Artisan Food – Page 2 – Wyedean Deli Confidential Blog

30th April 201718th July 2017

Monmouthshire Food Festival…Don’t miss it.

Food Festivals are, quite rightly, big and very good news. Especially in this fabulous area in which we live, stuffed full as it is with great produce, makers and eateries. So don’t miss The Monmouthshire Food Festival on 20^th to 21^st May 2017 at Caldicot Castle. Monmouthshire has some outstanding producers and makers (many of which have featured in this magazine) and so The Monmouthshire Food Festival is definitely an unmissable food event. There’s a full programme of demonstrations, talks, tastings and lots of food and drink to try and buy.

The Chef’s Theatre features many of the finest chefs from across Monmouthshire. They will showcase the finest food the county has to offer in dishes that show both flair and imagination, a positive treat for the taste buds.

The county of Monmouthshire is the food capital of Wales. It is home to the finest producers and award winning hotels and restaurants boasting two Michelin starred restaurants and many holders of AA rosettes. The Whitebrook holds a Michelin star and four AA Rosettes and many other awards. Chris Harrod, who is Chef/Patron, will be cooking in the Chef’s Theatre on Saturday 20^th May at 1:30 pm. For food enthusiasts this is a demonstration which is not to be missed.

Cooking in the Chef’s Theatre on Sunday 21^st May at 1:30 pm is Tim McDougall, Head Chef at the Llansantffraed Court Country House Hotel, holder of 2AA Rosettes followed at 2:30 pm by Mark Turton, Chef/Patron of the 2 AA Rosettes #7 Church Street in Monmouth

The Look and Learn Theatre features master classes, tutored tastings and demonstrations on a wide range of food and drinks. Meet the people who really know about the food on offer, the producers. Join in with a masterclass led by Duncan Fox from Haven Distillery – a cottage distillery which produces premier London Gin with some interesting botanicals. Duncan will tell you everything you will ever need to know about gin!

Also in the Look and Learn Theatre will be a butchery and BBQ demonstration from Adrian Walker, Accredited Master Butcher of Golden Valley Meat and Game in the village of Grosmont in Monmouthshire. He is one of just fourteen Master Butchers in the UK and the only one in Wales and the Three Counties of Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. At the centre of the festival is the Producers Market. This features artisan producers, many of whom hail from the Marches, the border area of England and Wales. Award winning cider makers Ty Gwyn, fine artisan chocolate maker Black Mountain Gold and hand crafted ales from Castles Brewery located just one mile from Caldicot Castle’s drawbridge.

Bring the kids too. The Children’s Quarter will have lots of activities for your young foodies to enjoy with one or two surprises! Try a workshop on quick, simple and healthy after school snacks.

This year the supported charity Guides Dogs for the Blind. Staff and dogs from the charity will be on hand and is offering visitors a chance to get up close to a guide dog or puppy and find out more about their vital work. For a little bit of fun volunteers from Guide Dogs will host “Jam and Juice”. Sighted kids can put on a blindfold to make jam sandwiches and juice drinks to experience what it must be like to have eyesight issues. And of course, there may be the odd cuddly guide dog to pet!!

Browse the Producers Market which will have stalls with many different products to try and buy. Come and taste beer brewed just a mile from the festival or take home locally made preserves made from foraged fruit.

The festival will be celebrating World Day of Bees on 20th May with presentations from our local Gwent Beekeepers together with a display hive of bees (all quite safe) and information of the work being done by Monmouth based Bees for Development who work across many countries in Africa to alleviate poverty and retain biodiversity. We will also be welcoming the team from local dairy, Mead Farm, who will be bringing along a mechanical cow to show where milk comes from.

So don’t miss this event. A food event packed with great tasting food, top tips and help with “how to” sessions it’s going to be fab! All set in the glorious surroundings of Caldicot Castle and grounds.

How about a family picnic in the glorious Caldicot Castle Country Park with delicious food and drink from the food festival? So why not take an empty picnic basket with you and buy your picnic at the show, find yourself a great spot in the castel grounds and dine like Lords and Ladies?

Links

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Monmouthshire-Food-Festival-654281511286346/

Web https://monmouthshirefoodfestival.co.uk/

13th March 201718th July 2017

Don’t Drive and Eat Ice Cream

Forest and Wye, ice cream, St Briavels, Gloucestershire, David Broadbent Photography, WyeDean Deli Confidential, food, artisan,

There is a new ice cream dream team in town. Charlotte and Marcus Adam of Forest & Wye ice cream company based in St Briavels mean business and they have the premium product to back up their ambitions.

