News

We are delighted to share that our Executive Development Chef Team all received award’s at this year’s International Salon Culinaire competition.

This annual event allows chefs at the top of their profession to demonstrate their skills in front of top industry experts.

Chris Ince, Chef Director, said: “We were thrilled to see all of the Executive Chefs recognised at the prestigious Salon Culinaire competition. They all demonstrated the skill and passion we have come to expect from them, so it was wonderful to see it recognised by the country’s top chefs.

“Matt Vernon, Dan Farrand, Matthew Chapman and Dan Kirkpatrick are excellent chefs and I’m proud to lead such an inspiring team.”

The team won eight awards in total, including a Bronze award each for the Mystery Basket Grand Prix.

The event was held on the 20^th to 22^nd March at the ExCeL London and included several competitions for budding chefs as well as seasoned professionals.

Awards:

Tilda Chef Team of the Year 2023

• Dan Kirkpatrick & Matthew Chapman Angel Hill Food Co Each chef received a Merit

Dishes:

• LE ON DE FUEGO, Spanish ‘Nduja Lions Mane Croquettes, Toasted Rice, Tomato & Smoked Almond Romesco Sauce, Black Garlic Aioli – Membrillo Gel – Herb Oil
• LA TOMATINA TRATAR Brown Butter Marshmallow Timballo Sandwich, Tomato Vanilla Jam, Almond & Sherry Cream, Tom & Jerez Cocktail

HYGIENE AWARD Sponsored by Cleenol (working practices)

• Dan Kirkpatrick, Matthew Chapman Each chef received the award

Mystery Basket Grand Prix

• Matthew Chapman and Dan Kirkpatrick Angel Hill Food Co  Each chef received a Bronze Award

Dish: Sri Lankan Monkfish Kiev, Potato Air bag, Romanesco Puree, Rhubarb & Green Herb Chutney and a Rhubarb Crumble Baked Alaska

• Dan Farrand and Matt Vernon Angel Hill Food Co – Each chef received a Bronze Award

Dish:  Dessert – Chocolate mousse, blood orange gel and confit, spiced shortbread biscuit

The controversy around pasta… and other carbohydrates

World Pasta Day on 25th October gives us an opportunity to celebrate all things pasta; but in the last few years we have seen an increase in people dropping it from their diets. The low-carb diet has gained in popularity and there are people celebrating the benefits, while others caution us about changing our diets to avoid carbohydrates – so we asked our Company Nutritionist, Louise Goodall, to explain whether we should be keeping it on our plates.

Starchy carbohydrates, such as pasta, are an important source of nutrients in our diet. Put simply, they are long chains of sugar compounds which our bodies use as fuel.

Each gram of carbohydrate provides us with just under 4 calories, with fat and protein providing 9kcal/g and 4kcal/g respectively. Carbohydrates can provide us with many nutrients including fibre, B vitamins, iron, calcium and folate (a type of B vitamin).

Some people cut out or reduce the level of starchy carbohydrates in their diet, believing this to be a golden ticket to improved health and/or weight loss. It’s important to note that cutting out any food group from your diet can be risky business due to the potential of subsequent nutrient deficiencies.

Unhelpfully, there are varied opinions amongst health professionals and scientists as to whether reducing the level of carbohydrate in your diet is a good thing or not. There is also an abundance of anecdotal evidence from those describing how eating less carbohydrates helped them to achieve a healthy weight.

The government promotes the Eatwell Guide as a pictorial description of what a healthy balanced diet looks like. The guide shows that around a third of our total daily food intake should be from starchy carbohydrates. So, who’s right? It’s not a simple question to answer.

What we do know is that fibre, B vitamins, iron, calcium and folate are all beneficial to us and as mentioned above, are all found in starchy carbohydrates. Fibre is great for supporting normal bowel function and research shows that diets high in fibre can reduce your risk of bowel cancer. It is recommended that adults eat 30g of fibre a day but unfortunately many people aren’t reaching this recommendation.

