Food & Drink Round-Up: June 2019

My round-up of food and drink highlights for June 2019 is a little different from previous months. That’s because towards the end of June I went off on my holidays to Anglesey. I’m posting from there right now and I’ll write about it later in July.

So, for now, here’s the best of the blog and from my social media for the first part of June 2019.

If you want to see what I got up to food-wise on Anglesey last year you can read my 2018 piece here: Anglesey: a great destination for food lovers.

STONE FARMERS’ MARKET

The first day of June saw me at Stone Farmers Market. Styling itself as ‘Staffordshire’s biggest and best’, the market is held on the first Saturday of every month (except January) and draws big crowds to the town. Among the fifty-odd stalls you’ll find local meat, preserves, cakes and breads and lots more.

Pork Pie

Among the goodies I picked up was this lovely pork pie from Powell’s. Now, regular readers will know I do bang on about Melton Mowbray pork pies as being the best. But I did like these, despite them (whisper it!) hailing from Shropshire. It had a good porky flavour and nice ratios of meat, jelly and pastry. Hand raised and without the pink, cured meat of inferior pies, it exhibited lots of the fine qualities of the Melton Mowbray gold standard.

I also bought two big pieces of smoked pancetta from the Lancaster Smokehouse. I often see them at street markets and nearly always buy some of this intensely flavoured meat. They call it Tuscany style and it’s cured with rosemary, bay and smoked garlic. It’s lovely browned and added to dishes like pasta sauce or sausage and bean stew.

Faggots

My shopping was pretty much all meaty, including white pudding plus something I hadn’t eaten in years: faggots. These came from the stall of Aston’s of Coven near Wolverhampton. The faggots went into the freezer when we got home and were eaten a few days later heated in some leftover belly of pork gravy, also from the freezer. We thoroughly enjoyed them.  For my taste, as someone who doesn’t like an overly strong offal flavour, the faggots had just the right amount of offally-ness.

The meaty theme continued with a sausage bap from farmers’ market regular Park Hill Farm, made with their own free-range pork.

Before heading off home we went for a walk along Stone’s pretty canal, stopping on the way back for a canal-side pint outside The Star pub.

GOURMET DINNER AT THE MOAT HOUSE

Even when you love a particular restaurant, it’s always a bit of a nail biter when taking someone else along for the first time. Will they like it? Will there even be something they fancy on the menu?

That was the case when I took big brother along to the Moat House Acton Trussell. He won’t like me saying this, but I find he’s the person I have to think most carefully about when considering what to cook for or where to take them to eat (and that includes the vegans and gluten avoiders). There’s quite a number of foods, flavours and textures he really doesn’t like so you usually have to discount at least half the menu.

Thankfully, the Moat House met with his approval. And, at just £39.95 for five courses of expertly cooked food, like the lovely lemon dessert and quail dishes you see above, the Gourmet Dinner met with my approval as the bill payer too, Read my review of our meal at the Moat House here.

A FULL SUNDAY

The white pudding bought at Stone Farmers’ Market turned up the next day as part of a big Sunday breakfast cooked by other half. Besides the white pud, there were fried eggs, smoked back bacon, black pudding and Staffordshire Sizzler sausages (all from Denstone Hall Farm Shop) plus roasted cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and toasted homemade bread.

A non-food digression

After breakfast, we went over to Derbyshire to see the well dressings at Tissington. I normally only post about food on here, but I must just show you one photo from the day. There are six wells in this beautiful village which, for a few days in Spring, are decorated with incredible images – all handmade using flower petals, leaves and other natural things. My favourite this year was Jonah & the Whale which included a willow sculpture of a whale’s tail or flukes. Stunning.

Next, it was off to my local town of Leek for the Totally Locally Leek Sunday Supplement market.

Chocolate & Lunch

Top of the list of stalls to visit was that of Seed Chocolate, the award-winning bean to bar chocolatier I wrote about here. I’d planned to get some of their Toasted White, but went for a new and tempting looking coconut malt with cacao nibs and sea salt instead.

Wonderfully creamy with a hit of salt at the end, it was hard to believe that the bar contained no added sugar. The sweetness came from coconut milk but also from lucuma, a fruit native to Peru. Another incredible bar from Seed Chocolate, who are also one of my latest recommendations as Staffordshire editor at Great Food Club.

With the showers coming and going, we decided to head to Getliffes Yard for something to eat.

Dating from the early nineteenth century, and still with the original cobblestones, Getliffe’s Yard has been transformed into a great example of why so many people love Leek. It’s a treasure trove of independent shops, businesses and cafes and, with an impressive glass roof, you don’t need to worry about the rain. Having the dog with us, we sat in the covered outdoor space of the Leek Bar and Grill where I had a well-filled club sandwich and a beer.

TRAVEL CUTLERY

I’d been meaning to get a set of travel cutlery for a while. Ever ready to get eating at a moment’s notice, we even keep shakers of salt and vinegar in the car in case of impromptu trips to the seaside with mandatory fish and chips.

But sometimes we need a little more equipment. Perhaps there’s a pork pie or Portuguese custard tart that needs dividing up. Or maybe a naughty street food seller is still dishing out single-use plastic forks and spoons, which we definitely don’t want.

Well, as you can see, I finally got around to purchasing some cutlery in June, just in time for food festival and picnic season. I decided to have a little fun with them too by getting my name engraved. Some people have flashy cars with personalised number plates. All Moorlands Eater needs is travel cutlery for less than a tenner.

