Written for Natural & Organic Monthly Roundup (September 2025) During August I had two surprising encounters with organic producers. The first was at a local food festival, and featured an artisan producer of fermented organic pickles and sauces. His range was fully certified but did not mention Organic in the product title and his certification […]
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The Two Ingredient McTruffle
A recent Scottish trip to Dumfries and Pitlochry bought together whisky and chocolate, through visits to the Annandale Distillery and Explore Chocolate respectively. Explore owner Matt Green is doing some very interesting bean-to-bar work with single cocoa origins like Sao Paolo and Vietnam. He has experimented with a wide range of single malts in chocolate […]
Ultra Processed Foods 2024 – Extending The Debate!
I chaired two events this year which put Ultra Processed Foods under the spotlight. In September The Guild Of Food Writers hosted an online debate entitled “Ultra Processed Foods – Hard To Swallow” . Watch the full debate here. Then in October the Danish Embassy in London hosted a debate in real life entitled “The […]
Chocolate Gone Wrong Truffles
Over the summer four 100g bars of 70% dark chocolate in my office over-heated and bloomed. Bloomed chocolate looks weird and has an unpleasant texture but it is not dangerous – it just needs to be melted and reworked. I have developed a special truffle recipe to use up surplus or bloomed chocolate. It involves […]
So What’s Wrong With Ultra-Processed Foods?
Written for www.qualityfoodawards.com One of my first projects as a product developer was to reduce the cost of the coating on a choc ice. After weeks of replacing cocoa with wacky ingredients (carob, cassia and more) I delivered my report to the client. Executive Summary: your chocolate coating tastes bad now and everything we have […]