Cawston Press drinks

As part of our on-going summer food and drinks festival, That's Food and Drink is taking a look at what's on offer from Cawston Press.

For a refreshing treat this summer, try these new sparkling soft drinks, created for the more mature taste of the adults amongst us, from Cawston Press.

Elderflower Lemonade and Ginger Beer are the latest launches from the premium soft drinks company.

Their aim is to satisfy the increasing demand for discernible, non-alcoholic drinks for grown-ups that aren't full of artificial flavours, colourings or preservatives. (EDITOR: So doi not put your teeth on edge!)

Each variant has been especially designed and crafted by Micah Carr-Hill, Cawston's Master Blender, and use beautifully fresh ingredients that are lovingly and gently blended together with sparkling water and Cawston's trademark utterly delicious pressed apple juice.

Both are perfectly balanced, thankfully are not overly sweet and are gently sparkled.

Like all Cawston's drinks, they use juice that has come from fruit picked at the peak of ripeness and pressed within a 48 hour period.

And another key factor in their success is that they are made without any concentrates, artificial sweeteners, preservatives or colourings.

Ginger Beer is a twist on the classic and features two types of ginger, one sweet & citrusy and the other earthy & fiery. The result is a fruity, complex ginger flavour with a satisfying 'bite' and the perfect hit of heat for a drink that's discernibly dry. Using pressed apple juice in the blend adds a dash of acidity and fruitiness to this not-so-sweet ginger beer.

Elderflower Lemonade is a refreshingly light blend with the unmistakable floral fragrance (of this quintessentially British flower), Cawston use an elderflower extract made by soaking the dried flowers in water which captures the wonderful aroma of these delicate blossoms.

The sparkling water adds to the refreshment, whilst the squeezed Sicilian lemon juice delivers tingling citrus and with just 99 calories per can, this blend offers those wanting a lighter drink delicious flavour without any compromise in taste.

Ginger Beer and Elderflower Lemonade will join Cloudy Apple and Rhubarb in the line-up of adult sparkling drinks from Cawston Press and will be available at Waitrose and Ocado (in a six pack, RRP £4.99) and as individual 330ml cans in Pod, Whole Foods Market, As Nature Intended and Planet Organic (RRP 99p ea.), plus all good independent retailers.

That's Books and Entertainment: Lime 43 is a new cocktail is born with Licor 43 an...

That's Books and Entertainment: Lime 43 is a new cocktail is born with Licor 43 an...: Whilst feeling pretty hot the other evening I accidentally hit on the recipe for a new cocktail which I have decided to name the Lime 43. ...

Now Walkers Shortbread is available in a new, gluten free range

By universal acclaim and repute, family-owned and managed Walkers is almost without a shadow of a doubt, one of the world's top bakers and purveyors of genuine Scottish Shortbreads.

For a while the expert bakers at Walkers were examining a problem that the company had identified. The many people who would be loving to eat Walkers Shortbreads but, by reason of the fact that they had a gluten intolerance or a gluten allergy (or a wheat allergy) were excluded from enjoying Walkers Shortbreads.

But this is where the bakers in the test and development kitchens at Walkers Shortbread became involved.

They turned their baking expertise to the problem of how to develop and craft a new series of recipes for a type of genuine Shortbread that they'd never attempted to make before. A special gluten free range of  products.

The came up with the following three recipes: Gluten Free, pure butter shortbread.
It melts in the mouth, you can taste the butter.

 Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Shortbread. They don't scimp on the chocolate, when Walkers tells you that they are offering you some really delicious shortbread loaded with real chocolate chips, that is exactly what you will get.

And the Gluten Free Ginger and Lemon Shortbread is a real revelation. There are real lemons and real stem ginger in this beautiful shortbread biscuit. Every bite is delicious from the first to the last one.

And everyone can eat them, safe in the knowledge that thee will be no adverse reactions in any of the group.

As with all of Walkers Shortbreads, they are made with only the finest ingredients that are available and they are then baked with only the expertise and the care that a company like Walkers can bestow upon their products.

This ensures that the products are made without any compromise.

Jim Walker said: "We're delighted to launch a Gluten Free option to the Walkers Shortbread range, so allowing everyone the opportunity to enjoy this delicious traditional treat without compromising taste."

He went on to point out: "With  so many people now suffering from food it intolerances we took the view that it is important to create choices for all. We're proud to have the unique offering of traditional shrotbread which has a Gluten Free Certification from the UK Coeliac Society."

Each pack costs from £2.50 and is available from www.walkersshortbread.com/glutenfree.

