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Steenbergs Fairtrade Vanilla – Some Background

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

I tried to post a response online at The Times in relation to their article but they wouldn’t post it – perhaps it was too long or too partisan.  In any case here are some further details on Steenbergs vanilla. 

The article in The Times is unfortunately in part true as child labour is one of the big problems with vanilla in Madagascar and the developing world.  I am not sure about widespread employment of children below the age of 8 years old, but it certainly might exist in pockets and will tend to happen around harvest time on family farms. 

Other major problems include: very high levels of general poverty and low levels of development within Madagascar where GNI per capita is $410 for 2008 compared to $45,390 for the UK, ranking Madagascar 145th out of 182 countries; and environmental issues such as degradation of the rainforests for slash & burn agriculture and massive losses of unique biodiversity in Madagascar. 

These issues are being addressed in a small way by Steenbergs through a focus on (a) organic agriculture and (b) Fairtrade vanilla, but the fight must still go on to improve further the development prospects of the Malagasy people.

Steenbergs vanilla beans come from three Fairtrade projects in North Eastern Madagascar with about 1000 farmers structured into co-operatives.  Employed staffing is low at 60 people with a large amount of seasonal workers, reaching up to 400 people.  Child labour is prohibited.  All workers are paid above the minimum Malagasy wage and lunch is provided for free and is not deducted from wages.  All employees work 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday and 4 hours on Saturday morning.  If additional work is needed, overtime is paid at a higher rate.  The working week is no more than 60 hours.  Employees are provided with work clothes. 

Here are some basic facts relating to financial status of region:

  • Vanilla represents over 90% of agricultural income of planters’ families with rest coming from sales of coffee and some rice, but perhaps more importantly it is these cash crops that enables farmers to generate income above pure subsistence farming; the rest of their farming is cassava, rice and vegetables for their own consumption.  Each planter produces on average 400kg a year of green vanilla (unprocessed vanilla) every year which generates income of roughly $600/year per family.  Switching to organic Fairtrade vanilla generates income of over $2,000 for the same crop, an increase of $1,400 per year per family. 
  • So without Fairtrade and organic, vanilla farmers only earn less than $2 a day to live on and so their standard of living is miniscule, and even with Fairtrade and an income of $5.5 a day there is still a long way to go.  On top of this, a typical Malagasy family comprises 8 people plus sometimes some additional grandparents, and they live in  a bamboo hut of 20 – 30m2.
  • As for schooling in the vanilla growing regions, 80% of children aged 6 – 11 go to the local state school, but only 10 – 15% continue to middle school (12 – 15 years old) and 3% continue their schooling beyond the age of 15 years old.  Schools are usually about 100m2, which is then used to teach 4 grades, i.e. 300 children, in the same space.
    Vanilla Planters Walking Along Track

    Vanilla Planters Walking Along Track

  • Other social information: with a few exceptions, mains drinking water is not available nor is electricity.  Transport is by foot along country tracks and average distances of travel to various places are: 5 – 8km to middle school; 25km to high school; 25km to nearest dispensary for pharmaceuticals; and 90km to nearest hospital with first 20km by foot.

The Fairtrade premium has been used in the last year for the following:

  • Purchase of land and construction of silos for storage of rice
  • The repair of bridges and other small structures
  • Improvement of school facilities

Other projects being looked at include:

  • Drinking water supply and sewerage infrastructure
  • Improvement of country tracks to make walking easier
  • Irrigation systems to aid rice farming and stop “slash & burn” farming techniques
  • Plan on AIDS awareness to be conducted at school

For me, even Fairtrade seems like a drop in the ocean and more needs to be done.  But the key is to start taking those small steps towards greater economic stability and social improvements and to halt environmental degradation (stop the slash and burn of the forests). 

 

Vanilla Flower

Vanilla Flower

Fecondation or Hand Pollination of Vanilla Flowers

Fecondation or Hand Pollination of Vanilla Flowers

Initial Heating To Kill Green Vanilla Beans - Echadaudage

Initial Heating To Kill Green Vanilla Beans - Echadaudage

Curing and Testing the Maturing Vanilla Beans

Curing and Testing the Maturing Vanilla Beans

Sorting And Packing Fairtrade Vanilla

Sorting And Packing Fairtrade Vanilla

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Follow the frankincense trail

Sunday, February 7th, 2010
A Bedouin checks a frankincense tree

A Bedouin checks a frankincense tree

With deft strokes, a Bedouin chips away the grey, papery bark, then smoothes a green patch the size of your hand on the tree; it’s a scrubby, scraggly and unpretentious tree.  As if by magic, milky white tears of gum-resin start welling up in the freshly made green wound.

The Bedouin moves to another tree continuing his harvest.  At some of the trees, the Bedouin man finds trees that he has recently tapped and from these he removes handfuls of precious sap that has now hardened to a golden hue – this is frankincense, one of the world’s most precious substances that is now so rarely used in the developed world.

The trees that the Bedouin would have tapped are Boswellia sacra and we were in an imaginary walk through the fabled frankincense groves of Oman’s desert plateau that borders the green mountains of Dhofar.  This is where the best frankincense is grown as this is where the ideal conditions are – a steady tropical sun, pale limestone soil and an heavy dew from the monsoon.

Omani frankincense has a subtle aroma of balsam that recalls distant shrines or northern pine forests.  The trade in frankincense struggles like many of the ancient spice and ingredients trades as they are hard work for the money that you can make – in the Middle East, young men would rather work in the oil fields rather than the frankincense fields, while in Sri Lanka, young men would rather work in a bank than learn to prepare cinnamon bark.

