with knife and fork » lancashire

Across the Ribble estuary, towards Southport

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:53:00 +0000

Last weekend I was in Lytham on the Fylde having a little promenade along the front.

Here’s the view across the Ribble estuary towards Southport

In the foreground the mud and sand flats, then the boats and shrimping tractors, then the water.

Flat and beautiful.

Festive menu, part 1

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:39:04 +0000

I’m sure everyone has their festive menu’s already sorted. Their shopping list written, deliveries planned, meat ordered and so on. Down to the last detail. So my festive might have come to late. But if you are dithering then read on (and into the remaining parts as they appear) you might find some inspiration. And for those who have everything planned out with military precision well you might find some ideas for surpluses or things to make if you can’t get what you need for your menu on your final dash to the shops.

I cooked this menu last weekend when we had a pre christmas, Christmas dinner with my parents and my brother and sister in law. we’ll all be in different places with other bits of our families on Christmas Day so this was our festive get together complete with tree decorating, silly games, sherry and presents. and of course lots of food.

Here’s the menu:

Starter:

Selection of smoked and cured salmon
Terrine of Lancashire cheeses (recipe to follow)
Crispbread

Main:

Slow roast shoulder of pork served with two stuffings (Chestnut Stuffing recipe to follow)
Roast root vegetables
Roast potatoes
Sprout and peas
Lashing of ‘jus’ from the meat

Dessert:

Sticky ginger pudding
Clementine sorbet (recipe to follow)
Jersey cream

And in the spirit of making things easy for the chef so everyone could spend time chatting rather than sweating over hot stoves lots of it was ‘cheaty’ so bought in but from top quality suppliers. And some of it was very easy to make in advance.

Here’s where I sourced things from:

Salmon: Forman & Sons London Cure smoked Salmon and 3 gravadlax cures

Lancashire cheeses for the terrine (recipe to follow): Butlers Cheeses

Crispbread: Peters Yard (of course!)

Pork shoulder : Anna’s Happy Trotters

Sticky Ginger Pudding: Cartmel Village Shop

So that’s it delicious food from good suppliers making the menu easier but still delicious. Watch out for the recipes coming soon.

Tasty Lancashire

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:28:00 +0000

Tasty Lancashire is a cheese.

From Lancashire, which might seem obvious, but in these days of Cheddar from just about anywhere and PDO stuff you never know.

Not all Lancashire cheese is Tasty even if it tastes very good.

Traditional Lancashire is either Creamy (aged 4-12 weeks) or Tasty (aged from 12 weeks to 2 years). Crumbly is some latter day invention of factory production.

Anyway.

A few weeks ago it was British Cheese Week.

I don’t need a special week to want to eat British cheese, any day any week suits me just fine.

To make cheese week more special though the nice people at Butlers Farmhouse Cheese sent me some of their Tasty Lancashire.

Wow. This is the Tasty Lancashire of my childhood. Creamy buttery texture but strong tang.

Not for the fainthearted.

But what Lancashire lass or lad is fainthearted huh?

Now I just need a London stockist, or courier delivery weekly.