Lamb Cooked in Hay

One of our favorite guests and very loyal friend of Gliffaes, Ken Phillips asked us to a arrange a private dinner in the Drawing Room for his wife's birthday.
"My pleasure", I said.
"What would you like to have on the menu?"
"I'll leave it up to you James, but I would like four courses please. There will 19 of us."
And with that he was off. Now, this is not as easy to do as you might imagine as the only guidelines I had was no sweetbreads! Anyway between Karl, the Head Chef and I we decided that if we used as much seasonal produce as we could the dinner should receive a universal thumbs up.
This is the menu Karl came up with;

Smoked Chicken & Summer Bean Terrine with Black Bomber Cheddar Bread

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Mini Lobster Thermidor

(Tail and claw meat with a saffron volute, cooked in mussel stock along with herbs and a little cheese and finished with a herb crust)

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Leg of New Season Lamb Baked in Hay & Rosemary. Seasonal vegetables and Pink Fir Potatoes

(If you live in Wales you get to eat a lot of lamb so we decided to do something a little different and cook the lamb in hay which gives a lovely grassy sweetness to the lamb)

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Summer Pudding, Lemon Creme Fraiche

(Plenty of fresh blackberries in the hedges around Gliffaes this time of year)

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Coffee and petit fours

Thankfully the dinner went very well and we got a resounding thumbs up for the food.The guests brough their own wine which I am only too happy to decant and serve if that is what is required. (We do charge a fee for corkage)

Notes on cooking the lamb in hay.

Seal the leg of lamb in a pan until it has some colour. You need two roasting tins lined with hay and put the lamb in one along with rosemary, garlic and juniper, cover the joint with hay and put the second tin over the top, like a lid. Make sure no hay is poking out and wrap foil around both baking tins to seal them. Cook at around gas mark 5-6  for around 12 minutes per pound. Rest the meat in the hay for at least 20 minutes after taking out of the oven and by adding a little honey to the juices in the pan you will have a lovely gravy.  If you would like more detailed help please call us and we will be only too happy to talk you through it.

Picking Wimberries

It is around the first couple of weeks in August that wimberries or bilberries (Empetraceae) are ready for picking. These are wild berries found on moorland and mountains across a lot of Wales and uplands in England and Scotland. Wimberries look like small blueberries but are less juicy and more acidic, though just about sweet enough to eat raw. They grow on a low scrubby plant making them pretty hard to find but once you have found a patch you keep it secret and go and visit it every year.

The great thing about the patch we know about is that it is about 45 minutes walk from where you have to park the car and the walk across Llangorse Mountain is one of the best around Gliffaes anyway. Nine of us set out on Sunday afternoon armed with three very useful' berry combs'. These tools enable you to pick berries pretty quickly and don't damage the plants. You can buy these combs from Ray Mear's website.

Between the nine of us we took it in turns to pick berries and ended up with about 9lbs of berries in an hour. After carrying them home and then picking the leaves and twigs and giving them a careful rinse it was time to make Wimberry Tart. Susie has perfected the recipe; short crust pastry, plenty of wimberries and a good dose of black current liquor or cassis. Served hot with plenty of cream it went down very well in the dining room over the next two evenings.

A Generous Host + Good Friends + Good Venue = A Great Party

Every once in a while some generous individual decides to throw aparty for his or her friends, nothing too unusual about this you might think. But when your host decides to take over the whole hotel for a weekend and treat his friends to what is, in effect, a giant house party - that is pretty unusual. No small undertaking and I was very pleased to be entrusted to arrange a special birthday weekend for a very trusting Gliffaes guest. Planning started over a year ago to ensure that he could have every available room for his chosen date.

With every room booked by the host it means he is free to do as he wishes; play music, dance to a band, play games, watch a film - its up to him. The brief for this weekend was to make it relaxed and informal and for people to take their time over a couple of long slow dinners. To talk, to eat to listen to their music and to drink.

Friday night is always difficult with people having to leave work and rush to get ready for the weekend away. So we did not want to fix a time for dinner but  set up a buffet to run for a couple of hours. Chicken and vegetable curry was the order and the plates were licked clean, this was all washed down with a cask of real ale from the Breconshire Brewery. As the evening was fine almost everyone ate outside.





