You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Farm Shops' category.
Soul food for wintery weekends – a bowl of homemade French onion soup and chunky slices of bread smeared thickly with butter. We ate Miracle Bread from Jane’s Handmade Bread bought at Abbey Ley’s farmers market spread with white goat’s butter.
Last weekend N and I had a lovely weekend down South, visiting some friends in Surrey and doing a bit of wedding planning (how exciting!) – we went to view these stunning giant tipis as a possibility for our wedding reception…
But back to food. We visited a National Trust property called Polesden Lacey (a beautiful house, gardens and stunning view – well worth a visit if you’re in the area) which also has a recently opened farmshop.
Always on the hunt for delicious local food, we chose a couple of local cheeses, a sausage roll and a pork pie. The sheep cheese we bought called Lord of the Hundreds is so tasty I could eat the whole thing in one sitting.
On Sunday night we cashed in a voucher for a free night’s stay at a hotel called the Bishop’s Table in Farnham. It’s a pretty old building painted sky blue, which has recently been refurbished downstairs combining modern and old very nicely. Upstairs hasn’t been updated, but we had a large room with a big bathroom with delightful old shutters – the only thing offense about the bedroom was the garish flowery wallpaper and matching curtains.
Breakfast, however, was going to cost £12.50 for each of us, which I think sounds quite a lot! I wasn’t convinced the breakfast would live up to its price tag, so before we left for our weekend away I had a search on the internet for an alternative option for a tasty Monday morning breakfast.
I discovered Farnham Pottery farmshop and coffee shop, which is located just outside Farnham in a place called Wrecclesham. Originally a Victorian pottery the buildings have been sympathetically converted into a small farmshop and coffee shop. With only four tables in the tiny coffee shop, it felt cosy but light and airy with a lovely atmosphere.
From the breakfast menu, N chose a bacon breakfast bap accompanied by a pot of Earl Grey, and I went for the English muffin with scrambled eggs (it did come with smoked salmon but I was far too full after a weekend of good company and good food) and a Delightful Detox smoothie (yoghurt, raspberry and pineapple).
The food was delicious. My English muffin was toasted to perfection and the scrambled egg full of flavour and moist, N’s bacon bap disappeared without a murmur, and the smoothie was scrumptious. And the cost – £12.60 - just 10p more than it would have cost for one of to have breakfast at the hotel, and it was just what we were after.
This is my perfect lazy Saturday (or Sunday!) brunch.
Lightly toasted bread smeared with butter. Crisp salty bacon. Sweet cherry tomatoes. Deep earthy mushrooms. And golden yolked eggs. Oh, and a big mug of hot chocolate.
How to create my perfect brunch
For me, creating the perfect brunch is about excellent ingredients and careful planning of how and when you cook each item.
Firstly, turn you oven onto a low heat and pop in two plates to warm.
In one, large cast iron frying pan I start off the bacon first. Meanwhile, I chopped my mushrooms and cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
Once the bacon starts to crisp, I add the mushrooms and let them start to cook. When the bacon is to cooked to your taste, remove and place in the oven.
Move the mushrooms to one side of the pan, drizzle a little olive oil onto the other side of the pan and add the cherry tomatoes – they should sizzle and spit. Season both the mushrooms and cherry tomatoes with salt and pepper.
Heat another smaller frying pan and add some oil – this will be your egg pan. As you crack in your eggs and start to fry them, instruct your boyfriend to pop some bread into the toast.
Just before your eggs are ready, remove the warmed plates and bacon from the oven. Butter your toast, divide the bacon between your plates, slide the fried eggs onto the toast, and spoon over some mushrooms and tomatoes.
Eat!
My ingredients:
- Polish Black Bread from Barbakan Deli in Manchester
- Back Bacon from Sue at Little Heath Farm
- Organic Eggs from Abbey Leys Farm
- Goats Butter
- Vine Cherry Tomatoes
- Chestnut Mushrooms
I thought it was about time I shared with you a fabulous new local food business who produce fantastic pies.
I first met Neil from The Great North Pie Company at a farmer’s market at Abbey Ley’s last summer when I had a stall to advertise the local food awards I was running as a volunteer for CPRE Cheshire. A relatively new business on the local Cheshire food scene, Neil and his family set up in 2008 baking delicious pies using quality local produce.