JAMES COCHRAN TASTING MENU

A big highlight of my June was the tasting menu by James Cochran, hosted by The George at Alstonefield.

James Cochran is head chef at his London restaurant 12:51. But you might know him as 2018 winner of BBC2’S Great British Menu. There, he wowed the judges with dishes combining his Caribbean and Scottish heritage with influences from his home town of Whitstable.

The George at Alstonefield

The George has some great talent of its own in the kitchen too – take a look at this review of my first meal there and you’ll see what I mean. For the tasting menu they were also joined by another outstanding young chef, Louisa Ellis, who was in residence at The George for two weeks. If you’re a fan of that other BBC show that highlights up and coming chefs, Masterchef: The Professionals, then you may well have seen Louisa producing some wonderful looking dishes on her way to the 2017 finals.

Courgette Soup

Crab

Of the next two courses, I couldn’t quite decide which was my favourite of the whole meal. The first was picked white Devon crab in a katsu curry sauce. For me, this had just the right amount of tingling heat. On top were thin slices of crisp, sweet apple.

Scattered over and around were crunchy little nibs of almond and an icy frosting of cooling buttermilk.

Pork & Smoked Eel

The pork and smoked eel terrine that followed was firm and meaty, pieces of the bold flavoured fish studded through the porky slab. True to The George’s aim of using local produce, I later learned that the pork came from pedigree Saddlebacks at nearby Croft Cottage, as did the hogget, which featured later. Both were excellent.

On top of the rich terrine were dabs of subtly smoky whipped feta and sweet, refreshing cubes of watermelon. No doubt some would sneer that dehydrating peas is an overly chefy thing to do. But I loved the pretty green heaps, intensely flavoured and a delight to let melt on your tongue.

BBQ Leeks

More mild barbecue flavour next, in the form of a raft of tender, sweet leeks with cured egg yolk, hay, hazelnuts, Berkswell and sorrel.

My favourite part of this delicate dish were the creamy pearls made from Berkswell ewes’ milk cheese.

Hogget

Our penultimate course was roast saddle of hogget. Hogget is meat from sheep between one and two year’s old and that extra time to mature gives the meat a much fuller flavour.

Here, it was dressed with a fantastic lamb sauce, courtesy of Louisa Ellis I understand, plus the traditional accompaniment of mint. I love sheep dairy with lamb (think salty feta with juicy lamb kofta) so appreciated the tangy sheep’s curd alongside. A charred nugget of onion brought a nice bitterness to the sweet meat.

Strawberries, Hibiscus

Finally, came a stunning dessert course. Soft and sweet strawberries, possibly torched a little, came with whipped, incredibly light yogurt, a crispy shard of fruity meringue plus more dehydrated loveliness, fruity this time, to melt on the tongue.

Too much sweetness was averted by tart hibiscus flavours splashed over from the accompanying jug of sauce.

Altogether, an incredible evening of great food in relaxed, friendly surroundings. What more could you want?

CONGLETON FOOD & DRINK FESTIVAL

The second Saturday in June, I was planning to go to the Macclesfield Food Festival. But a combination of circumstances meant that I pulled out. Luckily, I discovered that fellow Cheshire town, Congleton, was holding its annual food and drink festival the very next day.

With more than a hundred stalls of street food and food and drink producers, both local and a little further afield, there was loads to choose from. We had some tasty snacking including dim sum, a dirty burger, jerk chicken and organic ice cream. I brought a nice little haul of goodies home too.

I strongly recommend you get the event in your diary for next year. To whet your appetite, read my post about the 2019 Congleton Food & Drink Festival.

SOCCA (AGAIN)

I think this is the third monthly round-up where I’ve mentioned socca or chickpea flour flatbread. But I don’t care. As I find more delicious ways to eat this fantastic stuff, fried like a pancake or baked in the oven, I just have to share them.

This time it was to accompany matar paneer, one of my favourite vegetarian curries of Indian cheese and peas in a spicy tomato and mint sauce.

In its guise as gram, chickpea flour is used a lot in Indian cooking (think bhaji, pakora etc.) so I guessed socca would work well as a sort of lighter chapati.

I flavoured the socca batter (which is just gram flour and water) with a few ground and whole spices (fenugreek and coriander powder, chaat masala mix, fennel and cumin seeds), plus chilli flakes and chopped coriander. So, so tasty!

BBC GOOD FOOD SHOW

June saw me at the BBC Good Food Show for the first time. To be honest, it’s not something I’d considered going to before. My main interest is in discovering food and drink that’s local, or local-ish, so a big, national event doesn’t appeal that much. But one of my sisters and a niece I hadn’t seen in a while were going along, so it seemed like a good opportunity to meet up and also see what it was all about.

None of us were interested in seeing celebrity TV cooks, so we stuck to perusing the exhibitor stands. Yes, there were loads of stalls of cheese, chocolate, flavoured gin, sauces, sausages, preserves and lots more. But I’ve found that by visiting local markets, farm shops, street food events and food festivals you can get all of these things near to where you live, many made by small artisan producers.

I’m glad I went along to the Show to see what it was all about. But I think I’ll stick to my local food events, thanks.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear about my July in food and drink including my trip to Anglesey.

All photos except the James Cochran/The George promotional image are © Moorlands Eater & are not to be reproduced without permission