Rude Health : Quoi ! Du porridge ?

RAREMENT les marques de produits culinaires trouvent écho sur ce blog qui héberge généralement des histoires nées derrière les fourneaux. Le plus souvent par intérêt, par passion commune et surtout par cette relation humaine qui prime sur tout autre aspect. Mais à chaque règle son exception, il fallait bien que ce support d’expression serve lui aussi d’exemple en la matière.

Et la marque fut son apparition. Mais attention, pas n’importe laquelle. Car quitte à jouer l’exception, autant pousser le concept jusqu’au bout. Une marque anglaise, porridge de surcroit…

Oui, je vois d’ici vos mines déconfites, vos expressions de rebut, vos regards de dégout. Tout cela est bien normal après tout, un français ne mange pas de porridge. Les céréales, ça doit croquer sous la dent, et avec des pépites de chocolat sinon rien. Question de principe national.

C’est sans rien vous cacher que ces clichés traînaient au fond de la mémoire jusqu’au jour où la française signataire de ces mots fit la rencontre de Camilla, mère de famille anglaise quelque peu déjantée et surtout créatrice de Rude Health qui me mis au défi de me faire aimer le porridge. La cigale avait beau avoir chanté tout l’été, la fourmi n’en n’était pas moins optimiste dans la réussite de sa tâche.

Rendez vous pris un samedi matin de 2010, l’esprit interrogateur et complètement dubitatif devant un tel challenge. Rien que l’idée de se lever un samedi matin et parcourir des kilomètres pour aller découvrir le monde du porridge dépassait l’entendement.

Et pourtant… à coup de mise en confiance, de préparation alimentée de commentaires ‘Non, mais ça se mange vraiment ça ?!” et de dégustations – non, on ne ferme pas les yeux à l’approche de la petite cuillère -, le porridge est petit à petit passé de l’état de concept à … ‘bon, j’avoue, ça ne croque pas sous la dent mais ces dattes, ces morceaux de bananes, ces céréales – qui plus est sans sucre – ont un certain charme qui ne laisse pas indifférent.’

Alors pour ceux et celles qui chercheraient une alternative à nos céréales sucrées et quelques peu grasses, les parisiens et parisiennes pourront en trouver chez Rose Bakery et Lafayette Gourmet, en attendant une arrivée sur le sol français, un jour.. peut-être.. quand nos palais seront prêt à une telle invasion.

Rude Health
www.rudehealth.com

Goooood Morning! A visit to Jordans Cereals

EVERY morning, millions of people slowly move one foot in front of the other, carrying their barely woken bodies into the kitchen to open the cupboard, take a bowl, pour some cereal, open the fridge, pour some milk over the cereal, close the fridge door, take a spoon and start eating.

What seems to be an endless effort for sleepy minds is what we call breakfast. Breakfast. Even a marathon seems an easier task on some mornings.

Of course, the easiest option would be to either stay in bed or teleport yourself to the office but, see, unfortunately, life isn’t that simple!

However, while people stare bleary eyed over their bowl of cereal trying to remember how to get their mouths to shape a simple ‘Hello’, thousands of brains are spending hours, days and weeks to create the recipe that will turn mornings into a pleasant moment.

The idea of people putting their thoughts together to make mornings a relaxing time for millions of men, women and children before the storm of the day begins intrigued me. It was time for some in-depth learning and investigation at Jordans Cereals’ headquarters to find the key to such a successful market.

Back in 1969 and the hippy years, when Bill Jordans went to the States with his music band, he could never have imagined that he would come back with granola in his luggage and years later, run one of the most successful breakfast cereal businesses in Europe.

With his family already working in the milling industry, Bill and his brother launched the first Crunchy G in 1972, followed by Muesli which would be produced using sustainable farming methods.

Having witnessed his local Biggleswade devastated by over-farming and transformed from the quaint hedge-rowed countryside into an industrial plantation, Bill Jordans set up the Conservative Grade.

The idea is to help farmers to create nature-friendly habitats on 10% of their farmed land. This practice allows natural predators to thrive and keeps other pests under control for the benefit of the crops. The farmers taking part of the scheme also plant crops which provide food and habitats for the wildlife.

Back to cereal and the creation process. A cereal recipe isn’t just about mixing oats and additional ingredients in a bowl. And once the oats are collected, the creative process starts.

“Our team works with six fine and thick traditional oats and more than 200 ingredients. Depends on what we are trying to achieve, a recipe requires about 1-2 months development in the kitchen and then 2 months in the factory to ensure all recipes on a bigger scale.”

There are 4 people who create recipes for Jordans products, spending an average half their day in the kitchen. Then, the entire company gets involved at some stage to taste recipes to make sure people enjoy them before the packaging and the sales teams get involved.

40 years after his trip to the States, Bill and his family have made Jordans Cereals a company that produces 20,000 boxes of muesli a week with 7 different flavours – Natural, Fruit & Nut, Super Berry, Organic, Nut & Seed, Truly Fruity and Fruity Fibre -, and has launched 3 recipes of porridge including Traditional, Quick & Creamy and Organid as well as 6 Country Crisp recipes: Strawberry, Raspberry, Raisin, Honey, Dark Chocolate, and 4 Nut.