Chunks of frankincense

Chunks of frankincense

From these chunks of golden resin, a whole economy flourished along the frankincense trail, from ancient Arabia to distant Greece and Rome.  On the back of the camel, this river of incense built up fabled kingdoms with names that have a haunting romantic quality and litter the texts of the Bible – Main, Hadramawt, Nabataea, Saba (of the fabled Queen of Sheba) and Qataban.

These ancient city states had their own languages, their own histories, their own law and religions, their own art and architecture and they created dams and irrigation to develop agriculture to feed their peoples and water systems to provide pure, luscious water for their people.  Then their kingdoms collapsed before slipping into the dust of ancient history, becoming forgotten tales and monuments (like at Petra) for tourists to gawp at.

The Egyptians used the “perfume of the gods” for temple rites and as a base for perfumes; frankincense is first recorded on the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut from the 15th century BC, where it says that she had sent an expedition to the land of Punt (perhaps in Somalia) to go and get some frankincense.  In 450BC, Herodotus, the Greek Father of History, mentioned the aromatics of Arabia – “The whole country is scented with them and exhales an odour marvellously sweet.”  In the Roman world, incense perfumed cremation rites and Nero lavished a whole year’s production of frankincense on the funeral of his consort, Poppaea.

The trade in frankincense nowadays is obscure and a very small niche, but in 100 – 200AD, Southern Arabia sent over 3,000 tons every year along the frankincense trail to Greece and Rome.

The Hadramawat city of Shibam

The Hadramawat city of Shibam

This 2400 mile trail began in Hadramawt in South Yemen around the ancient of Sabota.  Pliny the Elder wrote “Frankincense…is conveyed to Sabota on camels…The Kings have made it a capital offence for camels so laden to turn aside from the high road”.  The camels would have collected the frankincense from the valley of Wadi Hadramawt with its cities, Shibam, Sayun and Tarim.  From Sabota, the camel trains would go to Qana for shipment overseas and trading with India for spices or north to Timna and then through Saba, the ancient kingdom of Sheba.  After Marib, they would travel to Main and then to Mecca, al Medina and finally to Petra, where the ancient Nabatean Kingdom traded incense and spices with the Roman Empire.

Was it from one or more of these ancient frankincense kingdoms, that the magi brought their wisdom and their gifts worthy of a prince.  Along the trail, the caravans would collect myrrh, salt and indigo.  For the Magi, frankincense symbolised divinity, an offering equal in importance to gold and myrrh.

Today, the best frankincense comes from Oman, with Hadramawt long gone as the centre of the trade.  Frankincense is also grown in India, Somalia and the Yemen.

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Trying To Build A Better Spices Business

Monday, February 1st, 2010

When Sophie and I set up Steenbergs, we were very clear in our own minds about what Steenbergs as a business wanted to offer as products – the widest and most exotic range of great spices, herbs, seasonings and teas from around the world that are grown under organic agriculture and ethically sourced.  But we also wanted Steenbergs to be run as a different sort of place to those that I had been asked to expect since I entered the corporate world.

We didn’t want a one dimensional pursuit of money to the exclusion of everything else  – I remember being interviewed for a job at Lazards in the City when I was maybe 25 years old and being told in that interview by an American gentleman when asked “why do you want to work in corporate finance?” that my waffly answer about “interesting, intellectual work” was wrong and that he wanted people that wanted money, were turned on by money and were motivated by greed, so luckily I did not get a job there.

Steenbergs also needs to be a fun, happy place to work where no-one blames people for mistakes and that when things go wrong we all muck in and clear up the mess, sort it out and get on with life.  Firstly, we all make mistakes and secondly, you need to make mistakes to learn.

We hope that we have created a decent place culturally to work rather than one driven by profit and fear.

Finally, we are following a middle path, one that is decent, fair and reasonable to all people within and outside the business that come into contact with Steenbergs as an entity, and that we need to carefully consider Steenbergs impact on the world, on Gaia – our planet, and try to ensure that we make as small an impact as possible on the world.

It’s a middle path that accepts we must make compromises and so will not please everyone, but we will try and improve what we do, while also striving to make a small profit.  Without being profitable, it would be impossible to earn any income and to generate cash to re-invest in our business – we do not have the private wealth or big income to have the luxury of running Steenbergs as a loss-making entity without the need to consider how to grow sales, where to scrimp and save to keep costs down nor where to make pragmatic choices that may not always be the best choice for the environment (especially in packaging).

Recently, I have come across the the concept of the triple bottom line concept (“TBL” or “3BL” or “the three pillars”) which means that a business should think about “people, planet, profit” in its business dealings, rather than just to be in it for a quick buck for ourselves.  I like it as an idea as it encapsulates more rigorously what we have been trying to do in our own haphazard style.

We see the triple bottom line model as a better way to run a business, being a virtuous circle of slow but constant improvement in our business operations and the impact we have as a business on the world environment and people within Steenbergs and those who become involved with us, such as suppliers, buyers or just interested people.

So I thought it worthwhile to be very open about some of our thoughts and start explaining ways we think about and address certain key social and ethical questions within our business.  These can now be found at the following links on the web site:

Over the next few months, I hope to address packaging as an issue area and embedded carbon costs, so I will keep you informed of when I get somewhere there, but the information available to small businesses on these things is limited and the advice on how to look into it almost no existent.

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Vanilla, Gorgeous Heady Vanilla

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I love vanilla.  I really do.  I blogged about it as a spice back in May 2009 under Vanilla – the temperamental diva.

At Steenbergs, we have had such a good run with our organic Fairtrade vanilla extract that we are nearly down to our last few drops.  So last week, we got delivery of a new batch of organic Fairtrade vanilla beans and after Lee did the initial prep work he said that these Madagascan beans are of the most superior quality, and Lee’s hard to please! 

