Waitrose Duchy Organic 25th Anniversary Competition Finalist!

A few months a go I entered a competition to create a main course fit for a prince, and more specifically, a dish to be served at a dinner to celebrate 25 years of the brand he created to celebrate and promote organic farming. The prince, if you have not guessed already, is HRH The Prince of Wales and the brand, Waitrose Duchy Organic. To huge excitement I found out a few weeks ago that I am one of three finalists in the competition. The final choice is to be decided by public vote and you can vote for me by emailing weekendcompetition@waitrose.co.uk with my name 'Selina' as the subject heading. I cannot tell you just how exciting this is (so please do vote for me!).


Waitrose Weekend

The competition requested a main course that used Waitrose Duchy Organic products and was seasonal. As the celebratory banquet is to be held this autumn, I brainstormed ingredients that would be at their best late summer, are delicious, healthy and perhaps a little unusual, as well as representing  British produce.  My idea for the main course is seared whole fillet of beef on a bed of celeriac mash with roast beetroot, pickled blackberries, red wine sauce, nasturtium leaves and toasted oaten crumb. As well considering taste and seasonality, I wanted to create a visual story, the deep purple of the beetroot is a traditionally royal colour and the creamy white celeriac could perhaps represent the ermine cloak of the heir to the throne. Both celeriac and beetroot are also slightly unusual, beetroot mainly being eaten cold as part of a salad and celeriac seen as something of an oddity, time for these root vegetables to take centre stage. The Prince of Wales is strongly supportive of the countryside and rural communities so I also wanted to include a little wildness, hence the pickled blackberries (which would also add a little piquancy to the soft mellow earthiness of the vegetables) and the nasturtium leaves, which could be picked from the Prince's very own garden. The leaves are quite spicy too, and are a little reminder of the often missed edible plants on this island as well as providing a pop of green. Beef is the centre piece, it is the ingredient that Britain is rightly famous for and with beef from the Waitrose Duchy Organic brand you can also be assured of higher animal welfare standards including a ban on the routine use of antibiotics. The final flourish is the coated oaten crumb, a crunchy contrast to the other ingredients. I chose this specifically because oaten biscuits were the very first product in the Duchy range, baked in Scotland from British oats grown on the Prince's own Highgrove estate and they remain one of the most popular products today.

Organic, sustainable farming that considers wildlife, animal welfare and helps our producers is so important and its fantastic that we have such strong support from the Prince of Wales and Waitrose for this. Waitrose Duchy Organic is now the largest own label organic brand and the second largest UK organic brand overall. This brand represents the best organic high quality produce which should rightly be championed and in addition, sales of these products provide a donation to support the Prince of Wales' Charitable Foundation which aims to transform lives by aiding a variety of projects, including the Duchy Future Farming Project run in partnership with the Soil Association which supports farmers conducting research into organic farming methods. Photos of the final three dishes are in the current edition of the Waitrose Weekend supplement. I would be so overjoyed to win this, it would mean such a lot to me, so please, please, please do vote for me. I will update you on results as soon as I can!





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