The Great North Pie Company were a runner-up in our CPRE Cheshire ‘Buy Local’ Food Awardsand were a winner of the far more prestigious NW Fine Foods awards. On Sunday I bought a delicious beef and potato pie (with truffle oil!! a little non-local luxury we’re all allowed to indulge in!) for N and I to share for lunch.
We devoured the pie, with its melt-in-the-mouth beef that flakes apart into tender strands, along with hunks of Miracle Bread, also bought from the farmer’s market from Jane’s Handmade Bread, smeared with milky white goat’s butter. A truly scrumptious local meal.
As a child courgettes were one of the vegetables I loathed. I remember them cut in thick slices and cooked until slightly soft and mushy. They were gross.
Now I have a much better relationship with courgettes, I have found ways in which to eat and cook them which have made me fall in love with them. Courgettes are starting to ripen and I picked up a couple from Little Heath Farm that had been grown by a local lady with a large garden. There was a perfectly formed round yellow courgette which I couldn’t resist, and chose a couple of green ones as well. With some delicious French chevre cheese in the fridge along with a pack of Parma ham, a simple egg dinner was dreamt up – a frittata (fantastic as a store cupboard meal for those evenings when you can’t think what else to cook) with courgette, goat’s cheese and shreds of salty ham.
I’ve got another lovely courgette dish that I’ll post soon – semi-dried courgette and chilli pasta.
Here’s how to make it…
Soften half an onion in a little butter and oil. Next, grate up your courgettes and pop them into the pan.
There’s quite a bit of water in the courgettes, so let it cook out and then continue to saute the courgette until all the liquid has disappeared – a beautiful smell will start to waft up and fill your nostrils. Then you know it’s ready.
Whisk up a couple of eggs (I used four for two of us) and season well with ground pepper and salt…
Pour the beaten eggs into the pan with the courgette and onion mixture. Crumble over the goat’s cheese…
Finally shred over the Parma ham and bung in the oven for about 15 minutes until cooked.
I find the frittata is best left for 10-15 minutes before eating, more of the flavours come through than when it’s piping hot.
Now here’s the recipe for anyone who fancies making it for themselves.
Courgette, goat’s cheese and Parma ham frittata
Feeds two hungry people
4 eggs
1/2 onion, diced
2 courgettes (1 green, 1 yellow)
1/2 slice of goat’s cheese
a couple of slices of Parma ham, torn into pieces
salt
pepper
*Please note, ideally you need a pan with a metal handle that can go into the oven – if you don’t, you will need to pop it under the grill rather than in the oven.
Preheat the oven to about 200°C.
In a pan, heat a little butter and olive oil and saute the chopped onion until soft.
Grate the courgettes and add to the softened onion. Cook the courgettes – water will come out of them, so just keep cooking them gently until it all disappears and it starts to smell nice.
Beat the egg and season well with salt and pepper. Tip the egg into the pan with the courgettes and onion and keep on a medium heat while you crumble over the goat’s cheese and add the torn Parma ham.
Turn off the heat and bung the pan into the oven for about 15 minutes until nicely golden on top and cooked through.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool a little (about 10-15 minutes). Cut into wedges and serve on its own or with a garden fresh green salad.
Who could image that just two ingredients – egg and butter – could create such a delicious, moreish meal? N was anti-scrambled egg when I first met him. After finally managing to get him to try a mouthful of my scrambled egg, he can now be heard asking for it without any prompting at all!
Scrambled egg on toast, made with love and care, and not cooked to within an inch of its life, should not be dismissed purely as a side to a fried breakfast. Scrambled egg on toast can make a scrumptious and filling meal all by itself – at least in my opinion.
Using high quality eggs is essential for producing the tastiest scrambled egg possible. Organic, free range, rare breed/heritage or woodland eggs are your best bet. Or if you’re lucky enough to have your own chickens, home produced. We used free range organic eggs from Abbey Leys Farm.
Now I never really understood why recipes call for a ‘heavy based’ pan, but for scrambled egg it really makes a difference. If you use one that has a thin base (like my cheapo supermarket milk pan that I still have from university) then the egg at the bottom cooks too quickly and can burn and stick to the pan. A pan with a thicker base will cook the egg slower and more gently.
So, to make my scrambled egg I melt a good sized knob of butter in a heavy based saucepan. When the butter has melted and starts to gently bubble I crack in my eggs. Please note, I do not whisk up my eggs and pour them into the pan. I simply crack the whole eggs directly into the pan.
