Pickled beetroot & Chilli Jam

I had another trip to the Sunnyfields farm shop and market yesterday and couldn't resist picking up a couple of local items that I haven't tried before! These were Sunnyfield's own pickled beetroot and a jar of chili jam. I also picked up a bottle of English extra virgin, cold pressed rape seed oil, which I have blogged about before (see here) and makes a truly viable alternative to olive oil.

I'm quite a fan of pickled beetroot, since my parents used to make their own when I was young. Funnily enough, I don't think I liked it very much then! But, my tastes have changed a bit since then. Anyway, I had a simple salad for my lunch today, making use of chili jam and the beetroot. I also used some local eggs and some bread which I also got at Sunnyfields.

There are two cheeses here - a basic cheddar from the supermarket and some Lyburn Winchester Mature, which is very good.

The symbol to the left of the label on this cheese is the 'New Forest Marque', for which more information is available here. This seems like quite a good idea and apparently ensures that 'high standards of welfare and husbandry' have been applied (in the case of meat products, of course!). I have to say that whilst browsing around the market stalls at the Sunnyfields market, I noticed at least one alternative symbol apparently designating an origin within the New Forest area. I presume that this would be an unofficial symbol, so wouldn't indicate any kind of official endorsement. I shall blog on this subject again when I find out more.

Blacksticks Blue cheese

I tried this cheese the other day. I'm generally a fan of blue cheese, so I though I'd give this one a go. I have to say, it's fairly good! I enjoyed it with biscuits, always the best way to enjoy cheese in my opinion. Well, crusty bread works well to I suppose, but biscuits felt the way to go in this case. I'm not sure how best to describe it really, it's kind of creamy like Stilton, but maybe not as much. The flavour was subtly different as well, I recommend giving it a try!

According to the British Cheese Board (http://www.britishcheese.com/why_eat_cheese), 65% of adults admit that cheese is one of their favourite foods. Well, there you go.

Tebay Service Station

I recently had cause to visit the Tebay service station on the M6, whilst driving down from Edinburgh. You might well ask why this is so interesting, given that there are plenty of service stations along the M6, why should this one be so unique? Good question, but as far as I am aware, Tebay is relatively famous in the world of motorway service stations. At least part of the reason for this is that it has a fabulous shop that sells all kinds of local produce range from food such as sausages and vegetables, to various craft items. In short, given my interest in British produced food, I could hardly drive by without popping in! Actually, I had hoped to visit during my original EatingBritish year, but somehow never quite had the time (I was also without a car for much of it, so that didn't help either).





I didn't stop for as long as I would have liked really, since I still had about 300 miles to go and was keen to keep moving. However, I wondered around the shop and they do indeed sell an amazing array of local produce. In the end, I bought some lamb, cranberry and orange sausages and, in keeping with my efforts to work my way through all the different cheeses produced in Britain, some Blue Wensleydale cheese.


Both turned out to be really good! The cheese is wonderfully creamy, fairly similar to Stilton in flavour, but perhaps a bit rounder. The sausages, which I cooked in the oven (30 minutes, at 190C) and served with potatoes and peas (the way I nearly always do sausages), where absolutely delicious.

If it wasn't so far away, I would definitely go back! However, I will have to resolve to pop in if I am ever passing that way on the M6 again and I would recommend it as a good stopping point should you every find yourself over that way.

More information is available from their website:

http://www.westmorland.com/tebay

Cheese tasting

Whilst shopping the other day I noticed that Sainsbury's had a larger then usual selection of Cheddar, from different parts of Scotland. So, I thought it might be interesting to buy a selection and have a 'cheese tasting' session in the office at work.

I bought three different cheeses to start with: Rowan Glen mature cheddar (A), Isle of Bute mature coloured cheddar (B) and Orkney mature Scottish island cheddar (C). Here's a picture of the three cheeses:
After some discussion, we found the Isle of Bute cheddar to be very mild, while the Rowan Glen had a nice, creamy texture. The Orkney cheddar had quite a different texture, more waxy then the other two. In terms of taste, the Isle of Bute and the Rowan Glen were both quite similar. The Orkney cheddar had quite a distinctive flavour. Overall, the votes were as follows:

Rowan Glen: 3
Isle of Bute: 1
Orkney: 2

So, the Rowan Glen was the winner by a small margin.