But what do the people think? The member of the That's Food and Drink taste test team who does suffer from a gluten intolerance said: "The gluten-free additions are a welcome innovation. They tasted delicious."

And the rest of the team couldn't see what the fuss was about, so it looks like Walkers Shortbread has got it just about perfect! Well done!

Bundaberg, a craft brewed Australian ginger beer

Craft cocktails are set to become London’s summer drinks trend, That's Food and Drink can confirm.

The London Mule - as seen at the Grind.

 Bundaberg Ginger Beer team up with the Grind to create the must-have cocktail for summer

 Australian craft brewed ginger beer, Bundaberg, has partnered with cult London bar Grind to create London’s hippest cocktail of the summer.

The London Mule is a heady mix of fresh apple, bourbon and maple syrup, topped with refreshing Bundaberg Ginger Beer. The craft cocktail will be available at both the London Grind and Shoreditch Grind and is deliciously refreshing on a warm summers evening.

 Bar Manager, Adam Wright says “London has long been having a love affair with craft beer but craft cocktails are also about to have a moment. We wanted to introduce a new cocktail that would embrace craft, sophistication and summer. Something you could imagine Don Draper drinking at the weekend. The London Mule is just that.”


Make the perfect London Mule
Ingredients
·       1Ž4 fresh apple cubed (red delicious)

·       20ml maple syrup

·       25ml fresh lime

·       50ml bourbon

·       3 dashes of angostura bitters

·       Bundaberg ginger beer

·       Two cubes of candied ginger


Description: Macintosh HD:Users:katie.hancock:Downloads:For Approval 2:Ingredients.jpg
Method
1.     Muddle the fresh apple, candied ginger and maple syrup
2.     Add the bourbon, lime juice and angostura bitters and shake
3.     Strain into a short glass and top with Bundaberg Ginger Beer
4.     Garnish with candied ginger and fresh apple fan
5.     Enjoy your drink


Or why not try these as an alternative?

 Appley Ever After
A fruity mix of fresh apple juice and dark rum, topped with the refreshing Bundaberg Ginger Beer, perfect for those warm summer day.

Ingredients
·       Bundaberg Ginger Beer

·       1.7 fl.oz Dark Rum

·       0.5 fl.oz Apple liqueur

·       (Pomme Verte)

·       0.7 fl.oz Lime juice

·       1.0 fl.oz Cloudy apple juice

·       Apple fan to garnish

 Ignite

A fiery cocktail with a kick to get summer started, mixed with the cooling Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

Ingredients
·       Bundaberg Ginger Beer

·       1.7 fl.oz Blanco Tequila

·       0.7 fl.oz Lime juice

·       1 hot pepper

·       Pinch coriander

·       1/2 hot pepper to garnish

Crushed Sailor

A summery cocktail bursting with berry flavour added with the sweet and spicy bite of Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

Ingredients

·       Bundaberg Ginger Beer

·       1.7 fl.oz Spiced Rum

·       0.3 fl.oz Berry liqueur

·       0.7 fl.oz Lime juice

·       Dash Angostura bitters

·       Berries to garnish

So what is Bundaberg?
Bundaberg Brewed Drinks is a proud family owned business, based in the small Australian town that shares the same name. The Fleming family believe real ingredients and time honoured brewing methods make all the difference.

Since its humble beginnings, the company’s aim has been to craft premium non-alcoholic beverages using time-honoured brewing methods and the finest quality ingredients. Bundaberg Ginger Beer and other Bundaberg Brewed drinks are exported to over 36 countries.

Bundaberg Ginger Beer
·       Craft Brewed over 3 days

·       Real ingredients – cane sugar, GMO Free

·       Ginger from the Bundaberg region
·       RRP £4.49, 4 x 375ml


Find them on Facebook – Facebook.com/BundabergUK and on look out for updates from the Brew Riders on Twitter @BundabergDrinks

Available in leading retailers. For your nearest stockist please visit https://www.bundaberg.com/en-GB/product-locator/

Primula, it's what squeezable tubes were invented for!

Primula cheese in a squeezable tube goes back a long, long way. I can remember it being a useful addition to my mother's pantry when I was a child,

It comes in a variety of flavours, plan, with chives, with ham, and with prawns.

It is equally at home being used as a sandwich spread, as a filler for baked potatoes at a barbecue, or as toppings for canapés at a posh dinner party.

My favourite recipe is for large baked potatoes to have a filling made up of corned beef hash and Primula with chives.

And Primula cream cheeses make an excellent topping for crackers or with cheese biscuits of ou are having a party or just chilling out with your honey whilst watching late night TV films.

