YOU’VE EARNED IT
The postman always brings twice
Victoria Mather finds that online is the lazy way to luxury Iam very greedy. I am also very lazy, so it’s unlikely that I will drive to the west coast of Scotland, get a boat to the Outer Hebrides, then hitch a lift from a passing Mr MacSporran on North Uist to the Hebridean Smokehouse to buy a side of smoked salmon. Nor am I going to go to Nottinghamshire, a tiresome county where, if you believe anything you read in the Daily Mail, one is likely to be robbed or worse (and not by a charming Robin Hoodie), to buy England’s best ham. I suppose I could pick up perfect potted shrimps at Morecambe on the way back from Scotland, popping into Penrith for a fudge fix at The Toffee Shop, thus making a nice trip of it, but this hunter-gathering is marvellously unnecessary due to mailorder.
Pre-Boden, mail-order was a bit saddo acrylic-jumper. Now, ‘I ordered it online’ is distinctly cool. It’s still mail-order, it arrives with Robert the postman (‘This smoked salmon’s good then, is it, Victoria? You seem to get a lot of it’) and I’ve ordered luxury without moving my idle bottom from the Aga rail.
Some 25 years ago I sailed to North Uist. I walked past deserted white sand beaches with fat seals lolling on rocks in the sunshine. As a truffle-hound for a retail opportunity, I found the Hebridean Smokehouse, then Mermaid Fisheries. Frankly, after shop deprivation since Oban, I’d have bought sides of smoked crofter. My proper, oakey smoked salmon has been posted to me happily ever after. The smokery (www.hebrideansmokehouse.com) is now run by the Earl of Granville, who owns North Uist and often fillets fish eight hours a day — environmentally sound fish, raised from eggs of local stock, which have lived happy lives in sea pens with a 10ft tidal drop, so the salmon are not swimming around in their own poo. Also there are fewer of them, so no sea-lice or antibiotics. The fish are transferred from sea to loch by helicopter; so reassuring to know one’s food has led a better life than one’s self. Lord Granville’s smoked salmon was served at one of Queen’s 80th birthday parties; she used to stop off on HMY Britannia to picnic with his parents. Your slimey pink gunk in Sainsbury’s doesn’t have this organic provenance, nor a 16-hour peatsmoking process.
I met the marmalade-glazed, Nottinghamshire ham in France. Never trust the Frogs on grub: travel with a ham in your hand luggage, as Richard Craven-Smith-Milnes did. If you can handle a triple-barrel, a 7lb ham is as nothing. This is an epic adornment of hamminess (www.alderton.co.uk) and Richard also has immaculate smoked ducks’ breasts. The succulent, sweet Alderton hams, perfect for summer, are cooked.
From Dukeshill Hams (www.dukeshillham.co.uk) I’ve had raw hams that I have cooked myself with lashings of honey, mustard and brown sugar. Their uncooked Wiltshire ham is easy, and they also do proper York hams and Shropshire black, a dry-cured beast marinated in molasses, juniper and spices.
There’ll always be an England while there are potted shrimps. They are gents’ comfort food. James Baxter & Co (wwwbaxterpottedshrimps.co.uk) has been potting shrimps for six generations: deliciously spicy, just the right amount of butter, perfect shrimpy-ness with a squeeze of lemon.
The hot secret is delicious foie gras. Jeremy Wagg (jeremywagg@aol.com or 01256 471915) makes the most velvety I’ve ever tasted — and he’s in Hampshire, not the Dordogne. He splashes the livers, which he acquires in France, with port which is a fine English thing to do — less drying than cognac. Friends took Wagg’s foie gras to their Toulouse house party and were begged, weeping, for the name of the darling local farmer who’d produced this triumph. Wagg will courier it anywhere in lascivious blocks.
Veggies? Obviously the wonky carrot is organic cred. Cheese?
You can smell it at Carole Bamford’s Daylesford Organic (www.daylesfordorganic.com), taste the rich olive oil, so virgin it’s never even seen a man, drool over the glistening orbs of buffalo mozzarella. Lady B’s Daylesford emporium near Moreton-in-Marsh is the Claudia Schiffer of farm shops: exquisitely designed, totally alluring, and the veg has just the right sprinkle of real dirt. Very thin women are buying enormous amounts of expensive food to throw away. Online is anorexic, bypassing the impulse purchase.
And so to the Toffee Shop in Penrith (www.thetoffeeshop.co.uk) which has been boiling butter and sugar in brass pans since the first world war. All fudgey and treacly. One can eat lots without being sick. Robert the postman will always deliver another batch in the morning.
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