Gorgeous organic vanilla

Gorgeous organic vanilla

Well, I suppose that’s what you would expect from our new suppliers from the Antsirabe Nord region of Northern Eastern Madagascar; these beans have much more luxuriant richness and depth of the character than our last batch of beans, which hailed from Kerala in India.  Think of it as the difference between a New World wine and a Premier Cru from France; everything’s the same but the terroir in France just creates more character.

I am really excited by our vanilla at the moment.  We’re getting a better quality extraction at present than before.  Also, we have a great range of classic gourmet vanilla products – Steenbergs organic Madagascan gourmet vanilla beans (vanilla pods), organic vanilla powder (that’s gorgeous beans from Mananara that have been ground to a rich black powder, that looks like gunpowder in the old Western films but smells like heaven), organic vanilla extract powder (that’s the extract dried onto a dextrin base to remove the alcohol). 

The gourmet beans are actually from a Fairtrade source and we trade these into Crazy Jack’s and Essential Trading who pack them off as organic and Fairtrade, so we need to get our act together and actually launch them as Fairtrade!  It’s a bit ridiculous as we have had the product approved by Fairtrade and done the design work for them but never actually pushed the go button; soon, I assure you.

Mountain gorilla from Virunga Mountains

Mountain gorilla from Virunga Mountains

I (that’s me Axel Steenberg) have also sourced a wonderful organic vanilla from the Democratic Republic of Congo from the foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains in the Virunga National Park and near Lake Edouard, which is one of the two strongholds for the rare mountain gorilla (the other is Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest in Uganda). 

I came across them whilst reading Tim Butcher’s book  (Blood River – A Journey To Africa’s Broken Heart) about following in the footsteps of Stanley down the River Congo, like a latter day Kurtz, dodging the insurgents on the back of a motorbike or travelling down the lazy, languid Congo River on a pirogue; hence finding them was really poignant. 

These Congolese organic vanilla pods have a different character to those from Madagascar and will be in short supply as getting them is really, really hard – these organic vanilla beans have a rawer, earthier flavour, full of chocolatey aromas but also an underlying sweet leathery intensity.

Now, I’ve added mysterious tonka beans to this flavour package.  This is banned in the USA because it contains coumarin, an anticoagulant, but banning it almost makes it more exciting.  And the top world chefs like Gordon Ramsay at Petrus-Gordon Ramsay or Alex Stupak at wd-50 or Ferran Adrià at El Bulli use it, so let’s try it I say.

Tonka beans (memories of Tonka toys and that takes me a long way back) are the seeds of Dipteryx oderata, which originates from Venezuela in the Orinoco river basin.  The main sources of tonka beans are Nigeria and Venezuela. 

Tonka beans

Tonka beans

It looks like a flat, wrinkled deep black bean/nut with a shape that’s reminiscent of an almond and a look that’s a cross between a prune and date.  They have a flavour and aroma that is full of volatiles and immediately remiscent of vanilla but with more esters coming through like pear drops or furniture polish, with hints of magnolia and other warming, sweet spices notes like cinnamon, cloves and allspice.  It is used in French cuisine and sometimes for perfumes, and even flavouring tobacco.

Anyway, Steenbergs tonka beans come from Venezuela and a little goes a long way as they are very specialist and very strong – completely decadent and slightly naughty.  You use them like a nutmeg and grate them, so you could cook with them as a garnish over coffee or into cream or over stewed rhubarb.  I’ll conjur up some recipes in a future blog, so hang fire on asking for a recipe.

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Hot Chili From Steenbergs

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

The snow may have gone but it’s cold, dreich and miserable.  But after a manic Christmas, it’s given me time to do some of the boring, but necessary, things of business life – stocktake inputting, stock valuation and pricing review, plus I’ve just done the first cut of our Q4 2009 Fairtrade returns which will keep them happy.  I’ve still got to do stock reconciliations and new price lists – most things are going to stay the same price.

But on the upside, I have been able to do some of tastings and stock reviews that I have been wanting to do since October/November last year, and you will start to see some of these additions and tweaks to our product range over the next couple of months.

One of the key things we will be doing is going back to our roots – Steenbergs as your secret ingredient, the place to find those things that you just cannot find on the high street, a place for the exotic ingredients that dreams are made of.  Somehow we want to get the excitement of finding these mysterious ingredients onto our web site experience and not just in my mind, mad that it already is.

So we will introduce a new concept for us of web exclusive products, which are lines that we will not sell to retailers or Ebay customers of ours.  These are the wacky products that we have spent a lot of time and effort to track down, so we don’t want other people to get the benefit of our hard work.

Birds Eye Chillis Growing

Birds Eye Chillis Growing

As a start, we have begun by widening our range of chilli products.  We used to have quite a good range of these, but our supply chain wasn’t very good, and we also were concentrating on building Steenbergs raw materials activities and trying to build on success with retailers.  Perhaps we went awry and too far away from our roots, i.e. away from being good, old fashioned spice merchants!

So for chilli heads, we now can provide a wider range of chillis:

Ancho chilli: this comes from Mexico and is chile poblano ripened and dried.  A great quality ancho chile is flexible and neither damp nor dried out.  It is a deep red (although they can get really quite dark, blood red) with a wrinkled shiny skin – it’s 11cm long and 7-8cm wide.  Ancho chiles have a sweet, fruity, slightly acid flavour and while generally they are mild, they can shock you and be individually very hot.

Bird’s Eye chilli: these chillis come from Uganda and are sometimes called pili pili or peri peri chilli and I’ve even heard it called mistakenly Devil’s Penis chilli and is probably related to chile pequin.  They are bitingly hot with a Scoville rating of 135,000SHUs and have a flavour that’s reminiscent of dry hay.

Hungarian cherry chilli pepper: these are your classic chilli for making goulash.  They are packed full of flavour yet are quite mild with a bit of heat at 10,000 SHUs, so they’re like a mildy hot paprika.  Hungarian cherry peppers are traditionally smoked and are a deep tobacco brown in colour.

