In Italy, food is always best from your own village and from people you know by first name. Squisito use that as our basic principle but first and foremost our food has to taste good!

 

Squisito is a not-just-for-profit delicatessen which makes Italian food

that is fresh, local and seasonal from ingredients that are good, clean 

and fair. When we can't grow or rear ingredients ourselves we look

first to our own locality and our friends  since we like to know by first

name the person who makes, grows or rears our ingredients.

 

Squsito make fresh food which means our food reflects the seasons.

 

Squisito subscribe to the principles Carlo Petrini outlined when he

founded the Slow Food movement so we are proud to be winners of a Slow Food Good, Clean & Fair Producer's Bursary to exhibit and demonstrate at the BBC Good Food Show in 2008 and 2010.

 

Wherever possible Squisito food is made from authentic Italian recipes with ingredients and methods typical to that area but grown or reared locally in England. This is reflected in the fact that over 85% of the ingredients in the food Squisito sell at accredited Farmers Markets is grown, reared and sourced within 35 miles of Squisito HQ (the FARMA Farmers Market criteria) and often as not from our village. Squisito are the only accredited Italian food producer in the Midlands.

 

Squisito like to cook Italian food with passione and flair so we like to create new family favourites based on our experiences in Italy. Whilst out heart is in Italy our stomachs are in England so we occasionally adapt our recipes to take advantage of the richness of local ingredients. But we never compromise.

 

When we are with family in Italy we like to visit the local Bar and sip a Caiphirinha cocktail watching the evening passagiata and listening to the day's chit-chat and family news. Back in rainy England, I recreate the experience with my Caiphirinha Cocktail Sorbet ice cream made with Brazilian cahaça rum, fresh limes and spearmint from my mother-in-law Tina's s garden across the road. It's Squisito!

 

Sometimes we copy classic recipes like Pesto Genovese. Squisito Genovese is made from fresh local basil grown by Tina or  Blackdown Growers on the Fosse Way, fresh pinenuts, Gran Padano DOP and Italian olive oil and othe times we make a local English Parsley & Walnut Pesto using our Moss Curled Parsley, walnuts, Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and Welland Valley Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil. You will not find generic ingredients like sunflower oil, potato, cashew nuts, preservatives or any other funny business in our pesto. Squisito food is fresh - pure and simple. If you don't see what you want we expect you to ask.

 

To see what Squisito is all about come and see us at our new shop in Yelvertoft or at Farmers Market.

 

What you read above is a summary of how Squisito make. However,

we  have learned that producing food has ethical and social  

dimensions. It is not for nothing that the Lord's Prayer includes the

words "Give us this day our daily bread" since bread and the  

conviviality of the family table play a fundamental role in human

society. When you look under the bonnet and learn what

supermarkets do, where they buy from and how food is  processed

to look fresh when it can actually be weeks or months old it calls

into question the way we live and our disconnect between the land

and our social responsibilities to each other and the environment.

 

Whether you are a vegetarian or carnivore, an eco-warrior or

Daily Mail reader food is something we all buy and part of our culture

as well as our disappearing heritage.

 

Squisito therefore ask you to join us to defend our food heritage and be neighbourly by taking up your knife and fork to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem caused by agroindustrialisation and "fast living".

 

Squisito are a BBC Radio 4 'Food & Farming Awards' shortlisted 'Best Food Producer 2012'  and Slow Food BBC Good Food Show Bursary Awards Winner 2008 and 2010.