Meet the team feeding the nation

by northamptonchron.co.uk - 24/08/2011

"WHEN you sit down to eat in a pub or restaurant anywhere in the UK and select something from the menu, you may find you are eating a dish developed and cooked in Northampton."

A company that started nearly 20 years ago with six staff in a 1,000 sq ft factory unit now employs more than 50 people and produces six million frozen dishes every year from its 26,000 sq ft premises in Moulton Park. Products from Classic Cuisine are sold to pub and hotel firms, companies such as Ikea which sells Classic Cuisine dishes in its restaurants, and supermarkets including Asda and Lidl.

The words frozen food may conjure up thoughts of fish fingers and oven chips but that is a world away from the dishes produced here. The company has recently been awarded Great Taste Awards by the Guild of Fine Food for its feta and sun blushed tomato cheesecake and its filled chicken wrapped in bacon. Other dishes in its range include coquilles St Jacques, beef Wellington, steak and ale pie, stuffed butternut squash and duck marinated in orange and basil.

Managing director Jeeva Sanmugam, who joined the company 16 years ago and bought the business in 2008 is delighted with the Great Taste Awards. She said: “We were absolutely delighted for our product development team. It reflects the quality of the product we produce and how innovative it is. It’s at the cutting edge of product design. We were extremely happy and it’s great for the staff.”

She has seen the business make the leap from a completely handmade operation to one where the process is more mechanised with finishing touches done by hand. It is the only way to produce dishes in the numbers wanted by customers. But she said: “The product quality and values haven’t changed.”

The team is always on the look-out for the next food trend, keeping an eye on what the celebrity chefs are doing, what appears in the trade magazines and food magazines and what is selling in the supermarkets. According to Jeeva, people are becoming more traditional in their tastes with items like pies and slow-cooked stews doing well, not least because these methods of cooking allow them to use cheaper cuts of meat to best effect.

She has been in the food business long enough to see the trends come and go and come back again but the company is always looking for new ways of doing old favourites. Beef Wellington, for example, is one dish that has been in the range right from the start and remains popular. Now they approach it in a different way and instead of a thick gravy it has a lighter-style jus which is more in line with current tastes.

But if you go out for a pub or restaurant meal and order your coquilles St Jacques followed by beef Wellington, wouldn’t you be disappointed to find that the chef had just heated it up from frozen rather than cooking it from scratch? Jeeva stands by the quality of the recipes and the preparation methods and said: “If we put one of our products in front of you [in a restaurant] you would be hard pushed to say that it wasn’t made on site because we do follow the traditional methods of preparation. We have done all the hard work; all they are doing is heating it up.”

She believes that attitudes to frozen food are changing particularly since freezing food takes away the need for adding the preservatives that are needed in chilled foods. Also, the fact that you only take out of the freezer what you need means that there need not be any waste, something that is as much an issue for domestic cooks as big restaurants.

She said: “In years to come there will be a shortage of food and people will have to stop wasting food. With frozen food there is no wastage.”

It is certainly a message that the catering industry understands and Classic Cuisine has captured a niche by producing meals for this end of the market.

She said: “We have got a very dynamic product development team and their experience is in some good quality restaurants and hotels. They are developing good restaurant and hotel quality food.

More Details: http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/weekend-life/food-drink/meet_the_team_feeding_the_nation_1_2988017