Chilpotle chilli (or more correctly chile chilpocle): this is one of my all time favourite spices.  It is a jalapeño that has been ripened to a deep red on the plant and then smoked dry.  Its name derives from the Nahuatl chil (chile) and pectli (smoke).  They have a tobacco brown colour and are wrinkled with a smoky general flavour and aroma together with a very picante taste.  Great used whole to flavour soups or blended into a mole or a salsa or tomato sauce that’s got a bite, which you can then use as sauce for chicken dishes or even as a spicy base for a Mexican style pizza (now that’s serious fusion cooking).

Facing Heaven Chilli

Facing Heaven Chilli

Facing Heaven chilli (chao tian jiao):

what a romantic name for a chilli and comes from the fact that its pods grow upwards towards the gods in heaven.  These come from Sichuan in China and are the quintessential chilli of Szechuan cookery, and have that heat you would expect from a medium heat chilli, but full of the umami you would get from Sichuan peppercorns – they sort of fizz and fizzle on your tongue like space dust.  They have a rich red colour and pointed cone shape like a witch’s hat.

Habanero chilli: habanero chile is usually used fresh in Mexico (and traditionally from the Yucatán Peninsula), but we’re not set up for fresh products, so a dry version will do us just fine.  It was the hottest chilli until Naga chilli came along but it has an appetising flavour, although some of the depth of flavour is lost in the drying process, with a serious afterburn.  It’s heat rating is in range of 100,000 to 350,000 SHUs, which is damn hot.  One neat way to use habanero is to make a sauce, say a mole or tomato sauce and then infuse the habanero in it for a short while to give the sauce a light piquancy – in Mexico this is “to let the chile take a walk through the sauce.”

New Mexico red chilli: this is the staple chile of the United States and is used earthy red chile sauces and are an integral part of enchiladas, tamales, pozole, meat and egg dishes in southwestern states of the USA.  It starts as the dried long green chilli of New Mexico and has a light, sweet flavour, and then is field-ripened to a scarlet red and then dried to get the New Mexican red chile.  If you lived in new Mexico, you would find a range of chiles with rural names like Anaheim, Big Jim, Espanolas, Rio Grande and Sandia.  The main production areas are in the dry valleys of the Rio Grande River in the southern part of New Mexico and in the cooler north, where the heart of the biggest chilli growing region is from Hatch to Las Cruces in the south; in the north they are grown around Chimayo north of Sante Fe.

Naga Jolokia chilli (sometimes bhut jolokia): this a mega hot chilli and I mean mentally hot.  It was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest chilli ever at 855,000 SHUs, so be warned this is dangerous.  We all togged up in latex gloves, masks etc to pack this one and lived to tell the tale.  It originates from Nagaland in the far reaches of India on the border with Burma; it’s a harsh climate for a harsh chili.  We used to get some of Assam tea from near here on an estate called Banaspaty but supply became difficult with kidnappings of the estate managers!

At Steenbergs, we also have a range of pure chilli powders – cayenne pepper, chilli powder, smoked paprika and paprika – and loads of blended chillis from nearly every continent of the world (I don’t think the Antarctic have invented a traditional blend yet), but especially our Mexican Chile Powder, Harissa and New Mexican Chile Powder. 

To help you with your home cooking of Mexican food, we have brought in oregano direct from Mexico to complement our European oregano.  Mexican oregano is Lippia berlandieri rather than Origanum vulgare, and is closely related to lemon verbena; it has a stronger oregano flavour than good, old European oregano.

Note: I apologise for the almost schizophrenic use of chilli, chile and chili, but this is blatantly to get coverage under as many different types of search as possible.

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November Steenbergs Newsletter

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Steenbergs is here to help with all the Christmas baking

Traditionally a family time of year and it’s not just Christmas, it’s the time of year where everyone seems to be baking. This year we’ve pulled together lots of the essential baking ingredients to help you as well as our spice and tea boxes which make wonderful gifts. One person described opening up one of our boxes with the leaflet as just  opening up an “Aladdin’s cave of spices.”  We’ve all the usual news and information as well as an apology and an offer to make amends. Happy November and Guy Fawkes night enjoy the preparations for the end of the year…

Steenbergs tea gets a colour make over

Steenbergs has been selling tea since 2006 – we’ve always specialised in organic and Fairtrade tea but we decided to go colourful for 2009! We’re concentrating on our blended teas, many of them using spices. We’ve also switched the majority of our chai teas to be Fairtrade as well as organic. The new look tea comes in organic Fairtrade black chai (formerly our sweet chai); the seasonal – organic Fairtrade Christmas tea ; organic Fairtrade green chai tea and organic red chai (using redbush as the base tea). The chais or spiced teas are very warming and a great way to banish winter blues. Drink the black, red  or Christmas tea with or without milk or/and sugar whilst the green chai works well without milk but with or without sugar to taste. Have fun and let us know which is your favourite.

Other teas in this new livery are our popular organic Fairtrade English breakfast tea; organic Fairtrade Earl Grey tea and organic green tea with peppermint (formerly Moroccan mint tea). When the Steenberg house runs out of  Steenbergs English breakfast life the morning never quite starts properly until we’ve limped into the office – to begin again. Steenbergs Earl Grey tea is a delicious light tea which we particularly like in the afternoon – weak and black whilst Steenbergs green tea with peppermint is an all day winner. Drink our green tea with peppermint on its own or with a little sugar or honey. It works well as settler as well as making a delicious all day round drink.

