Fischer’s

However, on Wednesday John and I were fortunate enough to attend a foraging day there, led by Dr Patrick Harding, a renowned naturalist, being shown what a wealth of food there is to be found for free in spring.

We all know about nature’s wonderful autumn  harvests of damsons, sloes, mushrooms, blackberries and so on but apart from wild garlic and elderflowers we were hard pushed to think what else might be available at this time of year.

Dr Harding is probably best known in his role as a ‘mycologists’ – an expert in the study of mushrooms and his delight was unfeigned when on our foraging ramble  round the beautiful Fischer’s garden we chanced upon an edible but dreadfully poisonous-looking layered saddle mushroom apparently also called Dryad’s saddle and Pheasant’s back… We were prepared to take on trust that this was edible, if slightly tough.

He is also interested in the chemicals present in plants, and the medicinal and other uses these are put to. We however concentrated on the edible, and how one can pep up a salad with chickweed or sweet cicely and brighten it up with dandelion petals. One can make soup from the young leaves of nettles in spring, and pesto from ransoms, i.e. wild garlic leaves…

After an hour’s invigorating and enlightening ramble we returned to the hotel to enjoy a truly wonderful lunch, with every dish containing some of the wild plants we had learnt about. Fischer’s has a Michelin star so you can be sure a meal will always be delicious, attractively presented and what’s more pleasantly served. On Wednesday we all ate at one big table and the conversation and laughter flowed as well as at any successful private lunch party with friends.

My only regret was that I didn’t take notes. Several wise people did, and I thought it was all so interesting I would remember every word but my confidence was sadly misplaced. Lots of interesting snippets linger tantalisingly in the back of my memory.

John and I both enjoyed it so much we are planning to go to the autumn forage at Fischer’s on October 22nd and this time I will take notes.

Fascinating brickwork and an unassuming sign

We’re always on the lookout for new and interesting places to eat, purely, you understand, so that we can share our experiences with you all, our guests and friends.

We happened to find ourselves in Derby earlier this week , with several hours to kill while our car was being serviced. Lunch time loomed, and I remembered meeting restaurant owner Stuart Baddiley recently at a course in Derby. I had promised him we’d try tp pay his restaurant, Zest, a visit some time, so this seemed the obvious opportunity.

Derby is not exactly in our immediate radius, but we have had several guests coming to us from Derby recently, and other local places only slightly further afield; also of course many of you return or arrive via Derby or nearby, so the following food report may be helpful.

Zest is in George Streeet, off Friargate, and not knowing Derby it took us a bit of finding. Once there, the street is modest and the exterior of the building is not particularly prepossessing, and possibly unhelpfully,  right next door to another restaurant.

Delicious Mushroom Soup

This all serves to create a great contrast when one steps inside – the interior is  modern, clean and uncluttered, and very charming. We were very pleasantly greeted , seated and looked after for the rest of the meal by Matthew, the Zest manager.

The ‘Express’ lunchtime menu was attractive, and reassuringly simple; one is always suspicious of menus boasting countless choices, knowing full well that they cannot be made to order, but will be ready made and merely waiting to be reheated in a microwave and served with a flourish of (handmade?) garnishes.

As unfortunately we weren’t particularly hungry we ordered a sharing board of breads and dips followed by a truly delicious mushroom soup, piping hot. We followed this with sorbets (John) and coffee.

The restaurant was by no means full, but we could see that they were expecting a large dining party in the evening. We will certainly return when we are next in Derby and if ever that happens to be in the early morning, their champagne breakfast looks too good to be missed! Do let us know if you try it.

The last week has scampered fast, busily and enjoyably but leaving very little time for quiet reflection or blog posts (let alone mundane chores like ironing…

Starting backwards, Mothering Sunday today was a very happy day for this mother but possibly more about that tomorrow. Ruthie and Nick, our two London-based young, came up for the weekend which sadly is something Sara in Australia can never do. Two other friends were here on Friday night with plenty of reminiscence and happy chat. On the Saturday Ruthie and I walked in to Ashbourne along the Tissington Trail (John dropped us off at Alsop Station (no trains for many a long year although when my father was young they used to come up by train from Lichfield). We walked briskly and reached Ashbourne in 2 hours 1 minute (according to the map it is 7 1/4 miles) which we were pleased about but were we glad to sit down in Bramhall’s cafe in Ashbourne and enjoy a cup of tea and a flapjack afterwards!

