Today Editor Dani and I visited the Alresford Watercress Festival. Alresford is a small town in Hampshire and it was recognised by the Romans as being the perfect place to grow watercress; a couple of millennia later it still is. As such, the locals have a large bash every year to celebrate this gratifying green grub.

Venerating a verdant victual? Long-time readers might wonder why the hell I am having anything to do with such things – I’ve warned you of the carcinogenic dangers of green growths so many times. Truth is, Alresford Watercress is really quite good for a plant. More importantly, it tastes wizard when served with meat. I’ll say more on this and the festival in general below.

Let’s deal with the vegetable itself first. Watercress we’ve all had in dreary restaurant salads is simply a wet green thing; that is precisely the kind of thing I hate. Alresford watercress has a compellingly crisp texture; there’s a satisfying quality to it when you bite. Unusually for a plant, it has flavour. Quite a lot of flavour, too, and it’s rather nice. Piquant and peppery with an edge of horseradish character to it. It enlivens food, which is why the Hampwich is such a brilliant construction.

I have to say, I’ve only had Alresford watercress quite close to the Town itself, and so I wonder how well it will travel and whether you, my dear and distant readers, will ever be able to sample its delights without coming to Hampshire. And you should come to Hampshire^[1] as there are so many good things here as the festival amply demonstrated.

We tried watercress in all manner of things; perhaps most memorably some watercress and wasabi fudge. Yes, that sounds weird, and I can honestly say it was, but I loved it. For the first 30 seconds after I tried it all I could articulate was, “Wow!” When I recovered my wit I was struck by it’s odd but winning combination of sweetness, bite, fire and life all tied up in a complex whole. The lady from the producers, Mummy Makes, seemed highly entertained by my confused enthusiasm for it.

Of course, watercress featured in much more. It is excellent blended in sausages and burgers, where its peppery bite enlivens the meat flavours. We’ve got some rather good watercress sausages that I am looking forward to having for breakfast, hopefully tomorrow morning. Of course, a lot of people serving food didn’t actually make watercress-containing food but just had some on offer to put in burgers, sandwiches, hotdogs and the like. It worked a treat in everything I tried it with.

A lot of the Hampshire Farmers’ Market regulars were at the festival. I was smitten by the smell of Greenfield’s hog roast at the first market I attended and this time we finally tried one. It was amazing! The pork was moist and juicy with incredibly rich and powerful flavours. I never really see the point of crackling but the pieces in this roll tasted fantastic and the feel in the mouth as I crunched them was spiffing. Needless to say there was a happy heap of watercress in our hog roast roll.

We finally got some produce from The Spanish Ham Master, who sells excellent Spanish pig products at various Hampshire events. We got two packets of head-end Lomo Iberico, which is fattier than normal Lomo Iberico, and ate them both within 15 minutes of getting home. Prime pig!

The excellent Woodlands Jersey Beef were there and we secured two sirloins to have with some asparagus we procured from the gentleman pictured. Lyburn Farmhouse Cheesemakers provided us with a kilo and a half of Lyburn Gold.

I’ve got a lot more time for polytheism these days and if there is a god of pies, he runs Manydown Farm Shop in Basingstoke. Why do I say this? Just look how much chicken packs this chicken and ham pie:

We’ve had beef and various chicken pies from Manydown and they’ve never been less than utterly crammed with exceedingly high-quality ingredients that have been prepared with skill. I find it hard to imagine a better pie than Manydown’s, but when I finally get to meet the person who prepares these marvels I’m going to suggest she makes a chicken and truffle pie. My mind boggles!

Naturally there were plenty of festival type jollies. They included the Watercress Queen who distributed watercress to her subjects:

Falconry demonstrations that included this rather massive Canadian horned owl:

There was a small collection of farm animals you could stroke. Or lick, I suppose, if you like your meat really rare:

Marching bands entertained us:

As did various flavours of Morris Dancers:

All attendees were kept from getting too excited by Alresford’s police force:

Just to be complete, I should say it is worth visiting Alresford at any time, not just when the festival is on. It’s very pretty with some good walks, has rude signs and the very highest qualified professionals:

The Alresford Watercress Festival was a good warm-up for the Hampshire Food Festival, of which I shall write more soon. We purchased a pile of quality produce with our arms straining. Oddly despite the incredible range of goods we got we didn’t actually pick up any fresh watercress…

1. ^[1] Let me know when you are visiting and I’ll meet you for a drink or two. ↩

Related posts:

• Mirth with meat at The Ginger Pig’s beef butchery course

This was published on Elitistreview

Recently I have been eating the best sausages I have ever encountered, from Hyden Organics. I was very pleased to score some of the sausage meat and some of their eggs so Dani could create cracking Hyden Organics Scotch eggs. They were topping.

