EATING FOR BRITAIN: BOOZE ON THE BORDERS

Welsh Whisky and British Cassis? What gives?

It is, one would imagine, like saying Italian efficiency and German improvisational comedy.

However, as my trip is proving, life is full of little surprises.

To be honest, Welsh whisky was not that great a surprise, having encountered Penderyn Single Malt on offer at Heathrow close to five years ago. I bought a bottle on my way to the US, more for its comedic value than for suspicion that it might be any good and produced it to much giggling at a the end of a dinner party hosted by one of my New York based chums.

The giggling stopped however when we began to taste as Penderyn’s light colour and subtle flavours began to win us over as new converts. It was not the best whisky we had ever sampled, well of course it wasn’t but for a spirit that was barely old enough to bear the name, it showed definite promise.

Move on those five years and I braved sheeting rain at the Head of The Valleys to make my way to the small distillery in the town from which the whisky draws its name and the place from which the whisky draws its water, filtered down through the Brecon Beacons.

They owners are certainly not playing at making whisky here and as Sian Whitlock, the commercial director showed me around the plush new visitors centre and tasting room, you could clearly see that they wanted to mount a serious challenge to the skirt wearing distillers North of Hadrian’s wall.

They have taken a different tack to their process, spending considerable time and money creating a still for a single distillation process as opposed to the double used in Scotland and the triple used in Ireland and their malted “beer” is made to their own recipe and brought in from the nearby Brains brewery.

With the help of Dr Jim Swan, arguably the most famous name in whisky making, they have come on in leaps and bounds since my first tasting and, after my short tour, Sian was kind enough to offer me a few (well within the limit, I hasten to add) sips to try not only their signature “Welsh Gold” single malt, aged in Buffalo Trace barrels, but also two other expressions, one aged in Islay barrels and one in sherry barrels.

The former slightly too mellow for me, but perhaps ideal for those who find the peat driven Scotch of Islay too much. The latter, my favourite of all of them and I was delighted when Sian gave me a bottle to take away with me.

Across the borders in Herefordshire, I had been invited to visit Jo Hilditch at her farm, where she told me she offered “the only cassis made in Britain” I have to be honest, given that cassis is not always in huge demand in the DH household, that I wondered how such a niche business could keep going in the U.K and in the current economic climate.

I wondered, that is, until I climbed out of my car and into Jo’s and she explained that her farm was over 600 acres and supplied chickens to the supermarkets and blackurrants to everybody’s childhood favourite, Ribena.

Ah, blackcurrants. Jo is a bit of a proselyte for Blackcurrants, working closely with The Blackcurrant Foundation who are fiercely promoting the health benefits of this home grown super food over the imported blueberry.

Jo grows acres and acres of the things and if is from these that her sideline of making British Cassis, a cordial made from the berries, arose. It may be a sideline and production of this and an accompanying Framboise (raspberries) may be small scale, but Jo treats it with extreme seriousness and is keen to build it into a recognisable brand.

Small (again legal) tastes confirmed that it is very good stuff, fermented with champagne yeasts until it reaches 15% ABV and would make the basis of a excellent Kir or Royal.

A stop for Welsh Whisky and British cassis may seem like an odd diversion for a trip around Britain, but good is good wherever you find it and both of these are well worth a try.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: MY GRANDMOTHER MADE ME A WELSH FAGGOT

OK

Let’s get it out of the way. The term faggot, comes from the Welsh word Ffagod, which meant bundle. Quite how that relates to the strange offaly meatballs that are one of the great foods of Wales, I am not sure. Perhaps it is because traditionally they were wrapped in bacon.

Whatever, they were another taste of my childhood that I was determined to try in Wales. They are also known as “poor man’s goose” or “savoury duck” and, like haggis in Scotland, they were a way of using up offal and the cheaper cuts of meat in times when money was hard to come by. Rather like now, in fact.

My grandmother used to make them, well of course she did and would serve them in the traditional way, with peas and a highly vinegared mint sauce and the thought of them in a bowl with a good ladling of rich onion gravy sploshed on top is one of the best food memories of my younger days.

So, of course I had to try and find someone who made them while I was on my journey and who better than Neil James, of N S James & Sons whose Faggots were voted the best in the country by The True Taste of Wales judges and whose traditional butcher’s shop is considered one of the finest in the UK.

This is a butcher’s shop as they used to be. With its own abattoir at the rear and most of the meat coming from a few miles radius, the classic cuts of properly aged meat are guaranteed to make any real flesh lover’s heart skip a beat. Thick pork chops with a half inch ribbon of fat, brisket rolled ready for slow roasting, lamb kidneys protected by a covering of their own fat and rows of free range chickens. Alongside the meat a display case of food prepared in Neil’s kitchens, hand raised pork pies, black puddings, sheets of belly pork cooked slowly in his mother’s Aga so the crackling bubbles to a perfect crunch and, of course best of all, trays of his prize winning faggots.

