Its’s time for ‘Melanzane alla Parmigiana’ – here’s our recipe!
Great news!… We have made it to the shortlist of Muddy Stilletto Awards in the ‘Best Independent Producer’ category. Thank you to everyone who nominated us… we now need your vote again for the finals.
If you think we deserve it can you click on the link below and give us your vote! Put in your name and e-mail in, scroll down to our category ‘Best Independent Producer’ and click on CiCi CoCo vote!
Thank you for your vote….
1. Click on the link Muddy Stiletto Awards
2. Put in your name and e-mail in, (you have to scroll down an bit)
3. Scroll down… and down until you come to ‘Best Independent Producer. (the shortcut is just called ‘Independent producer’)
4. Put a tick in the CiCi CoCo box.
5. Submit vote.
Thank you for your support… Giuliana, ‘The Cook’ & Simon, ‘The Kitchen Porter’
Amazingly we are already two weeks into our four week promotion at Selfridges Food Hall in London. We have delivered into London for the first time, completed staff inductions, sampled in the food hall, and cooked like crazy to keep up. The response on the sampling days has been fantastic with sales spiking whenever we are in store. Our ‘Roasted Beetroot and Walnut Pesto’ has been a favourite followed closely by our speciality lasagna.
Thanks to all those that have supported us and all our new London customers!
Preparing for the Selfridges staff
Selfridges Food Heroes
About us!
In store
Sampling in-store
Our first delivery
‘Grab & Go’ stocked
We are proud to be associated with the Vale Harvest Local Producers Market that is going from strength to strength. Last year the market moved around a bit; we had the beautiful location at Orchard View Farm that proved a bit too far for our customers to travels too and then the windswept and rainy XT Brewery yard that was just too cold and wet!
Since the beginning of the year though we have been firmly located in Haddenham. On the first Saturday of each month we put up our tent and spread out our food along with lots of other amazing local producers. The market was immediately well supported by the local community and is growing each month. You can get everything from your basics: bread, vegetables and meat (all locally baked, grown or reared!) to more elaborate cakes, jams and of course our lasagna and sauces. We have also been experimenting with hand made pasta at the market made from ancient varieties of spelt and rivet wheat that has been selling well.
You can see when the next market it at http://valeharvest.weebly.com/ – we hope to see you there!
Handmade Fresh Pasta with heritage and ancient varieties of wheat.
As an artisan producer heritage, ancient, rare breed and heirloom are the words that we are hearing more and more in the world of producers and artisan food makers… as breeds and varieties that often taste better, are more distinctive as well as helping to preserve biodiversity in our countryside.
Whilst we use rare breed Oxford Sandy and Black Pork in our Cuddington Special Lasagna and are exploring Heirloom tomatoes in our sauces (giving each one its own sweetness rating) we were excited when were introduced to ancient and heritage varieties of wheat, by John Letts.
We met John about two years ago at a local apple festival; he spoke about ancient varieties of wheat that he was working with and we discussed how these might work in pasta making as an alternative to the more traditional wheat varieties.
Two years later we met John again and have been making our own fresh pasta using his flour since. We experimented with various different varieties of ancient and heritage wheat flours but have settled on our own unique mix of spelt and rivet wheat flour to make our pasta.
The heritage rivet flour is milled from rare species of wheat that was first grown in England in the Norman period and became popular because of its high yield and exceptional flavour. The spelt is the parent of modern wheat flour and was first grown in Britain in the Bronze Age (2,000BC) before disappearing from the farmer’s fields in the Saxon period.
John Letts has been working with local farmers in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire to grow a limited supply of these wheat varieties and mills the wheat into the most amazing flour.
By combining the two varieties we have made a pasta that has a fantastic bite and taste. Just by combining the pasta with butter and parmesan you have a great tasting lunch…
John is also growing one of the oldest of all wheats, Emmer. This is closely related to durum wheat so we are looking forward to getting our hands on some of the milled flour to see what we can make…
We are thrilled to announce that The CiCi CoCo Kitchen is going to be in Selfridges Food Hall in London from April 2013. We have been chosen to take part in the British Food Heroes month. We will be sampling in store and Selfridges will be stocking our speciality lasagna, pasta sauces and pesto.
Fingers crossed the London public like what we have…
See us in Selfridges in April 2013
We have been nominated for the best local producer in the Muddy Stiletto Awards. We need your nominations to get though to the next stage. If you love our food please support us by nominating us at the awards….
http://muddystilettosawards.co.uk/vote/
Thank you in advance for your support,
Simon & Giuliana
Please vote for the CiCi CoCo Kitchen!
We have been experimenting making different pastas… the best so far is Spelt Pasta… delicious.
We have called it ‘Tagliatelle di Francesca.’
The Ten Mile Menu launched today, a new on-line supermarket specialising in delivering artisan food directly to your door step. You can get all your favourite items from the CiCi CoCo Kitchen along with some great local produce. The amazing thing is we know most of the producers are we see them at local food markets at the weekends with their great products.
The site features local produce sourced by founder Steve and aims to promote that food on-line and also in the real world. Steve has told us about some exciting plans for the future… a great idea – watch this space to see how the story unfolds.
We met Steve from TenMileMenu a few weeks ago. A refugee from a successful London career, Steve is in the process of setting up an on-line business to source the best local produce from across the South Buckinghamshire Chiltern Hills and deliver them directly to your door. For the next few Saturday’s Steve has a stall at the Leather Bottle in Earlsfield in London where he will be sharing some of the food he has sourced with the London crowd – Starting tonight 24, Nov 2012 and going on for 2 weeks. He will then be launching his new site before Christmas. We are excited to have our products on the Ten Mile Menu so you will be order our food directly from Steve.
Steve came around with his photographer to take some pictures of our food and here is one of the pictures he has shared with us… thick toasted fresh bread, a drizzle of olive oil, a rub of garlic, a generous helping of our Roasted Beetroot & Walnut Pesto and some crumbled Cheshire cheese… delicious.
