Review: Koyal, Surbiton

Koyal is the third branch of the Dastaan empire. Unlike their Leeds restaurant, this time they’ve opened just a couple of miles up the road in Surbiton. It should make a big difference though: Dastaan is on a suburban shopping parade miles from the nearest train station, meaning anyone from central London has quite the …

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Ukiyo

Review: Ukiyo Hand Roll Bar, Covent Garden

So I need to foreshadow this review. I love sushi and sashimi, except for one element of it. The thin seaweed sheet used for wrapping rice in various sushi forms. It’s often hard to bite through, and the texture is neither crispy nor yielding. It’s essentially the closest thing to chewing on paper that exists …

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Review: Liu Xiaomian, The Jackalope, Marylebone

Needing lunch, we settled on noodles at Liu Xiaomian, which has been cooking in the basement of the Jackalope pub in a quiet Marylebone mews for a few years now. This really isn’t one of the modern, polished, faux-street-food restaurants that have been springing up all over the trendy corners of London recently (most of …

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Review: Bala Baya, Southwark

So. Bala Baya describes itself as a Middle Eastern restaurant, as do a few review sites that perhaps keep their info updated. But older reviews and articles, that no-one ever updates, call it an Israeli restaurant. It doesn’t take much nouse to realise why they have re-badged themselves “Middle Eastern” as thoroughly as they can! …

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Review: Som Saa, Spitalfields

One of the first new-breed Thai restaurants in London, I was put off visiting Som Saa for a long while due to a sad episode of racism tangled up with the restaurant six years ago (here’s a relevant Twitter thread). But we were at Spitalfields and needed lunch, and I’m optimistic enough to hope that …

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Review: Koyal, SurbitonReview: Ukiyo Hand Roll Bar, Covent GardenReview: Liu Xiaomian, The Jackalope, MaryleboneReview: Bala Baya, SouthwarkReview: Som Saa, Spitalfields

Ludlow Food Festival

Categories:

Events and Visits

15 September 2011

Pickles, relishes, chutneys and preserves as far as the eye can see
I can’t decide how to write about the Ludlow Food Festival. For a start, we’ve been to it a few times before; the first time was about seven years ago “before it was famous.” So of course a whole lot of it is familiar. Festivals are rather like film sequels, it’s very rare for your second visit to recreate the magic of your first.

But we’re actually living in Ludlow now and it seemed daft not to go when it’s only a five minute walk from our front door. No worries about how many beers, wines and ciders to sample! Nor about buying too much stuff; we took a break around lunch to deposit a load back home and have a cuppa. Then we plunged back in to taste and buy some more. It’s a hard life.

There certainly were plenty of great producers and makers at the show. Among my favourites were:

  • Trealy Farm, fine British charcutiers who displayed dozens of beautifully prepared chorizos and salamis as well as an irresistable spicy boudin noir which I can now report is delicious with parsnip and potato mash
  • The Best of Taste Co, whose fruit sauces are intensely packed with fruit and exactly the right sweetness. Nothing better has ever been invented to put on greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream
  • Once Upon A Tree, who make ciders, perries and apple juice all with a great deal of class and elegance
  • Oliver’s, makers of the very best cider and perry I’ve ever had. The guy just has a gift with fruit and also looks after the Slow Food Presidium for perry. I like perry
  • Little Round Cake Co, a bakery from Shrewsbury whose stand was covered in delicious looking single-serving versions of old favourites such as the coffee cake that I took home and scoffed later

A medieval castle is a fairly splendid setting for a food fest
There were lots of others. Without even stopping to watch a cookery demonstration or listen to a talk we took a good six hours to explore the whole show in the baileys of Ludlow Castle. To be honest, I’m not really interested in sitting down to watch a famous chef cook something, certainly not unless I’m going to be eating it afterwards. But if that’s your thing then you could fill the day even fuller.

So that was Friday. On Saturday we did some of the Festival trails instead. The sausage trail involves wandering around the town trying a sausage from each of the four local butchers as well as a “guest butcher”. My winner was a black pepper Old Spot sausage from Andrew Francis. D W Wall had foolishly gone for brie and cranberry. Brie really has no place in a sausage, even I could have told them that. As though five sausages wasn’t enough, when you hand in your completed trail leaflet (so your score can go to deciding a winner) you get a free sausage in a bun of your choice.

