Oils
Rapeseed Oil
Chili Oil
Dressings
Classic Vinaigrette
Balsamic Dressing
Honey & Mustard
Ultimate Chilli DressingWe spoke to chef Gavin Austin about how and why he uses Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil…
1. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and what you do at Northampton Saints?
I’m originally from North Norfolk. I’ve been cooking for over twenty years and am currently the team performance chef at the Northampton Saints.
2. How did you first hear of Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil?
It was a good while ago now! When I moved down to Northamptonshire to work at Oundle Mill, I heard about Mellow Yellow at the Northamptonshire Food Awards. This must have been about 6 years ago and I have been using it ever since.
3. What were your reasons for switching to Mellow Yellow?
Well it’s the ultimate oil. I don’t think anything else is as good. It’s really versatile for my uses and really good for you.
4. What do you use Mellow Yellow for now?
I use it for everything! Dressings, cooking breakfast, lunch, I even add it into desserts. The flavour works brilliantly with dark chocolate, orange and sea salt.
5. What would you say is the biggest benefit to using Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil?
It’s healthy and not full of rubbish. Plus it’s local! I like to support independent local businesses so Farrington’s is perfect.
6. What is your favourite recipe to use Mellow Yellow in?
That’s a really hard question as I pretty much use it in everything. It goes into probably 95% of my cooking. Vegetables, chicken, scrambled eggs, caponata, etc, all use it. It’s just so versatile so I couldn’t pick a favourite.
7. We know you try to encourage the players to cook at home themselves, who is the best or most creative home-cook?
The names that spring to mind are Christian Day and Jamie Gibson, they stand out as two of the most foodie players.
8. As the weather is pretty cold at the moment, what’s your go-to winter warming comfort food dish?
Anything slow cooked!
If you enjoyed this interview with chef Gavin Austin, why not watch our video with him at the Saints last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPcDwXTvrgg
Christmas is just around the corner so now is the perfect time to share with you some of our favourite recipes, hints and tips for festive cooking! The Mellow Yellow team has all contributed a recipe or a favourite tip to help you ensure this is the best Christmas yet.
Tips For Roasties…
Roast potatoes – Make sure you use Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil. Thanks to its high smoke point, it helps you achieve extra crispy roast potatoes as it performs brilliantly at high temperatures. Take a look at Joanna’s freezer tip below if you want to save time on your roasties.
To save time on the big day, parboil and freeze your potatoes a few days earlier. Then once your meat is out of the oven, heat up Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil in a roasting dish until nice and hot, then put in your parboiled potatoes from frozen. This will make EVEN crispier roast potatoes, and save you a bit of space on the hob. (As heard by Joanna on Radio 2.)
Mince Pies
Mince Pies – Homemade mince pies really are so much better than shop bought ones, plus our recipe has a secret addition of chopped apple in the mincemeat that elevates the flavour!
A different way to eat a mince pie – Heat it up and take the lid off, pop a slice of stilton inside while it’s still hot then put the lid back on. Enjoy your sweet and savoury treat! (Rachel promises us this is delicious.)
Any other tips?
Use roasting bags for a juicy turkey and start with a clean oven to make the clean up easier! If you’re not feeding the five thousand, buy a turkey crown as it’s solid meat, takes less time and fits in a roasting bag perfectly! (Jo’s top tips for a stress-free Christmas!)
Leftover Christmas Cake? Don’t waste it, instead cut into large chunks, cover with clingfilm then foil, and freeze. (Gina’s favourite way to keep Christmas going until Spring)
Chestnut Stuffing – Emily’s Christmas dinner highlight
Ingredients:
100g bacon
50ml Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil, plus extra for greasing tin
1 onion peeled and chopped finely
150g sliced mushrooms
250g chestnut puree
250g tin whole chestnuts ground like breadcrumbs
Small tin or tube of liver pate
3 large cloves of garlic chopped finely
1 tablespoon (15ml) dried oregano
50g fresh breadcrumbs
1 lightly whisked egg
Salt and black pepper to taste
Method:
Cut any rind off the bacon and chop into small cubes. Put Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil into pan and fry bacon and onion for about 3-5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl with all the fat and stir in well with all the other ingredients and check seasoning. Grease baking tin with Mellow Yellow oil and cook in a preheated oven at 180c for 45 minutes.
Boozy Cranberry sauce – Richard’s way to add a kick to lunch time
This is one to start this year ready for next Christmas as it needs 10-12 months to infuse. But its a great thing to start during any time off you have this Christmas!