Now, the important bit – allow the eggs to cook everso slightly. You can burst the yolks if you like, but try and let the white, well turn white – like when you fry and egg. Now, give it a gentle mix (I used a metal spoon). Then let it cook some more. Then another gentle mix.
By adding the eggs whole to the pan, and gently breaking them up as they cook results in a chunky scrambled egg where some bits are white, some bits are golden, and some are milky yellow combination of the two. I think it makes for a much more interesting scrambled egg rather than one uniform taste and texture.
Have the heat on about a medium, but if the egg starts to stick to the bottom of the pan, remove it from the heat briefly and continue mixing. I do this back and forward, on and off the heat until it reaches the texture I like.
I like my scrambled eggs moist but not too runny, and certainly not dried out. The egg should slide off the spoon, not plop off like lumps of jelly. I know everyone has their own preferences, but if you usually cook your scrambled egg a bit longer, just try it more moist, just once. When I first tried cooking scrambled egg like this I couldn’t believe how different it tasted.
Once the egg is cooked, stir in a good grinding of black pepper and salt to taste. As with most food, I tend to be a purist and refuse to add too many embellishments, but yesterday I added some freshly snipped chives from the garden. Chives are an ideal paring for egg and provided an interesting taste addition to our scrambled egg.
Butter some slithers of toast and spoon the scrambled egg over the top.
My perfect scrambled egg
Serves 2 for lunch
6 eggs
A knob of butter
Salt
Black pepper
Chives (optional)
Buttered toast
In a heavy based saucepan melt a good sized knob of butter over a medium heat. When it starts to bubble crack the eggs into the pan.
Allow the eggs to cook a little before bursting the yolks and giving them a gentle mix. Leave again to cook a little, and then mix gently. If the egg starts to stick to the bottom, remove from the heat and mix. Keep the egg mixture moving, but do so gently until it reaches a moist sloppy consistency.
Stir in some ground black pepper and salt to taste. If you are using chives, snip into the egg and mix.
Spoon the scrambled egg over a couple of slices of buttered toast.
Eat immediately!
Tuesday night was the event that I’ve been working towards for the past year. The culmination of a year’s volunteering for my local branch of CPRE(Campaign to Protect Rural England), single-handedly running their local food work. We have been running ‘Buy Local’ Food Awards to celebrate the fantastic work of businesses in Cheshire that grow/sell us great local food.
The event was a combined effort from myself and Helen Meade, who is the Regional Co-ordinator for the CPRE ‘Mapping Local Food Webs’project which is being rolled out across England. Helen has been running a pilot project in Knutsford, and with my local food awards coming to an end, it was a perfect opportunity to join forces and put on a lovely event.
We have been busy advertising the event through our different networks, but we still didn’t know how many people would turn up – I think we were hopefully for 30 (my secret goal was 50 though). We had a number of interested businesses who offered to bring along samples of their food, and all five of our award winners were able to come.
So Tuesday evening finally rolled around. My car was filled with tablecloths, earthenware vases, chalkboards and hedgerow flowers (a mixture of elderflowers, daisies, grasses, and cow parsley). We had about an hour and a half to set the room up, with the normal hiccups (no glasses or cutlery…aah!).
Businesses started arriving and setting up their displays of food, leaflets and samples of food – yumm! We had Riverford Organic:
One of our ‘Buy Local’ Food Award winners – Riverside Organic – brought some baskets of the seasonal produce grown on their farm. We also had sausage rolls from another of our winners H Clewlow Butchers, homemade gooseberry fool (I really want this recipe!) from the Walton Lea Project also an award winner, homemade cakes from Abbey Leys Farm, and chutneys and jams from a lovely company that I don’t know the name of!
Over 50 people turned out for the event, which is more than we ever imagined, so are so pleased and hope that people enjoyed the evening. It was so lovely to see my local food awards come a glorious end with the winners accepting their awards. I have really enjoyed running the awards but it has been exhausting at times, so I’m looking forward to a month off from volunteering before I start planning my next project.
There should be some professional photographs available soon as a journalist from the local paper came along to the event. If and when they are available I will post them or a link to them.
I do quite a bit of volunteering in any free time that I have. Most of it is to do with local food. On Tuesday 16th June I am helping to run an event in Knutsford, Cheshire to celebrate the local food grown and produced in our county. If anyone reading this happens to live near to Knutsford and is interested in local food, we would be delighted if you are able to join us.