Other new teas in the new livery include our organic white tea – bai mu dan or pai mu tan depending on your translation from Chinese – very cleansing and easy to drink all day through, can be an acquired taste; organic jasmine tea – always a winner in terms of calming and relaxing; and organic redbush tea – particularly popular as no caffeine and can be drunk very much as a black tea substitute, our loose leaf redbush tea is naturally sweet.

Christmas and Steenbergs

Spices have long been associated with Christmas in terms of baking, the Christmas kitchen and presents. This year we have pulled together much of the essential items to help you with the baking and created the Steenbergs Christmas baking shop, we’ve also pulled together some ideas for Christmas drinks and Christmas presents.

All our boxes make excellent presents for cooks of all abilities and interests – the choice is wide it’s just choosing which one for which person – whether it’s the Thai box for the globe trotter or the Christmas box, which is a good all round box, or the mini Fairtrade spices box or the storecupboard minis or the Smoke and spice box for the BBQ / grill or bake expert. For advice or help with choosing the right box for individuals please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll even wrap them up for you – don’t forget to let us have a message if you are sending it onto a different address. This year we have revised all our tea boxes to go with the new look tea – so again there’s something for all tastes and interests.

One of the simplest – if a little time consuming – Christmas spicy things has to be making a pomander – this traditional orange studded with cloves and then “set” with orris root makes a great traditional addition to the house. Somehow in our house it almost symbolises the start of the Christmas preparations almost as much as making Christmas cake!

What’s new with Steenbergs

Since the last newsletter we’ve been at Olympia at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair. It literally finishes the day before school’s back so we are always the bleary eyed parents who stagger into school the first day to be greeted by lists and questions! (We’re just trying to get through the day.) The Fair is always a good one in terms of meeting retailers who stock or might stock our products and passing on new products and sharing our enthusiasm – hopefully and news about Steenbergs.

 This year we were showcasing our new home bakery range, our new look tea range and our new look premium range – more about this shortly. All of which seemed to go down very well. We have, as always, added to our stockists list and with the home bakery range and mulled wine sachets going through distributors there should be some Steenbergs products available near you.

We’ve also added additional Steenbergs products to the range including two new single Estate peppers – Tasmanian Mountain pepper - which is roughly 10 times hotter than normal pepper and Madagascan wild pepper – for more information on all our peppers and these two new ones look at our recent entry on the blog. Two new flavoured salts have also just been added – porcini salt and truffle salt - both are intense flavours and will add a wonderful flavour to your cooking. Flowers also seem to be featuring at Steenbergs with Cornflowers, Marigold flowers, Jasmine flowers and orange blossom featuring on the list for the first time – you can use all of them in your recipes and meals – work well in salads and added at the end of meals so that you don’t lose the glorious colours of the flowers.

Organic Fairtrade Mulling wine spices

We now offer organic Fairtrade mulling wine spices in sachets! If sachets aren’t for you we also offer organic Fairtrade mulling wine spices loose in a jar and pre-blended into an organic Fairtrade mulling wine sugar . The joy of the sugar is that it is very easy to simply make a glass of mulled wine or gluwein.

We even offer a luxury version with orange for extra flavour. So however you like to create your perfect mulled wine – we’ve got it covered, we even sell the individual spices to allow you to create your own individual recipe if so desired.

Our tips for making this drink include adding orange juice to the wine – as opposed to diluting it with water – and the odd sliced orange always adds to the ambience and flavour if you are entertaining.

The sachets are going to be available via Suma and Green City distributors as well as ourselves so you should see them around and about, as well as in our stockists and  direct.

Postal strikes

Normally many of our parcels go by post, however, during the postal strike we have made alternative arrangements with courier companies. We won’t send anything by post the day before or the day of a postal strike. Ones sent previously should be fine as the majority go by tracked post which we understand is being given a priority by the Post Office. We will continue to monitor the situation and make arrangements and improvements as required. So it is even more important to leave instructions for deliveries if you are going to be out and not available for signature. Don’t forget that we can send your parcel to work address or leave it in a safe place, if you’ve left us instructions to do so.

New products

Once again there’s lots of new things at Steenbergs online shop. Getting ready for stir up weekend and Christmas baking we’ve got in organic mixed peel and organic glace cherries . Also new is organic Agave syrup and organic tahini. D2W products also seem eminently sensible and their biodegradable food and freezer bags join the ranks of their biodegradable bin bags.

Dried mushrooms – chanterelle, porcini and shiitake are now  available. And to help you with winter puddings we also now stock natural custard powder, as well as vegetarian jellies. If you are making your own – don’t forget our vanilla extract and/or vanilla pods they are ideal for this.

We seem to have gone rose mad  – it must be the end of summer in recent weeks and new additions to the toiletries include the Duchy original rose and mandarin shower wash, and the Weleda rejuvenating wild rose range. All of these have that lovely rose fragrance that somehow just brightens up your day.

Staff choice

The second in our irregular series of staff choices of our products. This time features Lucy, who has been with the company pretty well since it began.
Favourite Steenbergs product: Green tea with peppermint.

This is a brilliant tea and has been very popular with my friends who always ask for it instead of a coffee after a meal.

Favourite non Steenbergs product: Country products Bombay mix.

This is very moreish I have had to restrict myself to a bag a week or there would be no stock left for our customers.

Environmental tip: My husband and I couldn’t understand why our electricity bills were so high, we bought a gadget that tells you how much electricity you are using at any one time and we found out that someone had left our immersion heater on. Whoops. I think we managed to save ourselves £50 since we bought it.

Apology and offer

First of all an unreserved apology. The offer in the newsletter wasn’t properly set up. The mistake was noticed quickly and rectified and we have been through all those who placed an order using the code and refunded the people who were charged the incorrect amount. Some of the invoices are incorrect but the amount charged through your credit/debit cards was correct. Anyone who has any concerns about this should contact us at enquiries@steenbergs.co.uk

However, we know that some of you tried and failed so for those in particular we apologise profusely. We extended the offer for a further few days and we are offering by way of peace offering a free box of Peace Tea to anyone who orders up until 30th November 2009 using the offer code FREE TEA.

