On Tuesday 18th June we will be joined by River Cottage HQ head chef Gill Meller with a menu living up to the old saying "you can eat everything but the oink".

Canteen head chef Sam Rom and his team have designed a delicious three course menu showcasing some of the more unusual cuts of pork and embracing the River Cottage ethos of using the whole animal.

Menu 

Starter: Sharing board of zampone sausage/ ham hock terrine/ crispy pigs head

Main Course: Porchetta/ marinated leg steaks/ slow braised shoulder & bacon

Pudding: Seasonal pudding

(This menu is subject to change and an alternative vegetarian menu will be available on the night.)

Enjoy this special evening for only £28 per person.

Booking is essential, you can either book online email: axminstercanteen@rivercottage.net or call the Canteen on 01297 631715 for further details.

We look forward to seeing you.

Axminster Canteen & Deli Team

River Cottage Canteen Bristol

Lunch Menu - Tuesday 14 May 2013

Our menu changes daily, but this gives an idea of what is on offer this week. 

River Cottage Canteen Bristol showcases the very best ingredients - seasonal, local, organic and wild - available from the surrounding area. Everything is prepared here on the premises, by our head chef Mark Stavrakakis and his team, overseen by our executive chefs Gill Meller and Andrew Green. 

VegfestUK Bristol is the world’s biggest veggie event and this year is celebrating its 10th birthday.  To mark this occasion, and National Vegetarian Week, River Cottage Canteen Bristol will be offering a vegetarian only menu, with a full range of vegan options, for the lunchtime services on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th May.  Whether already a committed veggie, or a curious omnivore book now to avoid disappointment at rivercottage.net/bristol.

Vegfest Lunch Menu 24th & 25th May

Together

Seasonal vegetable mezze board 10.00

Smaller

Gazpacho soup, basil oil 5.00 (vg)

Spicy mushroom, peanut & coriander dip, flatbread 5.00 (vg no flatbread)

Marinated courgette, oregano & baby leaf salad 5.00 (vg no cheese)

Heritage tomatoes & buffalo mozzarella 6.75 (vg no cheese)

Aubergine, hazelnut & mushroom parcels 7.00 (vg)

Fava bean falafel, mint yoghurt, tabbouleh, flatbread 7.25 (vg no flatbread)

Bigger

Mushroom stoup, herby dumplings 11.00 (vg)

Chickpea & rosemary pancakes, fennel roasted vegetables 12.00 (vg)

New potato, melted onion & thyme tart 11.50

Moroccan spiced chickpeas, chard & poached egg 9.75

Sourdough pizza: Pickled raddichio, fennel seed, chilli & blue cheese 9.25

Sides

Heritage tomatoes & pickled shallots 3.25 (vg)

Chips with Cornish sea salt 3.00 (vg)

Mixed leaf salad 3.50 (vg)

Chard, garlic, chilli flakes 3.25 (vg)

Sweeter & Cheesier

Cheese, chutney & oatcakes 7.50

Cranachan iced parfait, marmalade syrup & hazelnut shortbread 6.50

Lemon trickle cake, clotted cream 5.50

Chocolate, lime & sea salt mousse 6.50

Lemon sorbet, summer fruit compote 4.50 (vg)

Children’s

A selection of dishes from the main menu are available in half portions for children.

Fava bean falafel, mint yoghurt & flatbread 4.50

Fat pasta ribbons, tomato sauce, cheese 4.00

Tomato & cheddar flatbread pizza 4.50

Children’s ice cream 1.00

Please speak with a member of our team regarding any dietary/allergy requirements

(vg = vegan)

As with all River Cottage dishes, ingredients are seasonal, as locally sourced as possible and subject to availability.

For more information about VegfestUK Bristol, see www.bristol.vegfest.co.uk.  Around 25,000 visitors are expected over the three day festival with a feast of daytime and evening entertainment. 

Further information on National Vegetarian Week is at www.nationalvegetarianweek.org

This picture was taken in May last year and the garlic isn't flowering quite as profusely yet. But there were lots of garlicky greens to gather as we walked down into the woods and nearer to the stream, Ruby found that the garlic flowers were just beginning to open. Her 2 year old friend gathered garlic leaves just as enthusiastically as us, before sitting down to happily remove her wellies and socks so that her leggings and feet could become more closely acquainted with the mud. We all had lots of fun.

Back home in the kitchen, I was as excited as ever to have a bag crammed full of nutritious and free greens. My friend Heidi used her wild garlic leaves in a lovely Moroccan inspired soup with chickpeas, saffron and tomatoes. But I was still in the mood for a Saturday night Chinese supper. Not authentically Chinese at all, I have to point out, but the sort of fragrant yet wholesome food I felt like.