We can well recommend Bramhall’s, across the road from the Ashbourne Market Place. You can have breakfasts, lunches and teas here. The service was efficient and very friendly, our tea was hot and plentiful and the flapjacks deliciously ‘homemade’. Which leads me seamlessly on to the Macmillan Lunch that Fischer’s Baslow Hall laid on last Tuesday. Fischer’s is the only Michelin Starred restaurant in Derbyshire, and eating here is a wonderful experience whatever the occasion – whether dinner, their 2013 Lunches or a charity event like this. We all were treated to sparkling wine and nibbles when we arrived, then a three course meal with more wine and coffee; needless to say, the food was all quite delicious!

Someone from Macmillan described the sort of work that is done locally, and Nicky, someone who had benefitted by Macmillan care herself spoke very movingly about the lifeline they had provided her. Fischer’s handed over the entire proceeds of the lunch – over £1600 – to the Macmillan representative who was of course delighted. All of us attending felt we could not have found a pleasanter or more luxurious way to feel good by helping a charity.

For a so far photographless post, the last entry may seem rather surprising. There is a big photographic exhibition in Derby – a ‘festival of photography and related media’ for the next month and amongst many things on offer I spotted a 4-week (2 hours each week) course ‘Blogging for Photographers”. Well, heaven knows, I am no photographer but I do write a blog and I do have a husband whose photographic skills I hope more than make up for my lack! John was quite happy to suggest it would be extravagant for us both to attend, so I shall be cooperating with him in absentia as it were.

We have had one session so far, which was setting up a blog so I spent a fairly relaxed 2 hours. I suspect it will be a different story on Tuesday when I go for the second session. Meanwhile, horrors, we have homework! We have to write a 200 word blog post and send it in beforehand which means I have little time and should not be sitting here writing this.

Freshly baked cakes for our guests

It is never a hardship for me, as I love baking (indeed all cooking) and it is always nice to do be doing it when you know how appreciative the eater/s tend to be. When we first started Tom’s Barn I made a cake because I simply thought that is what one did – we always have something in our tins in the house, to be produced when anyone drops in! We hadn’t realised that it would become something a bit special. Non-bakers particularly are amazed and experienced bakers usually ask for the recipe…

I have been asked for this Black Treacle & Stem Ginger Cake recipe several times recently. In fact, I fondly but wrongly thought it was already in the blog recipe section, but now it really is. It is a very favourite recipe of us all, and all credit must go to Mary Berry for the original recipe, adapted slightly by me over the years.

Tom’s and Douglas’s Barn Black Treacle & Ginger Cake
(Adapted from a Mary Berry recipe)

Cake
225g soft butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
225g black treacle or sometimes I use molasses
275g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp mixed spice
4 eggs
4 tbsp milk
3 bulbs stem ginger chopped finely
Generous handful chopped/broken pecans or walnuts

Measure all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix for about 2 minutes, either by hand or in an electric mixer. Pour into a non-stick (or lined with greased foil) deep baking dish approx 9”x12”. I use the small Aga baking tin

Bake at 180’C/Gas 4 or in the top oven of an Aga with the cold plain sheet hanging on the second set of runners until it looks cooked i.e. firm and golden brown. I start looking after about 30 minutes.

Icing
125g icing sugar (more probably!)
About 4 tbsp stem ginger syrup from the jar (use more if you have taken more icing sugar)
Handful chopped nuts and ideally more finely chopped than I have in this photo!

Mix all together to get a good spreading consistency and spread over the baked cake.
Sprinkle with chopped nuts

Tamarind Date

Dan Lepard, whose recipe from the Guardian this is, unashamedly calls it ‘The best date cake in the world ever’, and equally unashamedly, as someone who bakes and eats it quite frequently, I would agree wholeheartedly. It is extremely delicious and very easy to make.