Stockists and blog update

New stockists include Jenners Food Hall, Edinburgh, now run by Valvona and Corolla. For a full list of your nearest stockists, click here and tap in your postcode. Whilst every effort is made to keep this list up to date we can only try our best. Our baking range and mulling wine also goes through distributors so we don’t always know the end shop.

Blogs recent blogs have included making our Christmas cake, delivery of our organic Fairtrade mulled wine spices, unusual peppers, Diwali, Kulfi, how our organic audit went (we passed) and Afghanistan. It’s wide ranging and we love to hear back from you via comments or suggestions of topics you’d like us to cover from recipes to spices to organic and Fairtrade issues.

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Exotic Pepper From Around The World

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

I’ve been hunting for some specialist peppers in recent months.  That’s what some of the thrill of being a spice merchant is all about – hunting for the exotic, tracking it down and then getting it in.

We already have a broader range of peppers than anyone else: vine pepper (Piper nigrum), long pepper (Piper retrofactum), cubeb pepper (Piper cubeba), grains of paradise (Aframomum melegueta), Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum), pink pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius), allspice (Pimenta dioica).  Vine pepper is what we call the classic black pepper plant;  with vine pepper you get 4 types of pepper from the one vine plant – green, black, white and red.

Now, I have got hold of some wild pepper from Madagascar and bush pepper from Tasmania and I am so very excited, like a little boy in a sweet shop, and cannot stop hopping from foot to foot – a bit sad really.

Tasmanian pepper

Tasmanian pepper

The Tasmanian pepper (Tasmania lanceolata) which is sometimes called Mountain pepper comes from the uplands of Tasmania and South East Australia.  Strangely, the indigenous Aboriginal peoples are thought not to have used these for spicing foods, although this may simply be colonial wishful thinking.  The berries are dark bluey-black in colour and have a 5 – 8mm diameter knobbly round shape, with a ridge around the centre.

In Australia, the Mountain pepperleaf is popular and can be bought ground, having a pleasant, lemon-pepper flavour. 

The berries are sweet at first, but the aftertaste lingers and builds over 5 or so minutes becoming really sharp, pungent and numbing – they are way hotter than classic black peppercorns so use one-tenth of the amount you would normally flavour with and don’t put directly onto food instead use them slow-cooked in stews or soups (they’re just too bitingly hot).  You have been warned!  Another way  it is used is mixed with other native Australian foods to create a bush spices mix of wattle, lemon myrtle and Mountain pepper.

Voatsiperifery pepper vine in Madagascan forest

Voatsiperifery pepper vine in Madagascan forest

The Madagascan wild Voatsiperifery pepper (Piper borbonense) is wild harvested from the forest on an organic cocoa estate, which sits right next to the estate where we get our pink peppercorns on the East coast of Madagascar.  They are called Voatsiperifery deriving from “Voa” meaning the fruits and “tsiperifery” which is the Malagasy for this pepper vine.  The wild pepper vines grow high in the trees, and the fruits only grow on the young, new grown shoots and are hand-harvested from the wild by farmers who go into the forest especially to pick them once a year.

Wild Voatsiperifery pepper

Wild Voatsiperifery pepper

The berries look similar to the comic-book-like bombs of the cubeb pepper (sometimes called Java pepper or tailed pepper) and are 3mm long ovals with a 5 – 6mm long tail.  They have a brown-black colour similar to normal black pepper.

The flavour of these Voatsiperifery peppercorns is earthy and woody taste, with a certain citrus floweriness that gives some freshness to the palate.  The flavours are long lasting.

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Easy Tasty Magic – cooking alchemy from Laura Santtini

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

A couple of months ago, a bubbly, cosmopolitan lady, called Laura Santtini, came out of London to visit Steenbergs of Ripon.

I am not sure what she expected but I know she didn’t expect a specialist spice merchant – like Steenbergs – to be working out of a spice godown in rural North Yorkshire, surrounded by fields, with a small brook running close by.  No salad bars, no coffee shops, just a glorious rural idyll.

Anyway, Laura Santtini had this vision of a new way of flavouring foods that she had developed out of alchemic mysteries.  I think it may be her Venetian ancestry coming out in her blood; her father moved to England from Jesolo on the Adriatic Coast.  Her food alchemy is a novel concept and has a lively, mythical magic, which is further enhanced by the names she has conjured up for the range and the mixes she’s developed.

Easy Tasty Magic has slightly louche names like Carnal Sin, International Jerk, On the Game and White Mischief, romantic names such as Alchemic Larder, Renaissance Stardust and Venetian Stardust, together with earthy tags such as Porcini Salt, Salt of the Earth and Truffle Salt. 

The rubs contain a dazzling array of specialist ingredients, for example cornflower petals, Facing Heaven chillis, larkspur, marigold, myrtle, orange blossom, peony flowers, pepperoncino chilli, Spice of Angels.  And the Stardusts contain a smidgeon of edible metal flakes that spread the tinsiest bit of magic onto your food – a special blend made for us in Germany and costing about £18,500 per kilo, so when people say that saffron is worth its weight in gold, it isn’t as it only costs about £650 per kilo.

It’s been keeping us more than a bit pre-occupied, tracking down these ingredients, none of which come instantaneously.  The jars are wonderful and they bedazzle you with their pallette of many colours.