When we look at the effects on weight loss, initially a low-carb diet will appear to be more effective than a low-fat diet. This is because our body will start to use up our glycogen (the stored form of glucose in our muscles). Glycogen is stored with water so as our levels of glycogen diminish, we also lose some ‘water weight’. However, in the longer-term, research shows that after around a year there is no difference in weight lost when comparing low-carb and low-fat diets.

For some people, low carb diets are simply not sustainable and can affect gut health and lead to constipation. How much carbohydrate we need is directly related to our energy output which will vary significantly from one person to another, meaning there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Generally, it is a good idea to be aware of the portion sizes we are consuming and choose less refined, wholegrain varieties where possible. The British Dietetic Association (BDA) identify one portion of boiled pasta to be 2-3 tablespoons. Remember every individual is different and will therefore require different portion sizes.

So, this year, I’ll be celebrating World Pasta Day with a delicious, tuna pasta bake – one of my all-time favourites. I use homemade tomato sauce with wholegrain penne and pack it with veg like sweetcorn, onion and pepper.

1. NHS (2018) How to Get More Fibre into Your Diet. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/how-to-get-more-fibre-into-your-diet/ (Accessed 23 October 2020).
2. Saunt, R. and West, H., 2019. Is Butter A Carb? 1st ed. Great Britain: Piatkus, pp.49-68.
3. BDA (n.d.) Carbohydrates. Available at: https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/carbohydrates.html (Accessed 23 October 2020).

“Human beings are sea creatures, dependent on the oceans just as much as whales, herring or coral reefs” (Sylvia Earle)

This week Angel Hill Food is celebrating National Marine Week, an initiative run by The Wildlife Trusts from the 27th July to the 11th August. Although the initiative is for 2 weeks a year, Angel Hill’s commitment to sourcing sustainable fish is a lifetime promise. This commitment starts by only serving fish from the ‘Fish to Eat’ list from Marine Conservation Society.

The MSC Fish to Eat List

Angel Hill is proud to feature on MSC’s wall of fame, certifying that they use their seafood ratings to make sustainable and thoughtful buying decisions. MSC has also compiled a ‘Fish to Eat’ list, which is comprised of fish from well-managed, sustainable stocks or farms. Similarly, they created a ‘Fish to Avoid’ list, which is made up of fish that are often overfished, vulnerable or from badly managed fisheries.

Choosing fish which feature on the ‘Fish to Eat’ list is a great start but in general, we are too reliant on the ‘Big 5’ (Cod, Haddock, Tuna, Salmon and Prawns). Great examples of alternatives include Coley instead or Cod/Haddock and Rainbow Trout instead of Salmon.

Although intentions may be good, it is often a confusing battle to ensure we purchase sustainable fish, but if you are ever in doubt look for the MSC logo. Any fish with the logo has been certified to the MSC fisheries standard, a science-based set of requirements to ensure sustainability.

Have you thought of going plant-based?

Are you prepared to go one step further from choosing sustainable fish and meat options by implementing a plant-based diet? According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), livestock is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems. So even if it’s just adopting a plant-based diet for one day a week, it can make a big difference to the planet we all must live on.

There is even a not-for-profit campaign named ‘Meat Free Monday’ (MFM), which aims to raise awareness of the detrimental environmental impact of animal agriculture and industrial fishing. Their website, which you can find here is full of wonderful plant-based recipes to inspire you. A host of A-list celebrities have already endorsed MFM, including Ringo Starr, Tom Hanks, David Walliams and Joanna Lumley. So, what’s stopping you?

What steps are you going to take to make more sustainable choices? Find us on Twitter to let us know.

We’re delighted to be opening up our new Angel Hill restaurants across the country in September.

If you’re one of the lucky ones enjoying the new food and are searching for our 10% discount, then search no more!

Mention the code “Welcome10” to our team at the till and you’ll receive 10% off

(when spending over £4.00 in the restaurant, between 3rd-7th September, in our newly launched locations)

While you’re here, don’t forget to check us out on Twitter and we hope to see you in our restaurants soon!

