Food & Drink notes

Snap happy; special delivery; golden, delicious; essential reading

Snap happy

Fudges flatbreads with pumpkin seeds and sesame, or cheese and black pepper, are a modish addition to all the other scrumptious biscuits (yes, Marmite, Cheddar-topped cheese straws and Florentines we mean you) from this Dorset family bakery. Deploy these elegant crunchy fingers with dips, nibble them with drinks or dunk them in soup - but whatever you do, snap to it, they're good. Around £1.60 a box; 01963 362402 for your nearest stockist.

Special delivery

Chunky Pickle is a funky addition to the line-up of Cornish produce from Seriously Good, an aptly named company that delivers all sorts of local goodies - from Padstow pasties to freshly caught fish - anywhere in the country. Prices for the chutney start from £2.80 for 280g (plus delivery). 0870 241 7027, www.seriously-good.co.uk

Golden, delicious

Pies are highly prized in Yorkshire, but only 18 months after they first started baking, I's Pies are prize-winners. Based in Ripon, and baked with flour from Driffield, locally grown herbs, beef from Castle Howard and even spices ground in Yorkshire, they picked up a Waitrose Small Producer of the Year Award earlier this month. Buy the pies - including Moroccan lamb, spinach and Yorkshire Feta, and chicken with lemon and herbs - for £1.75 each from Waitrose and Booth's supermarkets and from independent food stores in Yorkshire (call 01765 641 567 for stockists). Then think picnics on the Moors.

Essential reading

I hadn't heard of him either, but David Herbert's 'The Perfect Cookbook' and 'More Perfect Recipes' (£7.99 each, Penguin) are instantly attractive, charming and concise collections of wide-ranging, cookable recipes, at a fraction of the price of most new cookbooks. He writes mainly in Australia, so he's less well-known here, but these travel brilliantly. Recipes run from Anzac biscuits to Yorkshire pudding.