Make Valentines Special... Romantic Candlelit 4 Course Dinner served in The Pavilion Restaurant Friday 13th February and Saturday 14th February 2009 £24.95 per person including a free bottle of red or white wine per couple* Limited Availability Luxury Valentines Break Romantic candlelit 4 course dinner Served in The Pavilion Restaurant Overnight Accommodation with Free Executive Room Upgrade Complimentary bottle of Bubbly in your room* Full English Breakfast Limited Availability £139.00 inclusive per couple Add an extra night only £79.00 per couple (bed and breakfast) when booked with this package. Executive room upgrade available on request. *Wine/bubbly to be selected by the hotel
Back to basics Attention to detail, the best ingredients and flair in the kitchen make Pollen Organics pesto ‘eat-with-aspoon delicious’, reports Sally Place For pesto with pizzazz, you need look no further than the fresh pestos lovingly prepared by Richard and Christianne Pollen as part of Pollen Organics, their food company set up nearly eight years ago. The Hampshire-based business produces a range of 22 tasty organic pestos, sauces, dressings, mayonnaises and preserves. Many have won prestigious food awards, including their fresh pestos, Ave Maria Seville orange marmalade, chilli and fresh ginger salsa, spiced-up tomato ketchup and traditional free-range mayonnaise. The Pollens’ delicious fare can be found nationwide in supermarkets, specialist food stores, farm shops and the farmers’ markets in Farnham, Haslemere, Petersfield and Winchester thanks to Pollen Organics’ growing reputation and Richard’s superb selling skills. With a sound track record as an entrepreneur, he left a busy marketing career to take over the commercial side of the business, and has never looked back. Waitrose is the only supermarket to sell Pollen Organics’ fresh organic English watercress and lemon pesto and their fresh organic basil and almond pesto, both £3.49. The delicious chilled pestos are unique in food retailing because unlike most pesto sauces they are unpasteurised, which makes a huge difference to the taste. Food journalists have given them the thumbs up, with one describing the fresh pestos as ‘eatwith-a-spoon delicious’. Waitrose Chilled Foods Buyer Sonia Fuller has been pleased with their popularity. ‘Waitrose has built its reputation on the strength of its fresh-food offer and we are always delighted to find fresh products that offer our customers something different. We sell the excellent Pollen Organics pestos as part of our locally produced initiative – it is great to support small suppliers in this way.’ Richard is delighted that Waitrose is selling his products. ‘Being stocked by a quality supermarket reinforces our credibility as a reliable, serious supplier of excellent food,’ he explains. With so much success under their belts, it’s hard to believe the couple only began the venture in 2000. Having brought up seven children, Christianne, not content to put her feet up, started cooking sauces on the trusty Aga in the kitchen of their home in Bramshott Chase, Hampshire. Her background as a cordon-bleu cook, and deep conviction of the importance of eating real food, spurred her on. ‘My driving force was making products that could be used to cook tasty, nourishing meals with minimal effort. By adding our versatile sauces to fresh meat, vegetables, pasta and rice, it is possible to quickly produce a wonderful meal. With no preservatives or added sugar, our range is ideal for mums who don’t have the time to make their own sauces but still want to feed healthy, home-cooked meals to their family. We encourage people to try new ideas too - watercress pesto is excellent with pasta, but divine if added to freshly cooked fish.’ ‘… when Richard rang to ask for permission to use their fruit in his marmalade, he was informed that the only other people doing the same resided in the Vatican’ Her culinary creations were an immediate hit and the business took off. ‘The house started to get unbearably full of jars and boxes and we had to decide whether to make or break. Having got so far and received so much positive feedback, we decided to expand,’ she says. After a fruitless search for premises, they found the solution in their own backyard, quite literally. They converted their stable block into a production unit with a large kitchen, now the hub of Pollen Organics, where Christianne dreams up new product ideas and cooks her creations with the help of three assistants, Jill, Rosalina and Lubos. Much of the preparation is still carried out by hand. For instance, they peel 400 red onions each week, as fresh onions are essential to achieve the right crunchy texture in the red onion marmalade relish. The cooking batch sizes have increased since the early days but still remain relatively small so that Christianne can ensure that quality remains consistently high. They source their organic ingredients carefully, using local produce where possible. For instance, the watercress for the fresh organic pesto is grown in Warminster, while the basil comes from Laverstoke Park Farm and the New Forest. The Pollens are keeping some excellent company. Their oranges come from the Huerta Ave Maria orange grove near Seville, and when Richard rang the proprietor to ask for permission to use their fruit in his marmalade, he was informed that the only other people doing the same resided in the Vatican. Extraordinary attention to detail is something the Pollens take seriously. For Richard, making excellent food that people care about and want to buy again has always been important. ‘Our guiding rule is: if it isn’t good enough for us to eat and serve to our family and friends, then it won’t pass muster with our customers.’ The couple are poised for the next expansion phase but admit their timing could be better as the credit crunch continues to bite. Richard remains undaunted. ‘We’ve just redesigned our labels and marketing material to better reflect the pure, wholesome image of Pollen Organics. We are investigating the export market and will be re-launching our website later this year.’ The true magic ingredient of Pollen Organics is Christianne. Her talent for putting together simple, wholesome ingredients in an inspired way to create something really special has been key to the range’s success. As long as she is happy to dream up her tasty, appetising recipes, the future of Pollen Organics is assured. V www.pollenorganics.com the waitrose page v 27 <strong>View</strong>
Change language