Food & Drink

THE CAKE WHISPERER Val Stones

CHOCOLATE, DATE AND PEANUT SQUARES

Iam continuing my development of bone-friendly recipes and as I love dates, peanuts and chocolate I have used these ingredients to create a relatively healthy tray bake. Dates and peanuts are high in protein and minerals.There is no added sugar – the dates add natural sweetness and using dark chocolate helps keep the sugars to a reasonable level. This recipe includes vegan alternatives. Serves 12

Preparation time 15 minutes plus time for chocolate to set.

What you will need A brownie pan – either 20cm square or 18cm x 28cm Microwaveable bowl

Ingredients 30g unsalted butter or coconut oil plus extra for greasing 180g pitted dates 225g salted peanuts, plus extra 30g chopped to scatter on the chocolate 25g sesame seeds 50g unsweetened peanut, almond or cashew butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 40ml whole milk or almond milk 2 tablespoons date syrup 50g granola 150g dark chocolate (53% cocoa), broken up

Method 1 Grease and line brownie pan, allowing sufficient to be able to lift out when set. 2 Blitz the dates, peanuts, sesame seeds, nut butter, vanilla extract, cinnamon, milk and date syrup until well ground and forming clumps, stop occasionally to stir the mixture. 3 Place the mixture in a bowl, stir in the granola and combine well. 4 Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, level off and press down firmly. 5 Place the chocolate and butter in a microwavable bowl and melt on low for one minute, stir and then heat for a further minute until melted. 6 Pour the chocolate over the nut mixture and spread. Scatter the remaining peanuts over the chocolate. 7 Place the pan in the fridge for at least 30 minutes until the chocolate is set, remove from the fridge and lift out, with a sharp knife cut into 9 or 12 squares. Place in a container and keep in the fridge, will keep for 2 weeks.

MOJO VERDE

Johnny Jones, Head Chef, The Queen’s Arms

This is a version of salsa verde, but with a bit more of a ‘kick’. It tastes fantastic with both meat and fish and is a great one to have ready to use when entertaining – spoon it over barbecued food before serving or drizzle over your dinner party dish – guests will love it. We are serving it at The Queen’s Arms with lamb rump, broad beans and olive oil potatoes.

Ingredients 1 bunch of coriander 1/2 bunch of parsley 4 cloves of garlic 1 green pepper 1 green chilli 1 pinch of cumin 300ml extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar 2 teaspoons of salt

Place all ingredients in a blender and blitz for a few minutes until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Done!

thequeensarms.com

WILD SEA BASS CURED IN TARRAGON WITH FENNEL AND PINK GRAPEFRUIT SALAD

Sasha Matkevich, The Green

Image: Clint Randall

This is a perfect way to celebrate your fresh catch. Let’s just hope there will be plenty of large sea bass coming in this month.

Ingredient Serves 6 1500g wild sea bass (filleted, skinned and pin-boned) 1 fennel bulb 3 pink grapefruits 3 dill sprigs, chopped 100ml cold pressed olive oil 2 tbsp lemon zest 1 tbsp lime zest 100ml lemon and lime juice 250g Cornish sea salt 500g caster sugar 1 bunch fresh tarragon 400g soured cream Cornish sea salt and black pepper to taste

Method 1 Put the sea bass on a tray, large enough to hold the fillets in the cure. 2 To make the cure, combine lemon zest and lime zest with lemon juice, sea salt, caster sugar and tarragon in a bowl and mix together well. 3 Pour the cure over the fish, making sure it is evenly distributed and fish is covered all over. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for 4 hours. 4 Wash off the marinade with cold water and pat dry with kitchen paper. Wrap in cling film and return to the fridge for an hour. 5 Remove any tough outer layers from the fennel and slice very, very finely with a sharp knife. Quickly put fennel in iced water and refrigerate for 20 minutes. 6 Meanwhile whip the cream with salt and pepper until it’s firm and refrigerate. Peel and segment pink grapefruits, removing all membrane and pith, then cut into small pieces and place in a large bowl with the dill and olive oil. Season with sea salt to taste. 7 To serve, thinly slice the sea bass, drain the grapefruit and set aside, reserving the dressing.