Once again, we were delighted to support this year’s ACE Charity Dinner at the Langham Hotel in London. The dinner managed to raise nearly £10,000 in support of some really good causes. The Angel Hill team helped kick things off in style with a fantastic array of canapés.

For this post, we decided to let the photos do the talking – so have a click through the images of the evening (just don’t do it on an empty stomach!)

The fantastic team behind the event were drawn from our Culinary Classroom sessions and the chefs had a great surprise while leaving when Michel Roux Jr. complemented them on all their efforts – great work guys!

The Culinary Classroom guys are a fearless bunch, and they needed to be in January when they had to brave a very chilly Scotland in search of some of the best game Britain has to offer.

This session was the organised and arranged by John Fleming, Development Chef for Scotland, as he wanted to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for game with everyone. John grew up in Scotland on the game estates, he often helped raise the birds and so was involved in the whole cycle. It was exactly this experience that helps drive his respect for the ingredients we cook with – and something he wanted the Culinary Classroom chefs to experience first hand.

As always, it was a bright and early (dark and cold!) start to the day in Scotland, with the group arriving early in the morning. Luckily, as always, John was well prepared with a much needed supply of piping hot Groundhouse coffee. The group was split up into two for the first drive, one off with the beaters and the other with the guns. So it was time to scramble into the back of a trailer or to put those boots to good use (and find out how warm they really are..).

What followed was a crash course in Scottish game; from the way the birds are reared, to the training of the dogs, the history of the estate and through to traditional cooking methods and modern attitudes towards it. One of the reasons we set up the Culinary Classroom is to bring craft skill back to the forefront of cooking – something that was on the wane. Sadly, the same is true of game and the skills needed are slowly being lost.

It was great to get the chefs out into this environment, as there was a real mix of experience within the group. We believe it’s vitally important for our chefs to understand where their ingredients have come from, and the love and dedication that’s gone into producing them, way before they make their way into our restaurants and on to our plates. It was a real eye-opener for some, while others had grown up on similar estates and were keen to share their knowledge.

It was time to say goodbye to the staggeringly beautiful Scottish countryside and get the team back into their natural habitat of the kitchen. So we bid our farewells and went back to one of our nearby units to do what we do best.

It really was a fascinating day, and something that is very much removed from our day-to-day roles. It’s so important for our teams to be able to step outside of their comfort zone (literally!) and to seek inspiration and knowledge from less well trodden paths. We can’t wait to see what they come up with next..

The 14th of November is an especially poignant date for the city of Coventry – it was on this night in 1940 that a massive Nazi bombing raid begun, causing huge devastation to the city and its residents.

This date is especially important for the history curriculum of schools in the area, with many of them putting on special lessons, theme days and projects so that the pupils can understand the importance of the date and to learn the cultural significance of it.

The war years were a time of great hardship, not only for the obvious reasons, but also in terms of diet and availability of food – with Britain under a constant naval blockade, the ability to import food was severely restricted. The Catering Academy team in the Midlands realised the role that food could play in bringing these events to life, and so put on a special day to help support the history lesson plans at a Coventry Primary School.

The display included foods that would’ve been available during the war, wartime posters encouraging people to produce their own food and also period uniforms – to turn the dining hall into a live display from the 1940s.

Another aspect of the display was a typical ration pack from the era. It’s easy for us to read about rations, but to see the small amount of food that people lived on really drives home the impact that the food restrictions must’ve had on day-to-day life.

Throughout the day, the pupils of the school came to the display with their teachers – bringing the food out from the textbook and into real life.

That day, the team also put on a themed lunch and dressed in period clothing. It was a hugely successful day, with the Head commending them on their efforts and the impact it had on the children.

We were delighted to be able to support the school’s curriculum in this way and will continue to work in partnership with our contracts up and down the country.

