts for your favourite foodie.

All the range will be available on the Staffordshire Fine Foods website or from the restaurant. A couple of local delis and farm shops have been in touch as well. The whole line is hand produced and we have no intentions to move from that to large scale output.

If you have any requests or questions, please let us know

So here I am stranded because of the snow, 180 miles away from home. It’s like retirement, we know it’s going to arrive but we do nothing about it. Trunk roads don’t get gritted and nothing gets ploughed. If in this modern age a country grinds to a halt over a few inches of snow, how did Britain survive in days gone by?

First thing, is that they used the seasons as their friends. Autumn came, food was getting ready for store, hams were made, fruit preserved and vegetables put into sand pyramids. Winter brings with it cold, snow and ice. All of these are great for preserving food. In Victorian times, people in the big house would dig holes and store goods buried under snow, a kind of 19th century freezer.

We have modern appliances that do all this now, but there are a foolhardy few who venture out to forage, dig or even smoke food in the winterscape. What better way to welcome these hunter gatherers back than with a large bucket full of beer, wine, water and snow. It’s nature’s very own drinks cooler and a welcome sight at any party this time of year.

Don’t fight nature, work with it?

The kind people at Taste of Staffordshire awarded us with another two certificates (ooooohh and a decanter and a bottle of fizzy stuff) last night at the presentation evening. We were warned that we had been short listed but beyond that knew nothing else.

Out of the hat came the 2nd place in Brasserie of the year, which we had attained for the 3rd year in a row. The competition was much harder this year as they had introduced an accreditation scheme to get into their guide, which gave zero cost entry into the awards. This meant many other venues entering the fray. We got beaten by another place, the Three Horseshoes, a brasserie in the Staffordshire Moorlands, who had beaten us two years prior.

Next came a 1st in the NFU Local Food Champion Award. This was great news as it put a tick against our commitment to buy from enthusiastic local suppliers. We have always believed that when you know the product and the person behind it, you will have a consistent ingredient and a strong relationship with the supplier. So it was almost a mirror, the National Farmers Union giving us an award.

Who would have thought that going to the pub is a reference to a trip to heaven? There are various references to how the term “gone for a Burton” came about, but this is our favourite.

One of the adverts used by Burton Brewery during the war portayed a football match. One of the team members had not turned up and when asked where he was, one of his pals said: “he’s gone for a Burton”. So rather than playing his football match, the fellow had gone to the pub for one or more pints of Burton Ale. Apparently, when airman didn’t return from a combat mission, they had “gone for a Burton”. This has become a slang term for absence or mishap, but still a great story with local history.

Burton Brewery went on to become part of Worthington, then Bass and almost Molston Coors. Almost? Most of the real ales produced under the Bass name went on to be produced under license by another Burton brewery, Marston’s.

Now this is not a dig at a popular nickname given to the police, it’s actually a piece of history of Burton upon Trent. Back in the late 18th century, the Peel famly fled industrial riots in Lancashire and came to settle in Burton. The family business was cotton milling and this was very unpopular up north. Unlike many mill owners, Robert Peel was a kind man and ensured high standards of welfare for his workforce, some as young as ten. At one time the family home was Peel House on Lichfield Street, which is still there in good order.

Next came Robert Peel II who joined the family firm. He was also instrumental in supporting workers rights and retired to the new family home at Drayton Manor. His son, Robert Peel III, redeveloped the home into a true mansion and became home secretary. It was this Robert Peel who went on to found the police force, at the time nicknamed Peelers and later Bobbys.

This family of over achievers also went onto breed the very first Tamworth pigs from imported stocks from Ireland in the early 19th Century. The Tamworth is today a rare species and to a certain extent endangered in some areas. Careful pig breeding will keep this beautiful creature from becoming another piece of history.