1 Snacks and puddings
The Classic English Summer Dessert (£1.80 per portion from Grange Gourmet) is truly excellent (if slightly unseasonal) and you can pass it off as homemade if you're showing off. Just plop it out of its little container on to a plate and serve with their raspberry coulis (£4.20 for a 270g bottle that will serve 10-12 people).
Marchents delivers wonderful cakes. We particularly recommend Sarah Meade's Cherry & Chocolate Chip Kirsch Baba Cake which is succulent, boozy and exceedingly moreish. Traidcraft delivers a range of 'fair trade' chewy cookies, dried fruit, sweets and chocolate, all completely delicious (they also supply quality wine, tea and coffee).
2 Meat
Scottish butcher Donald Russell is the uncontested king of meat - none of us has ever tasted beef like this for tenderness and flavour. Russell's herd has never had BSE and holds the Quality Meat Scotland award. They supply most top London restaurants and also hold the Queen's royal warrant. As well as meat they do salmon from the Kyles of Bute, langoustines from the west coast of Scotland and king scallops from off the Butt of Lewis. They also sell game and will put together gift boxes. None of this comes cheap, (rump steak is £17.80 a kilo - £8.31 in Tesco) but worth it if you can afford it. You can either order direct or via Marchents.
The best crackling you'll ever taste graces a rolled pork joint from Richard Guy's Real Meat Company. The pork has a lovely delicate flavour and good fine texture. All the meat we tested from this company was tender, flavoursome, didn't leak water when cooked and didn't shrink. Another wonderful pork supplier is Pugh's Piglets - delicate flavour, very tender and finely textured. Delicious. Try Viking Sausages for a completely different and delicious sausage experience. They are hand-made by an old established village butcher's in Lincolnshire, B. Leaning & Sons, using a recipe dating back to the 1860s. For years people have made long detours to buy them but now they do mail order.
3 Fish
The Fish Society's cod fillets are like no other. Our tester's guests were delighted (not to say amazed) in the upturn her cooking had taken - lovely firm chunky flakes of fish that didn't crumble, great flavour and fresh bright colouring. The paella kit is surprisingly simple (since paella is notoriously difficult to make) and the fish is firm and fresh. There are even saffron strands to add at the end. Hot-smoked salmon fillets from The Cornish Smoked Fish Company is a firm favourite, and they do wonderful mackerel, trout meat and cheese from their tiny premises in Charlestown.
4 Chocolates and sweets
Streets-ahead winner for this category is the hand-made fudge (right) made by the Burnt Sugar Sweet Company, (it can be ordered through Marchents, £11.95 a 200g box). We love the Devon Clotted Cream and Natural Vanilla, but they also do chocolate, walnut and ginger flavours. All of it will go in a flash. Truly crumbly, it is hand beaten with wooden spoons and broken into pieces when cool. Writing about it induces a curious longing.
The Chocolate Society (founded in 1990 to the delight of chocoholics) scores highly with its Bonbonnier truffles (£7.50 for 100g) made daily with Valrhona French milk chocolate and a 55 per cent dark chocolate content and really fluid interior. Their Belgravia chocolate biscuits, £6.40 for 125g, (a smart version of the Chocolate Bath Oliver) are so rich you'll only manage one at a time.
Despite imminent tooth trouble the nougat nut in our office loved Caffè Sicilia's torrone (Esperya), which came in really pretty packaging.
5 Ready-made meals
We do like Basilico, which delivers crisp, authentic tasting, stone-oven pizzas that try to get as far as possible from the stringy, chewy, cakey pizzas that most delivery services are keen to supply. Currently they are a London-based company with outlets in St Johns Street, Lavender Hill, Fulham Road, Finchley Road, Upper Richmond Road and they will be opening nationwide soon.
6 Charcuterie
Two hungry sailor friends of ours took Mrs Elizabeth King's 3lb pork pie (£14.50 from Marchents) on a trip across the Channel, and proclaimed it the most tasty and filling pie they'd ever eaten. They are just sad they didn't have another one for the return trip. Hand-made in Cropwell Butler, Lincolnshire they insist on dispatching them on the day of cooking to arrive the next day, so when our sailors were back and reordered one that Parcel Force managed to hold up by a day, they were not charged. And you can have a pastry message of up to 15 letters on top of the pie!
