A Taste Of Spring: Spring Canapés
Here amongst our THB family, we all love our food. Food is at the heart of what we do. We have a passionate and highly experienced in-house catering team. And our chefs are absolutely dedicated to serving food you and your guests will love.
We come together most days (when we’re not busy hosting weddings) to eat lunch around our long wooden share table in the bar. You could say we’re foodies in the sense that we love to share and celebrate good seasonal, and local food.
Our chefs prepare large plates of food, usually fresh salads and grilled meats, or a hearty home-cooked lasagne on a rainy day, and we take the time to chat with each other and talk about what’s been happening both in and out of the wedding world.
Almost everything served from our kitchens is made from scratch on the premises. And really, it all boils down to good quality, seasonal food that’s full of flavour and made with love. We do our best to source all ingredients from local farms, supporting Welsh farmers and suppliers across the country.
Today we’re taking five minutes to talk spring canapés, local produce, and the delights of grilled asparagus with our head chef, Rich.
Rich, tell us about what you love to cook come springtime, and about your approach to cooking here and at home…
I love food that’s nice, simple and full of flavour. That’s what I like to cook and enjoy with my family. You know, really good food. Food that you love to eat as much as you love to cook.
Our menus are seasonal, and I guess crowd pleasers that we enjoy making. I do like to bring in an element of the fine dining, haute cuisine. We adapt it to make it work on our larger scale catering setting (the jus, and the foams, the edible flowers, and a lot of the vegan plates we’ve been creating at the moment). But a lot of what we do here in our kitchens is simply about really good, delicious flavours, and food that you can truly enjoy eating whilst sitting around a table with your friends and family.
We KNOW you’re picky about your produce! Can you tell us a little more about what you look for when sourcing your ingredients?
I like to use products from small, local, Welsh suppliers where I can. Things like our salt, and fresh mussels, come from Anglesey. And a lot of our meat and fresh produce comes from the Wrexham area, or at the very furthest, North Wales. We work closely with our suppliers to source speciality ingredients where necessary.
We get fresh deliveries on our doorstep every day, so it’s pretty good to use what’s around us locally. You know, if it’s seasonal then it’s closer to home, better flavours, better nutrients.
I just work with what’s seasonal, and we adapt the menus here to do so. We get fresh deliveries on our doorstep every day, so it’s pretty good to use what’s around us locally. You know, if it’s seasonal then it’s closer to home, better flavours, better nutrients. It’s fresher, and as Raymond Blanc says, it keeps the community together. And seasonal food is more affordable.
Everything you create in the kitchen is a work of art, but we’re dying to know – do you have a spring fav?
This time of year, asparagus is really lovely and really fresh. We’ve an asparagus and parma ham canapé on the menu that I really like. The combination of creamy hollandaise paired with the seasonal asparagus wrapped in crispy parma ham, it’s tasty. It’s refreshing and as a bite-sized canapé, it has nice flavours. The creaminess of the eggy hollandaise sauce cuts perfectly through the saltiness of the parma ham.
Grilled asparagus is just so classic, a perfect spring canapé. With the organic eggs sourced from a local farm for the hollandaise, it is one of our THB favourites.
I also recommend our salmon blinis, served with caviar crème fraîche. We garnish with fresh chives from our herb garden. A perfect palate cleanser. We cure our salmon in house for a deliciously fresh twist.
We serve our canapés on olive boards and local slate. They’re really good for share style food – either as canapés or even light bites or starters. In the springtime, as you linger in the little bit of sunshine and enjoy a beer or a cocktail after your ceremony, I’m sure you’ll love them. You can’t say no to great food that’s unassumingly delightful in its ability to please every crowd. It’s that simple.
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Chef Rich might downplay his delicious, local food, but the team here are lucky to enjoy his mouth-watering fare each day at lunchtime. As are our couples, who time and time again come back to tell us that they, and their guests, loved the food and that it was the best food they’d ever had at a wedding!
Author bio: Chef Rich has a passion for delivering outstanding locally sourced, handmade food, which is guaranteed to be a real talking point. Trained in classical French and fine dining styles, and with a rap sheet that features Head chef positions at The Grosvenor Pulford and The Chester Grosvenor Hotel, Chef Rich is really more paired back than you might think. For him, it’s all about simple, easy, local food that looks good and tastes great. feature image: Kat Hannon Photography, at Tower Hill Barns
If you’re looking for the perfect spring wedding venue to hold your ceremony and reception – it would be our absolute pleasure to assist you in creating your dream wedding. Click here to book a viewing.
