339. Heat Wave Engulfs Ludlow Food Festival!

 

  An Indian summer. Suddenly the sun notices a little place called England and unleashes its full force on the green and pleasant land. The heat to the Englishman who goes out in the midday sun, as do mad dogs, is something to be lived with and sweated through.

  Last year’s Ludlow Food Festival will be remembered as being the one where the castle flag flew at half mast to mark and mourn the passing of a much loved and remarkable monarch. This year’s - the twenty ninth - will be remembered as the one where chefs didn’t an oven to cook things in.

  It was all too hot for me to take Lucy The Labrador along with me but she relaxed in the cool of Fishmore Hall while I pounded the streets of Ludlow and perspired my way around the castle grounds looking around the stalls as the crowds built up and the demonstration theatres prepared to get underway.

  An impressive young chef who cooks for private functions, Harry Bullock, whose business is called Evatt & Bullock Co led off the series of demonstrations on the outer Bailey stage and delivered an impressive talk full of enthusiasm. He was followed by the more grizzled-looking fish expert, Mike Warner, whose demonstration of preparing a gurnard dish and a John Dory dish was fascinating and then I ambled around the stands again trying to keep out of the direct sunlight.

  Lunch was pleasingly in the cool indoors with a talk by, and opportunity to taste the pies made by, Andy Thomas of Mr T’s Pies based at Clun. Andy was indeed a great pie enthusiast and revealed that he longed for the day when Clun would become a special travel destination for those seeking out quality pies to enrich their lives. He revealed that his fantasy special pie would be a high quality chicken Balti pie but felt that it was difficult for him to obtain locally chickens of sufficient quality to use in his pies.

  We sample pieces of four pies - all of which were excellent - Shropshire’s very own fidget pie which contained Long Mynd pork and ham slow cooked in cider with mustard, local apples, dauphinoise potatoes and sage; Hare Hill mutton, pea and mint, Caramelised onion, potato, Cheddar cheese and mustard and Stilton and leek. My favourite was the mutton, pea and mint where the mint perfectly complemented the delicious mutton. Thomas’s pastry on all the pies was excellent.

  In the afternoon I attended a demonstration by Thom Bateman of The Flintlock at Cheddleton in Staffordshire. Bateman, we will recall, was beaten by Tom Shepherd in the Great British Menu Central Region final. His enthusiasm for his work and his degree of application to it shone through and reinforced the feeling that Lucy and myself must find our way to The Flintlock.

178. Ludlow Food Festival 2021.

 

 After a necessary year’s break (though there was an online version in 2020) the Ludlow Food Festival, Britain’s first, has returned to Ludlow Castle as autumn arrives in a timely way. Lucy The Labrador and I were in town for when the Festival opened its gates and I was surprised to see how many people were waiting to be admitted. 

 I attended all the talks from West Midlands chefs on the stage during the first day and broke them up by exercising the dog and visiting the fast food and other stalls. It was hard to believe that anyone was taking the pandemic seriously, no-one at all was wearing a mask, social distancing was a forgotten concept and the only visitors forced to keep their distance from the food tents were the multitude of dogs who, when you think about it, were probably a far lesser threat to the health of the humans than other humans. 

 The first speaker of the opening day was Reuben Crouch of C-Sons on The Green and C-Sons of Shrewsbury. He had been a speaker at the 2019 Festival and well worth listening to and he was the first speaker of the day to reflect on the difficulties of the pandemic and the possibly even greater difficulties now experienced by the hospitality industry due to the shortage of staff and the difficulties associated with supply problems.

  Well worth listening to was the Suffolk Food writer and Fisheries journalist, Mike Warner, who talked about preparing the various ingredients for a fruits de mer dish. The interviewer admitted she had never eaten an oyster so far in her life and was therefore encouraged by the audience, like a Collisium crowd gesturing a ‘thumbs down’ sign, to sample one, a fresh raw specimen. Warner advised that the best way to achieve most pleasure from the shellfish was to chew it and relish it slowly - first the salty, maritime “flavour of the ocean” followed by a sweetness and ending with a metallic burst. The interviewer was game though reluctant and with a moderate amount of gurning set about her task hardly with relish. She indicated that this might not only be her first oyster but also her last. 

  And then an enjoyable cooking demonstration by Andy Link, chef at the Riverside Inn in Aymestrey in Herefordshire. He had first spoken at the event about, I think 15 years ago as a mere lad, and now gave an account of his career and work in a fine restaurant in a Marches village and how he had dealt with the unique problems of the last 18 months.

  The final demonstration of the day on the Wardington’s original stage was by Mike Bullard, founder of the Butcher’s Social Club, now located in Dorridge. Bullard was asked about the evolution of his restaurant from a ‘pop-up’ in a butcher’s shop in Harborne, the several months of carrying on serving burgers and beer from there till he established himself in Henley in Arden. He found his restaurant was popular in the village but there was not sufficient passing trade and so he has recently moved on to the Forest Hotel in which The Butcher’s Social Club is now situated which offers greater opportunity for catering for events. He talked about how much of the restaurant’s meat is cooked in water baths (good for beef and lamb apparently, less so for pork) which greatly eases their preparation of large amounts of food. Well, each chef must choose what is best for his business but sous vide cooking may make good business sense but it often results in a less than satisfactory outcome for the diner - not so much Chef as artist as Chef as Swimming pool lifeguard. My enthusiasm for visiting the Butcher’s Social Club was considerably reduced by the prospect of everything there being largely cooked sous vide.

 

  In between listening to the talks, Lucy The Labrador and I toured the fast food stalls. Inevitably the longest queue was waiting at the Beefy Boys stall. My enthusiasm for burgers is usually only a little greater than my enthusiasm for food cooked sous vide but the previous evening I had had a perfect burger, precisely seasoned (which is the key) in the ‘Bistro’ (the former sitting room) of Fishmore Hall (it was accompanied by a sensuously delicious relish and very fine chips) and I resolved to see how the Beefy Boys burger matched up to the delight of the previous evening. I chose the Beefy Boys original burger - more simple and less encumbered with numerous additional ingredients - with its ‘original’ and ‘secret’ accompanying sauce. It was not really all that good. The Beefy Boys burger was desperately under-seasoned and the sauce unmemorable and really now one has to ask what all the fuss is about. Prize-winning in the past, I believe, but now nothing to place it in the firmament of great burgers. The number of customers queueing may say differently but it looks to me that the makers of this product have been living on old successes for far too long and need to take a long hard look at their tired product.

Beefy Boys burger, tired and underseasoned

The dog at least remained a fan

Fishmore burger, great chips, delicious relish

  The businesses occupying stalls at the Food Festival are little changed from previous years. There’s a wealth of local cheeses, ciders, ales, charcuterie, pies, meat, pottery, utensils, condiments, preserves, chutneys, relishes, breads, pastries, greengrocery and so on if you wish to buy. And very good it all lookks too. And of course there are countless opportunities to buy local gins from businesses around the area. Ludlow Gin is a major sponsor of the event but in name at least my favourite has to be Gun Dog Gin.