THE HERALD FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3 2017


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19 News Produce Awards offer great opportunities UK food producers once again


have the opportunity to enter one of the most esteemed competitions in the food industry, with Ceredigion having the privilege of being home to last year’s winner within the dairy category. Food publication ‘delicious.


magazine’ have launched the Produce Awards for 2017 and entries opened last Monday (Jan 16) and remain open until October. There are eight categories in nine


regional heats across the UK that aim to highlight leaders in farming, fishing, animal rearing and artisans. At the end of the competition, the


winning products and producers from the wide variety of British choices will have the chance to star in the food magazine’s pages, which will feature in the October 2017 issue. Ceredigion is often known for its


fantastic produce and thanks to the 2016 Awards, the county was able to celebrate one of its most successful producers. In the national ‘From the Dairy,


Artisan’ category, Lampeter-based traditional ice-cream maker Conti’s Traditional Ice Cream were able to win the category and have been one of the top stalwarts of the ice-cream industry since 1946. The family-run company have


previously been praised for their award- winning traditional ice-cream, which comes in all kinds of flavours, including salted caramel, vanilla, strawberry and chocolate orange and have all been created using Calon Wen’s organic milk, cream, butter and organic raw cane sugar. The 2016 Awards also featured


other Welsh finalists including ‘Trealy Farm’ for their charcuterie (beech- smoked air-dried ham), ‘Halen Môn’ for their pure sea salt PDO and ‘Mostyn Kitchen Garden’ for their raspberry jam.


The competition has previously


managed to pull in well-known names who have turned their hand to judging the categories, including Michelin-


Rhian Boyt rhian.boyt@herald.email


starred Walnut Tree chef Shaun Hill in Abergavenny, well-known author and retired Director of The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery Elizabeth Luard and award-winning cookbook author, writer and cookery teacher Lindy Wildsmith. Delicious.magazine is a unique


publication dedicated to anything food- related, which aims to fit into any type of lifestyle, offering something for everyone. Each month, the magazine packs


in as many yummy treats as possible, including inspiring recipes from top chefs, particularly from Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. Karen Barnes, editor of delicious.


magazine, also contributes her fair share of recipes she has created and her experimentations with seasonal ingredients each month, along with some from food director Angela Boggiano. To celebrate the opening of the


Produce Awards, The Herald spoke to Karen Barnes to find out more. On her career to date, Karen said: “I


started out as a PA in book publishing, then trained on the job as an editor before moving on to work in London as a sub-editor in national magazines - first on weeklies, then heading up the sub-editing/production team at Good Housekeeping magazine. “I became head of the Good


Housekeeping Institute, which was a fantastic job overseeing all the food, homes, gardens, lifestyle and consumer testing pages for the magazine. “I edited special one-off food


magazines there, too, which gave me the experience I needed to edit a food magazine - something I’ve always wanted to do. “I became editor of delicious.


magazine in April 2010 and I still pinch myself every day that I have the privilege of doing a job I enjoy so much.” With a strong passion for food she creates, Karen described to The Herald


in great detail about what she loves about food: “I started cooking at a young age. My mother was a fantastic cook - a cook ahead of her time - and she had me chopping onions from the age of five. “I distinctly remember thinking


‘I’ll never be able to do this as quickly as she can’. But by the time I was 10, it was my job to cook a three-course dinner for the family every Saturday night. “I cooked the same thing every


week – Flemish beef stew, followed by lemon syllabub. “They must have been sick of it, but


they never complained! And then, when my mother died when I was 15, I did all the cooking for the family for a period of time. “So, you could say the love of


food, recipes and cooking are in my genes. I’m the editor of delicious. magazine and I don’t write recipes for the magazine very often as we have a talented, trained food team of three, who test up to 70 recipes a month, many of which are recipes they’ve created themselves, as well as recipes from various guest chefs.” Karen continued to say: “I do get to


taste quite a lot of the dishes, though, as the kitchen is open-plan to our office and I like to make sure I know about every single recipe that appears in the magazine. “My job is to put together and


choose the content for the magazine, coming up with ideas with help from the team, overseeing the whole thing, commissioning articles and reading everything before it goes to press. “It’s a huge job, but it’s a rewarding


one. I love every moment of it, and I’m lucky to work with a ridiculously talented bunch of people. There are 14 of us altogether - 11 on the magazine and three on the shared online team. “Some people ask me how we have


enough ideas to fill the magazine every month. The truth is, every month, I have about 40 pages of ideas that I can’t fit in!” On her involvement with the


Conti’s Ice Cream: Started up in 1946


Produce Awards, Karen explained: “The first Produce Awards launched in 2016 and it’s something we, as a magazine, had been wanting to do for a long time. It’s so important to recognise the sterling work so many small-scale, hard-working, dedicated producers are doing around Great Britain. “There’s so much the UK has to


shout about in terms of the quality of its food - something that wasn’t always the case. We have world-class cheeses and dairy farms, we produce charcuterie to rival any that comes out of France, Italy and Spain, and we’re renowned for our preserves, our baking and for the quality of the meat our farmers produce. “The more these producers are


celebrated and recognised, the more shoppers will be aware how important it is to choose and buy wisely.” Karen further added: “The


organisation of the awards is a huge task - and we have a new team of two dedicated to making sure the awards are organised properly and judged fairly, with plenty of input from the rest of the editorial team, too. “First of all we recruit regional


judges, who are expert in the food and producers in their area. Once the awards have closed for entry and all the entries have been assessed to make sure they meet the strict quality criteria, we submit all those entries to the regional judges, who assess the stories and produce carefully. “They select a shortlist to put


through for the final judging, which will happen in the summer with a top- class expert judging panel. In 2016, the judges included Prue Leith and Sophie Grigson; this year’s judges have yet to be announced.” On how successful the previous


Produce Awards have been and what her hopes were for this year’s Awards, Karen stated: “In our October 2016 issue, we wrote about each category winner for our inaugural awards and, throughout 2017, we will be featuring each of those winners in greater depth, alongside a recipe created especially for the magazine using the produce from that winning producer. “We also offered PR support to each


of the winners and sent out nationwide press releases at the time of their win. “Some of the winning producers


were featured on the delicious.podcast, and there is a dedicated area about the awards on the delicious.website (deliciousmagazine.co.uk). “We also produce sticker artwork


for the winners to use on their packaging if they want to.” “As the winner of the Dairy


category last year was a Ceredigion- based business, what would you be able to tell the readers about your favourite Welsh dish?” we asked Karen, to which she gladly responded: “Ah yes, that Conti’s ice-cream - how wonderful is that? I love the simplicity of it - the purity of taste. But, to answer your question… My mother was Welsh and my grandfather was a miner, so I feel a great deal of allegiance to Wales. “I hope it’s not a cliché to say


that my favourite Welsh dish has to be Welsh cakes, fresh and warm from the griddle. Nothing can beat them. I make them often - in fact I now have a cookbook full of Welsh cake recipes!” Karen concluded the interview by


telling The Herald how she feels the awards are important in highlighting and discovering the talents and the work of many producers around the UK: “I think it’s vitally important we make a noise about the unsung heroes of the food world. The work they do is often hard and it can be lonely as well. I found our final judging an emotional experience last year because it was a powerful reminder of how much Britain has to be proud of in terms of its food. “We want our awards to grow


bigger and better every year, but their success is down to your readers, our readers and the wider public nominating the food producers and heroes they know and love.” Karen finally added: “The


more entries, the better. Visit de l i c i ousm a ga z i ne .c o.uk/ produceawards to nominate or enter - or see the out-now January issue of delicious.magazine to find out more about the awards. We’d love to hear from people.”


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