Letting Local Ingredients Shine

I haven’t gone away, my column has just changed from weekly to monthly so the format of the column is going to be slightly different too. I still love telling you about local producers and will keep doing so regularly on my Top Tastes website and will be sending a fortnightly newsletter from the site so keep an eye on it.

I will also be sharing industry news and telling you more about how we use beautiful local ingredients at home.

First up this month we recently decided to make a dinner using as many local ingredients as we could, so Karen and I went to Heck’s in Whakatu Estate, 185 in Hope, Joyful Little Leaves and stands at the Nelson Market where we picked up everything from beautifully hand-crafted sausages to young, crispy carrots then went home to see what we could create.

The result was a warm salad with carrots, oranges (from our tree at home), meatballs made from Heck’s Italian sausages, fresh sprouts from Joyful Little Leaves and toasted breadcrumbs made using Big Score sourdough. The carrots were oven roasted with slices of orange and drizzled with olive oil and maple syrup. Salt, pepper and maple syrup were the only non-local ingredients.

This made a delicious meal that took about 10 minutes to prepare and about 45 minutes to oven bake the carrots and oranges.  You can find the full recipe at www.toptastes.co.nz

The inspiration for using Heck’s sausages came from learning the Heck’s Traditional German Butchery in Whakatu Estate is open to the public every Thursday and Friday. We stopped in to see what he had for sale and discovered a chiller packed with his own salami’s, beer sticks, meat loafs, sausages and various fresh meat cuts.

The meat loafs, salamis and sausages are made using just meat and seasoning, as he says “97% meat and 3% seasoning and natural flavourings like garlic, salt & pepper.”

I will tell you more about what Heck is up to in the next few weeks but in the meantime put a visit to his specialty butchery on your to-do-list. Supporting a business like Heck’s means we get to enjoy his outstanding products in the future.

185 in Hope is a local institution when it comes to market garden farm shops, Gavin and Angela grow huge amounts on site and pick everything fresh for you and me to buy on Fridays during winter and five days a week during summer. Right now, seasonal vegetables like cabbages and broccoli make great buying while their bins of onions they grew over summer are perfect for making chutneys and including in your winter casseroles.

Joyful Little Leaves has to be my find of the year. In May I wrote about Trish Drummond and Carlton Richards and their highly productive organic market garden that is hand tended, intensively planted, and ecologically focused producing a variety of healthy leafy salad greens and we have been buying their products almost every week.

In the warm salad we used their microgreens and sunflower shoots to add crispness and a nice peppery bite. If you want to buy products from them at the Nelson Market on Saturday mornings make sure you get there early. When we stopped in at about 10.30am they had almost sold out but we were lucky enough to get some freshly dug carrots, much better than the big woody things in plastic bags you buy at most supermarkets. Joyful Little Leaves salad mixes also last for a week or two in the fridge because they are picked and packed fresh before being delivered to your door or sent to local food outlets. Email info@joyfullittleleaves.nz to get on their email list so you find out about what’s fresh each week.

So, make a little effort to source beautiful local ingredients direct from suppliers, add some imagination and you can make your own easy version of many recipes, just like we did a week or so ago.

In local food producer news Pete’s Natural Sodas are running a Pledge Me campaign to raise funds for a canning line. While Pete’s is a real success story it is still a small family-owned business trying to compete with the big multi-national companies in the very competitive drinks market. The key thing that sets Paete’s Natural Sodas apart from the rest is that their drinks are made using all natural ingredients and are lower in sugar. That sugar is also unrefined so is a much healthier alternative.

Being able to sell their drinks in cans means you can have your favourite drinks at sports events, at concerts, and they will be much more portable for you and me to take on picnics. Get in behind this wonderful Nelson business on Pledge Me where you can get lots of stuff for your pledge.

Finally, another passion of mine is the arts, especially everything the Suter Art Gallery has to offer. They are currently running a raffle to win an outstanding artwork from Michael Dell. There are just 125 tickets at $125 each with only a few left, so drop in to the Suter to secure your ticket. The odds are 1 in 125, that’s way better than lotto!

Published in the Nelson Mail 30-07-23