Netherton Foundry Shropshire

Netherton Foundry Shropshire
Classic cookware, made in England

Tuesday 30 January 2018

Caring for your new pan

Whether it was on your Dear Santa letter, a complete surprise or a present to yourself, if you have been lucky enough to receive some of our cookware, we hope will enjoy it for a long time to come.

Many of you will already have some but for everyone new to us, here are a few pointers on how to look after your spun or cast iron cookware.

All our cookware is pre-seasoned with organic flax oil.




This is applied with a cotton rag and then baked on in our industrial oven.



There may be a few traces of the rag on the surface of the pan but this will rub off with a dry washing brush or Scotchbrite sponge.

The surface of the cookware is not smooth like a chemically coated pan.  This is a special surface treatment that we do to prepare the metal for the oiling process.  The oil adheres better to the roughened surface than it would to a smooth surface. Over time and use, your cookware will get blacker and smoother.

If you have a frying pan or a wok, just crack on with it and get cooking, the more you use them the better they will get and the little oil that you need for cooking will help to develop that lovely black patina you can see here.  This one has just been rinsed under the hot tap.





Saucepans and cast iron bowls will benefit from a secondary seasoning before you use them.  Just follow the instructions that came with your product or watch the video on our website.

You will find lots and lots of advice about seasoning on the internet, we are simply sharing our experience and the results of a lot of experimentation.
Flax oil is by far the best oil to use in our opinion.  However, you can also use coconut or rapeseed oil to good effect.  For the carnivores among you, animal fat is a great seasoner - just get that good quality bacon into the pan and get cooking!

Recipes which call for the inclusion of acidic foods, such as citrus fruit, tomatoes, vinegar can erode some of the oil coating in the early days of use, but this will diminish as you build up the seasoning.  We regularly use our cast iron casserole to make chutney and it survives trial by vinegar without battle scars.  Do not use olive or nut oils, they do not give a good result and you can end up with a sticky residue.  Do not oil your pan unless you intend to bake off the oil.  This will accumulate on your cookware, attract dust and result in a hard to clean finish and an unpleasant oiliness to your food.

If you really, really mess up - and you won't be the first to burn something to the bottom of your pan - try boiling some water in the pan and leaving to soak, then carefully scrape off the residue.
Worst case scenario - put it through the dishwasher, but make sure it is completely dry before re-seasoning - we find it best to do this either on a low light on the hob or in a warm oven.  If you have adopted extreme measures, you will be well advised to re-season twice.  But at the end of the process you cookware will be as good, if not better than new.

We also sell spares for all our products, so if you inadvertently burn your wooden handles or drop a screw down the drain, then you can get a replacement.  Check out the spares page on the website and if you can't find what you are looking for, give us a call.

And if you want an independent view - spend a few minutes watching this YouTube video 


Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

Sunday 28 January 2018

Wokkin' the tofu

If you don't know what you are doing and are not following qualified medical advice, cutting out a food group can be at worse damaging and at best pointless. 
The most obvious candidate for this is gluten; there are so many bloggers and Instagrammers, a tribe of wheat free warriors out there promoting a gluten free diet for no apparent reason.
Genuine gluten intolerance and coeliac disease is debilitating and can be dangerous.  It is also limiting, expensive and socially awkward, so why anyone without a genuine reason to cut it out should choose to do so is quite beyond my comprehension.  
We have friends who are gluten intolerant, lactose intolerant or who suffer from any product containing oestrogen - milk, be it cow's, sheep's or goat's milk, its associated products -  cheese, yogurt and dairy based ice cream, as well as eggs.  All of them would, in an ideal world prefer to lift these limitations on their daily calorie intake.
Vegetarianism, veganism, flexitarian eating, pescitarianism are all personal choices, with the emphasis on personal.  By all means make your own choice, but please remember that the key word is CHOICE, evangelise all you like, but let everyone else decide for themselves what they do or don't eat.
And remember, the number of zeros on your Instagram account does not equate to percentage points on an exam paper.  Having a million followers may make you rich, but it doesn't make you any more qualified than me to dish out dietary advice.

Phew, having got that off my chest, I will get to the point, which is the meal I cooked this week, which incidentally turned out to be vegan and given so many are trying out this diet during Veganuary, I thought I should share it.  I am in favour of, though not adopting Veganuary and dry January, they are akin to a trial period for a New Year's Resolution; stick with it for 31 days and then if it's not for you, give it up without any guilt or self recrimination.  If you decide to carry on, great, just don't come over all smug and bore me to tears with an in depth analysis of the inner workings of your gut.





