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February 05 News
February is the month of the year when it’s hardest to eat seasonally. The game season is all but over, a second month of cooking and eating brassicas is starting to pall, and what other fruit and vegetables are around have often been stored for some time.
Perhaps this is a good time, then, to concentrate on one of our preserved ingredients, new to Mortimer and Bennett.
Pilchards have been caught and salted in Cornwall since the early nineteenth century. Salted whole, and packed into wooden crates, they’re a common sight in the markets of Spain and Italy, where the vast majority of the fish are sold. Salsa puttanesca, that classic tomato and anchovy sauce, was originally made with Cornish pilchards – the anchovies are a modern adaptation. Why we make so little use of them in the UK is a mystery, when pilchards are one of the UK’s most sustainable fish stocks. A quick and easy recipe follows, pairing pilchards with one of those standbys of the winter larder: the potato.
We get our pilchards from the Newlyn Pilchard Museum and Cannery. As far as we know, Mortimer and Bennett is the only outlet in London for these fabulous fish, which deserve a place in every kitchenÂ’s store cupboard. Come to the shop to buy them loose, and they’ll keep for a year in the fridge (though we doubt you’ll keep them that long), or if you’re outside London, we do them in tins as well.
February’s also the month of Valentine’s Day, of course, and to celebrate, Mortimer and Bennett has a new range of chocolate from Germany. Sinnvolle Schokolade allows you to buy Love, consume Desire and swallow Comfort. Each bar comes in an appropriate form, so Innocence comes in both Unblemished white chocolate, and Blemished, where the chocolate is flecked with vanilla. Comfort comes in the form of an easily suckable thumb. They’re all available on the website, and make an ideal Valentine’s Day gift.
And don’t forget our ever popular Kama Sutra chocolates: Jacques BockelÂ’s exquisite, and explicit, chocolate depicting panels from a Hindu temple – sure to raise the temperature enough to start them melting.