Charlotte was, back in the day, a qualified librarian. Turns out that those librarians trained and qualified in the dark arts of book classification and stealthy movement in audibly neutral halls of knowledge and entertainment are, all of the time, hatching plots of a utopian nature. Well, they are if they are Charlotte Adams. She is one half of the new premium artisanal husband and wife ice cream dream team, behind the new Forest & Wye ice cream company.

As an enthusiastic amateur ice cream maker (and hearty consumer) the chance to visit the new Forest & Wye creamery, in the lovely village of St Briavels, was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Anyone who has ever made ice cream or gelato will know that the taste blows away any large brand offering no matter how fancy the box or slick the marketing. And that is kind of the problem. My own small versions, in varying degrees of delicious success, are doing well if they last in the freezer for more than a couple of days! But try and scale that process up for sale as a product and things begin to get tricky.

Enter then Charlotte and Marcus Adams. Well versed in this small scale purist production of, amongst other flavours – alcohol flavoured ices, for personal use only (honestly officer) who then decide to become “clean” ice cream makers, wherever possible shunning processed ingredients to deliver what is says on the tin. The clean food movement has somehow got lumbered with endorsements by “celebrities” (this apparently now passes for gainful employment) you may or may not have heard of. In addition it bears the weight of the most damaging of food marketing monikers – “trendy”. Clean Food has never meant anything other than just natural ingredients. The ethos of this embryonic company is seasonal, local, fresh, as clean as it can be. So, the logic goes, Rhubarb Crumble ice cream (and loads of other yummy non-alcoholic flavours) has only ice cream (milk, cream and eggs) and rhubarb crumble in it – easy. Anyone can pronounce all the ingredients.

But it turns out that there are many reasons to adulterate a product and one of them is to get over problems of upscaling manufacture. Want blackcurrant ice cream? Add a big shot of commercial blackcurrant syrup for instant and easy flavour enhancement. But what if you want to get really radical and just get all the flavour from real blackcurrants? I know, it’s a crazy idea isn’t it?

The impetus for turning passionate hobby into a cottage industry business was supercharged by friends who tasted Charlotte’s’ home-made alcoholic ice cream. Right after they’d asked for a second helping they implored her to make a business of it and presumably therefore to ensure a continuity of supply. Let’s remember the ethos, when Forest & Wye make alcoholic ice cream, like their supreme “Baileys and Kahlua” – Baileys “flavour” just doesn’t cut it. It has to have, erm Baileys and Kahlua in it. Not as easy as you might think given the well-known anti-freeze properties of alcohol. Why stop there? Let’s go with their Vanilla and Cognac or Coffee and Whiskey and – our absolute fave Amaretto – wait for it smooth creamy taste followed by the Amaretto taste which builds toward the end – Wow! All of this raises the tantalising notion of adults only ice cream parties all purchased from licensed premises – that’s right they have real booze in them and you need a licence to sell them!

Having spent the past 15 years living in St Briavels and raising their family of 3 kids, the two thought that now was the right time to launch their dream business. It’s not been easy though, having decided to go for it, their ideas of clean ice cream with only the freshest of whole ingredients therein proved to be a challenge. Everyone they met, they bought training or equipment from, in fact everyone told them you need to make commercial ice cream with emulsifiers, stabilisers and bla, bla, bla. There was a dark and heart breaking time for Charlotte when, already having trashed several full scale batches, she thought that it might be true and that they might have to consider the worst case scenario and go with the advice. But a golden coloured revelation came to them on a quiet St Briavels night. A natural golden, sticky solution. Known of for centuries, and incidentally something that has a shelf life measured in a atomic half-lives, – honey. Together with a little natural bean flour, hey presto! They had cracked it.

ice cream, amaretto, — A very rare pre-production model complete with typo’s. Sadly now gone!

This is the first hurdle for most passions turned into businesses – where and how will you supersize your enthusiastic experimentation. With their eldest child now fourteen and the youngest pushing seven – playtime is over kids! The kids were evicted from their playroom and its transmogrification into modern creamery separated from the rest of domestic life began. Our exclusive peak into the creamery tells the story of the couples’ commitment. Fully kitted out with the latest brand new ice cream/gelato making equipment – no one could accuse them of “not going for it”, it’s organised, well laid out and tidy with a five star rating.