When we noshed on these orbs we had a simply spiffing bottle of Morey villages. It was a 2007, a vintage some people are sniffy about, but the qualities of the wine showed pulsingly pleasurably in this year. Suited the skeggs quite wonderfully.

The sausages I have been eating have been Hyden Organics pork and wild garlic flavour. The pork is from Oxford Sandy and Black pigs, which by now I am convinced make flesh of the tastiest order. As I wrote in my first piece about them, Hyden Organics are organic meat producers and I am sure their sympathetic treatment results in superior flavour.

When at the last Hampshire Farmers’ Market we saw Hyden were offering some of the sausage meat unskinned – our minds immediately turned to orb creation. When mentioning this to Hyden’s boss man he insisted we try some of his Bantam eggs for the core of the skeggs.

As you may know Bantams are a small breed of chicken and so the eggs are smaller than usual. Dani is modelling one (along with a normal hen’s egg, on the right and left of the picture respectively). I grew up with Bantams in my back garden (named, after their primary characteristics, by my dear sister as Blacky, Whitey and Runny) and knew their eggs were tasty. I thought they’d make superior sausage spheres.

The recipe was as given before, but once the eggs were boiling in the pan they were taken off the heat for three minutes before cooling the eggs in copious volumes of cold water. This was a guess; see below how accurate it was to get molten yolks…

The eggs required extremely exacting shell skinning skill. Breaking the shell without shattering the whole egg and yolk was difficult. Well done Editor Dani for doing it with furious concentration and no swearing.

Hyden Organics pork and wild garlic sausage meat is a bit damper than other meat Dani has made orbs from, but he managed to wrap the Bantam eggs and breadcrumb them again with perfect precision with a paucity of profanity.

Once wrapped in meat and crumbed they were deep-fried for three minutes then transferred to an oven at 160°C for a further three minutes. They were then ready!

Were the yolks liquid? See below:

The sausage meat tasted fantastic; really porky with a good garlic character. Premier pig! I really loved the taste of the Bantam eggs, but the yolks do have a slightly thicker texture than normal chicken eggs that Dani was a touch perturbed by. I thought that was just fine as the flavour was so good.

Hyden Organics clearly remain top flight producers of animal products, and with their produce Dani reached, what is up until this point, his zenith of Scotch egg production. They were wizard weasel!

I’ll give you a note of the wine we drank with the orbs.

Morey-Saint-Denis ‘Clos Solon’ 2007, Domaine Fourrier

A rapturously pleasurable nose that was blooming with the great fruit of the vintage and suffused with the enchanting scented earthiness of Morey. It smelled highly attractively and for a village wine had quite a lot of complexity. Oak and alcohol were not excessive and the whole impression of the nose was one of sybaritic gratification. Morey could well be the best village in the Cote de Nuits, and this sniffed up like it could defend that reputation. The palate was almost as lustfully enjoyable but it seemed like it kept its grey nylon socks on whilst it was trying to get down to it – it was a touch less committed to lustful pleasure. This was mainly due to a slightly high acid level that seemed just a hint out of balance. The tannins were structured but seductive and the fruit gorgeous. Very long, but if I’m really, rudely picky the palate might have been lacking the highest levels of complexity one could want from a village wine, as well as its balance not decking a Hare Krishna with the first blow. But that’s me being a really critical sod; it was a really pleasurable wine and well-worth seeking out. Drink over the next couple of years.

