Two recipes made from Princesshay Honey that you’ll want to recreate!

Did you know that princesshay has it’s own bee colony that produces honey? I didn’t until very recently!

The City Bee project began in 2012, when a tranquil rooftop garden was created for honey bees high above the shopping centre as part of an environmental initiative which forms part of the company’s wider biodiversity strategy. Princesshay regularly encourages visitors to visit the project and get an insight into the busy world of bees.

To date, the city bee project has been visited by over 1000 school children, students and members of the public. Now entering its 5^th year, Princesshay’s city bee project continues to grow, with the project now housing 5 hives with approximately 300,000 bees.

Apparently, this year, the exceptionally hot weather in June has resulted in Princesshay’s bees producing a bumper batch of honey – four times more than in previous years!

The marketing team behind Princesshay approached me to share their news and I asked my friend Anne (who also happens to be an amazing cook and nutritional therapist) if she could come up with a yummy recipe using the Princesshay honey and she came up with two..

Prepare to salivate…

Green Beans, Honey And Salad

Honey and cheese are a match made in heaven, especially goat’s or sheep’s cheese like feta. The honey here brings another dimension to the salad helping all the flavours mingle and balancing out the sharpness of the feta.

This is a nice salad that’s perfect for the early autumn when you still have green beans available but also when walnuts are in season. You may note I used almonds here but that’s because my walnuts had been stored for a bit too long and had gone bitter.

Ingredients: (serves 4 as a side dish)

400g green beans

200g feta

50g walnuts

1 banana shallot

½ tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. walnut oil

2 tbsp. Princesshay honey

Zest of ½ lemon

Method:

Steam the green beans until al dente, roughly 15min.

While they cool down, cut the feta into small chunks, finely slice the shallot and coarsely chop the walnuts.

To make the vinaigrette, mix the mustard, honey and lemon juice together then slowly whisk in the two oils to emulsify the mixture.

Place the beans on a platter, sprinkle the cheese, shallots, nuts and lemon zest. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad, toss thoroughly and tuck in!

Honey Roasted Figs With Rosemary

Figs and honey go extremely well together, perhaps because when you bite into a ripe fig you already get undertones of that syrupy taste that honey confers.

I’m also a big fan of rosemary and my garden is full of it so I had this idea to bring a bit of botanical note to this dish to cut through the sweetness of the honey. Be careful though, rosemary is very pungent and if you put in too much you risk ending up with something a bit soapy…

I deliberately didn’t add anything to the yoghurt apart from vanilla to let the other ingredients speak for themselves. Here you get a nice contrast between the fig and honey syrup and the tang of the yoghurt. Without it you’d have something too sweet, which wouldn’t do justice to the wonderful floral taste of the honey.

Ingredients: (serves 6 for a light dessert)

12 large ripe figs

6 tbsp. Princesshay honey

1 twig of rosemary

500g Greek yoghurt

1 vanilla pod

Method

Split the figs in quarters without entirely cutting them through. Place them in an oven-proof dish and insert a few rosemary needles at the heart of each fig.

Drizzle the figs with honey and bake for 20min in a preheated oven at 180 degrees.

While it’s baking slit the vanilla pod open, collect all the seeds and mix in with the yoghurt.

Serve the figs warm with the yoghurt and drizzle the glorious honey juice on top.

Princesshay is available to buy at Chandos Deli in the shopping centre, grab yourself a jar while you can!

About the Author:

Anne Richardson is originally from France, she moved to Devon in 2012 after spending twelve years in London. She had to look up Exeter on a map when her husband accepted a job there!

She moved down in bleak February, with a toddler, crippled with morning sickness and knowing no one. Finding it hard at first but she soon met lots of mums, started at feel at home and now wouldn’t move back to London for the world (just the weekend perhaps).

Anne is a registered nutritional therapist who is passionate about food; she is either cooking, eating or talking about food. She is a strong believer that we could all be healthier if we ate better but doesn’t do fads.

Devon is the perfect place for her and her family, not only is it similar to her native Brittany, it is also abound with good produce and a wealth of places to visit. With two boys she can often be seen on Dartmoor, at the beach, on walks or just cycling around the quay.

Anne has her own company called Crunch Nutrition, head here for more information. You can also follow her on Twitter or drop her an email if you have any questions.