206. Christmas In The Marches.

 I spent a lot of time in Shropshire in 2021. Where England ends and wild Wales begins. So it was only fitting that for the second consecutive year the labrador and I should check ourselves into Fishmore Hall on the outskirts of Ludlow and settle in for six lazy days of extended Christmas pleasure. The hotel, with its Michelin-plated restaurant, Forelles, has now featured in a number of these Blogs over the years. It’s comfortable, smart, friendly and stylish, a chance to be that little bit Georgian (it was built in 1820 when that fat old hedonist, The Prince Regent, finally made it and became George IV) and yet have all the comforts of 2021 including face masks and anti-viral hand fluids. The considerate hotel guest may indulge in hand washing but not dish washing which is a perfectly satisfactory compromise for a happy 2021 Christmas, I think.

  The hotel was offering a vast number of gustatory experiences in its Christmas programme - two ‘afternoon’ teas, 2 fine dining dinners in Forelles, a Christmas lunch served in Forelles and a Christmas night buffet. No complaints of skimping were possible.

  I will not enlarge on some of the dishes served in some of the above meals because as a not-infrequent visitor I had experienced them before and written about them in this Blog. But here are a few highlights not previously covered and which should help to ensure Michelin’s continuing recommendation of Forelles when it’s 2022 Guide is published.

Let’s start with Christmas lunch. I chose a starter of very nicely prepared gin cured confit salmon served with little pieces of red and yellow beetroot, caper and dill mayonnaise and shards of toasted soda bread. A fine start particularly as it had been preceded by a rather large and tasty amuse bouche described as ‘celeriac, truffle and cep’:-

  Then the roast turkey indisputably with “all the trimmings”. Elegance had perhaps been thrown out of the window - thank God, I say - and although the plate looked more rustic than you usually spot in Forelles much of it was excellent - the turkey very nicely cooked and moist, a good apricot and chestnut stuffing, a cheeky little pig-in-blanket, a tasty, silky gravy, a bread sauce which might have had a little more flavour but nice to see it there, cranberry sauce and a joyous collection of vegetables including finely crispy duck fat roast potatoes with, for me, only the little sprouts not riotously pleasurable - controversial I know, but I do prefer my sprouts to be firm rather than hardish and I should have enjoyed them more if they had been cooked for a little longer. Nevertheless, it all made for a very enjoyable and happy Christmas lunch main course.

  The pre-dessert was delicious and could have been enlarged into an excellent dessert - a blackberry sorbet with blackberries and Ludlow Gin’s wonderful Betelgeuse liquor - highly pleasurable. 

  A man has to know when he’s beaten and I was not capable of consuming the dessert proper but the little pieces of Christmas pudding or sticky ginger cake presented to other guests looked delightful. So here was Christmas lunch and much pleasure had been experienced while consuming it. Time for a snooze knowing that someone else was responsible for washing the used dishes.

    After a snooze and a walk with Lucy The Labrador and a catch up on what the The Queen had to say and after the grey-skied short day had given way to the very dark, silent, long mid-winter night, the hotel offered a sensibly modest but generally delicious light hot and cold buffet. There was plenty to chose from and I won’t enlarge on it except to show a photograph of my happy plate of nibbles, pleasingly weighed down by a delightfully tasty slice of marmalade glazed ham, a sticky chicken thigh, a game sausage roll and a very satisfactory potato salad. I went back to the table in a state of joyful gluttony unable to resist the smoked salmon, the blue cheese, pear and walnut salad, and the chicken liver pâté with a sliver of warm sourdough but I failed sadly to rise to the occasion and to try the root vegetable fattoush, the selection of local cheeses and, apart from a mini-mince pie the sweet delights of the Christmas fruit cake (well I had had some at tea-time) and the Yule log. All in all a Christmas spread to put a smile on the face of Mr Pumblechook.

A Christmas supper fit for MrPumblechook.

   Other Fishmore Christmas fayre that should be mentioned were the excellent teas - a special ‘Festive’ version which included enjoyable apricot, chestnut and sage sausage roll, bacon leek and Gruyère quiche, Brie and cranberry toastie, turkey, stuffing and onion marmalade sandwich and prawn cocktail sandwich, white chocolate and cinnamon macaroon, a merry little glass of sherry trifle, Black Forest opera cake and two sorts of scones - fig and orange and ‘classic’ plain served with mulled berry jam and brandy clotted cream - and the (far from) standard tea which included a wondrous dainty little orange and sea buckthorn opera cake. As a result I resolved, transiently admittedly,  to devote my life to the consumption of opera cakes. Sadly I did not photograph the opera cake but I shall return to Fishmore in a couple of month’s time and will record the little darling’s picture for posterity then though it lives for the present in my mind’s eye. The hotel’s pastry chef is Chloe Wednesday (see Blog 126) and a fine pâtissier she is too.