The ale trail is even more up my street: fifteen different ales to try, each offered at a different pub around the town. Beer + moderate exercise = win. Also helped digest the sausages. I’ve found some of my favourite beers at past Ludlow ale trails, such as Hobson’s Mild and Twisted Spire. Alas, this year nothing really stood out for excellence, though several were good. Weirdness award goes to “Tonka beer” from the Ludlow Brewery, the tonka berries giving a very pronounced vanilla-y aftertaste to the ale. I’m a snob about putting flavours in beer, but in a moment of enlightened charity I’m going to admit that this worked quite well.

I can testify that these pies tasted as good and gamey as they look
When I started this article I was intending to moan about the crowds in the festival and the rugby scrum you have to push through for a sample nibble of some cheese or relish at a popular stand, and how I wished to visit an unpopular festival for a change so I could have it to myself. But it turns out that this is my most trivial recollection of last weekend and the Ludlow Food Festival remains a jolly good few days of food and booze.

I recommend it to all.

Tips to enjoying the Ludlow Food Festival

  1. Make a long weekend of it and visit the main festival in the castle on Friday – it’s less thronged
  2. Also stop in any of the butchers on Friday and buy a sausage trail ticket for Saturday, or you’ll be queuing for one on the day
  3. If you want to combine the festival with one of Ludlow’s Michelin restaurants, try booking six months in advance. Or more
  4. Oh yeah, and book accommodation very very early too

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Pattypan, stuffed

Categories:

Recipes, Showing off, Vegetarian

15 September 2011

Pattypan, stuffed
They look like inflatable flying saucers, they’ve got a cutesy name that makes me twitch whenever I say it, and they taste of nothing. Really nothing. Pattypan (twitch) are a summer squash just like the courgette but they even manage to underperform the humble courgette on flavour.

Although that flying saucer shape is pretty cool.

To be honest I don’t think I’d ever buy one, even for the shape. I’d go for courgettes every time. But a squadron have landed in my brother’s veg plot and I can’t stand to see anything go to waste if I can possibly cook it in time.

It seems that everyone agrees these aliens are only good for one thing – stuffing and baking. Which makes sense; their flesh being firm, juicy and flavourless you need a bit of something tasty along with every mouthful. Bacon is of course the third condiment, after salt and pepper, so I started with a couple of rashers and checked what else was lying around…

Stuffed Pattypan (twitch)

This was for 2 pattypans, a good lunch for two

  1. Steam your pattypans (twitch) for ten minutes to get them cooking, or boil in an inch of water if you don’t have a steamer
  2. Cut the top with the stem off, just like you would a pumpkin, and scoop out the seeds; they’re even more useless than the flesh, so ditch ’em. Scoop some flesh out too and set it aside, but don’t go too mad with the scooping; the skin is much thinner than a pumpkin and I suspect the whole thing will collapse if it doesn’t have a good thickness of flesh left to keep it solid
  3. For my stuffing I first fried up a couple of rashers of streaky bacon until crispy. The secret to crispy bacon is frying on a looooow hob, leave them gently sizzling in their own fat until all their white bits have gone brown. If you fry bacon at high temperature parts will burn before other parts are brown
  4. Bacon done, I sautéed chopped onion and celery (thanks, bro’s veg patch) for a bit in the bacon fat and added finely chopped chilli and garlic. Use whatever quantity you feel comfy with.
  5. Add the chopped pattypan (twitch!) flesh and do a bit more gentle sizzling
  6. Season your sauté (that’s salt, pepper and the bacon chopped into little bits) and add a handful of breadcrumbs, that’s the cooking done. Finally throw in a good handful of grated cheeses, on this occasion it was a mix of parmesan, gruyere and cheddar as they were all down to their heels
  7. This mixture now gets stuffed back into the (twitch) and the tops put back on because it looks cuter that way
  8. You want to roast them in an oven at about 180C. I rubbed olive oil over the skin first, which just helps it to brown rather than blacken if it is in the oven a bit long. It could probably stay in there for ages, but about 20-25 minutes should be fine. Basically, don’t let them blacken.
  9. Grind some pepper on top and serve with whatever bits of salad you see fit

Outside in the garden more flying saucers are swelling on the stem as we speak, so this recipe is likely to be recurring with variations very soon.

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