429. Ludlow Food Festival 2024. Part 2.

  It has to be said that the hottest ticket in town during the Ludlow Food Festival is that for the Sausage trail held on the Saturday. Instead of walking around several stations at different locations around the town including Grand Old Duke of York-style marching up and down the impressively steep Corve Street to visit Ludlow Brewery where one of the stations was located, all sausages are now consumed at the brewery which doesn’t help in the least as the spectre of trooping up Corve Street still remains if one intends to visit the rest of the festival located inside the castle grounds. But the Sausage trail, though no longer a trail, is still fun and popular and I always buy tickets for both myself and Lucy the Labrador though her walking is now very limited and I have to take her supply of sausages back to Fishmore Hall for her to enjoy rather than her making an in-person appearance at the Festival.

  Four local sausage makers were represented. The sausage from Morgan Country Butchers was the weakest, lacking the flavour of the others and encased in a vaguely impenetrable skin and I chose the mildly spicy pleasingly textured sausage from Ludlow Farm Shop as my favourite for 2024.

  And so to the second day of the Festival proper inside the castle. Clare Thomson, a food writer, gave an interesting cooking demonstration linked to her new book on vegetarian cooking and I then took the opportunity to wander around the large number of stalls selling cheeses and dairy products, charcuterie, sweetmeats, wines, cider, gin, kitchenalia, books, meat, studio ceramics and so on, surrounded by country folk, many with dogs of which Labradors made up a large percentage.

  If the Sausage Trail, now renamed The Battle of the Bangers, is a great pleasure, the Saturday evening fire feast in the medieval Banqueting hall has, up to now, been the most important single event at the Festival. Thus it was that I returned to the now largely deserted castle’s keep in the gathering darkness of the evening to join about 70 or so others for a meal which has always been a delight to in which to participate.

  The fire stage was dramatically lit by the huge pans cooking vast pieces of lamb, the meal being curated this year by chefs Samantha Evans and Shauna Guinn (collectively Hangfire) who introduced the meal to the salivating diners. As well as the large, admirably Kentucky-style cooked lamb cutlets the chefs had created an ovine equivalent of pancetta which they named lambchetta  (well, why not?). This was accompanied by a not entirely successful burnt leek gratin in which, it must be said, the leeks were delightfully sweet. There were also butter beans, cavelo nero, caramelised onions and black sheep gravy. The main was generously portioned and served aptly utterly rustic. The main problem was that service was, I suppose inevitably slow, and hence the dramatic dish was served, sadly, cold and this took away a lot of the pleasure of it. Still, it was an exciting platter and went down well.

  The starter had been served prior to going into the banqueting hall and was an excellent grilled Cornish sardines on Malvern sourdough toast with a tangy burnt tomato, lemon and coriander salsa. I would have happily consumed a double helping of it. Prior to the main course the now familiar and completely desirable Shropshire sharing platter of Shropshire salumi (Blackhurst beef bresaola, smoked collar, Shropshire chorizo, beer sticks, Appleby’s Cheshire (there are no Shropshire-made cheeses apart from Ludlow Blue made at the Ludlow Food centre and before you ask, Shropshire Blue is made in Lincolnshire, having been invented in Invernessshire, hence’local’ cheeses mainly originate in neighbouring Cheshire), White Cheshire, Double Gloucester, Appleby’s whey butter, grilled peaches and pears and rosemary and sea salt focaccia). This in itself would have been a worthy meal but the lamb was to follow as above.

  Finally a seasonal dessert of a ‘harvest-fired’ crumble of plump local blackberries and local apples. It was very good and a little too generously portioned for me but I needed a good stockpile of energy to see me through the walk back to Fishmore Hall.

  And so to Sunday. To be continued ….