A day at River Cottage HQ – Part 2 – the food
6th April 2016
So this is part 2 of my River Cottage blog, and it’s going to be all about the yummy food we cooked and ate on the day.
After our hot cup of tea down at the Yurt it was time for our first little cooking class with River Cottage Group Head Chef, Gill Meller. Gill was showing us how to cook on the Esse Fire Stone, which is a very cool wood-burning outdoor oven that you can pretty much cook anything in. We didn’t know too much about this oven before, but we fell totally in love with it and what it does and are hoping to get our very own Fire Stone for Cotes Mill, it would look so cool sat out in the courtyard.
Gill was teaching us how to make the perfect pizza in the Esse Fire Stone, with the help of a very excited Helen!!! It was so quick and so easy, the bases were thin and crispy and the cheese was all melty and delicious in just a couple of minutes.
Helen went for a classic tomato base, creamy buffalo mozzarella, a sprinkling of cheddar (something we wouldn’t typically put on a pizza… but Gill told us that adding just a little bit along with your mozzarella will make your pizza that extra bit cheesy and rich and yummy), a few fresh mushrooms, some zingy garlic and nettle pesto and a generous helping of River Cottage’s handmade British salami.
Something that I think is really cool about this oven is that you can place your food directly onto the stone, you don’t need a tray or a shelf or a plate. Doing it this way means your food gets those authentic smokey, woody kind of vibes, mmmm.
Helen and Gill kept a close eye on their pizza’s through the handy little glazed door.
And they were ready for tasting in a couple of minutes, how yummy do they look!?
We popped the pizzas onto an old wooden board, sliced them up and tucked in.
Next we got to explore inside the beautiful farmhouse. The farmhouse kitchen is truly lovely, full of quirky old bits and bobs, vintage utensils and pots and bowls, a beautiful big antique table and a huge open fireplace. Another room that reminded me so much of the Mill, authentic and charming and unspoilt.
Our lesson in the kitchen was with Andy Tyrrell, Senior Sous Chef at River Cottage, and Helen was the very willing helper again… she loves cooking so much and any chance she gets to cook she takes it, oh and she’s so good… I think she could give the River Cottage chefs a run for their money any day!
The cooker installed in the farmhouse kitchen is an Esse CAT, a very lovely gas range cooker made from cast iron. The catalytic burner within this particular cooker is so effective that it cleans the gas as it uses it, meaning you don’t even need a flue to vent outside. Not only is this handy but it also keeps the look of the cooker and your kitchen clutter free and neat.
First up Andy showed us how to make the perfect Kale crisps. I know these things are pretty trendy and in right now, they’re healthy and they taste really good too, but buying a packet of these at the shops will cost you about £3. Trust me, you don’t need to buy them from the supermarket any longer… they’re so easy and so cheap and so much tastier if you make them yourself. Give the leaves a quick rinse, add a dash of soy sauce and a pinch of chilli – or whatever you fancy – and pop them in the oven to crisp up. Keep an eye on them, as they’ll burn quickly, but 5-10 mins should cook them to perfection. The best snack!
Andy then whipped up some little cups of Asian broth, a sweet and sour and tangy mouthful of utter loveliness. He added some chopped up greens and carrots and mushrooms to the bottom of the cups and poured the steaming broth over the top. So good!
Next up we made some English muffins with crispy bacon, spinach and homemade hollandaise sauce. I never knew it was so easy to make English muffins and I was fascinated when Andy popped them straight onto the top of the Esse hot plate and shut the lid. These little guys came out looking and tasting just perfect, they were slightly browned on each side and all fluffy in the middle.
Andy added the final touches to the toppings as Steven Lamb, the curing and smoking expert at River Cottage, looked on…
… He popped the toppings onto the fluffy muffins and added a good dollop of creamy, rich hollandaise to the top. The tastiest little mouthful ever.
And for our final lesson of the day we sat down in the farmhouse lounge where Gelf Alderson, River Cottage Head Chef, was waiting for us. An Esse Ironheart was sitting in the huge old fireplace, the flames were roaring and it looked so pretty.
The Ironheart is definitely more than just something to cook on, it creates a beautiful centre point to your room, it heats your room, it gives that cosy feeling and it’s sociable, you can all sit around the stove and cook and chat away, I love that.
Firstly Gelf whipped up a super quick and super simple bread dough. He shaped it, scored it, and again, placed it straight onto the bottom of the hot stove, no tin or tray needed….
The bread was perfectly baked within about ten minutes and it tasted so good. Esse have promised to share all of the days recipes with us, so as soon as I get those I’ll put a link down at the bottom of the blog for you – you have to try this one out!
We’ve got one of these beautiful Ironheart stoves in the Shaker Kitchen showroom at Cotes Mill, and just a couple of weeks ago Helen bought some bacon and collected a few fresh eggs from our resident chickens and cooked up some bacon and egg cobs for our staff. Helen cooked the bacon in a pan on the top hot plate, it cooked perfectly, but we had no idea that you could place your meat straight onto the hot plate for an even better result. Gelf cooked a few lovely and tender Venison steaks for us to try out, I’m running out of words to describe how good this food tasted, but you get the gist… it was incredible.
After all of our cookery classes were complete and we’d had a really good nosey around the grounds, Esse took us to see their lovely new trailer which they’d parked up outside River Cottage. The trailer has been fitted with a beautifully simple deVOL Shaker Kitchen and a classic white Esse. We are so happy that Esse picked one of our kitchens for their trailer, it’s going to travel all over the country to fairs and festivals and showrooms to spread the word about this lovely company and their lovely products. What a cool idea.
The deVOL Kitchen is painted in ‘Lead’, one of our favourite and most popular colours, with sleek wooden worktops, simple painted knobs and chrome taps. It looks perfect and we’ve been lucky enough to have the trailer parked up at Cotes Mill for the whole of this week, it will be with us until Friday and we’d love you to come and have a look.
To top the already amazing day off, we were invited back in the evening for a meal cooked by all of the River Cottage chefs and it was the most amazing meal, so good in fact, I’d eaten it all before I remembered to take any photographs… sorry!!
Well that’s the end of the blog, I know it was a long one but I really hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about and seeing what we got up to at River Cottage. We would like to say a massive thank you to Esse for inviting us to such a wonderful day, and also a big thank you to River Cottage and all of the lovely staff for looking after us so well.
– For more information on the Esse products I have mentioned, and to see their full range, just click here.
– And to find out how you can visit the very beautiful River Cottage, click here.