I can see imaginary obstacles to trying the recipe popping up all over the place. Cardomom icing? It’s lovely but I don’t usually bother although i have tried cardomom in the cake with very pleasing results. What on earth is tamarind? Well I didn’t know, still don’t really, but one can buy little bottles of the slightly salty lemony paste from Waitrose although not our local Sainsbury’s (bigger branches might). BBC Food describes it as ‘A tart fruit from the tamarind tree, used as a spice and souring agent’. Funnily enough I soaked the dates and tamarind paste and water overnight so that it would be all ready for this morning’s bake. John, not knowing what it was, reported to me that there was a really delicious warm spicy smell in the kitchen when he got up in the morning. He reckoned one could sell the scent, maybe for food shops to waft around on the hour like bakeries and coffee shops are meant to do with appropriately scented packaged food and coffee ‘odours’!

I looked up tamarind in Wikipedia and discovered all sorts of interesting facts; I began to feel that perhaps we ought all start eating it quite seriously. Tamarind is high in acid, sugar, B vitamins and, oddly for a fruit, calcium; it is used in Ayurvedic medicine for gastric and/or digestion problems, and in cardioprotective activity… Anyway, it tastes nice and today’s cake is all but finished already. Our two ‘boiler men’ who today removed the offending boiler from Douglas’s Barn found numerous hunks of cake helped them enormously, and the rest of us have done pretty well too. I had quietly removed our guests’ portion – seen in the photo -just to ensue I didn’t suddenly find I had to get baking again. Next Friday is soon enough…although having said that, I suddenly realised that our hungry boiler-saviour men will be here again at 8 in the morning. We are so grateful to them for rallying around so quickly when disaster struck on Friday and if it means making more cake tonight, I’ll happily do it.

Two local pubs hit the headlines today. The Sycamore, our Parwich pub, has been declared winner of the rural pub of the year category by The Ashbourne sub-branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). While the Sycamore does not pretend to major on food it is praised highly for ‘an excellently well-kept range of Robinson’s ales.

The George at Alstonefield is featured nationally today in the first of a new series on ‘country trails with a pint en route’ in the Sunday Times Travel section, page 19 (10th February 2013). The author, Vincent Crump, speaks admiringly of the two pints of Jennings Cockle Warmer he drinks there (this is obviously a double dose ‘pint en route’ walk). He does not mention any other names, but the George is widely admired for its ‘well kept real ales, carefully selected wine list and real pub food’. Horses for course: this is more expensive, ‘finessed food’, not by any description the more affordable standard pub grub such as people enjoy at the Sycamore.

But I am not meant to be writing about food, or beer, but about the circular walk from Hartington that is described in this piece. Because we don’t have a Times subscription we couldn’t access the link to it, which would have been by far the best option. Instead, I shall massacre Vincent Crump’s charmingly written article to extract the bare bones of the walk he describes so evocatively, in order that friends and guests can try it for themselves. (We shall put a photocopy of the article in the walk file in each barn as well so if you’re actually staying here you can use that.)

Definitely have an Ordnance Survey map with you so you can plot the route for yourself. Crump’s description is more poetic than scientific and after lunch it becomes even more disquietingly vague. My translation may do nothing to help but I truly am doing my best to extract the facts.

1.Start at Hartington.
2. Walk up Hall Bank towards Hartington Hall, now the Youth Hostel.
3. Opposite the hall gates turn right onto the ‘Leisure Lane to Dovedale’.
4. After a ‘swift mile the path collapses abruptly into Biggin Dale’.
5. Cross the Dove on a ‘dinky footbridge’ at Wolfscote Dale then ‘walk all the way to Alstonefield’. (Forgive me if this doesn’t sound very helpful but it’s what he says. I’d say, at this stage definitely look at your map!)
George stop for a pint or two… and lunch…then set off back to Hartington again
6. The hike back ‘arrows north on a field path, cleaving the small green bosoms of Narrowdale’.
7.Rejoin the Dove ‘as it squidges between cliffs through Beresford Dale’.
8. Then, he concludes, ‘before I know it I’m in Hartington again’.