On Saturday evening the plan was to keep the same level of informality but up the food stakes a little. We kicked off with champagne and canapes and then tucked into a buffet consisting of ;









•    Roast leg of Welsh Lamb – carved in front of the guest by the chef. (served warm)
•    Thickly cut rare Rib of Roast Welsh Beef, Homemade Piccalilli.  (served cold)
•    Roast Sea Trout with Fennel & Lemon. (served warm)
•    Grilled Vegetable Brochette.  (served warm)
•    Herb Couscous. (served warm)
•    Warm New Potatoes.
•    Peppers stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach & Welsh Cheese.
•    Organic Green Salad
•    Carrot, Orange and Sesame Salad.
•    Summer Bean & Mint Salad
•    Homemade Bread

Puddings:

•    Strawberries with Elderflower Sabayon
•    Chocolate Roulade
•    Lemon Posset with a Tuille Biscuit 

Once again this was done outside but this time with a few rounds of , "Happy Birthday" thrown in for good measure. All in all a very happy weekend and one we enjoyed hosting as much as the guests seemed to enjoy their party. If you have a big occasion in mind and want some ideas on how to celebrate it - please do get in touch.

Home Grown & Local

The mixture of sun, a couple of hours of rain and our very own compost ( made from a combination of food waste and wood chip) has meant a burst of activity from our vegetable patches at Gliffaes. Everything Peta has planted seems to be coming up now. While we can't pretend to grow anything like the quantity of veg we need we can grow salads and herbs very easily. During the summer and autumn we also get a great selection of organic vegetables from Pen Pont Estate near Brecon and Primrose Farm near Hay-on-Wye. Friday morning saw the following coming into the kitchen from our garden for Karl and his team to use over the weekend in  salads, garnishes and marinades.

Lettuces: Little Gem, Webbs Wonderful, Cos-Pandero & Catalogna.
Herbs: Parsley Flat and Curled & Coriander

Carrots, beetroot, beans,  Jerusalem artichokes and courgettes all to come as the season moves on.

Some of the good things appearing on the menu over the weekend were; (remembering that we change the dinner menu every night)

Rack of New Season Lamb, Nicoise Salad, Raspberry Vinaigrette
Fillet of Wild Sewin (sea trout), New Potatoes, Saffron Leeks, Spiced Oyster Tempura
Cornish Lobster, Spiced Potted Crab, Potato Salad, Samphire Grass
Y-Fenni Goats Cheese & Roquette Soufflé, Buttered Spinach, Horseradish & Thyme Cream

Remember the restaurant uis open to non-residents for all meals, and you only need to book for dinner. (01874 730 371)

Enjoying Summer Food Outdoors

The best thing about good weather and Gliffaes is being able to sit outside in truly wonderful surroundings and enjoy a long and leisurely lunch in the company of good friends. Simple pleasures indeed but I think we fail to under estimate the importance of the simple things in life. With so much rush and hassle everyday, two hours sitting in the warm shade of a tree next to an old friend with a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese is a simple way to bring us all back down to earth.

This weekend it was lovely to host a birthday lunch for Nicola Hill and 20 of her friends and family and as the weather was so fine we set up her lunch table under the shade of the cedar tree on the west lawn. Poached salmon, hollandaise, some lovely fresh salads, cold Welsh beef and some fine Welsh cheese all helped down with some thoughtfuly  chosen wine. We served a light red Morgon, straight from the cellar, and some chilled white Burgundy both of which seemed to slip down quite nicely.

Although not quite so easy to serve 40-50 for dinner outside on Saturday evening, almost everyone had a drinks on the terrace before dinner and with the French doors wide open the scent from the wisteria filling the dining room it was as good as being outside. The menu had a light, early summer feel to it with such things as:

Chilled Pea and Mint soup
Pan Fried Fillet of Mackerel with sweet Pickled Vegetable Salad
Medallions of Cornish Lobster, Pickled Bream, Potted Spiced Crab & Almonds, Potato Salad

Sunday lunch time and no matter what the temperature everyone still loves roast beef and served out on the terrace in the shade of a big parasol makes for a splendid way to write off Sunday afternoon. With more sunny weather forecast I am sure lots more will be taking advantage of our position above the river for some 'al fresco' dining.