Here’s Hyden Organic’s website

Related posts:

• The peaks of fowl experience
• Scotch quail’s eggs
• Chicken and guinea fowl in Riesling

This was published on Elitistreview

The Editor and I travelled into The Big Smoke to meet Swedish wine writer Erica Landin in Hawksmoor Spitalfields earlier today. She seemed impressed by our capacity to eat, the general pricing policies of London and the specific pricing policy of Hawksmoor. Fair enough.

Erica’s experience of wine journalism in Sweden is somewhat different to that of mine in the UK and Europe. It seems less involved in getting riotously drunk and telling scandalously ribald anecdotes ‘off the record’ for a start. She seemed moderately impressed that we got through two bottles and a couple of cocktails for lunch; I’m told by the Editor that Swedes have unhealthy attitudes to drinking at lunchtime. Anyway, let’s have a quick look at the food.

Any reservations about the quality of the plum-pudding pig ribs I might have had on my last visit were utterly erased this time. They were absolutely cracking. The combination of melting soft meat and fat along with a richly spiced sauce is quite the winner and, like me, you should go for them every time.

Erica seemed a bit daunted by the towering nature of her burger, but said she liked it even if it did ultimately require utensils to get it into manageable-sized units. I would have been impressed by her asking if she could have both triple-cooked chips and a salad with her burger, but wasn’t because not many salads are worth getting impressed about. Salads are just so unhealthy – JUST SAY NO!

Editor Dani ordered a medium-rare ribeye, double fried eggs, roast bone marrow, macaroni and cheese and stilton hollandaise. So did I. Everything was at the ‘jester’s shoes’ end of the pleasure-spectrum. One forgets quite how good their steaks are, the bone marrow is brillo and served with style, their macaroni and cheese recipe is perfect and, though I don’t think quality meat needs much sauce, I like the hollandaise to add to the M&C for enhanced richness.

The only slight disappointment was the eggs. I know here in Hampshire we have been spoiled with amazing King’s Somborne eggs, but these really do seem to be lacking much in the way of flavour. When you shovel a big lump of animal flesh with a whole yolk on top into your mouth you want there to be serious yolk action coating your meat-filled hole; these did not deliver. More work needed on sourcing top quality ova, I think.

The cocktails were faultlessly perfect and I really felt in the mood to be witty, charming and able to listen to a new friend after knocking back my Fancy Gin Cocktail. This remains the single best martini I have ever consumed on multiple occasions. Sure, you can almost have stronger martinis, possibly, but drinking isn’t a meat-measuring exercise. These FGC’s remain quite heroic and definitely enabling/disabling enough without sacrificing anything in terms of being really nice drinks. Dani had something else, but I missed it because I was busy with my drink and being probed by Erica.

The wines:

Cote-Rote ‘Les Grades Places’ 2004, Domaine Clusel-Roch

Clusel-Roch remain my favourite Cote-Rotie producer and one sniff of this demonstrated why that is so. No silliness with high alcohol here: this clocked in at 12%. No silliness with new oak either; nary a hint of it on the nose which was all about beautifully elegant and refined fruit, which a sophisticated earthy hint and real energy and life. This showed a lot of life and was not showing any signs of falling apart having been from a weaker vintage. A supremely engaging and attractive nose of minimalism and restraint; all about beauty and understated pleasure. I was a bit surprised that when we first opened it the palate seemed a touch tough, but a shake in the decanter and a swirl in the glass sorted that out. It then showed silky, polished tannins, a fine acidity that made it sparkle with life and refined but really deep and complex fruit. The depth of flavour, despite the small-scale of the palate, was amazing – the old vines character really shining through. It was very long, extremely sophisticated and highly pleasurable. The most enjoyable Cote-Rotie I’ve had since the last bottle of this.

Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru la Richemone 2005, Domaine Alain Michelot

This was one of the most reduced red wines I have smelled in years. When it was first popped it honked of Hydrogen Sulphide and I was going to say we shouldn’t drink it. But I risked shaking it and vigorously decanting and it opened a little. But just a little, alas. It remained stinky and reductive, not much fun as far as fruit went at all. Strangely, the texture on the palate was quite nice, silky and reasonably seductive, but I couldn’t get over that nasty reductive character and surreptitiously ordered myself an extra cocktail as I went to ‘strain the vegetables’. I tell you, those Fancy Gin Cocktails would be all you need in the cocktail department if it were not for the rest of Hawksmoor’s brilliant list.

