Veronica Farm Fudge, a family-run business from the island of Bryher which sells delicious, crumbly fudge in a range of flavours, including the hyper-local Scilly sea salt and Scilly gorse, which has a curiously exotic flavour, reminiscent of both coconut and pineapple.
Visiting these islands is like stepping back in time – everywhere you go there are piles of veg or homemade cakes outside people’s houses, which you pay for by dropping coins in an honesty box (Christine says that her biggest sales still come from the stall outside the family home).
So confident of their gastronomic appeal are the Scillies that the two minuscule islands of Tresco and Bryer (total population: less than 300) last year started what is definitely the most southerly, and possibly the smallest, food festival in Britain.
Kylie at Salakee farm on St.Marys rear ducks and says they wanted to do something unique with the farm after inheriting it from Dave’s father, and which they could balance with looking after their holiday cottages (ducks are fairly low-maintenance, as animals go). The ducks had to be specially flown over from the mainland at the start of this year, and are now turned into delicious products including duck burgers and duck sausages.
Richard Kearsley, the chef at the Hell Bay Hotel, tells me that the islands’ focus on shellfish is partially due to the fact that “There’s a lot of processing with fish, scaling and gutting and boning , and nowhere to do it here on a big scale”.
Perhaps most significantly, many producers feel that exporting to the mainland is just too expensive and difficult– even transferring between the islands can be difficult, says Sam Hicks, who has more than one horror story up his sleeve about tonnes of ice cream being left to melt on quays by forgetful restaurants.
Our eggs are from St.Agnes and marmalade is made locally too.
Check out the full article in the Telegraph to find out all about it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11135401/Scilly-islands-the-next-big-foodie-destination.html