Today it's cold, wet and windy but the fire's roaring and I can hear people gathering in the snug for lunch....
Jon (the male Innkeeper.... husband of mine) was in the kitchen at 7am making wild duck sausages to put on the specials' board this lunchtime....
We will be pleased when the weather changes a little.... we've had a winter like this......
...... and now we reckon we are due a little early spring sunshine!
Let me make some further introductions.....
I'm Marti, husband is Jonathan (or Jon.... it depends whether he's in my good books or not), we have three full time chefs, one full time Front of House, 8 part time FOH, currently hunting for a new dog to replace our gorgeous 16 year old collie cross who died last year....
Our whole life is good food.....we are boringly obsessed with really tasty food... we talk about it all day everyday.... trying, experimenting, going back to basics then starting all over again.
We have a short menu (this means that it is most definitely easier to produce because we insist that everything is prepared from fresh raw ingredients every day)..... make that a big lesson to you..... big menu...probably not prepared from raw ingredients.... unless it is a massive operation with a dozen chefs working 17 hour shifts!
We don't do that; we are a small team, we work reasonably normal hours for a country inn and restaurant and make sure that nothing compromises the quality we serve.
We use only local suppliers; in fact 95% of our product comes from surrounding farms and local markets......"farm to fork" they like to call it..... we just call it common sense.
We love our exceptional beef, pork and lamb and especially look forward to the abundance of fantastic game in the area as we love having lots of game dishes on our menu.
Our whole ethic is about flavour..... flavour first is our whole meaning..... presentation is important but we are more concerned with flavours.... big gorgeous gutsy flavours!
Anyway.... back to the duck sausages....... I had a try for breakfast (it's impossible to abide by the rules of normal eating times and expected food items for the specific times of day.....so you'll just have to get used to the fact that it is normal and usual for us to have belly pork for breakfast, or venison, or curried parsnip soup with crispy onions.....it's all rather liberating actually to be that radical!)....... the duck sausages...... really "ducky"... wild mallard, pot-roasted and shredded, mixed with a little pork meat & fat, really well seasoned with a little chinese five spice, some redcurrant jelly, tiny pieces of orange peel and squished unceremoniously into sausage skins, tied and then oven roasted....... only that the battery on my camera decided to die, I could have shown you the wee beasties..... they were magnificent and I promise to make sure the battery is always charged from now on!
We're serving them with a little carrot mash and some warmed plum gravy made from our glut last autumn....
I am genuinely hoping there might be a little spare one or two for me after this lunchtime service....
... here's to hoping......
See you soon!
M