We’re delighted to be able to say that we’re the first food service business to partner with the exciting food waste app, Olio. After successfully completing a trial at one of our busy sites in Cambridge, we’re really looking forward to working closer with them and helping tackle the growing food waste issue.

Together we managed to save 1,525 items of food going to waste, which equates to 678 meals. We’re absolutely delighted that by partnering with Olio and working closely with our client, we were able to make such a positive impact on the local community. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

What is Olio?

Olio is a free app that connects neighbours with each other and with local shops and cafes so that surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. Users of the app simply snap a picture of their items and add them to OLIO.

Why?

The social, economic and environmental case for action against food waste is compelling. Levels of food and drink waste by commercial and industrial businesses in the food sector amount to around 2.8 million tonnes, with a value of over £4.3 billion (source: WRAP). Food waste is also costly for local stores and governments, and ranks as one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. OLIO seeks to address these problems by combining mobile technology with the power of the sharing economy and an engaged local community.

How?

With the help of our on-site team, and Olio’s network of Food Waste Hero volunteers, we are able to donate unsold food to the local community. This ensures that the food we produce goes to feed people, rather than be fed to animals or sent to land fill. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, helping the local community and simply being the right thing to do.

Learn more about Olio here, by downloading the app on your mobile or tablet device or by checking out their Twitter page @Olio_ex

The latest Culinary Classroom session was kindly hosted by our fresh produce supplier, Fresh Direct, at their wonderful facility in Bicester. The chefs travelled from far and wide and were treated to a fantastic day hosted by Head of Food Development, Duncan Parsonage, and Senior National Account Manager, Gemma Mortimer.To kick things off, Gemma gave the chefs an overview of Fresh Direct, their sourcing model and crop reports. This was then followed up by an interesting talk on the science of quality control, where they found out all about brix tests (a scientific method to determine how sweet produce is) and the processes behind their QC.

The chefs were then split into two groups; one going on a tour of the facility and the other having a session with Duncan. The facility was very impressive, with a clear emphasis on quality produce. Duncan’s session revolved around lesser-known and high quality produce; with an emphasis on how the products could be used within our business. At this point, it was time for some lunch, with a delicious rustic meal of pasta, slaw and home-baked bread.

After lunch, Duncan expanded on his previous session by sharing some dishes and tips on how they could be implemented alongside our current offer. The crumbed exotic mushrooms went down a storm, as did a delicious risotto and a North African-style hummus.With the chefs suitably informed and inspired, it was on to the afternoon practical session and a bit of competition (not that chefs are a competitive bunch..). Two teams were formed, given a range of produce and asked to create a vegetarian dish. It was a race against the clock, as they had only 20 minutes to prepare, cook and clean down. The judging team of Chris, Rhys, Matt and Duncan then had the tricky task of deciding on the winning dish.The first team served up with a cauliflower and parmesan fritter served on a carpaccio of courgette and beetroot, with the second cooking up Mediterranean cauliflower, asparagus and parmesan crisp. The judging team agreed that the fritter was the winning dish, but both teams were commended on the presentation and execution of their dishes.All that was left was to say goodbye and hop on the train, plane or in the car for the journey home. It really was an excellent day, full of inspiration and its always great for the chefs to get together from all corners of the country and talk shop. We can’t wait for the next session!

We were delighted to support ACE (Association of Catering Excellence) by supplying the canapés for their Wine Dinner in support of the Wiggly Worm charity. The event marked the 80th anniversary of the group’s founding and was held at The Langham in London. Michel Roux Jr. and Adam Handling added some culinary star power to the event and so it was great to showcase our chefs at such a prestigious event.The invitation to do the canapés for the reception came as a result of the impression we made at the FSM Awards a few months prior, which was fantastic. Vic Laws MBE, Administrator of ACE, approached us to see if we’d help support ACE with their dinner and we were more than happy to do so. Chris and the team soon set about designing the menu, knowing that our dedication to quality food with meaningful provenance served by knowledgeable chefs would hold us in good stead for the event. After some careful thought and consideration, this is what they decided on:

