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.

In the interests of researching all good days out around Gliffaes, I decided to take Alexandra, Olivia and some of our French family canoeing on the Wye yesterday.I wonder why we have not done this before? What a fabulous way to spend the afternoon. I think I may do it more often.

Having not paddled an open canoe before, I was not sure what to expect, especially with four children in tow. However, as soon as we arrived at Wye Valley Canoes in Glasbury, it quickly became the fun afternoon intended.

With two to a canoe (we found an adult and a child in each to be successful), we spent a happy afternoon paddling our way to Hay-on-Wye. The Wye is low at the moment, and as novices, we all felt quite safe. The scenery is extremely beautiful and the river tranquil at this time of year. We loved sailing past the numerous swans, who are clearly quite used to canoeists and spotted plenty of wildlife along the way and some not quite so wild ducks and ducklings. Swallows and Martins swooped down around us, catching flies for their chicks and we also saw many Sand Martin holes in the banks of the river.

Once we arrived at Hay, our canoes and our clobber were collected by some extremely nice and competent young chaps, who then drove us back to our car.

Wye Valley canoes hire out their canoes for a half or full day and give you a safety briefing, some top tips on paddling and some practice to make sure you are happy before you leave. They also collect you at Hay-on-Wye if you wish and bring you back to Glasbury. However, you might like to have  a few hours in the pretty book town before you head back. Alternatively, have lunch at the River Cafe before you take to your canoe.


The drive to Glasbury from Gliffaes takes about 25 minutes. 
Canoe hire costs around £35 per canoe for an adult and a child.

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 Trip to Aberglasney Gardens

A trip to Aberglasney makes for a great day out from Gliffaes, the journey along the A40 westwards is very straight forward and takes an hour. We often call in here on the way back from Pembrokshire to have a look around and to have lunch in the very good cafe over looking the big pond, over which the swallows and house martens skim over through out the day.

The house and gardens were abandoned for 50 years and the restoration over the last 15 years is one of Wales' most remarkable garden projects. There are formal gardens, parapets and cloisters to explore. I think the two walled gardens however are the most beautiful part of the garden. One full of herbs and vegetables as well as the most amazing espaliered fruit trees on the big south facing wall. The other walled garden is full of shrubs and flowers. It is not difficult to to spend a very pleasant couple of hours here and if you fancy something else to the National Trust property of Dinefwr Parc and Castle is very close by as are the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.


Opening times: 
April - September 10am - 6pm (last entry 5pm)
October - March 10.30am - 4pm (last entry 3pm)

Discover more of Wales.

We have been going to the north Pembrokshire coast for about ten years now. Every time I make our annual trip I am blown away by the rugged beauty and by how few tourists there are on this wonderful stretch of coast underneath the Presseli Hills. We base ourselves in the small town of Newport at the mouth of the Nevern estuary in the middle of the Pembrokshire Coast National Park.

The beach here is enormous and most people congregate in one area close to the car park, move away from there and you can have as much space as you need to fly kites, play games, surf and make sand castles. The estuary is rich in bird life and has an easily accessible path along side it for a a couple of miles.Newport, is on the Coastal Path and a very efficent bus service can run you up or down the coast so you can enjoy the walk back home. I particular enjoy cycling around here; head for the Gwan Valley and another good trip is out to Strumble Head. 

The pictures show us on a beach (my girls call it the 'secret beach', if you want to know where it is get in touch) that we had to ourselves for most of the day where we built a fire, cooked our lunch and spent most of the day surfing (well those with wet suits did!).

If you had a week's holiday spare then a couple of days in the Brecon Beacons National Park based here at Gliffaes followed by a couple of days in Newport staying at the very comfortable Llys Meddyg Hotel,would make for a really wonderful week in Wales. The drive from the Beacons to the Pembrokshire Coast takes a little over two hours with a stop at Aberglasney Gardens along the way highly recommended.

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.

Queen comes to Gliffaes

I bet that headline got you going, well its true, we have two queens living at Gliffaes now. In the beehives at the bottom of the walled garden. Susie and I started keeping bees some years ago when the man who used to keep several hives here passed on. We had some very successful years at first and then we hit a rocky period along with most of the country's bee keepers and had a struggle to keep our three hives going. The verora mite and the disease known as, 'Colony Collapse' put paid to our bees. Due to the scarcity of bees I have been unable to buy any colonies for the hotel for two years until this year.

This summer has been a good summer for bees and the bee keeper who sells us Usk Valley Honey for the breakfast tables sold me two hives last week. The hives were brought to Gliffaes at dusk, once all the bees had returned to the hive at the end of a busy day. It does not take bees long to acquaint themselves to their new surroundings as long as you move them more than three miles from where they were before.

Bee hives are inspected about once week during the summer and as we do have an extra bee suit you might like to come and have a look inside a bee hive when we go and take the lid off. Friday afternoon is when we normally go and inspect the hives.