LOCAL PRODUCER
New roles on THE BOARD
WILL AND JAY ALLAN, THE FOUNDERS OF HILLSIDE SPECIALITY FOODS, ARE TWO BROTHERS WITH A PASSION FOR A QUALITY CHEESEBOARD. THEIR EXPERIMENTAL CHEESE ACCOMPANIMENTS ARE GATHERING A WHOLE HOST OF AWARDS IN RECOGNITION OF THE UNIQUE OFFERING THEY PROVIDE. TOM SMART
I
t all started in 2009 when Jay Allan was head chef at a Dartmoor Hotel. He would serve his cheeseboards with a Spanish Membrillo, a form of quince paste, to add sweetness and moisture to the cheese. With Membrillo only sourceable from Spain, Jay’s then cheese supplier asked if he could come up with his own British version, so in his spare time he set to work. The innovative result was a trio of fruit pastes: apple & cider, plum & port and pear. “Membrillo can be quite dense and overly sweet, so I wanted to create a product that was softer with as much fruit content as possible, and improved at room temperature with the wine, port
44 | THE WESTCOUNTRY FOODLOVER
and cheese, to fully compliment all three” Jay explained. The products quickly gathered something of a following and so Jay made a leap of faith, setting up ‘Jay’s Fruit Pastes’, which would later become
Hillside Speciality Foods when his brother Will joined the team. Since then Jay and Will have set about designing a range of cheeseboard accompaniments including savoury biscuits, relishes, pickles and chutneys. “Every product was carefully thought out to compliment a particular type of cheese, starting with an empty mixing bowl and building up to create something that fills a gap. As an example we came up with our celery pickle to compliment the flavours of Devon Blue cheese.” Their savoury biscuits have quickly become something of a favourite, with the boys working all hours to keep up with demand. “Everyone knows a savoury
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