When I arrived as planned at 8am, Neil was already hard at work and had prepared the ingredients to make this Welsh classic. Laid out in the workshop, were trays of belly pork, lamb breast, pigs liver, fresh onions, breadcrumbs and Neil’s secret spice mix. Neil doesn’t use as much offal as some, because he finds the strong taste puts some people off. The fresh onions provide all the juice the final dish needs.

The meat is minced with the onions and then minced again, this time with the seasonings and spices. Then, Neil deftly shaped them into cricket ball sized rounds and wrapped each in a rasher of Gloucester Old Spot bacon. I had a good too but obviously, as with my attempts at making Welsh cakes, the resulting mess was enough to almost bring him to tears. Still between us, we managed to fill a tray with a dozen specimens of fine faggothood.

Neil wrapped them up and placed them in a freezer box for me to bring home to London with me and then gave me a tour of the abattoir, where small numbers of animals are killed for local farmers in an efficient but unstressed environment. It shows in the meat and, as Neil gave me a tour of the meat lockers filled with Monmouthshire lamb, Old spot pork and Welsh Longhorn beef, I could easily understand why he gets people driving up from London and Bristol to buy meat from him.

Back home in London, I soon had the spoils of my visit baking in the oven and the very first mouthful was like stepping back in time, the texture and tastes are everything I remembered.

I may not say this very often, but I am rather proud to have a bit of Welsh in me.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: THE SALT OF THE EARTH ON ANGLESEY

I am spending a great deal of time in my new, er old car right now. I have clocked up over four thousand miles in the last few weeks with treks through Scotland, Northumbria, Yorkshire and now, Wales.

Apart from the plummy and slightly disapproving tones of my Tom Tom sat nav “oh do please turn around and go the way I told you to go” I have been enjoying the silence and the chance to think. With only the obligatory hour listening to Woman’s Hour on Radio Four, I have taken the opportunity to work out the story and structure of EATING FOR BRITAIN in my head.

Well, of course it’s going to be about the food, both in terms of the dishes themselves and the relationship of each region with their produce, but more than anything I am becoming convinced, it is about the people. Now, that should not have come as any great surprise to me given that I reached very much the same conclusion with EAT MY GLOBE, but there is something about the people I have encountered on the journey around the U.K so far, that I am convinced would make a fine backbone for the rest of the information to hang upon.

Nowhere has that proved more obvious than my visit over the last two days to the Isle of Anglesey and Halen Mon, The Anglesey Sea Salt Company, where not only did the owners, David and Alison Lea-Wilson, agree to meet me and show me what they do for a living, they also offered a complete stranger a room for the night in their stunning home.

I arrived exhausted after a four hour drive from Monmouthshire to find the house empty but open and a text on my phone telling me to make myself at home until they returned from taking their dog to the vet. A few minutes later, David and Alison came bounding through the door with two Jack Russell terriers scampering in behind them.

Almost before I had chance to deposit my bags in one of their comfortable guest rooms, Alison had a cup of tea in my hand and David was putting his coat back on and finding a torch to go rooting around for vegetables in the walled garden to the side of their house. I joined him, despite the howling wind and sheeting rain and we soon returned with a basket full of lambs lettuce and kale, which Alison served with supper.

Few things beat a home cooked meal when you are on the road and as soon as David plopped the cork from a bottle of Claret and Alison brought out a plate of locally caught and smoked sprats to snack on, I knew that they were going to be my kind of people. A thought compounded when the main course arrived in the form of a stew of lamb shanks with root vegetables, which had been cooking slowly in the Aga all day. With a large slice of treacle tart to finish and a glass of good port to wash the last crumbs down, it was little wonder that I had to retire to bed and fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

But, hugely enjoyable as all of this had been, I was here for a reason and that reason was salt. Halen Mon, literally means Anglesey Salt and David and Alison have been producing one of the finest salts in the world for nearly thirteen years and supplying it to some of the best restaurants including The Fat Duck and El Bulli.

Given its success, it is surprising to find that the notion of producing salt came about as a result of a downturn in their original business, a local Sea aquarium, which had given them a licence to use local sea water obviously a constant supply of raw material. After a few years of trial and error and much research on David’s part, they ended up with a process, which produces a startlingly pure salt with flaked crystals and a beautifully clean taste.