Drain the fennel and give it a good shake in the colander to remove all the excess water. 8 Add the fennel to the reserved dressing and mix well. 9 Divide the sliced fish between six plates and top with the grapefruit. Spoon the soured cream in the middle of each plate and garnish with fennel. Serve immediately.

A MONTH ON THE PIG FARM

James Hull, The Story Pig

I’m sitting on one of our new picnic benches looking at the most amazing view. The hills ahead of me are shrouded in mist – I try to imagine what it might have been like up there on Cadbury castle, when it was a hill fort hundreds of years ago. I wonder what they would have made of our tipi springing up.

It’s still – there is early morning chatter from the local rook population, no doubt just limbering up and waiting for me to feed the pigs their breakfast so they can come and try and steal. The lavenders are to my right, covered in early morning dew – they are purple now, what we have waited patiently for, every row a different colour. As I write the mist is burning off. Lilly, our naughty boy cat, is back from a ten-day trip away… He’s going to the vet this morning to put a stop to his wanton meanderings. Blue, our gorgeous dog that so many of you have now met, is sat with me, his nose on the bench – he too is waiting for more exciting things to happen. To my left there is a group of twenty big, growing pigs in the paddock next to the tipi – they slept outside last night. They have been next to us since the spring and are big now – big enough to knock me down when it’s feeding time! For months it was easy enough to fight my way through them with a turn of speed and a dive to the left or right, to give them the slip, then throw the feed in, a sigh of relief and onwards. Not now though, they are tuned in to my every move – they are huge, immovable objects, 20 of the biggest rugby players you will ever see. They run in front of me, one runs the opposite way, they slow me and that’s it – if I am not down by then it’s a miracle. Sometimes I take Charlotte (no I don’t send her in there!) – she walks along the fence as a decoy, giving me just enough time to run to their trough before they turn and pile in.

It’s been busy here at the farm – the shop and cafe are open every Thursday to Sunday, 10am-4pm. Charlotte is baking continually and I am front of house – not sure how that happened! We have both learned so much already – we have learnt that most people are lovely (with a few notable exceptions!), that some people don’t read signs (what seems obvious to me is not!), that people think our garden is tidier than I do, that everyone is blown away with our view, that our huge log is a hit with our smaller visitors, that I hate moving the picnic tables to mow underneath, but that I can’t let the grass grow long there either, that everyone loves a tipi, that every time we earn a pound we could spend two, that sunny weather is better for business (we knew that).

A few weeks ago we hosted an Open Farm Sunday event. This year, for obvious reasons, many farms did not take part. We decided to – it has become a big part of what we do here at The Story Pig. Across the country around 100 farms opened their gates to the public, to try and let people have a better understanding of farming and the countryside. At the time of the event we had been open two weeks, we had new staff, we were almost new to dealing with the public and we were new to the very likely prospect of hosting a very wet event with no way of knowing how many people would come. As the Sunday approached, the weather forecast got worse, my mood darkened, should we cancel, could we cancel, we couldn’t cancel. So we did what we could to cope with the forecast storm – we moved the cider bar and the band inside, and we prayed. When I woke on Sunday morning and checked the weather forecast, it had changed to light rain and I dared to hope that it might be ok. And guess what we hardly had a drop all day. On the stroke of ten the cars started to roll in and then they kept coming all day long. To say we had a good turn out would be an understatement – 1,000 people visited us that day and everyone seemed to have a good time, so a massive thank you to all who came and supported us. To our friends Len and Sonia and Luke and James John who gave their day to help us and our new staff who had no idea how busy we would be. It was fantastic to see so many people here at the farm – this is what Charlotte and I dreamt of. As I frantically carved the hog roast to keep up with the never-ending queue, our amazing local singer, Theya, burst into life next to me – the barn was a throng of life. I held back the tears, for the last few years we had been building to this point and here we were.

Remember Story Pig isn’t just for Open Farm Sunday – we are open every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We hope to see you soon. Now I have to read this to Charlotte without her starting to cry!

YALUMBA

David Copp

Yalumba is an Australian aboriginal word meaning ‘all the land around’. It was the name given to a new South Australian winery built in 1852 in the Barossa Valley by Samuel Smith from Wareham in Dorset.