I’ve had a cold for the past week and this little jaunt into London was not only surprisingly manageable, both in terms of viral infection and London-related harassment, but quite a lot of fun as well. OK, I was let down by the Nuits, but the Cote-Rotie was wizard. Hawksmoor always deliver the goods and it was a real delight to meet Erica. I bet we got her more quaquaversal than the chap she was meeting next could manage.

Here’s Hawksmoor’s website

Related posts:

• Hawksmoor (London’s best meat restaurant) has additions to their menu
• Hawksmoor (London’s best meat restaurant) again
• Photos of the wonderful food at Hawksmoor

This was published on Elitistreview

You’ve probably gathered by now that Winchester is an oasis of corking comestibles. I’ve written already about the local cheese on offer, and very good that is too. Sometimes, you need other cheeses, and this is where the brilliant Cheese Stall delivers the goods in fine style.

They sell continental cheeses of the very highest quality and are a truly brilliant resource to have just a few minutes’ walk down the road. The only problem is when buying a decent amount of cheese to last us a few days it’s dashed heavy carrying them back up the hill to get home.

Which brings me to my misanthropic rant that I’d like to get out the way first – I have covered this ground before. When we were queuing to buy our cheese the lady in front of us tried a number of cheeses then purchased 75g of a single cheese. If you like cheese that little what is the point in wasting everyone’s time going to a cheese shop? I could eat 75g of cheese and hardly notice it; it’s a laughably small amount. Cheese is great, buy enough to satisfy your urges! Our cheese purchases last visit totalled a little over 1.5kg.

Now, The Cheese Stall: I have yet to be disappointed by a single cheese we have purchased from them. Their Emmental de Savoie is one of the most amazing cheeses I have ever eaten. It is so characterful and powerfully flavoured that there is almost a slight suggestion of it hurting your mouth a hint as you nosh on a large lump. We got 650g of the stuff last time. It is amazing cheese and I think they now buy in extra just to satisfy my urges.

This pales in comparison to their stunningly creamy, richly powerful Comté. A magisterial cheese that leads the pack when it comes to this brilliant style of cheese. They’ve got Beaufort too, but I’ve only had a taste rather than the several hundred grams required to accurately judge it as magnificently as that taste made me think it is.

Editor Dani rather likes Morbier for some unaccountable reason, and insisted we got some last week. I may have found the texture as unattractive as I usually do, but blow me if this one didn’t taste pretty good. I was gobsmacked.

As far as soft cheeses go the Delice de Bourgogne and Pierre Robert play the butter/rancid balance perfectly, these triple cream cheeses being sold at a perfect stage of maturity. If you like your hedonism a tiny shade less hedonistic then the Vignotte is a complete joy of fat and fungus.

Their Roquefort is easily strong enough to give you really lurid dreams, but not aggressively difficult to eat. Much the same goes for their Gorgonzola which tickles my fancy no end with its piquant creaminess.

You get the idea, there is quality cheese here for everyone, even people who like cheese so little they buy only 75g of the stuff.

But there’s more! They have a selection of dried sausages which are just the kind of thing you want to be chomping on before moving onto your mid-afternoon snack. Our favourite is the Chorizo Fort, which is quite dry, with plenty of fatty flavour and a good paprika kick. These do not last long in Elitistreview Towers’ fridge.

The Cheese Stall moves around the various markets of Hampshire, here’s where you can find them:
Tuesday – Alton, High Street
Wednesday – Winchester, High Street
Friday and Saturday – Romsey, The Square and Winchester High Street

Find them you most definitely want to; they put most London cheesemongers to shame. Do buy more than 75g, though, otherwise you just won’t be getting the best out of them.

You can email them here to see if they have something you crave.

Related posts:

• Cheese, supermarkets and Hilaire Belloc
• Blessed are the cheesemakers
• What a friend…

This was published on Elitistreview

All my life I’ve hated Indian food. This probably has something to do with my sadistic and violent step-father devouring the stuff almost ceaselessly; I had to hate everything loved by the person who abused me so horribly. A trip to The Bengal Sage demonstrated that not only that I’m not scared of that loathsome shit anymore, but also that Indian food can transcend the tired and dreary rubbish pumped out by most English restaurants.

