Wealden Times | WT165 | November 2015 | Gift supplement inside

competition
Win a one-day cookery
experience for two at
Rosemary Shrager’s Award-
Winning Cookery School
Fables
From
The Farm
Jane visits the fatstock
sales and tries her hand
at making suasages…
The home of Rosemary Shrager’s Cookery School, lies in the heart of
Royal Tunbridge Wells. The School is housed within The Corn Exchange,
a beautiful three-storey Regency building. Within the School we have a
Domestic and Professional Kitchen, event spaces for private celebrations
and corporate functions. Every aspect of the School has been personally
designed to Rosemary’s exacting specifications, and no expense has been
spared to provide guests with up to the minute kitchen technologies in a
luxurious setting.
The Gallery Kitchen is a hand built home-style kitchen made by Mark
Wilkinson Furniture. The entire room occupies an airy, open-plan space,
with an enormous demonstration island and fully equipped workstations
with Miele appliances. It is a kitchen built to the highest specifications,
designed to inspire home cooks of all abilities. It’s ideal for private parties,
team building events, product launches, private chef’s Tables, filming and
photo shoots. We have a course or dining experience to suit every occasion,
whether it’s for a celebration or a private dinner for family and friends.
Our dining room is an exquisite home styled room ideal for catering to
smaller events, such as hosted meetings, company presentations or special
dining celebrations.
Choose from an array of one day cookery courses on offer: butchery,
Italian, Taste of Asia and baking (all using locally sourced produce). The
lessons are hands-on and include demonstrations and practical cookery
time. Meet everyone for a hot drink, before forming small groups to cook.
At the end, sit down and enjoy a three-course lunch and a glass of wine
and leave with a Shrager goody bag. The one day cookery course seeks to
inspire amateur cooks and budding food enthusiasts alike.
For your chance to win a one-day cookery
experience for two at Rosemary
Shrager’s Award-Winning Cookery
School in Tunbridge Wells, just answer
this question: ‘To whose exacting specifications
has the school been designed?’
Enter your answer with your contact
details* in the online form at www.
wealdentimes.co.uk/competition or post
to: The Rosemary Shrager Competition,
Wealden Times, 21 Stone Street,
Cranbrook, Kent TN17 3HF by 16 November 2015. There is no cash alternative
and the prize must be taken before 31 March 2016. *All entrants’ details
will be passed on to Rosemary Shrager’s Cookery School and Wealden Times
Events. Please let us know if you do not wish your details to be passed on.
After a warm and honeyed summer, the
agricultural show season came to a close at
the end of September. These are shows for
breeding stock and provide an opportunity to showcase
the best of British cattle, as well as sheep, pigs, chickens,
rabbits, leeks, honey, floral displays and plenty more.
But that doesn’t mean it all goes quiet until next spring. Oh no,
all the background work that goes into showing animals – halter
training, trimming, feeding, polishing, primping and grooming
is back in full swing in preparation for the annual round of
Christmas Fatstock shows. These are shows where farmers exhibit
beasts that are ready for the butcher rather than the breeder and
the livestock is usually sold in an auction after the show.
This year we are planning to go to the South East Prime
Winter Fatstock Fayre at Ardingly Show Ground. Established in
1869, this was originally the Edenbridge Fatstock Show which
only moved to Ardingly in recent history and which has a rather
illustrious past.
Sir Winston Churchill, best-known as a witty, determined – if
arrogant – leader of men also had a lifelong interest in farming
and, from his smallholding at Chartwell, enjoyed considerable
success at the Edenbridge Fatstock Show. His pigs, apparently,
were legendary prize winners.
So no pressure then! It won’t however just be cattle we are taking
to the show. As well as classes for cows, sheep, pigs, turkeys
and geese there is also a Sausage and Meat Pie-Making class!
Perfect, we’re up for it.
Our pigs live in about 20 acres of woodland and are truly free
range. Usually we only see them in the mornings when we toss
them buckets of food but right now they are filling up on all the
fallen acorns and don’t bother with our evidently less tasty rations.
It means that the sausages made in November and December are
particularly tasty.
They run around so much that they take about nine months
to mature – commercial pigs are ready in about six months – and
being old-fashioned breeds by then they have a fair amount of fat
cover. It makes them a little stout for chops and roasts but perfect
for sausages. So, we turn the whole pig including the leg, loin and
fillet into sausages and just add salt, pepper and a pinch of sage.
If all this sounds like we might be in with a shout for a ticket
in the sausage competition there is, however, one major obstacle
lying between us and success. The rules stipulate that the sausage
has to be made by the entrant and as we don’t usually make our
own sausages – that’s down to the brilliant Alex at Tottingworth –
we’ll have to borrow the mincer and nozzles. It looks easy but of
course it isn’t – and Alex has warned us that chipolatas are twice
as tricky as fat bangers. So far attempts to make anything that
looks remotely sausage-like have failed, there has however been
much juvenile humour in the trying.
Follow Jane on Twitter @coopers_farm
Congratulations to Guy Matthews from West Sussex, who wins the October 159 www.wealdentimes.co.uk
competition for an overnight stay in a Superior room with dinner & breakfast
for two at Dale Hill Hotel & Golf Club!