River Cottage Part 2

Following on from the last post Hugh arrived around midday to take the afternoon part of the course. I suppose Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is River Cottage to most people so it was great that I managed to get on a course that he was attending. He rocked in driving his battered old Landy and did a cookery demo for us. He cooked our starter for lunch which was chicken livers on toast. Essentially it was chicken livers fried off with some sherry mustard and other bits and pieces. Anyone that would like the recipe just leave a comment on this post and I will pass it on to you.

After the cooking demo he spent some time going round having a chat to everyone, signing books and getting pictures taken. While this was going on the rest of the staff were transforming the barn where we had the morning's classes into a dining room. We were promptly called for dinner which was their own roast chicken with all the trimmings and very nice it was too. A nice touch was that they had placed eggs at various seats around the table which we were not allowed to sit at. The hosts for the day plus Hugh then sat in these seats and moved around the table throughout the meal. It was really nice to be able to have a chat with them all and was probably the highlight of the day for me.

After lunch there was a Q and A session followed by a class on how to kill, pluck and clean a chicken. River Cottage's head chef Gillon Meller or Gill as everyone called him took us through the process and gave everyone great confidence, especially those that had not attempted anything like this before. We all got our own bird to have a go at which we were given to bring home at the end of the day.

It was about 5pm by then and the day was over. Everyone was given a signed copy of the River Cottage cookbook. For those that already had it they were allowed choose something else from the on site shop. I took home a signed copy of the Beyond River Cottage DVD. This was only a small thing but it showed the effort everyone made to make the visit to River Cottage as enjoyable as possible. Nothing was too much trouble.

With that we all jumped up onto the back of the tractor and returned to the real world after our River Cottage treatment! A very worthwhile day out and a must for anyone who finds themselves down Dorset way!