Telme, — Forest & Wye homemade ice cream.

Starting a new businesses can be scary. Lots of money going out and a really frightening period when no money comes in – self-employment is not for the faint hearted. But for people who know what they want and know that they want to achieve it’s the only way. What you need now are customers! Deborah Flint, founder of The Pantry village shop (now in new hands, the shop previously featured in this magazine) and big supporter of quality local producers was the first to help out. She commissioned a blind tasting competition with other brands and Forest & Wye. Topping the taste test was a breeze and they were stocked! A local brewery used Forest & Wye products at one of its events but Charlotte and Marcus are looking for more outlets. For the time being, their footprint is limited to a 30 mile radius of the Gloucestershire border but that is bound to change as tasting pioneers spread the word.

The packaging, like the ice cream, is simple, brilliant and wholesome. A plain brown fully recyclable pot with a stylish card label and you can feel good about your carbon footprint while you tuck in too. So here they are with a great creamery set-up and all the vision, passion and knowledge that you can shake a stick at. They have a fantastic premium product packed with goodness from as close to the creamery as they can possibly manage.

Over to you outlets…….

Links

Web www.forestandwye.co.uk

Facebook www.facebook.com/forestandwye

Twitter https://twitter.com/ForestWye

The Pantry www.facebook.com/thepantrystbriavels/

7th March 20177th March 2017

The Monmouthshire Food Festival 2017

Food Festivals are great fun and, quite rightly, big and very good news. Especially in this fabulous area in which we live, stuffed full as it is with great produce, makers and eateries. So don’t miss The Monmouthshire Food Festival on 20^th to 21^st May 2017 at Caldicot Castle. Monmouthshire has some outstanding producers and makers (many of which have featured in this magazine) and so The Monmouthshire Food Festival is definitely an unmissable food event. There’s a full programme of demonstrations, talks, tastings and lots of food and drink to try and buy.

The Chef’s Theatre always features many of the finest chefs from across Monmouthshire. They will showcase the finest food the county has to offer in dishes that show both flair and imagination, a positive treat for the taste buds. The Look and Learn Theatre features master classes, tutored tastings and demonstrations on a wide range of food and drinks. Meet the people who really know about the food on offer, the producers.

Bring the kids too. The Children’s Quarter will have lots of activities for our young foodies to enjoy with one or two surprises! Browse the Producers Market which will have stalls with many different products to try and buy. Come and taste beer brewed just a mile from the festival or take home locally made preserves made from foraged fruit.

This year the supported charity Guides Dogs for the Blind. Staff and dogs from the charity will be on hand offering visitors a chance to get up close to a guide dog or puppy and find out more about their vital work – and of course help out with a small donation. So don’t miss this event. A food event packed with great tasting food, top tips and help with “how to” sessions it’s going to be fab! All set in the glorious surroundings of Caldicot Castle and grounds.

3rd March 20173rd March 2017

Abergavenny Bakery Goodies

The Angel Hotel, Abergavenny, David Broadbent Photography, bakery, bread, baking, artisan, Cross Street,

We talk sourdough and all things bakery with the innovative bakery team at The Angel Bakery in Abergavenny. Unbelievably good!

Exactly one week ago I was sitting in the middle of the A40 roundabout in my stricken Landrover, holding up the juggernauts of the morning rush hour on the A40 roundabout just outside Abergavenny. Sitting helplessly waiting for a recovery vehicle when I should have been talking sourdough with the staff at The Angel Bakery, Abergavenny.

No panic though, my meeting With Jo at The Angel Hotel to see their new bakery has been temporarily put on hold and I’m thinking that today could have gone better – good coffee, the smell of fresh bread and pastries enchanting my sense of smell. Sadly, that will now have to wait for another day. So with time on my hands until the breakdown gets here it occurred to me just how well some of our local DeanWye towns and villages are doing. We’ve written before (The Pantry) about the effect that home working may be having on our previously “dormitory” villages and towns. In fact, a little like Brexit, our towns and villages seem to be bucking the UK trend of the last 30 years against all the predictions of the naysayers.