Let’s hope you are too!

John bought a bird feeder which came in this bag

Just for your interest, Sudbury is a Category D open prison for males which I gather means it will usually be for non violent short term or prisoners at the end of a long sentence. Prisoners can wander freely but have to show up for roll calls etc; we do quite often hear of prisoners absconding from Sudbury, and whilst that might be foolish, it can’t be very difficult to do. When we visited, it did look as if there was a fence of sorts, but nothing too off-putting if you were determined to get out.

Anyway, the prison has quite recently opened a restaurant, in the grounds but just outside the fence. The building is an old Nissan hut, but clean and attractively decorated. The Diner doubles as a staff canteen and is only open from 11.30am to 1pm on weekdays. It’s probably advisable to ring to book – the number is 01283 584000 and the postcode for Satnavs is DE6 5HW.

Lunching at the Secret Diner

You won’t be surprised to hear it is not exactly fine dining; one sits at formica tables and queues up to be served but the food was more than acceptable, very plentiful, with lots of choice and all extremely reasonably priced. We went with a crowd of Parwich friends and we all thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the occasion. We were almost embarrassed it was so cheap, and although the staff were extremely pleasant, we weren’t allowed to leave a tip although it was suggested that if we wished we could donate to some charities they support, including the local branch of Riding for the Disabled, which we were all glad to do. We had a three-course meal, with coffee and it came to well under £10 each.

After lunch several of us visited their Farm Shop, where they sell vegetables etc that the prisoners grow, and things they have made like bird feeders and nesting boxes. I was very taken by the fact that there also several dozen pairs of identical black men’s size 8 shoes, being sold for £2.50 each! No other sizes, no other colours… That was an unanswered mystery and if anyone can ever solve it for me I shall be grateful.

This summer, to celebrate the 2012 “proud to be British’ campaign many local businesses offered real bargains of some sort; one of the most generous and most enticing offers we cam across was the £20.12 lunch offered by Fischer’s, Baslow Hall.

The food is delicious, the gardens are lovely

John enjoying the pudding

Fischer’s, Baslow Hall

Obviously, you may well decide to stretch the budget to include wine, or coffee afterwards, but you don’t need to, and will be under no (external) pressure to do so. I must say we did, and then had a very relaxing stroll round the gardens to make the whole occasion a very special one indeed.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Below is a sample menu to give you a flavour of what you might expect. Tables need to be reserved in advance by ringing them on 01246 583259 or emailing: reservations@fischers-baslowhall.co.uk.

“£20.13 Lunch”

Duck Liver Parfait
toasted brioche, Fischer’s chutney

Nasturtium Cured Salmon
tartar, pickled kohirabi, horseradish snow

Confit of Duck Leg
rosti potato, honey & orange sauce

Pan Fried Cod
roast cauliflower, curry spices & granola

Toasted Marshmallow
Haygrove strawberries, tarragon custard

Warm Chocolate Pudding
damson ice cream, caramelised hazelnuts

Two courses £20.13

Three courses £25.13

Our dishes may contain nuts, raw eggs & unpasteurised cheese.

Whether you have walked here or come in the sleekest of limousines, you won’t want to have to pay a visit to the shops the minute you arrive, if indeed at all.

It is perfectly easy and part of the excitement building up for your holiday to organise everything that you can possibly think of beforehand, so your stay here is blissfully relaxed and luxurious. You can also plan some instant catering solutions quite apart from making full use of the local pub-within-walking-distance solutions.

You know that we provide you with a pint (no longer in a bottle!) of milk, some butter, bread and six freshly laid local eggs and things like oil, dried herbs etc but we don’t go as far as ingredients for your meals!

