Come Sunday morning, the temperature in Ludlow had moderated somewhat but there was equally a degree of humidity in the morning air. This was the final day of the Ludlow Food Festival and there was a day packed with activities ahead.
The first event on the main stage was a double act of Neil Crouch of CSons on the Green and Mark Harris of the Pheasant Inn ar and Tally Ho at Church Stretton. This was 40 minute session of worthwhile culinary bandinage and was followed by a pleasing demonstration of the cooking of lamb rack by Louisa Ellis, now a private chef based in Nottingham, who had been a finalist in the 2017 series of Masterchef The Professionals and had one the Christmas Masterchef competition with an Asian-based meal of Wagyu beef, spiced shrimp emulsion, tempura enoki and Szechuan spiced potato and Lime yogurt mousse with a mango and yuzu centre, lemon granita, compressed mango and pineapple and ginger crumb.
I had been looking forward to a demonstration by Chris Simpson of Pensons but he was unable to attend and so I headed for lunch and joined the long queue at the Beefy Boys stall feeling that I must continue my brief foray into burgers after my experience earlier in the week at Simpsons. The heavens opened and torrential rain gushed on to the castle grounds. Fortunately, though never a Boy Scout, I was prepared and had brought an umbrella with me and so managed to avoid a drenching while queuing for my The Beefy Boy. This was a burger, cooked to my liking, with bacon and cheese and mayonnaise, the latter of which rendered much of the bread soggy and not pleasant. It was tasty for sure but reinforced my doubts about the pleasures of street food. Time perhaps to take another break from burgers.
I ate my burger, sheltered from the deluge, in the main demonstration tent listening to a talk on Indian cuisine and then moved on to the highlight of the day which was the talk given by Dr Neil Buttery, chef and historian, on the life and works of Elizabeth Raffald, a remarkable Yorkshire woman, who, as Dr Buttery pointed out, did more to establish traditional English cuisine than the rather more famous Mrs Beeton who seems to have plagiarised, as did many others, the work of Mrs Raffald.
This was a fascinating and revelationary talk, nicely delivered by Buttery and at the end, I was delighted to add Dr Buttery’s book, author-signed, to my culinary library.
There was one more demonstration to attend before I departed the castle grounds for another year - that by Andrew Tabberner, Head Chef and Co-owner of the Gaerwen Arms, which had unfortunately recently burned down and it was impressive to hear him talk of his plans to bounce back from this misfortune.
Back to Fishmore Hall for dinner in the ‘bistro’ and a wonderful & memorable dish, served as a starter, of smoked trout rillette with avocado, cucumber and trout roe. This was a lovely dish for summer, or even an Indian summer, being refreshing, cool, fresh, light. I thought it was delightful.
I little expected to be eating another burger that evening but I surprised myself when I chose to do so and this time it was a buttermilk and paprika marinaded fried chicken - tasty though I should have liked the coating to be a little crispier - with an equally tasty red pepper and onion relish, chipotle mayonnaise and little gem lettuce plus some excellent chips and a less exciting collection of leaves which I suppose are necessary but rarely give me any pleasure wherever I encounter them.
For dessert I enjoyed the light and pleasing rhubarb posset with poached rhubarb and ginger crumble and ice cream. This was a pleasing, unpretentious meal and it gave me a lot of pleasure. And with it, my visit to the Ludlow Food Festival drew to a close for another year.
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