There will be a project update on the Mapping Local Food Websproject that has been taking place in Knutsford, which is funded by Making Local Food Work and CPRE. The ‘Buy Local’ food awards that I have run for CPRE Cheshire over the past year will see the presentation of the awards to the winners – I will add another post in the next day or so to let you know who are winners are. There will also be local produce to try, and some delicious cakes, tea and coffee.
We’d love to see you there! For more information contact Helen Meade on 07833 250 134 or leave me a comment.
The asparagus season has started here in England and I have been so looking forward to it. For that reason, we are feasting on the stuff at any opportunity, and will probably be sick of it by the end of its short season.
This is a simple meal of asparagus, topped with a couple of crispy slices of streaky bacon, accompanied by some toast smothered in butter and a soft boiled egg to dunk the asparagus spears in. You may see that I slightly over-cooked the egg so there was no dunking for us – not a mistake I will make again!
The asparagus came from Kenyon Hall Farm (also the people who run our box scheme Northern Harvest). The eggs were from Abbey Leys Farm – I follow Delia’s method for boiling eggs. The streaky bacon was care of Sue at Little Heath Farm, and the bread from Barbakan. So all in all a pretty local meal – and a tasty one at that!
Asparagus with crispy bacon and a soft boiled egg
Serves 2
Bundle of asparagus spears
4 slices streaky bacon
2 eggs
4 pieces of bread
Butter
Prepare the asparagus by gently bending the stems until they naturally snap – discard the woody stem. My preferred method of cooking asparagus is as follows (but feel free to cook them however you choose): Heat a narrow pan of water about half full until simmering. Use an elastic band to gently fasten the bundle of prepared asparagus together and place in the simmering water – the water should come at least half way up the stems. I use another pan of equal size, placed upside down on top of the first pan. This method enables the stems to cook in the water, and the delicate tops to gently steam.
Meanwhile, put your eggs on to boil – I follow Delia’s method for soft boiled eggs.
Cook the streaky bacon in a frying pan until nice and crisp.
When the asparagus is cooked, turn of the heat. Pop the slices of bread into the toaster and lightly toast. Take the cooked eggs out of the water and pop into your favourite egg cup – gently cut the top off to reveal the golden yolk. Butter your toast and pop it on the plate, along with a pile of steaming asparagus and top with the crispy bacon.
Eat immediately!
The Organic Farm Shop near Cirencester in Gloucestershire was one of my first experiences of a farm shop. It is my ‘local’ farm shop when visiting my family, and stopping off here on the journey is a sign that we’re nearly there.
As you turn off the road and down the long tree-lined drive to the farm shop, you pass piggies in a field and a market garden sized field of fruit buses and pollytunnels, before you reach the farm shop nestled amongst a grove of trees. There is something lovely about seeing the produce growing in the fields before you enter the farm shop, something reassuring – and a great reminder about where a lot of the produce you buy in the shop comes from.
In addition to the farm shop (which is stocked with fantastic goodies) there is a cafe serving delicious, home-cooked vegetarian food. Meat-eaters do not be detered by the veggie menu, it is scrumptious food and you won’t sit there wondering where you steak is. If N can cope, anyone can.
As it was my birthday weekend, we decided to treat ourselves to lunch in the cafe. It serves daily specials and have a standard menu which comprises of a variety of baked potatoes and omelettes. Most meals are served with a selection of salads, which are displayed on the counter.
You can pick and choose which salads you want – N and I turned down the mung bean, red cabbage and cauliflower salad, but were really surprised by salad of celery, cucumber, fennel and sunflower seeds. I was also converted to the true potential of polenta – an ingredient that I have had disastrous-throw-in-the-bin results with – these were crisp, cheesy ‘croutons’ that topped off our salad. Yum yum.
So N opted for a selection of salads topped with melt-in-the-mouth goats cheese (he had eaten his before I had a chance to take a snap). I chose from the specials board and tasted my first asparagus of the season – an asparagus and cheese tart with salads. This tart was so good and would really like to recreate, or at least try to!
As you can see it didn’t take us long to finish it all off. I am also coming to the realisation that I am a bit obsessed by taking photographs of empty plates (those that are empty because the food that previously was on them has all been gobbled up). I was so tempted to take a photo of the table next to us after the family had left, there was something fascinating about the empty plates, cutlery, cups and crumpled napkins strewn across the table. N gave me such a look at the suggestion that I quickly put the camera away.
Recent Comments