Ideally you’ll order what you need in advance and arrange to have everything delivered the morning of your arrival, so we can check and put away everything for you. If you would like to go completely organic, Riverford is a great favourite of ours, and we have a weekly delivery here, on Fridays (only). It is best to choose what you want and ring them beforehand on 01780 789700, explaining that you are staying here (they are well used to it!).Waitrose also has lots of great food, quite a lot but by no means solely, organic. They will deliver here, to DE6 1QB, any day.

Both barns have a fridge-freezer so another top tip we are now suggesting is to order pre-frozen meals from one of two companies we know of, Cook and Life, Fork and Spoon. We have tried Cook many times and swear by them – they are efficient, their meals are delicious and they arrive in packaging so well insulated everything is still totally frozen solid. Life, Fork and Spoon we have not tried yet, but will. Please let us know what you think.

Even with a well-stocked kitchen, you may well still feel like being catered for. Without moving out of the village you can ask our neighbour, Val Kirkham to cook a meal for you (ring her on 01335 390548 to discuss menus and prices), order a curry from Paul and Evie Burlinson (ring 01335 390488).

We have a pub in the village, the Sycamore, which serves pub meals, and there is also a British Legion, on the road going towards Alsop which welcomes guests warmly and which also does food sometimes. Within lovely walking distance for lunch is the Old Gate at Brassington and the Coach House at Tissington.

The pub also has a little shop well-stocked with all the basics so buying anything you may suddenly find you want can be part of a trip to the pub itself, or the purpose of a pleasant little expedition in the village

This post can be seen in addition to all the information we had already gathered so at the same time have a look here at the Forward Planning for Effortless Catering in the More Info Section of our website.

Tom's & Douglas's Barns Cherry Bakewell

Some nice soul emailed this today: I regularly keep up to date with your blogs; they are a joy to read and much more cheerful than the news, national or international.

Potentially much more cheerful than the news or indeed our blogs, tonight I have a newish recipe which i have tried out twice now and which has received the thumbs up from guests, family and friends. It is a variation on the permanent favourite Fake Bakewell. Perhaps we ought to call it a Cherry Fakewell?

I asked John to take a photo, but he wasn’t quite quick enough before most of the last batch had disappeared, hence the rather sparse display on the plate.

Tom’s & Douglas’s Barns
Cherry Special Bakewell Tart

If you think of the basic recipe as being for every egg 4 oz of ground rice/ground almonds, sugar and butter you can make the size you want. I always make this in a large Aga baking tray so it is the basic recipe times four. For normal family use one would probably do half, i.e. 2 eggs etc.

Recipe:
1lb good (Stork) soft margarine (or butter if you’re feeling expansive)
I lb sugar
*1/2lb ground rice
*1/2lb ground almonds
4 eggs, lightly beaten
Almond extract
Flaked almonds
Fresh stoned cherries, or one tin of cherries, well drained
Short crust pastry (either a bought block or made with 1lb flour)
About half jar jam (sharpish like raspberry, blackcurrant or homemade plum) For the Cherry Bakewell I used cherry jam and some raspberry, as the latter seems a bit softer and possibly moister.

Method:
Roll out the pastry and line the tin you are using. Spread the jam over, and cherries if using. Ideally put the tin (layered with cherries and jam) into the fridge but I can’t say I always – or actually ever – do!

Melt the butter/marge and sugar in a saucepan on a lowish heat, stirring occasionally to ensure the sugar completely dissolves into the melted butter. Add the ground rice/almonds and leaving it on the heat, stir for a minute or two until it is all well mixed and smooth. Take off the heat, and when it is a bit cooler, stir in the beaten eggs and a generous teaspoon and a bit (to size and taste) of almond extract.

Pour the mixture onto the pastry. Sprinkle generously with flaked almonds and pop it into the oven. In the Aga (2-door) I put it on the bottom grid of the top oven with the cold plain sheet over, for about 25-30 minutes+ until it is firm, looks golden and the almonds nicely coloured.

*It is perfectly delicious – and I rather think better – made with just ground rice and no ground almonds at all, but I often do half and half. I’ve never (yet) done it with all ground almonds.