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A selection of the dishes on offer in the Look What We Found! range |
Gourmet delights in a handy bag? Look no further than this
Don Ryan discovers that top quality food
doesn’t need to cost a packet – and sometimes it even comes in one
SUPPORTING small-scale local farming is considered a noble objective and is something many of us are keen to do. But, as this support usually involves a trip to a farmers’ market or specialist shop, the process is time consuming and usually expensive.
Circumstances can often force us into a supermarket and we end up buying food that comes from God-knows-where, produced by an anonymous transnational conglomerate. Sadly, the realities of modern life dictate that the produce of small farmers is usually reserved for special occasions.
Keith Gill and Roger McKechnie, two Tyneside business men, have cleverly surmounted this modern conundrum. Having garnered investment money from government agencies, they brilliantly exploit modern technology.
Working with small farmers and producers, they have created a new style of prepared food, which works without the need to compromise the ingredients or undermine the basic purity of the finished dish.
The result is Look What We Found!, a very good range of “off the shelf” meals, pre-cooked in a unique way that are available from the shelf at your local Sainsbury’s or Waitrose.
Their dishes include Home Reared Beef in Black Velvet Porter with Maris Piper Potatoes, and Gloucester Old Spot Pork Meatballs with Butter Beans in a rich tomato sauce.
Other gastro-style casserole combinations are built round Herdwick Mutton, Mushroom Stroganoff, Wild Rabbit and Smoked Haddock.
The fish comes from Swallow Fish, a Northumbrian, family-owned, fish-smoking business that claims to have accidentally invented the kipper in 1843.
Swallow Fish has a great reputation for authentic produce. The company was featured in the 1988 TV series Floyd on Britain and Ireland and on Rick Stein’s Food Heroes.
All the main ingredients for the entire range are sourced from companies and farmers in the north-east of England.
The beef dish is typical, combining meat from a Tees Valley farmer with Porter from The Durham Brewery.
The front of each pack usually sports a photo of the main ingredient’s producer.
Promoted as “slow food for the busy person”, each dish is cooked in individual portions by means of an ingenious process, well known on the Continent but rarely used here. First, the fresh ingredients are assembled and prepared by professional chefs, then packed in individual pouches which are subsequently sealed.
Next, the pouch containing the sealed in, raw ingredients, is placed in a pressure cooker.
Once cooked, the sealed produce will stay fresh for months and can be stored in a cupboard until reheated in the pouch in minutes, using a microwave.
This is good quality, tasty, everyday fare, designed as a complete meal and intended for one person.
The price, at £2.99 for a 320g pack, is reasonable.
The food is fairly versatile and can be removed from the pouch prior to heating, when extra ingredients, such as carrots and additional seasoning, may be added to increase the bulk and make the dish more complex.
On the back of the pack is a list of suggested additions and accompaniments.
Look What We Found!, is not Keith Gill and Roger McKechnie’s first venture in food production: 20 years ago they created Phileas Fogg, a range of exotic crisps.
Following initial success, they were forced to sell out to United Biscuits.
Like the Look What We Found! brand, Phileas Fogg had a strong social element. It helped to revive Consett, a north-east steel manufacturing town devastated by the economic vandalism unleashed on this nation by a doctrinaire Tory government.
This time, Gill and McKechnie are supporting their part of rural Britain in its attempts to overcome the betrayal and neglect inflicted on the countryside by dogmatic Labour politicians.
Let’s hope they don’t have to sell out to the big guys. |
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