After consultation with his brave wife Mary, the mother of four young children, Smith emigrated to South Australia in the hope of finding a better life for them all.

He found work as a gardener near Angaston in the Barossa Valley. His employer, George Fife Angas’ was a major investor in the new colony of South Australia, and was ready to help hard working settlers such as Smith to make his land productive.

An enlightened employer, Angas granted his gardener leave of absence to prospect in the Victorian gold rush of 1852. Four months later Smith returned to Angaston with £300, the proceeds of his ‘finds’. He used the money to purchase thirty acres of land with two horses, harness and plough; to build a new family home and to plant an orchard and several hectares of vine, which he tended after completing his day’s work as a gardener.

The vines he planted were from the progeny of prephylloxera Syrah vine cuttings from the Upper Rhone Valley sent back to Australia by James Busby, a Scots botanist, who had lived in Australia and was convinced the variety would flourish in South Australian soils.

In due course Smith’s wine business was passed down to another branch of the family related to Clem Hill, the captain of the Australian cricket team. Since when, the Hill-Smith family have turned Yalumba into one of Australian most celebrated family wine businesses.

Syrah (misspelt as Siras in the written records, soon became Shiraz on Australian lips) was immediately at home in the warm dry climate of the Barossa Valley. For a while it was considered a workhorse variety producing ‘gutsy’ fortified wines popular among the agricultural community. However, there was so little demand for it elsewhere that the South Australian Government initiated a vine pull scheme to replace it with Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, the two varieties most popular in the UK, by far Australia’s biggest export market.

Yalumba is a great story of bravery, pioneering and passion, which started in Dorset but was fully developed by the Hill Smith family in Australia. Robert Hill Smith’s strategic decision to sell off the fortified wine business and concentrate on table wines was the basis of its success. It remained successful because the family retained control and constantly sought good practice and innovative approaches to improve its range of offerings from basic day-to-day wines to its signature wines such as Octavius, an old Vine Shiraz classified by Langtons as Outstanding for its purity of fruit and balance. A recent change in UK distribution arrangements has brought Yalumba into the John E Fells stable alongside other great wine families such as Baron Ricasoli, Bouchard Pere, Guigal, Te Mata and Symington Ports. It is good to report that the enterprise of a Dorset family should have become so successful.

hddigital/Shutterstock

However, a number of Barossa growers, marshalled by winemaker Peter Lehmann, determined to save their older Shiraz vines and prove to the variety could produce very fine table wines.

They succeeded in style. Within a decade or two Barossa Shiraz earned the plaudits of the top French producers in the Northern Rhone such as Michel Chapoutier and Gerard Jaboulet It also attracted the acclaim of Robert Parker, America’s most influential wine critic.

Within two more decades Langton’s 2018 Classification of Australian Wine listed 12 Shiraz out of 22 of the very best Australian wines classed as Exceptional, meaning the most accomplished wines from exceptional fruit.

From the beginning, Yalumba determined to control the quality of its fruit by establishing its own nursery to supply all its plant material. It also supplies other wineries at home and overseas, and is at the forefront of the development of new varietals and grape vine growing programmes.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

Yalumba Samuel’s Collection Barossa Shiraz £15 Vineyards of Sherborne Ripe plums, aromatic hints of lavender and lashings of rich, complex chocolatey notes packed full of dried currants and savoury spice – this is a generously flavoured classic Barossa Shiraz, named after Yalumba’s founder Samuel Smith. It’s made from a variety of vines, varying in age from 10 to 35+ years, which contributes to the diversity expressed on the palate. Try it with a lamb dish – perhaps a pie or slow cooked shanks – for a memorable dining experience.

Yalumba Samuel’s Collection Barossa Viognier £15, Vineyards of Sherborne We absolutely shout about this Viognier – it’s always fantastic when a winery that receives a lot of attention for a particular variety, in this instance Shiraz, produces something entirely unexpected and glorious. Let us introduce you to Yalumba’s Viognier. It’s packed full of luscious stone fruit and is quite simply a pure expression of delightful exotic fruit.

vineyardsofsherborne.co.uk