Visit to Shawsgate Vineyard - January 14

On my bike today a mile up the road from Framlingham, to see Tom Jarrett of Shawsgate Vineyard. Shawsgate is one of the oldest commercial vineyards in East Anglia and has consistently won national and even international awards for its wine. The 20 acre vineyard produces white grape varieties: Bacchus, Reichensteiner, Seyval Blanc, Muller Thurgau, and Schonburger, with some of the vines dating back to the early 1970s when the vineyard was set up. As for reds there are three plots of Acolon and Rondo.

For most of the year the vineyard is very tranquil and a haven for wildlife and birds. Come late September/October the harvest starts. The team of about 20 pickers is a real cross-section of society from local ladies who've been doing it for years and also pick for other local vineyards, to travellers and seasonal workers. Tom tells me they've even had city workers volunteer on their holidays.

Shawsgate is unusual in having its own state-of-the art winery and makes wine for many other growers in the region, including Wyken, Lady Carla Carlisle's vineyard near Bury St Edmunds.

The winery was built in the late 80s and is equipped with over 300 stainless steel tanks based on a New Zealand model. Tom show me around and explains the process: the press is a rotating cylinder containing an air bag that slowly inflates, gently squeezing the grapes to release their juice. From here the juice goes in a large tank where fermentation happens then it's bottled and left to rest.

We visit the shop and see the range of white, red and rosé wines Shawsgate produces and we discuss how they have recently rebranded all the labels to give their wines a fresh modern look. We also talk about how Tom has withdrawn his product lines from supermarkets and and other retailers as the high duty on wine makes the margins very slim. Shawsgate prefer to sell direct to consumers or to the trade and you can enjoy Bacchus in several places including The Waterfront Cafe in Woodbridge.

You can visit Shawsgate most weekends for a self-guided tour of the vineyards or take part in their vineyard experience days. Food Safari is going to work with Shawsgate to offer a vineyard day with a difference where you can get hands-on for the day, pruning vines, picking grapes, even labelling bottles. Of course we'll throw in a good lunch and a wine and food matching session. Visit our web site for the details: http://www.foodsafari.co.uk/

Pinney's of Orford - January diary continued . . .

Tuesday 12th January - Pinney's of Orford

My first January in Suffolk has given us many stunning bright mornings and once again I de-ice the car to pop down to Orford to meet Harvey Allen, who runs the wholesale and retail side of Pinney's of Orford. Pinney's has a fascinating history worth recounting in some detail . . .

At the end of the second world war when Richard Pinney, like many of us since, decided he had had enough of living in London and headed for the countryside. After an extensive search he found a derelict cottage near Butley Creek, near Orford on the Suffolk coast and began looking for ways to make a living. his first enterprise was cutting rushes from local dikes and rivers, drying and platting them into mats and carpets.

He then turned his attention to the river and set about restoring the derelict oyster beds in Butley Creek. Oysters had been cultivated there since Roman times and had a fine reputation but the trade had died in the late 19th century. Despite being warned by local people that if he wanted to lose all his money, oysters were a good way to do it, he started laying down oysters from Portugal, which grew and fattened very well.

At the same time, being a keen fisherman, he caught some large sea trout off Orford beach. Not knowing what to do with them, he began to experiment with smoking in a disused compartment at the end of his cottage. The results were so good that he decided to buy some salmon and the smoking business grew from there. He developed a unique system of burning whole oak logs - a system which has been refined but hardly changed to this day.

In the mid 60s he decided to open a small restaurant for people to try these products and so the Butley Orford Oysterage began. In the 40 years since then it has involved successive generations of the Pinney family. The restaurant has moved to larger premises in Orford's pretty market square and the small shope at the back is about to move again to new premises right on Orford Quay. Many of the fish sold are caught with our own fishing boats. Daily landings include cod, bass, sole, skate, lobster and crabs, according to the season.

The smokehouses are still situated at Butley Creek next to the oyster beds. Trout, mackerel, cod roe, wild and farmed salmon, kippers and eels are among the products that are smoked every day, for the shop, restaurant and for our growing wholesale deliveries.The oysters grown now are the Pacific variety which thrive in the healthy oyster growing environment that makes Butley Creek such a special area.

***

Harvey and I chewed the cud for a couple of hours about the many challenges and opportunities facing producers such as Pinney's: how to start to sell through local Co-op supermarkets without upsetting long serving independent delis and farm shops; the decline of farmers markets for producers; the demise of Framlingham's landmark deli and general grocers, Carley & Webb, who've shut after over 100 years of trading; and the potential impact of Waitrose's announcement to open in Saxmundham in May on the site of Somerfield - all subjects worthy of their own blog.

