Salisbury’s Farmers’ Market takes place every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, from 9am-2pm in the Market Square. This isn’t the most convenient of times to have a farmers’ market if the whole household are usually at work. However, I managed to catch it yesterday. A few farmers’ market stalls do make an appearance at the bi-weekly Charter Market with one stall each of trout (smoked and fresh, brown and rainbow), vegetables, home-made pies, English wine, bread, cheese, and meat (usually bacon and sausages). The Wednesday farmers’ market is a completely different affair. There are a wide variety of meat stalls proffering free range rare breed British Saddlebacks from the Pigman, handsome organically reared chickens (and their bones for stock for just 50p!), and even English bison, locally grown fresh-out-the-ground vegetables that smell amazing - yes, it’s amazing, vegetables have a wonderful scent if they’re grown properly and haven’t travelled hundreds of miles, garlic from specialist Isle of Wight growers the Garlic Farm, and cheese!
It is worth indulging for the moment in the selection of excellent English cheeses available here. We will eventually try cheese from all the stalls but for now, here are two. The first are those made by Loosehanger Cheeses made nearby in Redlynch. Loosehanger have been a favourite of ours since we first tried their cheeses when we used to frequent the Winchester Farmers’ Market which is one of the biggest in the country (the market, not the cheese). They make semi-hard sumtuously creamy and mild cheeses that still manage to keep an excellent flavour. They do an excellent job of blending herbs and spices into their cheeses to create an amazing variety. Our particular favourite is the Woodfalls Oak where the cheese is gently cold smoked nearby at Fjordling Smokehouses in West Winterslow. The smoke flavouring is mild and doesn’t overpower the cheese. It goes excellently with a cool summer’s ale, grated in mashed potato or guess what? Also good on its own. It is a world away from that smoke-flavoured Bavarian cheese you get at the supermarkets, and in fact, doesn’t bear comparison. Go and taste the proper stuff.
The second cheese-maker is surely divinely inspired? How is it possible to make such incomprehensibly amazing things from goat’s milk? I am referring to the cheeses made by Pete Humphries, Bagborough Farm in Shepton Mallet who also sells his cheese through the Fine Cheese Co. in Bath. He happily welcomed me to sample all five cheeses he had on offer that day and each and every one, ranging from mild creamy white cheese to fuller flavoured goat’s milk cheese. Among them were White Nancy (Brie-like texture), White Lake (firmer texture) and Rachal (washed rind). I brought back some of the White Nancy* and had it immediately for lunch on some ciabatta with fresh watercress on the side. The unique thing about these goat’s cheeses is that they don’t have that capric acid twang to them. This apparently happens when billy-goats are kept with the lactating females. Pete Humphries has presented us with a whole new odyssey of cheese adventure. I can’t wait for the next installment.
*I must double-check this as I may have mis-read the particular label.
A quick addition: we’ve just had some of the plain pork sausages from the Pigman (based on the Clarendon Park Estate just outside Salisbury). We had them with yet more watercress, Cornish new potato salad (made with yoghurt and fresh mint, thyme and oregano from our fledgling plants in the garden). They rank among the top three sausages we’ve ever had. Not a hint of rusk, just pure sausage pleasure.
[GP:Salisbury]
And here’s a photo of the sausages from Pigman: before and after cooking