Abergavenny is a case in point. Vibrant, lively and with a significant proportion of independent shops (new rates assessments permitting) as well as well-known high street brands – the town is faring better than some of its neighbours. The Angel Hotel on the towns Cross Street is a particular beacon of this new found hope for our high streets. Stylish and trendy with well trained staff to ensure attention to detail and a top quality service, the hotel is working hard to offer visitors a quality experience in this great Welsh market town. All in all there are good reasons for confidence to be up! And so in this optimistic mood, The Angel has furthered its already impressive and ambitious plans and gone and opened a bakery across the street!

And now one week to the day since my breakdown (car), I’m standing in the bakery early morning amidst all of the buzzing, but focussed activity of the 5 staff. Baguettes and sourdoughs are already out, croissant (breakfast with an espresso) and pain au chocolat are on the counter together with, a very sexy looking, rhubarb Danish. In the clean spacious bakery engine room behind the tall plate glass which fronts onto the narrow street, dough is emerging after its 36 hour incubation to fulfil its destiny and be turned into flavourful, bread and buns with taste and great texture. My baguette (eaten at lunchtime back in the office) was crisp and strong with beautiful real bread flavour. A long bake made for a nice crispy crust, perhaps not one for the denture wearers, and the result of having had a decent amount of time to prove properly was a light open texture inside. These little cavities now swallowed more mayonnaise than is probably good for me, lashed to my cheese and tomato filling – wow, fantastic.

In the old days of the Tour de France cyclists used to slice a baguette and hollow out the centre so that it could hold even more nutritious carb fillings for the long cycle ahead. At the Angel Bakery that light airy centre is fantastic so you’ll want to keep it in and just stuff everything else in as best you can.

The bakery opened officially on 23^rd December and so now, a couple of months in, and the principal bakers Sophie and Polly, have the place running like a sewing machine. It’s well equipped with the latest bakery apparatus but the work is still all about traditional hand crafting. The two ladies met whilst working at the well-known London artisan bakery, The Little Bread Pedlar. This Bermondsey based bakery tucked into several railway arches has developed an enviable reputation and you can see the DNA of the Pedlar here in the work of the two ladies at the heart of The Angel bakery. Traditional methods and proper proving, deep bakes that are all about flavour, texture and crumb all done with style and innovation.

The results are all good. And the sourdoughs are amazingly so. A good bake really brings out their natural nutty flavour and again the texture is fab, nice crusty outside and soft, firm inside with an open texture to capture a good spreading of butter or mayo. Sourdoughs are great family loaves. They taste great, obviously, but they also keep well and make the most amazing toasted soldiers for soft boiled eggs. We also tried the fig and walnut sourdough – triumph! Nutty sourdough flavour again combined with crunchy walnuts pieces and figgy goodness throughout with every now and again a little motherlode pocket of sweet hit of fig. Really, really tasty.

The steampunk coffee machine with its enormous lever handles makes great stealth espresso using home roasted coffee without uttering a sound, unless the steam jet is activated. There are a few seats in the modest customer area which, really nicely, has a view into the bakery too, so you can see the magic unfold.

The Angel Bakery with Sophie and Polly at the helm will go from strength to strength. They have a great base to work from and the quality of what’s on offer is impressive. Even if you don’t live in Abergavenny, it’s worth going to the bakery for the croissants alone!

Web: http://www.angelabergavenny.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovetheangel/?hc_ref=SEARCH

Twitter: @LovetheAngel https://twitter.com/lovetheangel?lang=en-gb

3rd January 2017

Ugly Tomatoes.

I bought some tomatoes the other day. To be honest they were as ugly as sin itself. They were lined and wrinkled and had a few little black spots on them. Not really very pretty at all and they were all shapes and sizes – not one the same as the other.

Obviously I didn’t buy them from the local supermarket. These little blighters would have been strangled at birth, given the boot by the automation that sizes and grades fruit and vegetable and be now littering some landfill somewhere.

No, I bought these from a greengrocer running her own small shop in a little back street. I paid a very small amount of money for something that has taken weeks of care to bring to bring to market. When I got home I put the ugly bunch on the kitchen worktop and went back to work. They were so ugly that they would have made small children cry, old ladies feint, turn milk sour or made the Elephant Man gasp in amazement.