Volcanos, Earthquakes and other Tremors

 This time last week I was feeling very smug; the hotel was fully booked for this weekend with a group of Texans off to wedding near by. We were laying on a lavish dinner for 60  on Friday night, the night before the wedding, for the brides family, and  with all the Texans out at the wedding on Saturday night I had arranged a Chilean Wine Dinner for locals to keep our restaurant busy for Saturday night. So far so good but I certainly had not factored in a volcano! The Americans could not fly, the wedding postponed  and I was left with a hotel to fill in five days.


Thanks to the power of email ( a good lesson about maintaining a sound customer data base) I was able to re-fill the empty hotel for the weekend and we still had to pull off the Chilean Wine Dinner on the Saturday night. Head Chef, Karl Cheetham working with Michael Cox of Wines of Chile put together a great dinner, with each course accompanied by a different wine. All the wines came from Great Western Wine in Bath. Thirty people came for the  Dinner and £360 was raised for the Chilean Earthquake Appeal. The menu and wines were as follows:

Canapes served with either a glass of Elki Pedro Jimenez or Leyda Sauvignon Blanc Garuma Vineyard

Aspargus with Hollandaise - 2008 Leyda Sauvignon Gris
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Paupiette of Cornish Sole with Salmon & Chive Mousseline - 2006 Leyda Lot 5 Chardonnay
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Loin of Wild Fallow Deer, Boulangere Potatoes, Savoy Cabbage & Juniper Sauce - 2006 Falernia Carmenere Reserva
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Saffron Poached Pear with Vanilla Parfait or Welsh Cheeses & walnut Bread - 2008 Leyda Pinot Noir - Las Brisas.

Some of the wines are on our list and I want to serve the Pedro Jimenez by the glass as it will make for a lovely light summer drink.

So in the end we pulled something out of the ash(es)!

More Cheese than France

The U.K. has over 1200 different cheeses, more types than France has, which everyone thinks is the home of cheese. Wales alone has about 150 cheeses made by around 25 cheese makers. The growth of the artisan cheese maker has really taken off in the last fifteen or so years across Wales. Farmers soon realised that just selling milk to super markets was not a very profitable business so they decided to add value to their milk by turning it into cheese and selling cheese rather than just milk. Don't just think Caerphilly when you think Welsh cheese, Wales has all types of soft and hard cheeses made from cows, sheep and goats milk, raw and pasteurised.

It was on Friday that I came by all this cheesy knowledge by going to a very informative cheese tasting at the National Trust farm, Llanerchaeron. We spent and hour in the company of cheese expert, David Edwards, who talked us through a sample of ten delicious cheeses from across Wales. Cheese is tasted from mildest to strongest for obvious reasons. We began with a traditional Caerphilly, from Caws Cenarth in Carmarthenshire ( caws is the Welsh for cheese), made from organic cows milk this cheese had a tingly, lemony bite and being quite mild would go wonderfully in a salad. A new cheese to me was the soft mould-ripened, Preseli, from Pant Mawr Farmhouse Cheese in Pembrokshire. A fruity rich taste and a glossy straw colour made this cheese a deserving Gold Award Winner at the 2003 World Cheese awards.

Around the cheese board we went; goats cheese, two different blue cheeses, smoked cheese and even a scrumptious soft creamy Pont Gar infused with Garlic and Herbs which would make a new twist for cheese on toast. Our last mouthful came from the Teifi Cheese Company in the form of their double award winning, Saval. A semi-soft, washed rinded, raw milk cow's cheese with an aroma and taste not dissimilar to Stinking Bishop. Very strong taste but would be the perfect way to finish up that last glass of red wine.

At Gliffaes we only have Welsh cheeses on our cheese board but this tasting opened my eyes to the many more cheeses out there and added to my knowledge about cheese in general. Look out for some new additions next time you are here.
 

Fresh and Local

Fresh and local, that’s how we like our meat at Gliffaes. When we can we like to get a whole carcass and do the butchering ourselves. We can’t manage a cow but lamb, small pigs and roe or fallow deer we can. It means we  hang the meat for the right amount of time and cut it into the portion sizes we want. Karl Cheetham, head chef, will make sure that pretty much every inch of the carcass is used.

In the clip below we can see Carl begining work on a fallow deer from the Forest of Dean