Alchemic Larder boxes

Alchemic Larder boxes

We have been trialling the mixes rapidly over the last few months and packing  and labelling away at breakneck speed.  There are still a few products to complete – Salt of the Earth and the Alchemic Larder boxes – but the range does look truly beautiful and it launched yesterday in Selfridges.

selfridgesphotoIt looks magical back-lit in its specially designed display unit.  Selfridges have the range as an exclusive until early 2010; they can spot a winner when they see one.  Laura has said that it will be available through www.steenbergs.co.uk from January 2010, which we’re really excited about.

Easy Tasty Magic is another specialist own label range that Steenbergs is carefully adding to its list of customers.  We already blend & pack own label spices and specialist teas for, amongst others, Daylesford, Rick Stein and The Natural Kitchen.

For more about Laura Santtini, why not visit her web site at www.laurasanttini.com or go dine at one of her family’s iconic Italian resturants via www.santini-resturant.com and eat with the stars.

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Herbs and Spices for Your Health

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Herbal medicine has historically been the primary approach to acute and chronic health problems – this remains the case still in many countries.  We often forget that herbal medicine is the most enduring form of treatment and is still used by 80% of the global population as a key component in healthcare.

In the UK, botany and medicine were closely linked until the 19th century.  Later, with the development of the NHS in the UK, there was an almost permanent break in use of herbs and spices in British medicine.  Yet, in Germany, doctors still routinely prescribe herbs to patients.  About 70% of Germany’s population has used herbal products while in the UK the corresponding figure is 20%.

Personally, I have every evening an infusion of freshly picked rosemary after supper and I use echinacea for colds during the wintertime and the Ayurvedic triphala herbal blend for the digestive system.

Aniseed aids the digestion and is good for small children suffering from diarrhoea.  With honey, the tea disperses flatulence and for asthma, the tea should be drunk warm; if fennel is added, it helps to ease bronchial catarrh.  Chewing aniseed induces sleep and a few seeds taken in warm water will cure hiccups.

All chillies are used medicinally as carminatives, stimulants and aids to digestion and relaxes a sore throat.  They are taken as a good source of vitamin C; also, for treatment of dropsy, diarrhoea, lumbago, rheumatism, toothache and gout.

Caraway can be used as a tisane to ease digestive and bowel complaints and it is safe to give to children who generally like the flavour.  The seeds can be chewed after a meal to dispel dyspepsia and sweeten the breath.

Chamomile has a soothing effect and is used a tisane for abdominal pains, nervous upsets, cystitis, dilated veins and rheumatism – it can also be used as a mouth rinse for toothache and inflammation.  Infusions can be added to steam baths or as compresses for skin troubles (boils, abscesses, eczema), conjunctivitis, haemarrhoids earache and cramp.

Cinnamon is astringent and carminative.  It is a strong stimulant for the glandular system, and being an antacid is helpful for stomach upsets and diarrhoea.  Cinnamon is good for colds and sore throats.  In earlier days, it was used as a breath sweetener, as a tonic for the whole system and was given as a sedative to mothers during childbirth.

Cloves help in treating acidity, thirst, nausea, dysuria, liver dysfunctions, semen disorders, colds and breathing problems.

Couchgrass has been used since the 16th century for cleansing the blood, rheumatic complaints, diseases of the bladder and as a diuretic.  It was much praised by Culpeper who used it for all kidney complaints.

Dandelion is recommended for diabetics since its sugars do not burden the metabolism.  Dandelion juice has a general strengthening effect on the body systems and is said to be a cure for various ailments such as eczema, blood diseases, loss of appetite and dropsy.  Dandelion juice, mixed with agrimony and made into tea, is a well known relief for rheumatism and arthritis.  Dandelion’s bitter principles are said to strengthen the stomach, improve digestion and have a beneficial effect on the liver, kidneys and gall bladder.

Fennel seed is a good digestive spice and is used for babies’ gripe water or chewed as a breath freshener.  It is helpful medicinally for earache, toothache, coughs and asthma.  Fennel seeds stimulate milk production in expectant mothers and are sometimes indicated as being good for weight loss.  The seeds are good for the eyes and maybe be infused in water to make a soothing eye lotion.

Garlic cloves can be crushed and infused in water or milk and taken for all digestive disorders and will keep high blood pressure down.  It has an antiseptic effect good for infectious diseases and inflammations of the stomach and intestine.  It may be used in the treatment of gall bladder and liver troubles, headaches, fits, faintness and skin blemishes.

Lavender has a tranquillising effect; even inhaling its scent will calm troubled nerves and depressed spirits.  The leaves and flowers can be used to make a tea for heart palpitations, headaches, fainting, migraine and insomnia.  For headache and faintness, a cold lavender compress may be applied to the temples.

Nutmeg was once used to protect against Black Death, but is now used as an expectorant and stimulant that is beneficial for insomnia.  It is helpful against flatulence and vomiting, and it helps the digestion generally.  In severe case of diarrhoea grate ½ nutmeg and take in a dessertspoon of rum.

Onions have antiseptic, diuretic, expectorant, detoxicant, anthalmintic and antisposmadic qualities.  They should be included in the daily diet to discourage coughs and colds.  It helps in reducing blood pressure, cleansing the blood generally and in kidney troubles.  It also helps to promote digestion, stimulating the appetite and fortifies the nerves, heart and glands.  Raw onion juice rubbed on to arthritic and rheumatic joints is believed to relieve the pain.

The ancient Aryans considered black pepper as a powerful remedy for various used for disorders of the bodily system, while the Egyptians used it for embalming.  Nowadays, it is used in India for treating coughs and colds, fevers, lack of appetite, indigestion, worms and flatulence.  For a cold, take 5 – 15 grains of pepper, grind to a fine powder, taken with honey or sugar; or gargle several times a day with pepper powder in a solution of water to ease a sore throat.

Rosemary has a reputation for strengthening the brain and the memory if applied to the outside of the head.  This is because it has properties that expand the tissues to which it is applied so increasing the blood supply to those tissues.  Used as an infusion, it is beneficial for the heart and circulation – we often use it as a digestive after a rich meal.

