342. Here Comes The Rain Again …. Ludlow 2023 Final Day.

 

  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.

264. Ludlow Food Festival 2022.

 

  The Ludlow Food Festival has had its ups and downs. Two years ago, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, the live event was cancelled and the organisers had to resort to an on-line only festival but at least the show did go on. This year’s was suddenly faced with the nightmare decision of whether to cancel or not in the face of the sudden death of our late Queen and the prolonged period of national mourning which took place as a result. The show went on but with the compromise that the national flag (in this case, curiously I thought, the national flag of England rather than the Union Jack) would be flown at half-mast on the castle’s tower, a minute’s silence was to be held and no music was played during the festival (which to many would be a relief even at ordinary times). The weather was generally moderate and Lucy The Labrador and I had a generally happy time, she sniffing the entire grounds to seek out dropped food and I listening to a good number of the food demonstrations from mostly West Midlands chefs while she snoozed at the edge of the tent.

  The first worthwhile demonstration was by Chris Simpson of the Michelin-starred Pensons’ of the Netherwood Estate on the Herefordshire and Worcestershire border. I have not yet visited Pensons’ and I know that I must.

  Jason Christie, Head of Fermentation at Daylesford Farm Organics, demonstrated, as you would expect, fermentation as well as showing how to cook fish by means different from the chef at the next demonstration I attended, the first on Saturday, that by Stuart Collins of Docket No. 33 in Whitchurch (see Blog 182).

  One speaker who received far too much exposure at the Festival (3 separate demonstrations, one of which would have been quite enough) was Howard Middleton, the Tommy Cooper of British baking, who was last year generally funny in his ineptitude but this year was more a case of ‘you’ve seen him once and you don’t really need to see him again’ (let alone three times). He might have lightened the mood if the Festival had been rather sombre as a result of The Queen’s death but generally it was going along perfectly satisfactorily. People were eating and buying and holding on to their dog leads, Olde England was mourning but still getting on with things including this historic food festival.

  A real highlight of the festival is the Fire and Feast event on the Saturday evening. I attended for the second year having feasted right royally in 2021. As darkness descended on this magical scene (well, magical might not be quite the right word but, with a couple of cocktails inside me, it does convey the thrill I experienced being there with the fires burning and the tables all set up in the ruined banqueting hall) the eighty or so diners settled down to a quite fabulous feast of local smoked cheese and superb local charcuterie with figs and fine bread having previously been served a delicious and lovely piece of kid meat. What followed was astronomically good - supremely delicious and tender beef, of the highest quality, covered in truffle with a potato salad drizzled with an excellent, perfectly spicy chimchurri and served with charred, er, chard and gorgeously sweet carrots. There was a sort of apple crumble to follow with, I think, oats for the crumble but this was not really immensely enjoyable though the apple itself was very good.

  Back to Fishmore Hall where I was staying, at 10PM, the market square almost deserted after a day which had seen thousands of people walking through it to get to the castle.

 Sunday morning brought a double act demonstration by Mark Harris of The Pheasant Inn in Neenton and Reuben Crouch of CSons in Ludlow and Shrewsbury.

  If, like the Edinburgh Festival, Ludlow were to have the Festival’s best joke competition, Crouch and Link would undoubtedly have won with - 

   Reuben Crouch,  “I was going to put all the mushrooms into the pan …”

   Mark Harris, “But there wasn’t mush room!”.

Andy Link of Riverside Inn, Aymestrey gave an interesting overview of the trials and tribulations of recent years and highlighted the dab as a good flat fish to serve.

  He pointed that what you write on a menu really does matter and gave the example that when he featured gurnard on his mention there were very few takers for it but when he changed the fish’s name on the menu to the ancient name of it, sea robin, its popularity as a diners’ choice soared. It was formerly known as the sea-robin because, not surprisingly, its under-thorax is red.

The last demonstration I attended was that by Nick Bennett of Old Downton Lodge outside Ludlow and rather remote. This is another restaurant I have been meaning to visit for a long time. It does not do a lot of covers at any one time and the restaurant’s activity can be heavily influenced by the season, for instance it is heavily booked with the shooting season being upon us.

  Among my purchases were five large bags of Two Farmers crisps (at a very good price of £10 for five) produced in Herefordshire which I think are the tastiest and crispiest crisps I have ever had the pleasure to open a bag of, Two lovely pieces of ceramics from Stych Farm Studios and a copy of Angus D Birdett’s excellent new book A Portrait Of British Cheese which the author kindly signed for me, he being at the book stall at the time I bought it.

My new Stych Farm bowls -

  As Sunday afternoon drew to a close the crowds disappeared and I headed off for the walk back to Fishmore Hall. Sunday roast was on offer for dinner - 

  trout rilette, roast beef with seasonal vegetables and broccoli and leek gratin and what looked like a failed panna cotta with macerated cherries and cherry sorbet. The rillette was very agreeable, the beef was cooked magnificently and was as delicious as that I ate the previously evening at the castle and the accompanying vegetables highly enjoyable though the roast potatoes were not really crispy and I particularly enjoyed the broccoli and leek gratin - the flavour of the leek really shone through and the cheese was very tasty. The dessert was a bit of a hotchpotch (I think I was expecting a panna cotta but I don’t think things turned out as they should have done) but there was plenty of cherry flavour in the sorbet and macerated cherries to ensure satisfaction with it.

  And so to bed. Exhausted by food and exercise. 

  I hope that next year the Festival organisers can come up with some new interesting West Midlands chefs as most of this year’s chefs had been seen before and there are chefs local to Ludlow and nearby who have not yet made an appearance. The festival may be becoming mildly stale not just in the chefs presenting but also the food stalls. Now it seems to be more about alcohol than food - anyone and everyone in the area seems to be making gin and flogging it off at the Festival.

  Still, the grand Sausage Trail remains a great draw as hundreds of people, myself and Lucy included, amble around the town tasting what the local butchers have on offer. This year’s samples were very good but not outstanding and it was difficult to identify a deserving winner but dog and man eventually settled on the fine blushed tomato sausage produced by Carter’s of Ludlow (no relation as far as I know to Carter’s of Moseley).

  So the Ludlow Food Festival, Britain’s original food festival carries on and I have already reserved my room at Fishmore Hall for the second weekend in September 2023.

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.