Their facility is small, but well organised and the water is piped straight from the sea, in the shadows of the Snowdonia mountain range, filtered and then concentrated to increase the saline content. This being Wales there is, of course, barely enough Sun shine to power a small light bulb let alone dry the salt. So, the water is heated gently until the salt crystals begin to form and they are then removed from the solution, drained, rinsed gently and then dried to around 3% moisture. It is a simple process, but one that is handled with extreme precision by the small team of salt makers there whose pride in the finished product is tangible.

They have every right to be proud, this is a hand crafted product which requires constant care and attention to get the standards David demands and the flavour was apparent even to my jaded palate when we did a tasting later in the morning.

If David is the boffin and the innovator, Alison is the key to the salt’s sales success getting the product sampled by chefs, stocked on the shelves of supermarkets (the Angelsey Sea Salt in M&S is theirs) and even used by manufacturers of crisps. But they are still keen to do more and they plied me with samples, which I promised to “tart” around on their behalf.

By early afternoon, it was time for me to head off on the four hour drive back to the location of my next meeting, but not before Alison had fed me one more meal of local black pudding, eggs from the derrieres of the three hens strutting around in their garden and some good local bacon. Enough to ensure I did not need supper tonight.

They came out of the house to wave goodbye and, as I took one last look at them in the rear view mirror as they disappeared back into the house, the two dogs following close behind as ever, I knew that if EATING FOR BRITAIN was going to be about anything, it was about people, people like David and Alison.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: WALES, LAND OF MY MOTHERS

Wales plays a huge part in the DH obsession with food.

Our late mother and grandmother, God bless them both, hailed from The Valleys, The Rhondda to be exact and, consequently, our food memories are filled with the scent of superlative Welsh baking, simple stews and meals served in terrifying portions by women clucking in lilting but disappointed tones about our inability to eat a fifth serving.

So, when I set out for the Welsh helping of my EATING FOR BRITAIN trip, above all I was hoping to encounter some of the smells and tastes that made me who I am today (who said “nice of them to take the blame?”)

My first stop was Saundersfoot, a small town on the Pembrokeshire coast, where I found out they have a competition every year to see who, among the local restaurants, can make the best Cawl, that simple and entirely delicious stew that has nourished prop forwards for generations.

Saundersfoot is a town in transition. It wants to be Padstow but is still closer to Bridlington. There are a smattering of good restaurants and one of the best sweet shops you will ever find, Chobbles run by Amy Coleman, which sells every sweet your childhood dreams could ever desire, including my own favourite, Cinder toffee. However the town was recently described in an article as "scruffy" which may have the local council up in arms, but carried some truth as I wandered the streets and looked at the amusement arcade and shops selling seaside tat.

One man, Andrew Evans, owner of the lovely St Bride’s Hotel high on a cliff overlooking the town, is trying to change that. He blushed when I called him “the Rick Stein of Saundersfoot” but with his hotel and two restaurants in the town itself, he is at least giving visitors the option of eating well and I was delighted when he offered to be my guide on the cawl trail.

We met at 10am in a busy marquee where stalls selling local produce were already doing good business and, after I had a quick sample of Bara Brith, a tea cake, Andrew and I bought our small cawl bowls and set out to visit the nine pubs and restaurants that were taking part.

Cawl is one of the most simple dishes you can imagine and is closely related to both the Irish Stew and the Lobscouse that gives the people of Liverpool their nickname. Traditionally made with neck or scrag end of lamb, now people also use beef or ham, but whatever they use, the process is the same.

The meat is cooked gently in water until tender and left over night so the fat can solidify and be skimmed off. Then, root vegetables (swede, carrots, turnips) are added and cooked until tender before, finally, lots of chopped leeks are tossed in to cook just before serving. Er, that’s it.

There are of course some variations. As we sampled, Andrew commented on where he thought they had added too much salt, too much white pepper or even a touch of mint and we marked down our scores on a form we had been given to return at the end of the trail. Fortunately for me, my favourite came from one of Andrew’s restaurants, The Marina where the broth was thin, the meat was lamb and there was an accompaniment of bread and a square of strong cheese.

After nine bowls of the stuff though, I was cawled out and returned to my B&B to sleep it off, while the rest of the town carried on with their festivities. Even by the evening, I was not in any state for a big meal, so went to another of Andrew's places, The Mermaid and slurped up a small bowl of fish soup made with offcuts of the local catch.

Cawl may not be on anyone’s list of fine dining, but it is simple dish made with cheap ingredients, which seems, on this visit at least, to be just as popular in Wales as ever. Each taste, each sip of broth and piece of soft, slow cooked lamb reminded me of my own childhood and of meals gone by and sorely missed.

There could be no better way to begin a return to the land of my mothers