1 block of Tofoo tofu, cubed

Grated zest of a (Seville) orange
2 tsp crushed fennel seeds
1 tblsp runny honey (to make this truly vegan substitute with agave,date or maple syrup)
1 tblsp rice wine vinegar
1 tblsp soy sauce
½ aubergine, cubed
3 cloves garlic, sliced
Large handful of kale, finely chopped
1 tblsp sesame seeds
2 tblsp rapeseed oil - Bennett and Dunn is our preference
Noodles or rice to serve.

Combine the zest, honey/syrup, fennel, vinegar and soy sauce in a shallow dish.  Add the tofu and stir well to coat each piece.

Leave to marinade for at least an hour.

Bring a pan of water up to the boil and blanch the kale for 2 minutes, drain and refresh in cold water.  Drain thoroughly - ideally give it a good squeeze.


Put the oil in a wok and heat over a medium flame.

Throw in the sliced garlic and cook until just turning colour.
Add the aubergine and continue cooking until it starts to take on a little colour. 



Add the kale and the sesame seeds and continue cooking for another 3 minutes.
Carefully add the tofu and its marinade to the wok.  Cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes.



Serve with rice or noodles.
Serves 2 


Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©


Saturday 27 January 2018

Fruit cake

The last few crumbs of the Christmas cake have been scooped out of the tin and the festive board packed away until next year.
But we love a good fruit cake, so we are not hanging around until December for the next slice of fruit laden, moist cake.
This one was inspired by one of Sue's Christmas presents - a selection of teas from Whittard Of Chelsea. It's light, gluten free and so full of fruit I reckon you could count it as one of your #fiveaday. As you can see from the photos, the cake tin was not lined, simply greased and dusted with ground almonds and despite the cake's inherent gooeyness it came out a treat.

120g butter
60g granulated sugar
60g light soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tea bag - I used a Spice Imperial one, but any black tea will work
200ml boiling water
120g mixed dried fruit; sultanas and cherries is a great combination
80g ground almonds
40g chestnut flour (you can use self raising flour instead)

Put the teabag in a jug and add the boiling water. Leave to steep for 10 minutes.
Remove the teabag and add the dried fruit. Leave to steep until the tea is cold. Strain off the liquid, which, incidentally makes a terrific drink, and reserve the fruit.
Pre-heat the oven to 170ÂșC
Grease a 8½" cake tin and dust with flour or ground almonds. You can tip any excess into the cake mix.
Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly.
Fold in the almonds and flour and then stir in the steeped fruit.



Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 20 minutes.  Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.  Perfect with a cup of tea.

And while you drink your tea and eat your cake, have a read of this article about fruit cake by Mayukh Sen
You can see our full range of bakeware here: http://www.netherton-foundry.co.uk/shop/baking-tins

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

Saturday 20 January 2018

Taste not waste,

This post is a bit like a recipe, a bringing together of different ingredients and ideas to produce something bigger than the sum of its parts - or at least that's the plan; let's see how it turns out.  It is an amalgam of Januaryism -  miserable weather (it is snowing and raining as I write), still eating the Christmas leftovers, the nagging thought that we should be dieting but its too cold to contemplate restricting our calorie intake, discarded resolutions, scary credit card bills and even scarier bank balances - and a recurrent theme circulating in the media; #tastenotwaste, ie how not to throw food away.

I recently heard the following statistics on Radio 4, and this old Guardian report is roughly concurrent:

In 1957 we spent 33% of our income on food and 9% on housing
It's now 16% on food and 18% on housing.
In other words, we have doubled the proportion of our income spent on keeping a roof over our heads and halved the proportion filling our bellies.

This opens so many cans of worms that you could probably compost our annual food waste in less time than the average wait in A&E for an avocado stone injury.
But this is not an academic treatise, nor am I an economist, so we will leave that discussion to others in more rarified environments than this blog.  But the allusions to food waste and avocados were coincidental; they were prompted by Felicity Cloake's delightfully debunking piece in which she helpfully suggests that avocado flour is "best left to the prehistoric sloth", this in itself being a reference to this article, which, to complete the circle, references "avocado hand".
Having cheerfully dismissed the benefits of avocado flour, Felicity gets down to some much more attractive ways to reduce food waste. She is a clever writer with an ability to cut to the heart of a topic with surgical precision and a devastatingly honed wit.