Also from Lincolnshire comes Jacksons' Chine (£6.50 from Marchents) - a shoulder cut of bacon traditionally stuffed with parsley. Jacksons won Lincolnshire Butcher of the Year five years running, and we prefer it to the chine from Grange Gourmet which isn't quite as flavoursome and seems a bit overwhelmed by its parsley (£3.80 for 210g).
7 Cheese
Huge Cheese Direct supplies most of the big London hotels, and their mixed basket of unusual varieties (Pouligny and Banon goat, and a firework of a thing called Boulette) would be great for a big party. Their Celtic Promise (made in Wales, matured in Sussex) is our favourite and won the 1998 British Cheese Awards. Speciality wine and food emporium Jeroboams runs a really inspired cheese club sending out a monthly selection of approximately four cheeses serving six to eight people for £22.50 a month (twelfth month is a freebie). We tested a ewe's milk Fleur de Maquis whose flavour comes from its strong, herby covering; a rip-roaring Bleu de Sassenage that would also make a great pasta accompaniment, and our favourite was a glossy, runny Pave D'Affinois.
We love Neal's Yard Dairy whose English cheeses are always reliable and tasty, with good old-fashioned flavours, particularly their Montgomery Cheddar and Lancashire. They will put together a monthly delivery (£35 a month). We also recommend The Fine Cheese Company, who make a memorably runny Reblochon and a mild goat cheese. They'll put together boxes (£26 for five French cheeses and biscuits), and supply drink, relishes, sweets and Carluccio products.
8 Condiments
The Genoese Pesto Sauce from Gourmet World (£3.95 for 180g) has the flavour of a good Italian restaurant one - freshly mixed and slightly crunchy bits of pine nut. They do four others including a Duck Ragout, which is rich but interesting. Esperya do yummy things in jars which make great presents, and we sampled the oil-cured artichokes by Orto di Lucania (£7.85, 275g) which are terrific in a warm salad.
9 Vegetables and fruit
Graig Farm Organics was named as Organic Retailers of the Year at the 2001 Organic Food Awards. Their fruit and vegetable box (£15.41) arrives packed full of flavour. They also supply organic alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink, bread, meat and fish. We were also very impressed by the freshness and flavour of the vegetables from The Fresh Food Company. Our seasonal box included carrots (sweet and juicy), Tundra cabbage (so fragrant, non-stringy and gently flavoured it was delicious raw) and Spartan apples that had a great flavour and a texture that was pleasantly soft and worked well both eaten and juiced.
Riverford Organic Vegetables are another award winning outfit. All the vegetables are grown on their farm in Devon and our box arrived containing perfectly transported, brimming with firm and flavourful vegetables. They deliver in South West England and parts of London.
10 Drink
The classic Berry Bros & Rudd included a robust and fruity New zealand Sauvignon from their 2000 selection. They also do spirit deliveries. We particularly enjoyed Lay & Wheeler's Mad Fish Merlot, and their January sale sounds promising. Tanners won the International Wine Challenge's Central England Award again last year and their thoughtful and interesting selection reflects this.
Stockists:
Basilico 0800 028 3531 www.basilico.co.uk
Berry Bros & Rudd 020 7396 9666 www.bbr.com
Burnt Sugar Sweet Company 01482 863887 www.burntsugar.co.uk
The Chocolate Society 01423 322230 www.chocolate.co.uk
Cornish Smoked Fish 01726 72356 cornishsmokedfish@cornwall-county.com
Donald Russell Direct 01467 629666 www.donaldrusselldirect.com
Esperya www.esperya.com
The Fine Cheese Co 01225 448 748 www.finecheese.co.uk
The Fresh Food Company 020 8969 0351 www.freshfood.co.uk
Gourmet World 020 8748 0125 www.gourmet-world.com
Graig Farm Organics 01597 851655 www.graigfarm.co.uk
Grange Gourmet 01673 818 5000 www.grangegourmet.co.uk
Huge Cheese Direct 020 7819 6099 www.hugecheese.co.uk
Jeroboams 020 7727 9792 www.jeroboams.co.uk
Lay and Wheeler 0845 330 1855 www.layandwheeler.co.uk
Marchents 0870 60 61623 www.marchents.com. Due to a systems error over Christmas a number of customers didn't receive their orders from Marchents. Customers will be compensated for food that didn't arrive.
Neal's Yard Dairy 020 7645 3555 mailorder@nealsyarddairy.co.uk
Pugh's Piglets 01995 602571
Richard Guy's Real Meat Co. 01985 840562 www.realmeat.co.uk
Viking Sausages 01673 838205 www.vikingsausages.co.uk
