ox in the run up to Christmas 2020, Lymestone are now taking orders for this year via their website. “We introduced online ordering because of the pandemic, and we have a history of working with other local suppliers,” explains brewer’s wife Viv Bradford. “Before Christmas last year we made contact with Mary at Staffordshire Cheese and asked if she fancied some joint working. She sent over some samples and we sat together for a cheese and beer sampling afternoon. We matched the cheeses with the beers and the Cheese Box was born. In there you get six lovely cheeses, six different Lymestone beers, and a little board as a gift set.” On the upstairs mezzanine, alongside the M&S Cookery School, charity pumpkin decorating with Checkley Hall Farm and a children’s cookery school where little ones could make their own pizza, were Dalton’s Dairy from the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border. Fresh from winning Family Farming Business of the Year at the British Farming Awards in Birmingham on Thursday, they were offering visitors the opportunity to pat their own butter as well as serving their fruit spinners from a specially imported machine. The first and only one of its kind in the UK, it combines real frozen fruit with Dalton’s vanilla to create a delicious, swirled ice cream. “It has a taste similar to frozen yoghurt, and the real fruit tastes very natural,” Rosie Dalton explains. “People have been enjoying shaping their own butter to take away. We pat every single block of butter individually in the traditional way. We milk the cows and separate the milk from the cream, which takes a day, and then the next day we can make the butter.” With two main stages and multiple smaller stages VISITORS ENJOYED MANY CHEF DEMONSTRATIONS including the M&S Chef ’s Kitchen, plus tastings including Belton Farm’s cheese and beer pairing talks, there was plenty going on to keep visitors entertained. On Friday afternoon, Marco Pierre White demonstrated the simple three step process of creating a fantastic risotto for a crowd of selfconfessed risotto lovers who doubted their own ability to make a good version at home. “Risotto is a great dinner party dish because you can cook it with all your guests around you,” Marco says. “Someone asked if I add wine. Some chefs do and some chefs don’t. I taste the wine and if it’s delicious, it stays in the glass. If it’s quite aggressive I put it in the pan and reduce it down, to reduce the acidity.” Marco confesses that he prefers to eat cheese rather than cook with it, and found Long Clawson, from Leicestershire, a highlight of the show. “Their Blue Stilton was so deliciously creamy, the Red Leicester beautifully aged, and the white Stilton was so delightfully crumbly, which of course is what you want from a Stilton,” he says. “But I’m a lover of cheese so I’m easily seduced.” Does he think the pandemic has changed our attitudes to food and cooking? “People have been at home and working from home, so they’ve had to cook. The standard of cooking in Britain must have gone up enormously, because the more time you spend at the stove the more confidence you grow - and that’s the whole thing about cooking. Before the pandemic, lots of people never even thought about cooking, but now it’s their new hobby. They always say there’s a silver lining to every cloud, and there it is.” 12 www.jaimemagazine.com
w w w . n e r o e b i a n c o . u k Nero e Bianco Exclusive Fashion & Bridal Barton Marina Burton upon Trent DE13 8AS 01283 346704