From the Granola G. to the current Country Crisp, clusters seem to have always been people’s favourite. For their customers to share their love for clusters, Jordans Cereals has launched the Country Crisp Appreciation Society. The website aims to become a platform where the company will engage the conversation with its customers by sharing ideas and news.

With 13, 500 subscribers, it seems that breakfast still has a long life ahead of it, even when half asleep. Come on, the weekend isn’t that far off.

Country Crisp Pear & Chocolate Crumble Cake – Serve 6-8

For the pears
30g butter
30g golden granulated sugar
2 pears, peeled and thinly sliced

For the cake
75g butter, softened
75g golden caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
75g self raising flour
50g chocolate chips
150g Jordans Chocolate Country Crisp
1 tsp vanilla extract
Single cream, to serve
Preheat the oven to 180 C fan/ 200 C/ Mk 6. Prepare a 23cm/ 9 inch tin.
Heat the butter in an open pan over medium heat, and add the pear slices. Cook for 2 minutes, then sprinkle over the sugar. Turn the slices, then cook for a further 2 minutes. Set aside while you mix the cake.
Cream together the butter and half of the sugar until creamy. Add the eggs in 3 batches, and stir until well combined. Fold in the flour, and then the chocolate chips. Spoon this in to the base of the prepared tin, and sprinkle over half of the Jordans Country Crisp. Arrange the pears decoratively on the surface, and sprinkle with the remaining Jordans Country Crisp.
Bake for 30 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. Serve warm with single cream.

A French woman’s adventure in Porridge

SOMETIME, you need some challenges to spice up your life.  My last breakfast dare was exactly that kind of experience.

While some people would prefer regular toasted slices of bread with butter and jam, croissants or yoghurt and fruits for breakfast, others would enjoy a bowl of porridge. Wait, did you just say porridge? No way! I’m French! I eat crunchy nutty cereals. Any self-respecting anglo-saxon cereal marketing experts will tell you: ‘French people drive us nuts with their cereals’.

But by choosing to move to the UK last year, I knew there was a slight risk of exposing myself to some adventurous culinary experiences that even my ‘ready to try anything’ mindset would have never considered.I had to assume my choice! But, come on, porridge! That soggy cold mixture doesn’t even match my idea of the most basic breakfast.

And then comes Twitter and the power of social media. A tool so powerful that you haven’t even had the chance to breathe that you’ve already booked a porridge-tasting session on a Sunday morning. Was I really that sleepy to accept or was it because, just like St Thomas, I need to see to believe?!

On a cold Sunday morning, I was on my way to meet my lovely host, Camilla from Rude Health, who courageously took on the challenge of revealing  everyone’s  deep-seated love for porridge. Good luck!

Camilla welcomed me with a big smile and, as I stepped into their warm and cosy kitchen, looking at the children’s drawings on the walls, I told myself that maybe porridge couldn’t be that bad. They all looked healthy after all!

A French au pair was also there, looking over her different breakfast options. After a quick glance at the muesli and porridge boxes, she asked ‘do you have something crunchier?  With bigger nuts?‘. Ah! See, told you! The French and their crunchy nutty cereals. We’re not made for porridge, that’s all!

But my curiosity was much too strong and I needed to understand why, one day, Camilla and her husband had decided to change tack and move into the porridge business in. Why would you do that to yourself?!

“Some neighbours and us weren’t pleased with the Muesli we could find on the market. It was bland and not very appealing to the palate. We therefore decided to create our own muesli and instead of using the classic 12/13 ingredients, we ended up mixing 23 different nuts and oats all together to create the magic recipe.

The dynamic team then met with delis to see if they would be interested in their Muesli and after having convinced wholesalers to buy their product, their first boxes were on the shelves of neighbourhood delis. Since then, the company hasn’t stopped growing since.

“The quest for the ultimate Muesli recipe left us with a huge amount of oats and nuts. Instead of throwing everything away, we decided to create porridge! But porridge doesn’t have to be basic food. It is easy now to create gourmet porridge by adding fabulous ingredients and that’s what we’re aiming to do at Rude Health.

“It’s said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the one that would power you up. ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper’ should be our everyday motto. With our products, we make sure to offer people like you and me something they would enjoy, something with a home-made touch. We realised that a lot of people had their breakfast at the office and we wanted to give them a taste of home!”

But back to my “try to get @mathildecuisine convinced”challenge! With some pressure on her shoulders, Camilla was doing her best to defend the honour of porridge. After having chopped, poured and stirred, it was now time for the ultimate test. A bit of sugar, some maple syrup, the intriguing mixture was apparently ready.

A spoon in hand, I slowly dived in this mixture, brought the spoon to my mouth and…I felt a comforting sensation that my palate decided to adopt immediately. Was it good? Yes. Did it feel good? Yes. Was it what had been imaging for ages? No.

To celebrate that unique moment, Camilla served me a portion of her spotted dick porridge, the @porridgelady’s winning recipe at the Golden Spurtle ‘Speciality’ competition. It was good, very good, and comforting. All I needed to face a cold Sunday morning.

Congratulation, Camilla, for having convinced me that porridge was good, both for our health and the palate! It was a wonderful morning and Bravo for your hard work on developing good and high quality products. As a self-respecting French woman, I stand corrected and, maybe, just a little more English.

Rude Health
www.rudehealth.com