The nozzle is specially designed to help you make fancy, wiggly toppings if that is your desire. And there is now no need to pierce the seal with the little knurled cutter on the top. That's been replaced with an innovative and much more hygienic way to open the tube.

One of my favourite ways to serve it is to grill or toast some potato farll thins and then add some butter and a liberal dollop or two of whatever Primula cheese spread takes your fancy. My favourite is chives, with ham as a close second.

Served with a large fresh salad it makes a perfectly healthy main meal.

You'l be pleased to know that Primula also produces Primula Kids Cheese, the original Primula and a Primula Light version, too.

and it's also available in spreadable tubs, too.

Incidentally, all of the profits of the sale of Primula go to charity.

To learn more and for some tasty recipes you can visit

http://www.primula.co.uk/primula-cheese-range.html

Add some ginger to your summer deserts

Introducing Cooking Essentials from The Ginger People

Nobody does ginger like The Ginger People! For over three decades they have been perfecting the craft of all things gingery, responsibly sourcing their key ingredient via direct partnering with ginger farmers and producers from some of the world's best ginger growing regions.

And 2015 sees the UK launch of their EU Organic Certified Ginger Cooking Essentials range, a delicious assortment of culinary treats, guaranteed to tantalise your taste buds!

Organic Ginger Syrup.
• Ginger-infused syrup for beverages, breakfast toppings, desserts, stir-fry’s and glazes for your BBQ meats.
• Very versatile, and also makes a great hot soothing drink!
• Gluten and fat-free, and certified organic and Kosher
• 237ml RRP £3.79

In addition to its delicious taste, ginger also has a long history of medicinal use in traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. Modern research confirms its effectiveness in relieving symptoms of nausea, vomiting, indigestion and dizziness.

The Cooking Essentials range from The Ginger People is available from independent health stores, fine food stores, garden centres, farm shops and delicatessens’ nationwide.

Wow! The That's Food and Drink taste test team were very impressed with this organic ginger syrup.

It was tried in hot drinks (a ginger, hot chocolate and cinnamon drink that really kicked the taste buds into high gear!)  as an ingredient in a hot ginger pudding, as a pouring sauce for ice cream or as a cheeky addition to a cocktail or even stirred into plane yoghurt, it will add pep and fun to your summer dining experiences!

We can heartily recommend this ginger sauce.

Gin and Tonic cocktails

One of the temptations when you are mixing cocktails for a barbecue is to go too far one way or the other.

By that I mean you either put too much alcohol in the cocktail or you go to the other extreme and use far too much mixer.

Either way the drink will not satisfy your guests and too much alcohol and a barbecue certainly do not make a good combination. I remember the shriek of pain when the guest of honour at a barbecue party was so drunk that she felt the need to steady herself, by putting her hand on the hot barbecue, which certainly put a dampener on the evening.

So, what can you do? Buy pre-mixed cocktails. They come in cans or bottles and both Gordons Gin and Bloom and Fentimans are both widely available.

It's also better to have these drinks rather than jugs of drink kept outside as they can attract flies and in order to keep them cool you will have to add copious amounts of ice, this further diluting the cocktail.

With the Gordons and Bloom Gins readymade cocktails you can keep them in a drinks fridge until your guests are ready to drink them. After all, what is the point of serving warm drinks with guests trying to rescue flies from their glasses?

Go for readymade cocktails so that you can concentrate on cooking and serving up the food!

Fruit teas from Whittard

Sometimes only a fruit tea will do.

But if you are entertaining guests and you want to offer them s real fruit tea experience, it's no good just grabbing something from the supermarket, you have to treat your guests with respect.

Far, far too many fruit teas taste like they are nothing more than a couple of tea leaves, a few chemical flavourings, a dollop of cheap corn syrup and some bitter-tasting artificial sweeter. Which, sadly, if you study the ingredients list, you'll probably find that is, in reality, what they are, pretty much.

But! It doesn't have to be this way!

Get yourself along to your nearest Whittard branch (or visit their website) and find yourself some of the best fruit teas that you will ever have the pleasure of serving to your guests or of drinking yourself.

Recently, iced tea and fruit infusion drinks are becoming a big trend for this summer.

And Whittard has recently launched its ice TEA-JAY – a unique product for creating delicious fruity drinks and cocktails (yes, you can even add alcohol if you fancy!), as well as a number of fruit infusion flavours like Very Berry and Apple and Elderflower.

We have had the pleasure of trying the fruit teas from this range and have to report that they are utterly superb!