Firstly make cranberry Gin as you would sloe gin:
Ingredients:
450g/1lb Cranberries, frozen will work
225g/8oz caster sugar
1 litre/1¾ pint gin
Method:
Prick the skin of the cranberries all over with a clean needle and put in a large sterilised jar. Pour in the sugar and the gin, seal tightly and shake well. Store in a cool, dark cupboard and shake every other day for a week. Then shake once a week for at least two months. After 10-12 months strain the cranberry gin through muslin into a sterilised bottle . Once you have strained the gin, cook the soaked cranberries down to a jam like consistency adding a little salt and or sugar to taste. And there you go, delicious homemade boozy cranberry sauce, plus cranberry gin for a festive G&T!
Find more recipes here.
As the UK’s first seed to bottle producer of rapeseed oil, our British heritage is incredibly important to us! From 24th September to 8th October, the UK has been celebrating British Food Fortnight with the hashtag #BritishFoodFortnight. To show our passion for British food, we’ve been sharing our favourite recipes on Twitter each day. In case you missed these recipes, we’ve collated them all here for you. So take a look through and let us know which ones you’ll be trying next.
No self-respecting roast dinner would ever be seen without these by its side. Using our British cold pressed rapeseed oil on your Sunday roasties ensures you the crispiest potatoes. Thanks to the high smoke point of the oil, your potatoes can get nice and hot, helping them get that crispy coating.
A quintessentially British fruit, the humble plum sings in this Plum Cake recipe. With ground almonds to add a nutty flavour, this cake is fantastic for a Sunday afternoon tea, or even just to whip up mid-week for a surprise guest!
Using British beef, this recipe will always go down well when brought to the table. Simple, perfectly seasoned and deliciously succulent, it truly is a classic dish. We love our steak served with potato wedges and garlic mushrooms, but there are so many other options you could choose from.
Almond and rhubarb make perfect partners in our Rhubarb Cake, which is an easy yet impressive bake. This is a fantastic way to use any seasonal rhubarb you have, as well as impressing your family with a delicious treat for them to tuck into!
One Pot Honey & Mustard Parsnip Chicken
This recipe uses our Honey & Mustard dressing as a delicious cooking sauce. Simply pour the sauce over your chicken thighs and British parsnips, pop it in the oven and there you go, a tasty one pot dish that’s perfect to warm you up during the colder weather that British Food Fortnight signals.
Usually eaten at Easter time, British lamb can also be sourced later on in the year with a stronger, more developed flavour. Our recipe for Roast Lamb uses garlic, rosemary, lemon and plenty of seasoning to bring out the most flavour possible from your lamb.
A true British favourite, we couldn’t talk about British Food Fortnight without including these. In our opinion, no matter what meat you’re having, no Sunday roast is complete without a Yorkshire pudding brimming with gravy. Get your oil nice and hot, ours has a high smoke point which really helps, to get those puddings rising nice and high!
Blueberry & White Chocolate Muffins
The delicate flavour of Mellow Yellow lends itself perfectly to cake baking and is particularly good in these marvellous muffins. Blueberry and White Chocolate Muffins fresh from the oven will attract the entire household, so make sure to grab one for yourself before everyone else descends!
Such a simple side to make, and goes with so many different things. We like using British rooster potatoes in our Potato Wedges, but you can use any type of potato. A drizzling of Mellow Yellow and a good pinch of salt is all you need to create the most delicious wedges to be enjoyed by the whole family.
A beautifully light and fluffy lemon cake with a zesty lemon drizzle icing. Quick and easy for an everyday treat for the family but makes an impressive afternoon tea centerpiece if you’re planning a party.
Fresh Asparagus and Mellow Yellow Mayonnaise
British asparagus has to be one of our highlights of June, especially when combined with our delicious Mellow Yellow Mayonnaise. Our favourite way to serve this is by BBQ’ing the asparagus then serving it in a big pile with plenty of mayo ready for dipping!
This recipe produces a really easy, moist fruity apple cake. A perfect way to use up any seasonal British apples (cookers or eating apples) whichever you have in the garden or the fruit bowl. Served with creme fraiche, or even ice cream if the weather is warm enough, this cake is sure to be a hit!
A wonderfully unusual way to use courgettes when in season. This fluffy courgette cake with its delicious lime cream cheese filling is a coffee morning or afternoon tea show stopper!
Pastry no longer needs butter! Using our incredibly simple recipe, you can make a quick and delicious pastry with Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil. This recipe is for a fruity Blackberry and Apple Galette, perfect with a hearty pouring of custard or double cream.
British Food Fortnight has been a great way for us to shout about all the amazing food produced in Britain, but just remember to keep buying British! Tweet us and let us know which recipe is your favourite!