As Ruby had been involved in gathering the ingredients, she tucked in to her supper packed with greens with enthusiasm. Not something that always happens in this kitchen.

It made use of our current Purple Sprouting Broccoli garden glut as well as the wilder glut in the woods and was very simple to cook. Ideal for a May day when we'd made the most of the sunnier parts of the day outside between showers.

Wild garlic egg-fried rice

For 4 average appetites or 3 very hungry people

250 g brown rice

3 free-range eggs

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil

2-3 teaspoons soy sauce (I use the Clearspring organic variety)

3 handfuls wild garlic leaves, chopped

1 handful wild garlic flowers

2 handfuls purple sprouting broccoli

Break the eggs into a bowl and mix with a fork. Heat a small amount of the oil in a large wok and stir-fry the broccoli briefly. Remove and reserve on a plate. Heat the remaining oil and stir-fry the rice. Add the soy sauce and wild garlic leaves, stirring - the heat of the wok will wilt the wild greens nicely. Add the broccoli, stir and push the rice mixture to one side of the wok. Quickly cook the eggs in a sort of omelette in the wok, then slice into thin shreds with your spatula or chop sticks and mix with the rice. Heap into bowls, scattering a few wild garlic flowers on top.

If you want to make this dish more authentically Chinese you can of course use white rice and vary the oil. I'd normally add spring onions or Egyptian walking onions from the garden at the beginning of egg fried rice, but this time the wild garlic seemed to add plenty of that fresh allium flavour. Later in the summer I'll probably make it with peas picked from the garden instead of the PSB and wild garlic.

We ate it with some spare ribs that I'd marinated and cooked in the oven, but this would make a good vegetarian dish on its own.

As featured in Country Living Magazine

We have discovered the perfect way to enjoy a bit of the countryside, and a well deserved treat, when you have a few days to escape from the city. We’ve just come back from a Feather Down Farm Holiday on Billingsmoor Farm in Devon and had the best time ever. Coming home, we found the apple trees in full blossom, another chicken has gone broody and the asparagus is growing thick and fast…

By subscribing you’ll never miss a thing!

Feather Down Farm Days

Regular readers may remember last year’s post about dairy farms, this month we’ve been able to stay on a farm as a family and see for ourselves the hard work and commitment of our British farmers. This was no ordinary farm holiday, staying in a converted barn or cottage, this time we were staying under canvas in a fantastic Feather Down Farm Tent. Based on an Old Dutch Farm House with wood burning stove at the heart, we were excited to explore every corner; Macy chose one of the bunk beds in the twin room, Andy and I enjoyed the romantic double room lined with cotton drapes and lit by candles in hanging lanterns, whilst James clambered into the cupboard bed that would traditionally benefit from the warmth of young animals sleeping in the cubby hole underneath. The tent was fully equipped with everything from vintage enamel ware and a wall mounted coffee grinder to reclaimed dining chairs and glowing oil lamps. If your experience of camping is lumpy ground-sheets and floppy air beds, you’ll be pleased to find that Feather Down tents have wooden floor boards and you sleep in real wooden framed beds complete with mattresses, duvets and pillows. Our tent that slept 6 shared a field with just one other, though there were 10 tents in total on the farm. Each tent had a personal chicken coop and the children, who are usually up first on a campsite, were delighted to join in the chase for next door’s hen who had escaped during the morning egg collection!

A Feather Down holiday will definitely help you switch off and relax, which is a good job as there is no Wi-Fi, no electricity (except for hair dryers in the shower block) and not even gas for your morning cuppa. Each day starts with the stove being lit and the large tin kettle being filled with spring water from the brass tap in the kitchen area. A slow breakfast is cooked with food gathered from the Farm Larder, an honesty shop stocking a range of local farm fresh foods and a few of the basics that make life easier. We took milk, bacon, bread and butter for breakfast, a salad bowl, steaks and burgers for a BBQ and just made a note of what we took ready to settle up on departure. Evenings were cosy, with cheese and wine, playing cards by candlelight and no midnight stalks across a wet field for a night-time ‘visit’ as each tent has its own flushing toilet!

Friends who had visited Feather Down Farms before assured us that each tent was exactly as promised in their brochure and website and as I stepped into our tent I felt like I’d been here before. This was so much more than a holiday, it was an experience for all the senses that you will only fully understand when you go yourself; with sites across the UK and into Europe you can choose your location, switch off and enjoy.

In our next post we’ll be telling you more about the farm that we stayed on and introducing you to Jayne and Robert Lammie from Billingsmoor Farm in Devon.