But, and here is the thing – they tasted fantastic! Out of this world in fact! The kitchen smelt wonderful because of them and they made amazing and super tasty bruschetta, and Caprese salad and the next day with a light grilling they made the breakfast kitchen smell wonderful as well, full of warm tomatoey goodness. They also made the grilled bacon taste even better. Who knew that bacon could be made to taste any better?

“Hello” magazine readers should look away now – As in life, it’s always in the quality and not the looks so give a lot of love to the ugly ones too.

3rd January 20173rd January 2017

Mint & Mustard opens in Chepstow

Last night I went to a wake and a christening. All at the same time and at the same place.

Sadly, after many years, the Mughal Spice Indian restaurant in Chepstow is no more. The wholesome food and bonhomie of the brothers is a thing of the past. However, in its place is born an additional iteration to the very successful Mint & Mustard. The south-west based Indian food explosion has finally cracked the holy grail of the “Indian”, to offer distinctive, regional, genuine menu’s with a dash of great service and in cool surroundings. Although the new Chepstow outlet is pretty much just a lick of paint and a refresh for the old Mughal upstairs rooms at the moment, they have great ideas for the downstairs lounge. Anyone who has been to their other restaurants, particularly Penarth, will know that the decor style of this quickly expanding group is definitely upmarket and trendy with nods to all of the interior design trends and tricks of the new wave of uber-cool bars and restaurants.

Classy decoration in the upstairs dining room

As most now know, many of our beloved “Indians” have in the past been run by Bangladeshi folk. Nothing wrong in that, but since the days of the Raj, Asian food has been adapted and adopted by the British palate as only we seem to do with any world cuisine. Partly because of this restaurant menus became the anonymous high streets of the restaurant business. Homologous lists of dishes you could get from anywhere – with often differing resemblances to the stated contents.

Mint & Mustard is changing that. The reason for their success so far is simple? Of course the great levels of service are important but it’s the food. Genuine south Indian, predominantly Keralan, dishes all served up with lashings of style and presentation. Finally! An Indian restaurant that gets it all right.

Kerala, known as the “Land of Spices” because of its history as a spice trading centre to the world, sits on the Arabian Sea on the tropical Malabar Coast. No wonder then that fish is one of the staple elements of the Keralan diet. But it’s also famous for its meat and vegan dishes (Hindus in the Brahmin community are vegan). Coconuts abound in Kerala and, in all its forms, it’s a significant feature of the local cuisine.

Our starters of Scallop Thengapal served in their shells with an unctuous soft lemon and coconut milk sauce and the theatrical Keralan tiger prawns, deep fried in chilli and turmeric paste – delightful. A selection of mains followed which included expertly spiced chicken Kori Gassi, King Prawn Peera, chicken Dhaba Murgh with chilli, garlic and ginger and a Master Chef Mixed Grill Platter with an assortment of meat and fish tikka dishes. Accompanying sides of dals – Olan (butternut squash and cow peas) and of course Tarka dal.

Tarka dal is such a domestic staple of Asian cuisine from Nepal to the southern tip of the continent that it’s a litmus for the quality of any Asian restaurant. If a restaurant can’t get this right, the thing they have been cooking at home and eating for years, then it doesn’t bode well. If the tarka dal is good, you can have confidence that everything is going to be just fine. M&M’s tarka dal is great. Just the right amount of sauce, spice and texture in the lentils – a real treat.

Add to that a full house and lots of early evening atmos – and that’ll be another winner for Mint & Mustard!

24th October 201616th February 2017

Macaron A Sweet Indulgence

Becks Gough is a perfectionist – in all things. This bright eyed and enthusiastic Cinderford young woman is not the type to give up easily. And when, by chance, during a weekend in Paris she happened on the eye catching shop front of Ladurée on 75 Avenue de Champs Elysées she had – found her thing as they say – Macaron making. The window display of this famous patisserie and tea room, which has a history that began in 1862, definitely has the WOW factor and Becks and her friend bought some to try and also to take home to her mum. Macarons are delicate things but with lots of soft packaging and careful handling Becks got the colourful pastries home to Cinderford after a 15 hour return coach trip. Both Becks and her mum, Chloe, were impressed!

As so often happens, a life time’s work can begin with the belief “I can do that”. That was two years ago and in between time Becks has had several successes but many, many more failures whilst trying to perfect her own macaron method.