Do you love finding new local food producers, farm shops, restaurants and pubs? Well we do too, so we’re proud to now be part of Great Food Club. Great Food Club is an independent website that selects and recommends local food and drink independents. Based purely on merit, Great Food Club checks all its members before allowing them to be listed on the site. They use the simple criteria of ‘would we recommend this to our foodie friends?’ The great news is, they would happily recommend us!
One of our favourite things about the Great Food Club it’s perfect for finding great food in your local area. We’re incredibly proud of the fact that we are a Northamptonshire producer and so this guide is great for other Northamptonians to hear about us. By simply entering your post code, you can discover a world of fantastic foodie finds, right on your doorstep!
It is free to join the Great Food Club. Simply head over to www.greatfoodclub.co.uk and sign up. It is a fantastic way for foodies to find local producers, restaurants and shops in their local area. They will send you a membership card, which you can use in certain establishments to claim a discount.
You can find us on Great Food Club at http://www.greatfoodclub.co.uk/business/farringtons-oils/. If you love our products, which we hope you do, please feel free to leave a review and let everyone know!
Not only available in shops, we also sell our oil to various pubs, restaurants and cafes across the UK for use in their kitchens. Many of these businesses use our oil in interesting and innovative ways, and The Mermaid at Ellington is no exception!
The Mermaid can be found in the idyllic Cambridgeshire village of Ellington in a beautiful 14th Century public house. The name comes from the old ships timber used in its construction many years ago. The owner and head chef, Nick Marriott, is a Michelin star-trained chef who is passionate about bringing vibrant and refreshingly new ideas to a characteristic and historic country pub.
Having used our oil for a while, Nick recently contacted us with an idea. He wanted to use our rapeseed before it was pressed, and instead, germinate the seeds for an exciting new dish.
Here’s what Nick had to say about this innovative new way of using rapeseed:
“Here at The Mermaid at Ellington, Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil has fast become our go to quality oil of choice. With it being high in mono-unsaturated fat, it ensures us cooking at high temperatures without corrupting its lovely nutty character & flavour.
We now also use rapeseeds to bring to life our ‘Snail Garden.’ We germinate the rapeseeds and grow them into small sprouts by soaking the seeds and keeping them in a warm area to do their work. This process usually takes around 5 days but is definitely worth the wait. The germinated rapeseed add a beautiful image and perfect texture of a real life soil, as well as adding an earthy flavour to the dish. Combining the rapeseed with puffed wild rice & quinoa, caramelised chicory & sesame, the ideal soil is created for the garden. Hidden underneath sits a smoked garlic yoghurt and finished with salsify bark, baby vegetables and rosemary branches with flowers from the Mermaid garden.
Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil is also a perfect option for dressings and creating flavoured oil in which we make a lemon grass & ginger oil for all our Asian style cooking. We very much recommend this high quality product.”
Thanks Nick!
For more information on The Mermaid at Ellington, head over to their website: http://www.themermaidellington.co.uk
We are very proud of our Northamptonshire heritage and it’s always wonderful when retailers and other suppliers give their support to local food produce and fly the ‘Made In Northamptonshire’ flag. www.underfinewraps.co.uk is a well-known hand-made hamper and gift company, based overlooking the stunning Rutland Water, and we asked founder Clare Underwood to write a guest blog for us, explaining why she chooses Farrington’s products for her innovative hamper lines. Here’s what she said:
“Our relationship with Farrington’s goes back to the very start, when I launched Under Fine Wraps with a small but carefully selected line of county themed hampers, beginning with our Northamptonshire Hamper.
It is our intention to always create hampers packed only with food, treats, snacks, and cooking produce that we ourselves are happy to eat at home. And our county hampers carry the added dimension of containing produce made in those counties, so when we wanted oils and mayonnaises from Northamptonshire, it simply had to be Farrington’s.
Our Northamptonshire Hamper features Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Rapeseed Oil, Mellow Yellow Balsamic Vinegar Dressing, and Mellow Yellow Mayonnaise – all of which are simply delicious. I cook with the rapeseed oil all the time, whether frying, roasting or baking and it’s exceptional as well as healthy.
And when Summer comes around, there’s barely a salad made in our house that isn’t splashed with the gorgeous Balsamic Vinegar Dressing. Personally, I think the combination of the cold pressed rapeseed oil with Aspall Apple Balsamic vinegar is genius and the added punch of garlic and basil is inspired.
When we started to expand our hamper range with the introduction of the Northamptonshire Food, Beer, and Wine Crate, we included the rapeseed oil and Mellow Yellow Honey and Mustard Dressing and now several of our seasonal Christmas hampers also feature Farrington’s.
