Foodie with recipe for success

Serena Humphrey established three food businesses on the Dinnet estate, near Aboyne, last year. Her Deeside Smokehouse has proved a winner and recently won a prestigious award for three of its key products.  

By Joe Watson. Published: 03/04/2010 Press and Journal

Serena Humphrey is a woman on a mission.

Not just content with expanding the highly successful smokehouse and fresh produce businesses she launched a year ago from Dinnet estate, near Aboyne, the self-confessed foodie is looking at ways of better informing children and young people in Deeside about where their food comes from.

She too is involved in a wider initiative to launch a Deeside food brand to help market produce from the area.

Her own goal is to create a farm shop, delicatessen, coffee bar with children's play area and bistro restaurant in an old steading

on the outskirts of the village of Dinnet that could be used to tell people about the story of food as well as allow youngsters to cook various types of dishes from bread to beef or lamb burgers made with produce from Deeside's larder.

Mrs Humphrey was taken aback last year when a chef and his two sous chefs visited the Deeside Veg business she had just started and which is producing kale, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, mange tout, peas, new potatoes, courgettes, runner beans, broad beans, spinach, carrots, beetroot and kohl rabi as well as peppers and chills from a two-acre walled garden on the Dinnet estate and a neighbouring two-acre field.

She said: "The sous chefs asked if they could come back and help out as they had never pulled fresh carrots nor dug up tatties out of the ground. It's a problem that needs to be tackled. We have got to get children growing and eating locally-grown produce and we need to tie this in with local colleges too.

"It has to start happening all the way through the system otherwise we are going to lose the art of cooking altogether and in making best use of fresh produce."

Mrs Humphrey is already working with Aboyne primary and giving pupils there the chance to grow their own produce.

She has in the last year achieved a lot. Produce from her Deeside Smokehouse is now served at The Witchery restaurant in Edinburgh's Royal Mile as well as at The Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.

The Deeside Veg business continues to develop sales of its range of pesticide-free crops. Deeside Hampers was launched too to make

best use of a range of produce from the area.

There was also a big award win a fortnight ago at the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards as the Deeside Smokehouse won a Scottish Enterprise foodservice award for its cold smoked venison, pheasant salami and roast smoked pheasant.

The smokehouse was born out of frustration at being unable to sell all the pheasants that were shot on Dinnet. "Much as I loved roast pheasant there is a limit to how much we can eat ourselves. The game dealers were giving us nothing for them," she added.

Mrs Humphrey learned the art of smoking meat before then embarking on a charcuterie course that has allowed her to add pheasant and venison salamis to a range that also includes smoked haggis and a Deeside glider, two sweet-cured breasts of pheasant with haggis in between.

Future plans maintain the focus on the gourmet end of the food market with chorizo pheasant and venison sausages and a beef bresaola, a dry-aired salted beef which is matured for two to three months, being developed.

The success of the smokehouse has exceeded all initial expectations. It is now at the point of taking on full-time staff to do more of the work; one is likely to be in place by the summer and another at the year-end.

Mrs Humphrey said demand was such that she often worked into the night to meet orders. "Getting to bed at 1am and then having to start again at 6am was not the game plan. But I really do enjoy doing it and I can get huge satisfaction out of it. It justifies the shooting too."

She wants to expand sales further this year, but at a pace

which maintains product quality.

Pheasants – 3,000 of them were smoked between May and August – are now also bought from other small shoots on Deeside that were finding problems selling birds. The venison throughput is at seven to eight deer a week. Mrs Humphrey also smokes bacon for Aberdeen butcher Andrew Gordon and sees the potential to do more contract work.

"I want to expand the range throughout Scotland this year. Next year the aim is to head south. We already have a distributor and it is doing well. The Witchery is using up to 4kg (8.8lb) a week of cold smoked venison. That is a lot of weight."

Mrs Humphrey now has a part-time butcher helping her prepare the venison before it is smoked. She too has employed a gardener to look after the vegetable enterprise. John Chapman has moved from the Queen's Balmoral Estate to Dinnet. Three polytunnels will allow the growing season to be extended and there will be a wider range of tatties this summer.

Mrs Humphrey is also considering retailing home-produced beef and lamb from Dinnet, where the suckler herd extends to 280 mainly Simmental cross Limousin cows and there are 1,200 Blackface ewes. She, however, wants to get a more native influence into the cattle herd. A Hereford has been used, but she is looking to possibly developing something with Highland cattle.

And she also wants Dinnet to become greener through renewable energy schemes that could involve hydro or biomass to generate electricity and heat.

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 Winners of the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards 

Published: 19/03/2010 Press and Journal

The Scottish Enterprise Award for a new innovative foodservice product launched in 2009 for businesses with up to 25 employees – The Deeside Smokehouse for its cold smoked venison, pheasant salami and roast smoked pheasant.

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Deeside business serving up smoked pheasant and venison

Purpose-built facility delivering range of produce from estate

By Joe Watson. Published: 23/05/2009 Press and Journal

A new smokehouse has been set up on a Deeside estate to make better use of the pheasant and venison from it.

Serena Humphrey is behind The Deeside Smokehouse that will be exhibiting at next weekend's Taste of Edinburgh, being held in Inverleith Park, and then at the Taste of Grampian at Inverurie's Thainstone Centre on June 6. She too is heading to the Scottish Game Fair at Scone, near Perth, on July 3, 4 and 5.

She is excited about the business, which aims to add value to the pheasants and deer shot on the Dinnet Estate, near Aboyne, and for which she hopes to find new markets, both locally and nationally. She added: "It just seemed such a waste not to use the pheasants. Game dealers give us tuppence ha'penny for them.

"The idea is that we're turning them into a really healthy food. Until now pheasant really hasn't been all that readily available. We're going to be doing a website and hope to do a bit of mail order. We're also looking to develop sales through shops, restaurants and hotels."

The purpose-built smokehouse is producing three varieties of pheasant - hot roasted, a Deeside Glider which is two breasts stuffed with haggis, and a salami.

The venison range is wider. It too includes a hot roasted product. But Mrs Humphrey has also created a venison bacon which is dry-cured and good either cold with salad and lemon or cooked. Venison chorizo and a spicy venison salami are the two other products.

She has further plans for a beef bresaola, a dry-aired salted beef that originates from Italy and which is hung for two to three months.

Mrs Humphrey has been developing plans for the business for the last two years. She went on a meat-smoking course, and followed this up with tutoring in salami last year. She said the smoked pheasant was especially good. "It doesn't taste gamey at all. It is slightly firmer than a smoked chicken, but much more delicious."

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