What could possibly go wrong? How long have you got? A slightly different mix and – fail; folded too much – fail; not folded enough – fail; try a different oven on exactly the same settings – fail! Becks’ list goes on. She purchased the Ladurée book and took control of the process and slowly but surely she got there. Soon friends were asking for some and then friends of friends and so it continues.

Why macarons? Was our obvious question – “Both mum and dad are professional chefs with a services background and I wanted to do something different” just to find MY thing.

David Broadbent Photography — A Sweet Indulgence

So, how do yours compare to the best? Rather coyly and for some unknown reason a hint of embarrassment Becks says “Better”. A few days later a very colourful rainbow of macarons appeared to sample and photograph. Pushed to deadlines and up against competing demands we didn’t think that we could do the tasting justice. So, we took them, all of them, to a very fine country house in Lincolnshire which had been hired in its entirety for a, appropriately, a Royal Navy wedding!

So in the resplendent Edwardian halls and sitting rooms the night before the wedding over drinks and bonhomie we tried out Becks’ creations on the assembled close family and friends. The colours when you open a box of Sweet Indulgence macarons are what immediately grab your attention. Let the tasting begin….

The verdict was in from a very tough crowd. Wonderful and numerous other superlatives in the stampede to try all the flavours – lemon cream, strawberry and cream, raspberry and cream, blueberry and cream, Chocolate ganache, orange blossom and salted caramel.

The bride herself loved them, but daren’t try any more than one since her dress was very precisely fitted for the big day following. The bride’s mother loved the orange blossom ones best. The bride’s father loved them all (as did we). And, Ali, a flight stewardess for an American airline and someone who has visited the Champs Elysées outlet and tasted the original – loved them and pronounced them even better than the Paris version!! There you have it – confirmation that you should try some.

Contact Becks on b.gough1991@hotmail.com

11th October 20163rd March 2017

Foraging for Fun

Foraging sounds like excellent fun doesn’t it – alone in the countryside finding all your own food for free. What could be better? Having just come back from celebrating mushroom season Italian style for a continuing food documentary photo project we can say – we are fans! But it’s also a bit scary isn’t it. Alone in the woods for a start! What if you get attacked by a boar or an amorous stag like the Daily Mail are always banging on about.

What if I just end up eating overgrown lawn instead of an exotic wild herb? Even worse, what if that supposed French woodland delicacy of a dew-covered mushroom you’ve just picked turns out to be from the genus instantpainfuldeatharia? Just where do beginners to foraging actually start?

Amidst this glorious landscape of ours full of free, nutritious and healthy food as we are, it makes sense to get a little help before you start. Well you are in luck! The Parish Grasslands Project will be running a foraging day entitled a Taste of the Hudnalls. Described as a day of hunting for, and appreciating, the wild food available from the Hudnalls area.

Expert guide, Raoul van den Broucke, will be on hand to lead a small group through the lanes and fields of the Hudnalls on the afternoon of Saturday 29^th October picking out tasty treats along the way. Raoul, once dubbed by The Guardian, “the Carluccio of the Wye Valley”, has a long standing expertise in wild food and will be imparting his knowledge to the hardy group during the day. Later the same evening at the St Briavels Assembly Rooms Raoul will be joining the fabulous Yvette Farrell of Harts Barn Cookery School http://www.hartsbarncookeryschool.co.uk/ in a “cook what you brung” style masterclass of using wild food in the kitchen. There is also a competition for the best wild food recipe –don’t miss that! Visit the Grasslands website for details http://www.parishgrasslandsproject.org.uk/news.html#hudnalls2016. We’ll be there to cover the whole story but don’t let that put you off coming along and do say hello. It’ll be a fabulous day – tell them we sent you…

Raoul is a familiar face at the Tudor Farmhouse Hotel where is has been wild food expert in residence for several years as well as the tutor on Tudor Farmhouse Hotel’s extremely popular residential and group foraging courses. Under the expert tutelage of Raoul, Tudor’s courses having been running for about 5 years now and are always such popular events for the hotel that extra dates have been added for this Autumn and there are some new spring dates for 2017 soon to be announced. With either the day group courses or luxurious forage, eat and stay packages on offer to choose from, they are not to be missed. See their website for details http://www.tudorfarmhousehotel.co.uk/foraging-trips/

Tudor Farmhouse Hotel - you'll love it! — Tudor Farmhouse Hotel – you’ll love it!