The upshot of it all is that Food Safari will work with Pinney's to offer some behind-the-scenes tours of the oysterbeds and smokehouse at Butley Creek. You'll see for yourself the smoking process and get as close as you can (without actually going under water) to the oysterbeds and hear more about what fish are landed daily by the family's own boats. After the tour we'll head back to the the restaurant in Orford for a seafood lunch. The first event will be on May 30th to mark the launch of the new shop on Orford Quay. Visit our Food Safari web site for full details.

The Food Safari January Diary

January was a busy month for us at Food Safari as we spent as much time as possible out of the office and on the road visiting some of east Suffolk's finest producers and retailers and developing plans for our full programme of events in 2009. I thought it might be interest to write up some of those visits.



Tuesday 6th January - The Suffolk Food Hall

The kids are safely back at school after the Christmas hols and I whizz off down the A12 to meet Oliver Paul at The Suffolk Food Hall. It's a stunning clear, cold and frosty morning as arrive at Wherstead right underneath the Orwell Bridge, but inside the cafe is buzzing with mums and toddlers grabbing a coffee on their way back from the school run.



Since May 2007, the Suffolk Food Hall has brought together a number of local producers under one roof: Crystalwaters fishmongers from Lowestoft; Hamish Johnson cheeses from Framlingham; and Bread from local baker Helena Doy and their own Broxtead Butchery, winner of East Anglian Daily Times Best Butcher award in 2008.



As I arrive Oliver's busy with their chef taking photos of a steaming steak and kidney pie for their inaugaral Suffolk Foodies Club event 'Pie and a Pint' in February. The Foodies' Club is aimed at foodies in the Ipswich area and gives them a chance to meet some of the Food Hall's producers and suppliers and the chef, Andy, on the first Wednesday of every month. The events are very reasonably priced at £12.50 a head and I'm sure will prove to be a great evening out. The next event is on March 4th and is a chance to meet Helena Doy, from the aptly names Bread who supply farm shops and delis all over Suffolk.

Report: Beer Academy

How does the choice of ingredients and brewing process affect flavour and style? Why does beer get such a bad press while its supposedly more sophisticated cousin wine is seen as the natural choice to partner with food and growing steadily in popularity? How can beer find new audiences beyond lads and lasses swigging Stella on a big night out or beardy real ale drinkers?

These were some of the question that last week's Beer Academy course sought to answer. Aimed at people in the booze trade as well as beer enthusiasts looking for more of an educational experience than a typical brewery tour. I wasn't the only girl either!

The course was run by George Philliskirk, a beer expert who lives in what is apparently one of the epicentres of the beer universe: Burton on Trent (why - it's the high mineral content in the water there that gives the beers a refreshing edge apparently). George is a very charming, relaxed tutor with whom we'd had the privilege of dining with the night before in the company of Suffolk and Norfolk barley growers Teddy Maufe and Roger Middleditch of The Real Ale Shop. He knows his stuff from years in the industry and was about to head off to Australia to do a spot of beer judging. Nice work if you can get it.

The day covered the whole beer story in enough depth to come away with a much richer understanding of the topic:

• Beer ingredients (water, malted barley, hops, yeast are all you need for classic English real ale but you will find other grains like wheat and rice used for some styles and also herbs, spices and fruit added)
  
• Brewing process
  
• How to taste beer (just like tasting wine except you're not supposed to spit it out!)
• Beer and food matching
• History of beer and beer styles (what's the different between a stout and a porter?)
• Industry info: beer and health, the UK beer market

Some highlights for me included tasting some different types of malted barley: pale malt (just like Ovaltine or Grape Nuts), crystal malt (darker and more intense) and chocolate malt (the darkest of the three with a roasted coffee/chocolate aroma and flavour).

Beer and food matching was really interesting: try teaming chocolate with a Belgian Kriek (cherry) fruit beer - it's delicious. However this part of the course was a bit rushed and would merit a longer session. There are three key aspects to consider when teaming beer with food are:
1. Complement (a strong bitter with cheese)
2. Contrast (e.g. Kriek with chocolate)
3. Cut (think of a cold beer with a spicy curry)

Of the beers we tasted, those from the Meantime Brewery in Greenwich stood out as did Bluebird Bitter from the Coniston Brewery.

Now my months in Suffolk have confirmed a few things: that we are blessed with wonderful local producers, that there are plenty of good places to eat, and that I love a pint of Suffolk Ale be it Adnams or our local Earl Soham Victoria or Hektor's Pure which went down extremely well as the house bitter at the Latitude Festival last summer. It's probably fair to say that I was getting a bit complacent about beer. But Beer Academy revealed a whole world of different beer styles and ranged far and wide around the globe in search of good beers. We came away feeling much better informed about this amazing drink and with our tastebuds zinging.

Wild Meat in a Day - 29 March save the date

Happy New Year to all our readers! We're gradually emerging from a deeply restful two week holiday and raring to go with events for 2009.