You’ll note I say ‘English restaurants’ rather than ‘Indian restaurants in England’. This is because the food at the Bengal Sage sits two meta-levels above Indian restaurants in England. The food is more inventive and interesting than that at Indian restaurants and far more skilfully prepared from vastly higher quality ingredients than at most restaurants of any type in England.

Miff, of Bangkok Brasserie fame, had been pushing us to visit his sister restaurant for a while but it was not until we walked past the Bengal Sage and looked at the menu we realised his magic touch had been expertly applied to Indian food as well as Thai.

The menu was completely unrecognisable from most Indian restaurants my fellow Oxford scientists dragged me to when they wanted a ‘cuzza’ after Lab Drinks. It was not a list of every possible permutation of seven different ways of preparing five different meats, but rather a selection of ingredient-focused dishes that sounded as if they had been designed by someone who enjoyed cooking rather than just doing it for a job. The menu was attractive reading – I didn’t have flashbacks of getting beaten up as a child as I read it.

When we booked we asked to have whatever the chef recommended and this is what I would recommend you do. The embarrassment of riches on the menu makes it hard to choose so why not go for what they feel they do best. As ever, Miff was generous with the amount served; I’ll tell you some of the highlights.

The starter that really blew my socks off was a little-known Punjabi speciality: Malai chicken tikka. No, not that those chicken tikkas. This chicken was tender and deeply flavourful, delicately spiced and coated with little pieces of fresh herbs that had a delightfully crunchy texture as you bit into the chicken. The fresh, high-quality characters of the ingredients really stood out.

The potato parcels, Aloo tikki, were amazing in that they had a flavour that was vaguely reminiscent of the generic ‘Indian’ flavour one encounters in limp supermarket samosas and the like, but this variant of the flavour was salivatingly good. The flavours were fresh and lively, charged with complexity and real interest. It opened my mind to be reminded of the lacklustre flavour of ubiquity and then be shown that it could be done with skill and style. Lovely.

Our other three starters were also excellent and I felt we had already done better than I could have hoped for.

Three main courses shone out as coruscating entities that one should seek out. A Broughton water buffalo bhoona was packed with delicious water buffalo meat of the most melting texture. The meat was of the very highest quality and, like all the dishes, the sauce it had been cooked it was fresh and lively – a vigorous and exciting dish to eat.

The Sage goat was goat cooked in a blend of Indian and English spices. Again the freshness of the flavours really kept me captivated; no rotten vegetables and rancid oil here. Again the meat was tender and cooked with extreme skill to show at its very best. As such, this was the best goat I’ve ever eaten – makes me question my absolute dismissal of the animal as being unworthy of cooking.

A Thai influence showed in the chicken anjali. Vibrant lemongrass flavours packed this energetic dish and made it throb with life. Miff takes great care in sourcing his ingredients and the chicken was a world away from the dry, flavourless broiler fowl that most restaurants contemptibly serve to guests they clearly don’t care a fig for. These last two dishes showed that intelligent experimentation is possible with Indian food and, if you care, it’ll work a treat.

The food was a marvel. They’ve got a reasonably priced wine list and, whilst I would normally say ‘Don’t', the food was so subtle, sophisticated and fresh wine might just work. Skip the Indian wine, though, unless you want to vex some insufferable wine bore by giving it to them blind and telling them to identify it. We had beer and that was great.

As one who never wanted to step in an Indian restaurant it is a bit of a surprise to find myself recommending one so whole-heartedly, but I most certainly wish to point you in the direction of the Bengal Sage. As I have shown, even if the thought of Indian food turns your stomach (or makes you curl up into a ball so you are a smaller target) you are going to have a great time here. It’s better than an English Indian restaurant, and it’s better than most restaurants in England: it’s the Bengal Sage and Miff will pleasure you immensely there.

Here is The Bengal Sage’s website

Related posts:

• Restaurant research from the recent residence
• The Bangkok Brasserie – Winchester’s best restaurant
• A madly magnificent meal

This was published on Elitistreview