That they have no trace of chemical flavourings, no nasty artificials and just the delicious tastes of the fruits of nature.

Ideal for your summer barbecue, your after dinner drinks in the conservatory or with your al fresco Sunday lunch, on your picnic (just chill and put it in a vacuum flask) or whenever and wherever takes your fancy.

You can order from Whittard on line at http://www.whittard.co.uk.

Castello Burger Blue cheese declared "Best blue cheese ever!"

In order to give the slices of Castello Blue Cheese a good trial my wife prepared some homemade beef burgers.


Castello Burger Blue cheese is a recently launched product, based on Castello's extremely popular Extra Creamy Danish Blue cheese.

It is aimed to be the perfect compliment to the barbecue beef burgers this summer. (If we have a summer!)

After my wife prepared the burgers she placed slices of the Castello Burger Cheese on them and gave them a quick burst in the microwave and we at the cheese-topped burgers with a nice salad with some extra virgin olive oil as the dressing.

My wife's verdict: "This is the best blue cheese I have ever tasted!"

As my wife is a long time fan of blue cheeses of a wide variety of types and styles, this is high praise indeed!

Just ask for it as your cheesemonger or supermarket or visit http://www.castellocheese.com/en/our-cheeses/castello-burger-blue/.

Be a barbecue season hero with a garden curry in a hurry!

You can be the barbecue chef sensation of your entire neighbourhood when the delicious scent of your barbecue curry wafts throughout the neighbourhood.

What you need to do is to get a large pan and place it on the gas burner of your barbecue. The gas burner you have probably only ever used once to cook some barbecued baked beans, but haven't used since.

Into the pan place some pre-cooked chicken or turkey breast chunks (the chilled food sections in supermarkets like Morrison or Tesco are ideal for buying these) and then stir in a bag of Our Little Secret Tikka Lababdar sauce and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes. If you wish you can add a pot of plain yoghurt, or some crème fraîche and ensure that it is stirred in well.

Serve up with a side salad and perhaps some pre-cooked rice, if you wish. (For speed of preparation, buy a couple of bags of microwave rice.)

You can also use naan breads or, if you want to know my secret, just use plain pita breads instead of naan breads, should you have some in the freezer.

The above recipe works equally well with any other of the spicy and testy sauces from the Our Little Secret range, and it means that (with the That's Food ad Drink cheat as described above) you will have one of the most tasty barbecue meals ever, with the minimum amount of fuss, very little preparation time and only one pot being used.

However, if you want to really push the boat out, why not try these recipes kindly supplied by the folks at Our Little Secret?

Our Little Secret Summer Recipes

Tikka Meatballs with Coconut Rice

Serves: 4-5

Preparation time: 10 minutes

 Cooking time: 20 minutes

Add meatballs to a Tikka Masala Dine-In Kit and experience an awesome
twist on Britain's favourite curry.

Ingredients:

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- 10 meatballs of your choice

- 1 Our Little Secret Tikka Masala Dine-In Kit

- Desiccated coconut for garnish

- 1 chopped chilli

Preparation Method:

1. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the meatballs until golden brown.

2. Add the dry spices from the dine-in kit and sauté gently for 2-3
minutes.

3. Add the contents of the paste sachet and simmer for 1-2 minutes.

4. Then add the Tikka Masala sauce and simmer for 5-6 minutes ensuring that the meatballs are fully cooked and the sauce thickens to a desired consistency.

5. Make a 2-3 cm tear in the rice pouch and microwave on full power for 2 minutes.

6. Garnish the rice with desiccated coconut.

7. Add chopped chillies to add heat.

8. Serve hot and enjoy!

Chunky Makhani Vegetable Broth

Serves: 4-5

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

- Our Little Secret Makhani cook-in sauce

- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

- Shallots

- 1 crushed garlic clove

- 125g trimmed fine green beans

- 1 large diced sweet potato

- 175g baby corn, halved lengthways

- 375g small cauliflower, broken into small florets

- 400g drained lentils

- Water

Preparation Method:

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and sauté the onion and garlic for 5-6 minutes, until softened.

2. Stir in the curry paste and fry for 2 minutes.

3. Add beans, potato, corn and cauliflower to water. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are just tender.

4. Season to taste and add the Our Little Secret Makhani cook-in sauce and lentils. Simmer for 5-6 minutes until warmed through.

5. Add a little water to make the broth.

6. Enjoy by itself or with naan bread. Alternatively, you can add soup bread into the dish.

Sauces are available in Morrisons and other supermarkets and food outlets.