5th March 2016

The Pantry

village shop, David Broadbent Photography, village, shop, Deborah Flint, Cinder Hill Farm, local, service, village life, rural, UK, England,

Whenever one reads anything about rural services it is seldom good news. Cut backs and closures and the age old gripe that local businesses often loose out to supermarkets and shopping centres in terms of support from their locally based customers. It’s all too familiar a narrative we have come to associate with local rural services in last few decades. But one village in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire is bucking that trend and may even be an example of how the market may change for the better in the coming years.

St Briavels, the picturesque village purchased 800 foot (240 m) up on the edge of a limestone plateau above an ancient meander of the valley of the River Wye is packed with history including its very own castle. The hot news is, it also now has a local shop – just opened – to add to its list of services. That’s right, a village shop that has just opened!!

On the face of it this story is a great rural news story about a new village shop. One which stocks great produce offers great, friendly and knowledgeable service. But it could also be a metaphor for the dynamic of changing rural life evolving because of the way we work as a society.

The Pantry (opposite the local pub) is a modest but nonetheless extremely welcome, well appointed, very bright and airy shop in the true tradition. It is owned and run by Deborah Flint, half of the innovative and lovely people from the desperately successful (and very nearby) Cinder Hill Farm. The engine of the Cinder Hill Pie House success was good olde “word of mouth” from those who had tried their fabulous homemade pastry wrapped pies, sausage rolls and “Foggies”. We think that the enormous marketing engine that is “word of mouth” will soon make this little haven of village retail goodness as successful as the farm in growing a rural business – and that seemed to have worked out well!

New village shop in a traditional style.

On the day we visited the shop there was a steady flow (even in what Deborah called the quieter 2-3 slot) of customers. Locals buying milk and eggs and ordering bread for the weekend, frantic tourists desperately in search of some batteries for a gadget followed by more locals seduced by the small but very well curated selection of local cheeses and, of course, Cinder Hill’s Foggies and Boar sausage. The most noticeable thing was that not many customers arrived by car. Even the tourists were lodging in the Castle youth hostel 500 yards away.

In one of those quirks of fate that sees Deborah cutting cheese from the various wheels on offer only to find that they weigh exactly the same, the opening of the shop 3 weeks ago on 5^th February 2016 coincided with the closure of the last village shop 10 years before. On the day they opened a villager brought in a newspaper cutting about the closure of the much loved “Dot’s”. Exactly 10 years ago! How does that happen?

So we have a new shop – Yay! It’s bright, clean and airy. Well stocked with a mix of staple products and great locally made produce. Great bread (from the Crusty Loaf and Longhope Bake house), free range chicken and duck eggs, lovely cheeses and much more. Homemade tray baked chocolate cake sold by weight so you can cut as much as you like and good coffee to accompany your cake or pastry. Deborah is on hand at the helm with a bright smile and a chatty disposition to all which is the outward expression of her commitment to the quality of service The Pantry aims to provide.

It isn’t just about where a business is situated that makes it a “good local service”. When some business owners talk about supporting local services they have a tendency to assume that the” local” bit is most important. Any consumer will tell you that those businesses have got it completely wrong. The “service” bit is by far the most important part of the equation. You could be next door but if your service is bad, I’m sorry but I’m off to the competition! There also seems in our view to be an anecdotal correlation between business owners those who misinterpret the local /service balance to those complaining about lack of support – connection perhaps?

Neither Deborah nor her other half Neil had any background in farming when they opened Cinder Hill five years ago. But even that story has a hint of the just get on with and trade approach that would make Lord Alan Sugar swoon and reminisce about the old days.

Deborah and Neil landed at Cinder Hill for their version of The Good Life and five years ago from two pigs, found themselves suddenly with a surfeit of 23 little porkers to deal with. Their butcher (still very much associated with them today) helped by creating cuts and products that the two would be farmers from a fund raising and IT background needed. Deborah made sausage rolls and immediately threw herself into mastering the local market trade too. Her very first attempt to sell their product left her with, a surfeit of sausage rolls which she sold the very same day by going door to door in the village!

One of the problems (for that read several) about being a small local producer is the age old issue of getting your goods to market. We produce fantastic local produce in the Dean & Wye but, to be a success, that produce also needs to be sold. What then better than a new local outlet that can be that shop front for those great producers?

