Apples galore

Off into a grey and wet day for my jaunt to Chelmsford and Lathcoats Farm, thanks to a seasonal tweet from essexgourmet. Getting there was surprisingly easy, and as soon as I'd arrived at Chelmsford station, the right bus turned up to take me through Galleywood estate with its fabulously bird-named streets (Peregrine Drive, Firecrest Walk etc) and drop me just opposite the farm. Lathcoats grows over 40 varieties of apple (as well as other fruit and veg) and most of them were available to taste in the busy tasting shed. There were baskets and baskets of apples, with plates of chedder morsels to scoff in between fruit.

As soon as I paused by a basket, a knife wielder appeared to shear off a slice for me to taste. I had a long chat with one of the farm's owners, who told me about apple picking for his grandad and his garden apple tree onto which he's grafted seven varieties.

One of the apples I most wanted to taste was D'Arcy Spice, an 18th century Essex variety.

It was lovely - almost sparkling with yes, a rich spiced flavour. My apple advisor pointed me to Topaz. I was a bit snooty about this one, as it's modern and not British - but he was right.

The flavour was outstanding - almost sherbety - and the more I ate, the better it got.

Next up was Ashmead's Kernel, first recorded in 1700, and it's another lovely spicy apple. Next to it was Temptation, a french variety from a Delicious cross, but it tasted bland in comparison to the others.

Kidd's Orange, a New Zealand variety, is a Cox/Delicious cross, and was much better, with an almost jammy finish. I must have tasted around 20 varieties, and I was bowled over by the differences in taste. Truly a wonderful fruit. By now, I was appled out, so I bought some D'Arcy Spice apples and wandered over the yard to admire some of the farm's veg, stacked outside the farm shop.

Beautiful pumpkins and very painterly cauliflowers.

There was a scrum around a small tent on the other side of the yard, so I gently elbowed my way in.

There were a couple of tables with recipe leaflets and the food made from the recipes. This apple cake was particularly good.

On the other side of the tent, I joined the queue for Lathcoates single variety apple juice - make mine a bottle of Topaz. The farm had invited several of its farm shop suppliers to have a stall, including Cratfield Beef. After guzzling a couple of roast beef samples, I bagged a small joint of silverside.

I had a long chicken chat with the father and son team from Essex Birds - their rather wonderful slogan is 'chicken raised free as a bird'. They supply the farm shop with poultry, and are now rearing their big chickens for Christmas. I promised to return to the shop to see if the taste is as good as my beloved Wickham Manor Farm chooks.

I headed for the farm shop, which has a very good selection of fruit, veg, bread, preserves and dairy produce. Yet more apples in the specially cooled fruit and veg room. There were notices up explaining that one day this June, the heavens opened and all the orchards were pelleted with hail for an hour. Hence some of the apples are slightly stippled. I bought some bread and cheese, then headed out to meet a few of the animals.

This pygmy goat was on the lookout for stray food...

...but the kune kune pig was gently snoozing under a much-munched apple tree.

It was a great trip, and the farm was bustling with families, enjoying the apples, riding donkeys or getting a bite from the farm cafe. I'll certainly return. It's the kind of place that makes me feel very good about British food.

This week - including Shropshire and a pizza

The first half of this week was consumed by getting settled into new offices in west London: arctic air conditioning and a longer journey into work. Meanwhile in the garden, my brugmansia is starting to bloom its head off.

I took Friday off and got up at 0500 so that I could catch the first Wrexham and
Shropshire train from Marylebone to Shrewsbury. It's a three hour journey and there seem to be a lot of speed reductions on the line. The rail company is very small and very friendly, and you can get a cooked breakfast if you want; all ingredients are sourced from the company's base in Wales. I haven't visited Shrewsbury for many many years, and I found that it's shrunk as my legs have got longer. My first stop was at the castle, bang next door to the railway station. Originally built in the eleventh century as a motte and bailey, it now houses the Shropshire Regimental Museum. All the staff are ex-forces, and one of the guys stopped to talk as I pondered a showcase full of artifacts from the first Afghan war. We didn't win that one either, and we wondered why we seem not to have learnt anything.

Then I walked down Pride Hill and up to the Kingsland Bridge. Next to the bridge is my old school, Shrewsbury High School for Girls. I spent two years at the junior school and one here, at the senior school - happy days. And the food was a lot better than at my next school...The school is a lot bigger now, and they've nabbed several of the adjoining buildings. And there's an indoor gym! In my day, we had monkey bars in the main hall.
Next, I skirted the old town walls and came down to the English Bridge over the Severn.

The river was running pretty high. Over the bridge is Shrewsbury Abbey - all the remains of the old monastery.

A good number of the buildings remained (although in a terrible state of repair) until Thomas Telford bulldozed most of them to make way for the A5. Much of the abbey has been rebuilt too, but it's still a lovely church and well worth a visit. Back into town, past the guildhall, to wander around, shop for a picnic lunch at a lovely deli, and nose into the town museum down by where the bus station used to be. Then home by the 1600 train. A great day.
On the food front, I felt inspired by Hugh F-W's article in the Guardian yesterday to make pizza.

The recipe is from Dan Steven's River Cottage Bread book, and you can get it from the link above. I gently fried off some mushrooms with a couple of cloves of garlic and some lemon juice, used some garden toms for a tomato sauce, and topped it with mozzarella and my dried Turkish black olives. Onto my pizza stone it went for ten minutes. Before digging in, I added some torn rocket leaves. Yum. And there's enough dough left over for a few more over the next fortnight.

This morning, I made my usual Sunday visit to the allotment. While Q dealt with the compost bins, I cleared the fallen apples, weeded and made the harvest: plums, apples, toms, Burgandy Red potatoes - then a quick visit to the Paddock for a few late blackberries. Birds and humans have had most of them, but there are a few lurking in the prickliest places. This evening, I want to make an apple and blackberry version of a recipe in Olive magazine. That's for after my Muck and Magic smoked gammon cooked in cider with potatoes, broad beans and parsley sauce. One of my favourite Sunday meals.