  Let’s close with Boxing Day dinner in Forelles.  I chose the pleasing chicken and leek raviolo as starter and for the main course the splendidly green watercress risotto made acutely delicious by the presence of slices of exquisitely sweet charred sweetcorn and the crunch of hazelnut and pieces of mozzarella. A great dish far more enjoyable than the stuff a good many purely vegetarian dish-serving chefs manage to come up with. I’m lusting after it again now as I write this. The dessert was a little sponge containing a salted caramel sauce accompanied by a little macaroon and a green apple sorbet. No complaints there.

  And that’s that. My Marches Christmas is now a few days past but I am not downhearted as Lucy and I are already booked in at Fishmore for Christmas 2022 (God, COVID and Boris willing). And the 2022 gastronomic adventure in Birmingham and the West Midlands is about to begin. The experts are predicting that this year is going to be all about increasing veganism as carnivorous bastions fall to the sweeping tide as well as the rush to get umami hits from sea greens, soy and truffle and a gastronomic ‘climatarianism’ fad which involves eating a diet based on reducing the diners’ carbon footprint. We’ll see.

126. A Lost Year But A Happy Christmas.

 

Just when Birmingham and the West Midlands seemed to be doing so well from the gastronomy point -of-view along comes one of God’s smallest creatures, or perhaps it’s one of The Devil’s smallest creatures, which men named Coronavirus, and sets about wrecking everything. COVID-19 also followed straight on from flooding in some west midlands towns which had already done a lot of damage.

 Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, most of our distinguished restaurants have so far survived this year of lockdowns and tiers and eat out to help out by turning to producing expensive takeaways where the diner became partially the chef and entirely the waiter. Where there’s a will there’s a way. The general ability to think innovatively and work hard has for centuries been the hallmark of the pragmatic midlander, not cosseted like self-preening Londoners or self pitying like some whining northerners, which is why Birmingham restaurants have held out so long, they’ve got on with it pragmatically and often with a sense of humour and determination to overcome all odds even when things seemed to continue to get worse no matter how hard they tried. The city was devoid of people but our restauranteurs found a way. Let us hope that a rapid roll out of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine will soon be bringing back the diners who, let’s face it, probably have not spent much money at all during 2020 on rest and relaxation. If restaurants can hold on a little longer then a boom time may be awaiting them.

  Fortunately Birmingham was not placed in Tier 4 over Christmas unlike the south-east, birthplace of the new London variant of COVID-19, and Shropshire was still able to keep its hotels and restaurants open being in Tier 2 (until today which seems unkind as Covidity rates in the county remain startlingly low compared with elsewhere) and so the dog and I were able to pass our long-booked Christmas in Ludlow at Fishmore Hall in our own little bubble of one dog and one man.

 

What a delightful place it is to pass the Christmas break and each day was remarkably different - Wednesday somewhat wet and cold, Thursday dull and a little damp but not cold, Friday (Christmas Day) gorgeous, clear blue skies, bright sunshine, crisp with a lovely sunrise and a spectacular sunset, Boxing Day damp and increasingly rainy culminating in Storm Bertha overnight with rain and wind which decreased over Sunday until we woke to snow on Monday morning. 

  No matter the weather I feasted well in Fishmore Hall with the deputy chef Chloe Wednesday overseeing Christmas lunch (her proud parents were at the next distanced table) and I indulged in classic Christmas turkey, a very rich (perhaps a little too rich for me) chestnut and apricot stuffing, a pig in blanket, generous helpings of 6 different vegetables (nothing succeeds like excess) and a very unctious gravy/sauce. For my starter I had enjoyed a pleasingly thick roast carrot and cumin soup with little chunks of pickled cucumber which really lifted the dish along with an onion bharji which served as a tasty crouton. Dessert took the form of a Bailey’s crème brûlée which was just right after a very sizeable main course.

 

 

  

Chloe had been the pastry chef/sous chef at Fishmore Hall (before Joe Gould took up his post I think) and so I expect she was responsible for some of the splendid pastries and cakes served up at the two Afternoon teas (really it’s quite alright just to call them Teas) which were included in my Christmas package. My favourite had to be the Lemon and raspberry Battenburg but she also provides exquisite macaroons which on this occasion took the form of a blueberry and violet macaroon. Accompanying these two great pleasures was a splendid praline mousse with Tia Maria jelly and white chocolate (I’m not one for chocolate desserts but white chocolate does it for me every time. The savouries were a tasty little Coronation chicken sandwich, my favourite - a thoroughly enjoyable Ham hock, honey and mustard slider (I’ve gone so far in life without knowing until then what a slider is) and a smoked salmon, cream cheese and beetroot wrap. Least successful for me was a fine-looking but not terribly pleasant Tuna and red onion melt which would have been delightful without the aggressively favoured red onion in it which for a few moments alarmed me and made me wonder if I’d developed a disordered sense of taste. The tea was of course accompanied by very edible scones.

  Restauranteurs and diners will be pleased to see the back of 2020 I’m sure but when I’ve been allowed to do so I have had some grand meals here in Birmingham and our neighbouring counties. Keep fighting a little longer. There’s bound to be a dawn soon after this darkest Tier 4 night.