• Mi-cuit river trout, sauce vierge
• Tuna and black pepper, petit ratatouille, caper and tarragon
• Gilt head bream cerviche, lemons, lime and chilli
• Tartare of Shropshire beef, potato crisp, quail egg
• Potted Suffolk ham, sauce gribiche
• Bresaola, parmesan and rocket
• Spinach, pinenuts and feta, crispy filo pastry
• Watermelon cup, goat’s cheese, black olives and mint

We were lucky that The Langham is situated just across the road from one of our central London sites, so the team arrived early in the morning and prepared the food for the day in the kitchen there. It was then a case of packing everything up in special refrigerated containers and wheeling it across the road, where it was all put together on site.

Below are a couple of candid videos of  Matt and Tony walking us through the preparation behind the Beef Tartare and Potted Ham canapés.

Once the chefs had prepared everything, it was time to set up, plate up and serve the guests. Because we have truly awesome people at Angel Hill, we decided to do a live preparation station, allowing the guests to see our chefs creating the canapés and to chat about the food, where its from and how it was prepared. In addition to the live station, our chefs walked the room with plated canapés, and they really enjoyed engaging with the guests and talking them through the dishes.It was a fantastic evening for all involved and the feedback we had from the event was excellent. We’ll leave it up to Vic Laws MBE, ACE Administrator, to have the final word:

“I first experienced Angel Hill Food Co. at the FSM Awards and we were all very impressed.  I approached Chris Ince, their Chef Director, to see if they would support ACE at their Wine Dinner at The Langham Hotel. Where we were raising money for Wiggly Worm, their chosen charity. Chris, without hesitation, offered their support.

The canapés served were exceptionally good and the chef’s display attracted a lot of attention.  They truly contributed to an evening that raised over £16000 for our charity.  Thanks guys!”

We are proud to support SIFA Fireside’s annual Christmas lunch for their clients, and we have done so for many years.

SIFA Fireside is the result of the merger of two charities; Supporting Independance From Alcohol and the Fireside Charity. They are based in the Digbeth area of Birmingham and have around 100 staff and volunteers. They work with those who are homeless, affected by alcohol or otherwise socially excluded to improve their physical, social and mental well-being.

SIFA Fireside aim to empower people to meet their short and long term goals. They do this through practical support, including daily drop-ins, a resettlement service, a specialist alcohol support service, well-being and activity groups and an employment and training programme.

In order to help support SIFA Fireside, we donate a Christmas lunch for their clients – so we supply a full kitchen and front-of-house team, all the equipment and, of course, a full three course lunch. Those of us who have been lucky enough to participate in the event always look forward to it, as it really is amazing to be able to give back to the community and help spread some festive cheer.

Regional Operations Director, Martyn Stockwin, commented, “I’ve been involved in this event since we partnered with SIFA Fireside, and I really look forward to it every year. I’ve got to know their team over the years, and it’s great to be able to support the fantastic work they do”.

The team arrived early on the morning of Wednesday 14th December, ready to cook and serve dinner for over 100 of SIFA Fireside’s clients. Chef Director, Chris Ince, was creating the magic in the kitchen with Martyn leading the front of house. On offer was a prawn cocktail or Polish sausage salad for starter, a full Christmas dinner for the main and a traditional Christmas pudding with custard for dessert. It was a busy service, but with everyone working like clockwork, it went really smoothly and we were delighted with the feedback we got from SIFA Fireside’s clients.

Ewen Kinnear, Chair of the Trustees at SIFA Fireside, commented on the day:

“We’re delighted with what you’re doing. I’ve been involved for about five years, and every year it just gets better and better. Our clients see this as one of the biggest occasions of the year, not only do they enjoy the food but they get the feeling of importance. Your level of professionalism is first class, but it’s also the fact that you care and you’ve stuck with us for all this time, giving us so much support – it’s absolutely brilliant. We couldn’t ask for more.”

All that’s left is to wish everyone a very merry Christmas from all of our team!