The Forest of Dean & Wye Valley demographic has changed drastically over the years. Rural village populations have been gradually changing everywhere to a mix of born and bred and incomers. St Briavels has a healthy balance of both. Amongst those incomers serving the long apprenticeships to be recognised as here long enough to be called local are the professions and the blue collar workers tired of living in the conurbations. It’s the people who covet rural life and a rural place to bring up their families. What’s changing even faster that that is the way we work now and will work in the future. More emphasis on working from home, family friendly hours and (at last) improving rural broadband provision that makes working from home much more feasible for everyone. You could almost say that St Briavels is a model, a small wormhole on what “work” may look like in another ten years’ time. All of those people who used to leave in the dark mornings of winter only to return home in the dark evenings of winter turning villages into little more than dormitories are now trickling back. They travel to their actual place of work less and less often instead of daily and are returning to a village home life that will have more in common with a 100 years ago then 10.

18th February 201629th June 2016

Tudor Farmhouse Menu Exclusive

Tudor Farmhouse Hotel, Clearwell, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, David Broadbent Photography, Rob Cox, fine dining, restaurant,

The chic and stylish boutique hotel in Clearwell village is launching a new addition to their menu for 2016. Their All Day Grazing menu is a super tasty collection of “small plates” just right for a flavour and luxury boost for a quick lunch as you are passing, after a walk or other outdoor activity or just to catch up with a friend over something nice to eat. It’s also by way of a tasting menu for the main al a carte service and lunchtime set menus and so is a great opportunity to sample what you may like to order in a later restaurant meal.

We caught up with Colin Fell co-owner at Tudor Farmhouse and his Head Chef Rob Cox for an exclusive first view and tasting of the new menu. Colin told us “The new menu is available daily between noon and five o’clock for all of our customers. We have afternoon tea, great sandwiches and desserts and the small plate service selected from our main restaurant menu. It’s the Tapas concept done in our own unique Forest of Dean & Wye Valley style”.

WyeDean Deli Confidential had been invited to a pre-launch taster of the small plates and we have to say that we were very impressed! We’ve already tasted a couple of the dishes in their al a carte form like cauliflower steak now the main ingredient in a salad with radish and capers – delish! A smaller portion of the superb pan fried stone bass is also on the grazing menu and it looked fantastic on spinach and Rob’s colourful swede puree, and it tasted exactly how we loved it last time. There is a brown crab mouse with turnip and sea vegetables which, was so very subtly flavoured and a tour de force of presentation (as was everything else). Vegetables are a great and underused (creatively) ingredient as Chef Rob put it – “there are many more varieties of veg and ways to cook them than cuts of meat if you think about it – just as varied and tasty an option as an ingredient or a centrepiece”.

Rob has really established himself in the Forest & Wye since coming to Tudor Farmhouse. Originally from Lancashire and trained in Manchester, Rob’s previous position at Michael Caines’ Restaurant “Abode” in the cities heart at Manchester Piccadilly sees a complete contrast in surroundings for him. Tudor Farmhouses’ concept of buy great, buy local is a concept Rob likes and is familiar with. Quality comes first and as many of the ingredients as possible are sourced locally.

But, back to the plates. The Venison tartare looked stunning with a wafer thin slice of beetroot and topped with a garden of greens punctuated with bright juniper. The 24 hour braised beef featherblade on mash with a red wine sauce hit all of those lovely meaty tones and the texture of the meat went perfectly with the creamy mash and rich sauce. The received wisdom on the featherblade cut (from the front shoulder blade of the cow) which is packed with flavour, was that it should only ever be cooked rare. Rob’s innovation takes it the other way and braises it for a whole day and it tastes really great! If you are a meat eater – you’ll want to try this…

Colin had another treat in store for us and we sampled the a la carte serving of braised pheasant and roasted parsnips. Just looked fantastic and with a complimenting textures and flavours of pearl barley, quince and some fab looking mushrooms. A real country lunch or dinner plate!

The portions were just right for an on-the-go daytime treat and the menu has a wide variety to suit everyone’s taste. Dishes start from just £4 with the most expensive at £8 so they are great value for this standard of cooking in the chilled out environment of Tudor Farmhouse. And if you are really torn, are really hungry or just can’t decide – you can always have another – tapas DeanWye style!