Unless you’re Delia Smith, you probably know the feeling of being halfway through the holiday period and the cupboard is bare, and let’s face it, who needs to find themselves under-catered mid-way through Christmas?
We asked the lovely folks at Blagdon Farm Shop for a bit of help with our pre-Christmas catering plans and they gave us these two fantastic recipes which you can make now and freeze for that period between Christmas and New Year when you start wondering if you’ll ever leave the kitchen again.
They’ve also had a lovely set of photos done at Blagdon to emphasise their connection to produce grown on their farm and prepared in their own kitchen. Shop manager Jo Celerier says the idea came about for the atmospheric photoshoot by photographer Andrew Heptinstall from the fact that, because the shop isn’t actually on its farm, customers may forget that it is as rooted in its soil as any other farm shop.
That means a good 60% of the produce sold in the shop comes from the farm and from the farm shop kitchen, served up in the shape of beef from its Belted Galloway herd and rare-breed pigs, game from the estate’s venison, partridge, pheasants and hares, turkey, geese, ducks and guinea fowl – all of it expertly prepared by the team of master butchers.
There are free-range laying hens on the farm, and the shop and its kitchen uses some 18 types of vegetables to make its pies, quiches, soups, puddings, all homemade in small batches. Which leads us to thinking, well some of that might be useful in the freezer for the holiday period too. Not long now!
The Blagdon Farm Shop, Unit 16-18, Milkhope Centre, Berwick Hill Road, Seaton Burn, NE13 6DA tel 01670 789 924, www.theblagdonfarmshop.co.uk
Recipes:
