Load custom-data to On-Chip memory

Folks,
what would be the best way to load custom data to the on-chip memory of a Cyclone IV FPGA, preferably at start up.
Eventually a NIOS II application reads data from a flash device and stores it to the on-chip memory,
where an custom logic (outside NIOS II) accesses this data.

For the time being I only wish to initialize part of the on-chip memory with some static data in order to test the custom logic.


Thanks in advance for your help!