Last year we launched our new ‘Manper’ range (hampers unashamedly designed primarily for men and packed with savoury goodies, top quality beers and wines) and I’m certain the Mellow Yellow Chilli Oil will be finding its way into a few of those.
We have a very simple rule at Under Fine Wraps: never put anything into a hamper that we ourselves wouldn’t eat and enjoy and we often put this to the test at food fairs and festivals, where we always offer samples of the produce from our hampers. Farrington’s oils and mayos are always very well received, particularly among keen amateur cooks, who really appreciate the high quality of the cold pressed rapeseed oil.
If you’re reading this and you live or work in Northamptonshire, or you’re originally from the county, then I’d really suggest you try out our Northamptonshire Hamper. It’s a wonderful selection of Northamptonshire-sourced foods from passionate and artisan producers including, the county’s very own wine! Beautifully packed in a quality, hand woven wicker hamper with leather straps and hinges, it makes a lovely gift.
In fact, it’s very popular as a corporate gift and one of our lovely customers uses them in their employee rewards scheme and as staff birthday and wedding gifts. Lucky them, I say!”
To try Farrington’s oils and mayonnaises alongside carefully matched fine wines, whiskies, beers, and ales, why not visit www.UnderFineWraps.co.uk
Weight gain and obesity are a twenty-first-century health issue. With all of this temptation surrounding us, it’s easy to go up a dress size without even noticing it. However, by adopting these simple healthier lifestyle steps shared with us from the British Nutrition Foundation into your daily regime, alongside a careful exercise programme, you can drastically reduce the extra weight you’ve been carrying.
How can I maintain a healthy body weight?
Being overweight increases the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. In order to maintain a healthy body weight, it is necessary to consume roughly the same amount of energy (calories) as your body uses for normal bodily functions and physical activity. Reducing fat intake can often help cut back on calories but it is also important to reduce your amount of ‘free sugars.’ ‘Free sugars’ are added to foods by manufacturers, cooks and consumers (such as table sugar) as well as sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juice. It’s worth noting that sugars found in fruits and vegetables and in milk and milk products such as plain yoghurt and cheese are not classed as free sugars. Foods that are often high in fat and/or free sugars include cakes, biscuits, pastries, desserts, deep fried foods, crisps, butter, cream, chocolate, sweets, some cheeses and oils/spreads, so try to eat these foods less often.
Remember the following when selecting and preparing food to help reduce your daily calorie intake and aim to consume a healthy, balanced diet:
- Base meals on starchy foods, whole grain and high fibre versions where possible, such as wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta, brown rice and potatoes with skins and plenty of fruits and vegetables
- Remove visible fat from meat, skin from poultry, buy lean cuts wherever possible and try replacing some meat in your diet with pulses
- Grill, bake, poach or steam foods instead of frying or roasting them
- Choose low-fat, unsweetened dairy products (e.g. skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, reduced-fat cheese and low-fat plain yoghurt)
- Use reduced fat spreads where possible and opt for those high in unsaturated fats, see our article Make Sure You Eat the Good Fats for more information on this
- Choose tomato-based rather than creamy sauces
- Cook from scratch wherever possible
- Opt for low-calorie drinks such as unsweetened tea and coffee or plain water rather than sugars-sweetened options
- Limit fruit juice to 150ml per day. Try diluting it with water to make it go further.
- If you are hungry between meals, snack on fresh fruit and vegetables rather than foods high in fat and/or free sugar
- Eat more fibre – adults should be aiming to consume 30 g fibre per day to reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer. Fibre-rich foods include wholegrain foods, potatoes with skins, fruit and vegetables, pulses, nuts and seeds.
With the weather getting warmer, people are starting to flock around the barbecue with friends and family enjoying wonderful food, it is the start of BBQ Season. Check out our recipe for barbecued asparagus to kick start your summer season: Barbecued Asparagus
Kate Quilton and the team from Channel 4 Food Unwrapped visited Bottom Farm to see first hand how Duncan produces our brand of cold pressed rapeseed oil. Grown to LEAF Marque standards, our rapeseed is cold pressed on the farm. Cold pressing is a traditional process whereby the seeds are simply pressed and filtered and the oil’s natural properties are retained. Cold pressed rapeseed oil is becoming more and more popular as home cooks and chefs appreciate it’s culinary and health benefits. Duncan first launched Mellow Yellow cold pressed rapeseed oil in 2005 and was Britain’s first ‘seed to bottle’ producer, and today remain’s the only LEAF Marque branded rapeseed oil.
The programme airs Monday 20th April at 8 pm, Channel 4.