Sage tea is used as a tonic for the nerves and blood, and used as a lotion, is said to improve the condition of hair and skin.  As a mouthwash, it helps to keep teeth white.  Leaves among clothes discourage insects and rodents.  Red sage tea is an old remedy for sore throats.

Turmeric is fundamental to Indian medicine with various properties, including the treatment of skin allergies, diabetes, blood impurities, anaemia, jaundice, fever, worms, stomach disorders, anorexia, coughs and Alzheimer’s.  Turmeric is used in India boiled with milk and sugar for a cold and as a remedy for flatulence and liver complaints.  Scientists have identified curcumin oil as a chemical trigger that induces haem-oxygenase, which operates as part of the human defence against free radicals.  Curcumin has also been shown to be a powerful antiseptic, to guard against liver damage and assist in cancer treatment.

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Steenbergs’ June/July newsletter

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

 

Tasty treats from STeenbergs

A mixture of looking at new products and firm favourites for a delicious summer from Steenbergs.

We’ve also got some summer offers on as well as lots of new products and recipe ideas. Hope you have a wonderful July from us all here at Steenbergs.

Summer special offers from Steenbergs

We are currently offering 10 per cent off vitamins and supplements and as an introductory offer to cereals we are also giving 10 % off organic corn flakes and grape nuts.

So it’s a good time to stock up on old favourites or try something new.

Home baking gets some new additions

They’re here – natural bitter almond extract, and organic orange flower water. We’re very excited about these new additions to our home baking flavouring range. The almond extract goes wonderfully in sweet pastries, macaroons, marzipan and with apricots amongst many other things. The orange flower water works well with fruit and in madelaines.dsc_04543

This joins our very popular organic Fairtrade vanilla extract, organic rose water and organic peppermint extract to form the core of our home bakery range. Next month the flavoured sugars, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder will join them with colourful labels.

We stock a range of organic and ethical home bakery ingredients from organic sultanas, currants and raisins to organic flour (including gluten free versions) and unbleached baking paper and recycled aluminium foil.

Paprika – just arrived from Spain

7-recogida-de-pimientoOne of the lovely things about the fact that Steenbergs has now been going for nearly 6 years is that we have developed strong links with our growers. We’ve just had delivery of another delicious harvest of organic paprika and natural smoked paprika from our Spanish growers in Murcia, south-east of Spain. This family run company has been going since 1880 growing, drying and grinding this delicious wonderful paprika. They are a wonderful company to work with and their paprika is exceptional – intense in colour with a lovely sweet flavour.

Jams, chutneys and marmalade – Glenroyd give us the low down

glenroyd2Glenroyd Organics is Dean & Michelle (husband and wife) based in Barnsley in Yorkshire. They’re both complete foodies and when Michelle isn’t making Glenroyd’s delicious chutneys, mustards and jam, she’s reading recipe books and magazines for new ideas or watching foodie programmes. Dean is blessed with the enviable job of product testing and enjoying all the culinary delights!

They admit to always having been foodies and their best days and nights have been spent sharing great food and drink whether it be on fantastic holidays, with family & friends or simply chilling out together with some treats over the weekend.

The enjoyment of great food & drink and hectic professional lives naturally led to trying out recipes in the kitchen for those luxury weekend chill out treats and the beginnings of Glenroyd Organics was born…

Axel and Sophie’s favourite Glenroyd products – organic beetroot chutney, organic chilli jam, which the family can get through pots of – on the sweet side it has to be blackcurrant jam.

“Pots of gold” and other sightings

We were delighted to be listed in The Independent’s top 50 for Food websites this June – our first appearance on this list compiled annually where the Steenbergs jars were described as “pots of gold”. Whilst our Madras curry was suggested by that wonderful ethical cook – Rose Prince – in The Telegraph whilst discussing making the perfect coronation chicken.

Steenbergs jars were also spotted by one eagle eye fan being used by comedienne and actress Helen Lederer on BBC Celebrity Masterchef.

Lifestyle magazine continues its series using Steenbergs products.  Lifestyle issue 12 covers French cooking with our French box – go to pages 16-17, issue 11, page 34 – 35 gives some ideas on Thai cooking using our Thai box.

Many thanks for all the support.

Za’atar and sumach top sellers

Many of you have come to us because of the wonderful Ottolenghi  – the Cookbook - written by the Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.  This London based restaurant draws on numerous culinary traditions from Persia to California, focussing particularly on the Mediterranean. There are now 4 of these restaurants in Islington, Belgravia, Kensington and Notting Hill.  The book was kind enough to mention us in regard to buying sumac and za’atar. In the book, they are recommended as great garnishes for a plate of hummus or labneh – a type of Arab cheese. They also recommend them for salads and roasted meats.

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New products

At Steenbergs.co.uk we often introduce new products. Recently we’ve added cereals and cereal bars - this offers everything from organic mueslis (with or without raisins), the classic grapenuts and organic cornflakes. We’ve also pulled out our free from non Steenberg products – all Steenbergs blends are gluten free, dairy free and suitable for vegetarians and vegans – this new section includes gluten free bread mixes and chocolate cakes and dairy free chocolate drops and chocolate spreads. We’ve also introduced a number of Mediterranean items including olives, pesto, pasta and sun-dried tomatoes. We add to the shop regularly so don’t forget to check our What’s new section.

Blogs and stockists

Latest blog updates including a number of items about summer cooking including for delicious lunches in the office and the delights of home-made cooking.

We continually update our list of stockists - which grows daily – just tap in your postcode and find your nearest stockist. However, we also have a number of distributors, particularly on the home bakery range, so we don’t always know which shops stock us!

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