An upbringing in a less than wealthy Yorkshire household has led me to view food waste as shameless profligacy; each discarded piece of still edible food an act of wantonness akin to "pouring money down the drain"


This is where, for me it all starts to get a bit complicated. Indulge me please, before I share Netherton's own tips and tricks for using up leftover food and a new recipe.

In my opinion there are 2 significant factors at play here and its hard to determine which comes first; a case of the "best before" egg and the "use by" chicken.

So let's start with date labelling.  
Date labelling of food items was introduced in 1950 by Marks and Spencer as a means of stock control and wasn't used as a sell by date until 1973; there has even been speculation that these dates are used by manufacturers to encourage waste and additional expenditure.
Of course, buying habits have changed in the last 40 years to reflect other changes in our daily lives and few people shop on a daily basis or even once a week, so there is something to be said for date labelling.
However, as you have probably worked out, I am with Rose Eveleth on this one;
"...it's probably safe to say that you can ignore whatever date's printed on your food and go for a simple sniff test."

Which brings me to the second factor; a fundamental lack of food education, knowledge and confidence.  As a nation we have lost our connection with food at its most basic.  On Desert Island Discs  recently Angela Hartnett opined that Britain is not a foodie nation; it's not enough to boast some Michelin starred chefs, restaurants listed among the world's best and TV cookery programmes 24/7 when so many households are eating ready meals and takeaways.  I found myself nodding in agreement as she described the domestic cookery of the UK unfavourably with that of Italy. If you have read this blog in the past you will already know what I think of the teaching of food technology in our schools.  Nothing in the curriculum gives kids the confidence to judge for themselves whether or not their yogurt is safe to eat despite what it says on the lid.  Sensationalised reporting of food scares has eroded any confidence their parents may have had and they are growing up to be wary of food, not excited by it.
There is a massive difference between cutting a mouldy crust off a stale loaf of bread and using the remainder for toast or breadcrumbs (never throw stale bread away, you can use it for so many things) and eating undercooked chicken that smells a bit off but isn't green of furry.  The first will harm no-one, the second is salmonella in waiting!
I know that the chances are that if you are reading this, you already know that.  My personal observation is that most people don't, so they throw far too much away.
This doubt/ignorance , together with a restrictive, unimaginative curriculum in schools is one of the key contributing factors to the levels of food waste we are currently witnessing.
Fundamentally, the majority of people simply have no basic understanding of food, cooking and nutrition and it is not their fault.
I don't intend to be sanctimonious and preachy here, I just think we have lost sight of the essentials.
This, to me is such an important topic, way beyond anything I can hope to convey or achieve here.  
I would be very interested to hear your views on this subject.

OK - rant over, here are the Netherton money-saving, food-saving, waste-reducing, flavour-shaking tips:

Brown bananas;

Make banana bread, smoothies and milk shakes or chuck them in your porridge.
Alternatively freeze them for use at a later date in any of the above ideas or remove from the freezer and blitz with a stick mixer for dairy free, sugar free, instant ice cream.
Slice them, dip them in melted chocolate and freeze for bite sized banana choc ices.

Wrinkly apples:

Quarter, core and fry in butter and brown sugar and serve with clotted cream
peel and grate into salads and cake mix.
Core, stuff with raisins and brown sugar and bake in the oven

Limp veg:

As long as your veg have not started to decompose into primeval slime you can chop them up and turn them into soup.  These are generally known here as botbot soup - BitOfThisBitOfThat.
Or add a can of beans or any cheap cut of meat and slow cook for a delicious stew.

Egg whites and yolks:
Egg whites freeze well, so if you have been making custard and don't fancy whipping up a batch of meringues or macarons at the same time, save the whites for another baking day.
Egg yolks are of course essential to custard, Hollandaise and mayonnaise, so get your sauce on!

Eat leaves and shoots - with apologies to Lynne Truss

Cauliflower and beetroot leaves are delicious; broccoli stems are edible, chop them up and add them to soups; tuck into celery leaves as an addition to an omelette.

Citrus fruits:

If you are about to eat an orange, finely grate the zest first and add to a jar of sugar.  Use for puddings, custards and cakes*
If you need the juice of a lemon, zest it first and keep the grated zest in the freezer for enlivening soups, cakes, curries................
And if life gives you lemons in abundance and no time to make lemonade, freeze the grated zest, then freeze the juice in ice cube trays.  

And please, please if there is a neglected fruit tree or bramble hedge near you - harvest the fruit, do not let it go to waste.


