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Tag: Tony's Talk
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Tony's Talk - Short Sighted - Or What?
Fish and Chips suffer from being encased in plastic carrier bags that encourage the food you have prepared to lose its ‘pan appeal’ and become soggy through sweating. Paper packaging is far superior for the transport of hot food allowing your product to ‘breathe’.
However, in the great scheme of things the current ‘war on plastics’ is totally unwarranted. The horror stories of plastic pollution are not the fault of plastic itself but arise because we are all at fault in its disposal.
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Tony's Talk - In the immortal words of Victor Meldrew
In the immortal words of Victor Meldrew - “I don’t believe it...!” However, sadly it is a fact that our Trade is being hit by a tsunami of price rises. We are besieged with shortages, supply delays and price increases on key ingredients and packaging. The difficulties of obtaining shipping containers has been widely publicised but the cost increases less so. A 40ft. container from the Far East cost $2,000 in March 2020 to ship into the UK but now costs up to $14,0000! Sailing times have also been extended by up to 4 weeks causing further delays.
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TONY'S TALK - Return of the Enamel Bowl...?
When I ‘were a bit of a Lad’ in the 1950’s post-war shortages were commonplace. These particularly affected the packaging of all goods.
Greaseproof papers and ‘white news’ were especially in short supply and it was the norm for Customers to bring in enamel bowls in which to carry away their meal of Fish, Chips ‘n Mushy Peas. Newspapers and magazines were ‘recycled’ for outer wraps, coarse brown papers and even the blue paper that was used for bags of sugar were brought into service. 5” x 3” pure greaseproof paper bags were much sought after to contain a portion of mushy peas!
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TONY'S TALK - Harvest 2020 hopefully potatoes will save the day?
“Arable farmers have suffered the worst harvest in 25 years!”. The extremes of climate that Europe and other areas of the world have experienced over the last twelve months has played havoc with agricultural production.
Due to reduced planting the UK Wheat harvest is down 38% from that of 2019 and there are wide variations in quality with poor yields per acre. Imported wheat, especially from Germany will be required to give us enough flour to see us through and to level up quality. Price increases are inevitable and will be seen first in bakeries.
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Tony's Talk - Problematic Prospects for Peas
Whilst the glorious unremitting sunshine enjoyed during April and May helped us to endure the strictures of ‘lockdown’, it has impacted prospects for good crop harvests.
The seemingly constant rainfall experienced during January, February and into March put paid to many Winter crops and delayed Spring plantings. In spite of the fact that February’s precipitation was the highest ever recorded, farmers had to wait until soil temperatures had warmed sufficiently to allow successful seed sowing. This delay caused the surface of the soil to dry out and seeds require moisture to germinate.
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Tony's Talk - PIGS are FLYING - higher and higher!
For the 1.4 billion people living in mainland China pork has long been a staple food. As a result, approximately 50% of the World’s pigs reside there. In 2018 outbreaks of the deadly (to pigs) ‘African Swine Fever’, or ASF were first reported. During 2019 this air-borne disease has spread rapidly to the extent that nearly 50% of Chinese pigs have been led to emergency slaughter to try to contain this ASF.
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Tony's Talk - Make your Fish far healthier with Whitley's Pulse Batter
Tony's Talk - Make your Fish far healthier with Whitley's Pulse Batter...
Pulses are widely recognised for containing high levels of protein, fibre, essential vitamins and minerals. They are also extremely valuable to Farmers for they replace nitrogen in the soil reducing the need for artificial fertilisers whereas other crops take nitrogen out of the soil.
Traditionally our Trade has cooked fish very healthily by steaming it and retaining all its inherent nutrients within its fried batter coating. Whereas grilling fish can lose many of these benefits for they can drift away during cooking.
To further improve the advantages of battered fish during the 1980’s we sought to reduce the level of oil absorption during frying. We tried many proprietary starches and natural gums that purported to do exactly this. Many showed a degree of improvement but at a cost that would have made our batters totally uncompetitive.
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Tony's Talk - You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!
Tony's Talk - You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!...
When eighteen-year-old Vin Whitley started supplying Fish ‘n Chip Shops in 1899 he believed firmly that there should be no short cuts when dealing with foodstuffs. From ‘Helping’ him out from a young age, he drummed into me this maxim and we strive at Whitley’s to live up to his ethos.
We all know that we are being hammered by price increases on our Trade’s essential raw materials. Whitley’s aren’t immune to these increases resulting from last year’s disastrous harvests which gave us much lower yields of wheat, potatoes and other vegetables. Growing global demand has also increased pressure on our fish supplies to add to the mix.
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Tony's Talk - There isn’t a pea grown that can’t be cooked!
Although the Nation enjoyed a fantastic summer, we all know that we are suffering the after effects. Lack of moisture and high temperatures have played havoc with the potato, wheat and pea crops. As previously mentioned, despite starting four weeks late our pea crop soon looked in great shape - well established with an abundance of flowers. Then at the critical time came the heat! Just as the flowers were to transform into pods temperatures hit 25ºC when flowers just fall off. Thereafter it really was a case of “spot the pea pod”!
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Tony's Talk - Time for something a little different?
Fortunately, there are some undeniable truths about the food we eat. One is that Pulses are good for us being packed with protein, vitamins and fibre – and we should eat more of them. In the North particularly, we have recognised that ‘Mushy Peas’ not only enhance the appearance of a meal of Fish ‘n Chips but they also add to its claims to be a healthy meal. Like many people I believed that Marrowfat Peas were first introduced to Europe over 100 years ago from Japan. Known as ‘the plump pea’ or ‘the Fat Maro’ in Japan. I thought that we somewhat perverse Brits must have renamed them ‘Marrowfats’!
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