Cheese cake

It turned out to be my turn for cake again last week! That's the third time since I started this eating British scheme back in August. Since I've been quite busy at work recently, I was tempted to go for a honey cake again, but this seemed far to boring. I'm an avid fan of Nigella Lawson's programme on BBC 2 and I had recently seen her making a cheese cake, which seemed very quick and easy. The challenge though, would be to make a version of it using British ingredients. I figured that the cheese would probably be the biggest problem. Cheese cake, and here I'm talking about the non-baked variety (I've never understood baked cheese cakes), is usually made using some form of extremely mild cream cheese, such as Marscapone. Clearly, this isn't a British cheese and although I briefly entertained the idea of making a cake using a large block of Stilton (the king of cheese, after all!), I thought that this might not be too popular with my colleagues at work. It was time to call in the professionals.

I called in at I J Mellis on Victoria Street, which is considered by many to be the best cheese shop in Edinburgh. I figured that if anyone was going to be able to help me, it would be them. It turned out that they didn't have anything suitable in stock, although the shop assistant assured me that they usually do and he was able to advise me that the cheese I was looking for was called "Crowdie", which is a famous Scottish cream cheese (you can learn more about it here: http://eatscotland.visitscotland.com/scottish_food/cheese/). He suggested that I should try the Jenners food hall. Luckily, this isn't too far away from Victoria Street and they did have some, so that was the cheese problem solved.

It then occurred to me that the next critical part of any cheese cake recipe is the base. Nigella makes her base by blending up broken digestive biscuits with butter, sounds simple, but are digestive biscuits really British? I don't think they normally quote a country of origin on most packs of biscuits, so I searched high and low in the Jenners food hall, but they didn't have any digestives at all. I didn't really want to go hunting around Edinburgh for biscuits as it was getting late, to it was time to deploy my trusted problem solving technique. I went and had a cup of tea.

Feeling refreshed and inspired by the brew, I realised that oat cakes go well with cheese and so would probably make a reasonable base for a cheese cake. So, I purchased a couple of packs of plain, Scottish oatcakes. Once I got the ingredients home, it was a simple matter of following the standard cheese cake recipe. I broke up the oatcakes and blended them with some butter to form the base material, which I then pressed into the bottom of a round, spring-form cake tin. I think mixed the Crowdie cream cheese with caster sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice, before gently folding in some whipped double cream. I then gently spooned this over the base and left it in the fridge over night to set.

I think it turned out rather well, although I have to say that the Crowdie cheese really does taste of cheese, which made for an interesting flavour when mixed with the cream, sugar and lemon juice. The key test was that several of my colleagues had second helpings, so it can't have been all that bad!

Hawthorn berries

Gosh, it's been a while since I last posted! My excuse is that I've been away - a trip down to Southampton on business, London to visit some family and Lincolnshire. All good, but not too easy to keep up with the eating British thing!

Anyway, back now and aiming to try some new British food! While I was in Lincolnshire, I attempted to make fruit leather from Hawthorn berries, following a recipe I heard about from the TV programme with Ray Mears, called "Ray Mears' Wild Food". I collected a large bowl of berries and then squished them all up with my hands to form a paste which I then pushed through a strainer, as I saw on the programme. However, the berries seemed rather dry, so I had to add quite a bit of water to make it go through. I then left the paste to set - it turns into quite stiff jelly quite quickly. Then, I cut this into strips and dried them in the oven. It should be fairly simply, but I must have done something wrong since by the time a got back to Edinburgh, they had started to go mouldy :-( Oh well, the search for a source of winter vitamin C continues!

I tried a new British cheese today - Cornish Camembert, made by Cornish Country Larder Ltd (http://www.ccl-ltd.co.uk). I used it in my sandwiches for lunch and it was really good, with a lovely, creamy texture. It went well with sliced tomatoes and a little salt and pepper.

I don't know how much longer I'll be able to get hold of British tomatoes, so I plan to try to preserve some. I havn't yet decided how to do this, but I shall investigate. Watch this space!