Sharon Griffiths visits the new outlet of a self-confessed foodie.

TRACEY Cottrell is a total foodie, loves cooking, won through the first rounds of Masterchef.

When she eats out, she tries to work out the recipe and when she’s on holiday, she brings back gourmet souvenirs.

“Lots of spices from the Maldives this year. Wonderful…”

So it was only a matter of time before she abandoned her secretarial job and got into the food business.

The result is Deli-icious, a tiny shop she opened earlier in the summer.

Part deli, part sandwich bar, part gift shop, all tucked into one room in Wolviston High Street.

“I just love proper fresh ingredients,”

she says. “Who really wants to eat a sandwich that’s been wrapped up sitting on a supermarket shelf all day?” Her sandwiches are made fresh and to order, with the addition of little extras. “Fresh lemon on the tuna, coriander on the chicken tikka, a twist of fresh black pepper or even any of your favourite sauces. Sandwiches as people really want them,”

she says.

Tracey stocks ingredients that she loves to use herself – polenta, coconut milk, garam flour to make bhajis. But as well as interesting and exotic products, she also wants to promote local produce. Already, she has a wide range of local cheeses and would love to hear from local producers.

“In this part of the world we have so many producers making wonderful food that we should really be making a fuss about it, celebrating it. I just want to tell them that I’m here,” she says In the short time the deli has been open, Tracey has already built up a number of regular customers. “I’ve got to know more people in the past month than in all the 11 years I’ve lived in Wolviston,” she says.

The other part of the shop is given over to food-related gifts – unusual cake stands that make you long for afternoon tea, mugs, pretty little espresso cups, potato ricers, jolly colanders, tiny sauce warmers, and china cupcakes, cupcake teapots, cupcake jars, cupcake tins. Can you detect a theme here?

There are also, of course, real live, gooey, edible cupcakes, mostly made by Tracey.

And while she’s in the shop, at home supper’s cooking. “I use my slow cooker, prepare something before I come out and leave it to cook all day. I have to go home and feed the family properly. I can’t compromise.

Not when it comes to food.”

■ Deli-icious, 21a High St, Wolviston, Tel: 01740-600606.

Closed Sunday, Monday