Things eaten

[bunn]

- Went to Tavistock to the farmer's market on Saturday.  It's so much nicer shopping in a town than at a supermarket!  I bought, among other things, a chicken carcass with all the expensive bits removed, from Providence Farm.  It made quite a lot of very nice soup (would have been more soup, without a technical hitch with the lid of the liquidiser.  Oops.  Messy.)  I'm not sure why, but Providence farm chicken seems to have so much more flavour than most chicken. I made soup the other week from some random (but free range) chicken and it was nothing like as nice, the hounds had most of it.

   I also bought a loaf of bread made with wild garlic leaves, which seemed like a good use of a very abundant wild vegetable. It went well with the soup.   I might try this next year because my ramsons are really doing well now.

- Bought lunch from the Food Dreckly stall.  Philmophlegm had belly pork in a bap, which was apparently very fine.  Belly pork seems to be one of those things that are suddenly very popular, and quite right too. I had a lambburger, which was delicious.

- We went out in the evening to Langmans. Quite an experience, I've never been anywhere quite like it.  It's only open 3 evenings a week, and it tiny, so booking is always a bit of a gamble, but we persisted, because we've been before.  It's in the middle of Callington, which is a small poor town notable mostly for its giant pasty factory.  The restaurant is next to a pasty shop and round the corner from a chippy and a kebab shop - exactly where you wouldn't expect a restaurant to be.

It took us 4 hours to get through 6 courses, each one apparently prepared by an obsessive perfectionist with a passion for experimentation.  In fact, even calling it 6 courses is understating the case, really, given that there were amazing appetisers, petit fours straight from the oven, 3 sorts of bread, and the pudding course was three tiny complex puddings on a tray.  My favorite thing was a passionfruit jelly thing that popped in your mouth like Space Dust.  

It was food as a sort of divine insanity: I can't imagine actually wanting to cook like that, but what a thing to experience!

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

When she says "liquidiser", she means "philmophlegm's smoothie maker"...

[(Anonymous)]

A smoothie maker is a subset of liquidiser, with a tap. I did not employ the tap on that occasion.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Langmans is the best restaurant I've ever been to. And that six course tasting menu was just £35 per person. One of the benefits of living not just in Cornwall, but in an obscure part of Cornwall. I'm sure that food like that in Padstow or Rock would be closer to £100 per head.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't think you'd get that sort of thing in Padstow or Rock, because the commercial pressure and rents would be so much higher. I think Langmans is unique because Callington is so economically depressed that people can afford to run tiny businesses mostly for the joy of it.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Surely Callington can't be that depressed if there are people around who can run tiny businesses like high-end restaurants and game shops and not have to make money from them?

Incidentally, did you see in The Herald that a dog died yesterday after falling down a shaft on Kit Hill?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't, but just googled it. According to Thisiscornwall it was Saturday? I wonder which shaft? I can't think of any that you could get 35 feet down, and it says a dry shaft, which suggests the south/west side of the hill cos the East/north is so wet.

Unless there was a shift in the earth of some sort and a new hole opened I suppose?

[chainmailmaiden]

Bacchus & I had a look at the Langmans website it looks very good, though I can't think how they make any money with those prices. The wine list is apparently rather good, Bacchus can tell from looking at it that they buy them from the company he used to work for back when he first started out. He was wondering if there might be any possibility of a trip there when we're up in September?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Getting a booking is always a bit of a gamble (my impression is that it's one man's crazy dream rather than a business as such) but we'll see what we can do.

[chainmailmaiden]

If Bacchus is a MW by then you could always try name dropping... :-D