Our first event on 29 March is going to be a cracker. Wild Meat in a Day will give you the whole story of game: from insights into how game is shot, through a hands on game butchery experience to cooking and finally eating the results.

Robert Gooch and Ray Kent of The Wild Meat Company (one of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes) will give you the confidence to prepare game at home as well as sharing with you a wealth of experience about local game. Check out Tim's post from September when he learned the basics of game butchery with these guys.

What's more we're delighted to be joining forces with our friends at The Anchor on the Suffolk coast at Walberswick. The Anchor has undergone a transformation in recent years under the expert hands of Mark and Sophie Dorber, well known from their days at The White Horse, Parsons Green in West London. Sophie’s insistence on the best, seasonal, local produce combined with Mark’s passionate expertise for beer and wine, ensure that The Anchor is fast becoming both a welcoming local – and a gastronomic destination.

The morning will start with locally-shot game. You’ll have the chance to pluck and draw your own bird before enjoying a cookery demonstration from The Anchor’s head chef, Mike who will share with you his favourite game dishes as well as passing on tips, ideas and advice.

Over a relaxing lunch in The Anchor’s dining room you will be treated to an inspiring tasting menu of game dishes including some of those demonstrated earlier in the day. After lunch we’ll have a look at rabbit and Ray will demonstrate how to skin and butcher a rabbit and you’ll each get to have a go too.

You’ll leave the day with the confidence and inspiration to prepare your own game at home, a handful of creative recipes to impress your friends and even some of the game you have prepared yourself!

Cost: £150 per person, £250 per couple to include refreshments, lunch and your own game to take home. To book email polly@foodsafari.co.uk or call 01728 621380.









View Larger Map

Chicken - the full story

We spent a fascinating morning with Charles Nash who runs Sutton Hoo Chickens on land next to the site of the great Anglo Saxon ship burial. It's a beautiful, atmospheric place with views over the river Deben - lucky chickens.

Charles - tall, blue eyed and charming - has been farming chickens for a decade and his birds - both free range and organic are reared for flavour. We've been cooking Sutton Hoo chickens on a regular basis over the last few months and there's no doubt they are our favourite for flavour, texture and succulence.

With the sun on our backs we walked and talked. The chicken story at Sutton Hoo goes something like this: once every two weeks 2,000 - 3,000 day old chicks arrive from a specialist chicken breeder in Lincolnshire. The breed is a hybrid of a brown feathered mother and a larger white feathered father and is known as the 'Suffolk White' around here. It's a slow-growing bird which consumes 1.5 - 2x the amount of food compared with an intensively reared chicken during its life. At any one time there are around 15,00o chickens at Sutton Hoo.

The young chicks are fed with 'crumb' a protein-rich mix of wheat and soya while the older birds eat pellets of the same ingredients in different proportions. The birds are housed in modest sized warm, dry houses with plenty of space (a little like caravans) with fresh straw bedding laid out every day. The houses are portable and moved periodically onto fresh grass.

The result is a premium quality free range bird which enjoys a better quality of life than would be necessary to qualify for the label 'free range'. Slaughtering is done as humanely as possible.

So what about the difference between organic, free range, freedom food and so on? At Sutton Hoo there is a field for organic birds (Charles sells about 1/3 organic to 2/3 free range). It was interesting to get behind the scenes of chicken production to understand these labels more quickly. The only real difference between Sutton Hoo Free Range and Sutton Hoo Organic is diet: the chicks which arrive can become either but are fed either a regular feed or an organic one. What we learned is that if you are not sure of the provenance of a chicken (say you are buying from a supermarket or eating in a restaurant) then is is certainly true that the label 'organic' tells you that the bird has had good welfare. However, Sutton Hoo 'free range' enjoy exactly the same quality of life as their 'organic' neighbours.

While it might further complicate things to add a new label we left the farm feeling that these 'free range plus' birds are a great choice and justifiably can command a higher price than a bog-standard free range bird.

We'll be back at Sutton Hoo in 2009 with some Food Safari events where you will be able to learn what we did, catch, pluck, cook and eat. Watch this space.

Grain Brewery awarded

Food Safari's friends at Grain have been awarded at the Norwich Beer Festival with prizes for two of their beers.

Congratulations to Phil and the team. We're celebrating at Food Safari 'HQ' right now with a bottle or two of their delightful Porter. Yes the nights are dark but so's the Porter.
Don't forget that you can sample these and other Grain beers at our Barley to Beer event on Sunday 23 October at the Grain Brewery. Tickets are £40 from polly@foodsafari.co.uk but this is more than a brewery tour - we'll be tracing the whole journey of several beers from the grain to the bottle or cask and then matching beer with food in some surprising combinations over a rustic lunch.