Finally, having used half a pack of dried figs and a bottle of wine we weren't keen on to make  Nigel Slater's fig liqueur, I then created a recipe centred around the ambrosial amber liquid and some stale, but not mouldy, fairy cakes.  Think fig trifle meets Queen of Puddings.





5 stale fairy cakes or slices of leftover sponge cake, crumbled.
Some boozy dried fruit, if you've got it.  Otherwise, soak your dried fruit of choice in port, sherry, apple or orange juice for about an hour.
2 tablespoons of sweet wine, sherry or brandy (optional, but sensational)
250ml full fat milk
3 dessertspoons orange sugar* 
2 eggs.

Pre-heat the oven to 170ÂșC

Lightly grease a 1lb loaf tin.
Put the broken up cake and the dried fruit in the bottom of the loaf tin.
Pour over your booze of choice - I used the figs and the delicious fennel and maple syrup wine from the Nigel Slater recipe.
Pour the milk into a pan and heat gently to just below boiling.
Whisk the eggs and sugar together and then add the warm milk.  You can use your normal sugar, with or without the addition of some grated orange zest if you haven't got a stash of orange sugar in the cupboard.
Pour this custard over the cake and fruit and place the loaf tin in the oven.
Cook for around 20 minutes, until just set.
Serve warm, not hot.


Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

Tuesday 16 January 2018

New year's Honours

This is a list; a kind of New Year’s honours list, but not THAT list.  This list has been compiled by David and Clare Hieatt, founders of Hiut denim, bringing a Welsh town back to life, one pair of jeans at a time.
On this list there are architects, scientists, IT innovators, artists, writers, sportsmen and women, academics, chefs, writers, musicians, communicators, charity workers - people you have heard of, people you should have heard of, people you will definitely hear more of.  They are innovators, entrepreneurs, trailblazers, visionaries, empowerers, influencers, activists
They will change the way you think, see things, interact, consume, challenge your beliefs and expectations.
And on that list, in a section simply called Product, you will find Netherton Foundry.

Hiut Denim Co:   100+ MAKERS AND MAVERICKS — 2017.

Each year we compile a list of the one hundred+ people that got us to utter those words ‘I wish I had done that, made that, invented that, thought like that, changed that’. These are the people who have shone the brightest for us in 2017.




We are thrilled and humbled in equal measure to be on this list.  It is a genuine honour to have been selected and to find ourselves in the company of greats.
Please read about all these amazing people and then go and find out more about them and also about Hiut denim. 
You have already found us, but take a few minutes to read about who we are and what we do.
  
It must have taken a huge amount of effort and self discipline to compile this list, who do you add, who do you leave out?
We are shaken, stirred or otherwise moved by everyone on this list.  Some are new to us; some are so far out of our world as to be alien to us; some are familiar; some are part of our everyday lives.  What unifies them is, as Hiut say, the phrase that starts, "I wish I...."

I have picked 10 from the list, trying, as best I could to demonstrate the breadth and depth of talent contained therein.  It took a long time to settle on these 10 and their selection in no way diminishes anyone else on the list.   If my sample intrigues you, read the full list.  In fact, read the full list anyway.
  
1. Satochi Nakamoto -  founder of Bitcoin   https://bitcoin.org/en/
2. Boyan Slat -  The Ocean Clean UP http://www.boyanslat.com/
3. Lauryn Morris – design lead, Snapchat https://www.snapchat.com/
4. Linda Sarsour/Tamika Mallory/Carmen Perez/Bob Bland/Janaye Ingram/Breanne Butler/Mrinalini Chakraborty/Emma Collum/Mariam Ehrari, Cassady Fendlay, Alyssa Klein, Sophie Ellman-Golan, Jackson Hyland-Lipski. - https://www.womensmarch.com/
5. Keller Rinaudo - founder of Zipline, delivering blood products in Rwanda  http://www.flyzipline.com/
6. Massimo Bottura -  chef and founder of Food for Soul http://www.foodforsoul.it/
7. Yvon Chouinard/Melinda Chouinard -  Co-founders of Patagonia   http://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/home/
8. Anna Jones - author, cook, stylist   http://annajones.co.uk/
9. Chance the rapper, chosen by NFS daughter http://chanceraps.com/
10. Ashima Shiraishi  - rock climber and boulderer  https://www.instagram.com/ashimashiraishi/?hl=en


When you have read up on these guys, take some time to read about Hiut Denim, whose philosophy, "Do one thing well", resonates so strongly with us.  
This is all about making something good, making something good happen, making something good feel good.

Help us and Hiut Denim to make the world a better place.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018