Thank you Feather Down Farm Days and Billingsmoor Farm, we had a great holiday and hope to see you again soon!

 

Other News:

• Our almonds did get pollinated in the cold months of February & March, we can see the new nuts forming
• We are harvesting a couple of bunches of asparagus a week and whisking up a regular hollandaise
• The first Bee Keeping course of the year was a great success, there are 4 more dates available…

Jobs for next week:

• Get the garden ready for a bespoke course to help celebrate a 60th birthday
• Try and split the bees to start a second colony
• Sow some salad crops under cover in the cold frame

Have a good week yourself…

Join us on the Journey!

Each week we invite our suppliers to share their knowledge and enthusiasm for their products. Come along and enjoy a sample and meet the people behind these great local businesses, between 11am and 2pm - it's free!

Friday 10th May: Godminster use the finest ingredients grown on their farm in Bruton, Somerset, to create delicious organic products.

Friday 17th May: Mannabonbons handmade fresh and natural chocolate from Charmouth in West Dorset, using ecologically and ethically sourced ingredients.

Friday 24th May: Spong Bakes have you tried our delicous cakes! Kerri, who lives in Axminster, makes some of them for us.

Monday 27th May: River Cottage Stinger tasting day. Come and taste some of our legendary Stinger Organic Ale, brewed with organically grown, hand-picked Dorset nettles.

Friday 7th June: Tea's Me organic loose leaf tea from Christow, Devon.

Friday 14th June: Hamwood Crafts wooden hand-crafted kitchen and household goods from Montacute, Somerset.

Friday 21st June: Norcotts Cider have a new range of ciders, 5 exciting flavours developed and produced locally in the West Country.

Friday 28th June: Filberts Fine Foods Seriously divine, nutty snacks, plus delicious British gourment oils and Dorset drizzles.

Friday 5th July: Town Mill Brewery Micro-brewery making fine beers in the heart of Lyme Regis.

Friday 12th July: Mighty Hop Brewery Micro brewery producing hand-crafted beers, nestled in the heart of nearby Lyme Regis.

Friday 26th July: Tom's Pies Award-winning pies, handmade in the West Country at Clyst St. Mary, Devon. 

Monday 5th August: Lyme Bay Winery producers of award winning, delicious Country Wines, Liqueurs & Lyme Bay Ciders.

Monday 12th August: Yarde Producers of delicious, additive free apple juice & cider, made in Devon from Devon fruit.

Call 01297 631715 for more information.

We are very excited to have teamed up our very good friends at the wonderful Spillers Farm (as recommended by you!) to offer you an exclusive accommodation and dining package. 

Located in Musbury, in the Axe Valley an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and just a few minutes drive from the World Heritage Jurassic Coast, Spillers Farm is the perfect place to spend a relaxing couple of days. Just to make this offer completely irresistible it includes dinner for two at the River Cottage Canteen, just five minutes drive away. 

Spillers Farm is a working smallholding with an interactive approach and as part of this deal your hosts Keith and Bridget will be happy to accompany you on a tour of the farm and private lake, show you their rare-breed pigs, friendly flock of sheep, free range hens and ducks and vegetable gardens.

Rates: 

Monday - Thursday nights: Standard Double or Twin Room £165.00 for two persons for two nights with breakfast. Includes a 3 course dinner* for two at the River Cottage Canteen on one of the evenings. 

Monday - Thursday nights: Superior Room or Kingsize Room £185.00 for two persons for two nights with breakfast. Includes a 3 course dinner* for two at the River Cottage Canteen on one of the evenings.

To book, please call Bridget on 01297 551316 and mention this deal.

Axminster Canteen & Deli Team

www.rivercottage.net/axminster

*offer excludes beverages

Join the River Cottage Canteen & Deli team on Tuesday 14th May for a delicious three course meal centred around the artisan tradition of curing. Steven Lamb, resident meat expert at River Cottage HQ, will also be on hand to answer all your curing queries and tempt you with tasters from his mini-demonstrations.

Menu (subject to change due to seasonal availability)

Starter: cured meat platter/cured fish platter/vegetarian platter

Main Course: chervil cured venison/quick cure boar chop/veg option

Pudding: seasonal pudding

Enjoy this special evening for only £28 per person.

Booking is essential, you can either book online email: axminstercanteen@rivercottage.net or call the Canteen on 01297 631715 for further details.

We look forward to seeing you.

Axminster Canteen & Deli Team

Terms and conditions for facebook competition:
Like and share this event for the chance to win 2 tickets to this event.
2 tickets includes meals, but not beverages.
The winner will be picked at random on Monday 13th May and should be able to attend this event on Tuesday 14th May, 6.45pm