Good afternoon everyone,
We'll keep this one short and very sweet. Ice cream sandwich season is upon us, with the forecast looking, if not quite as glorious as last week then at the least, very decent. A trawl through emails past reveals that these frozen delights were originally concocted in March 2021 for our first ever pizza night. Hugo's little mind was blown when Kate blithely announced that she might try making ice cream sandwiches. Hugo's only reference point for such a concept were those ice cream wafers that he remembered from the 80s. Confronted with neat rectangles of vanilla parfait quite literally sandwiched between layers of chocolate and buckwheat brownie he was moved to drop down on one knee and utter those fateful words "please can we make these every time the sun even threatens to come out?". And so our annual ice cream sandwich season was born. For the week ahead, the brownie remains the same, but the parfait will be swirled with salted caramel and studded with Fruit and Forest's Piedmontese roasted hazelnuts. A slice of nice, as our friend RB would say.
For those looking for something a little lighter, the first of the strawberries came in yesterday and they are already tasting very good, so we'll have punnets galore coming in on Saturday, along with Styan's wonderful asparagus.
Of course, it's not just ice creams and fruit and veg that have their seasons, so too do farmhouse cheeses, and it is this time of year that we welcome back, particularly, the subtly flavoured and fresh tasting goat and sheep's milk cheeses, such as Brightwell Ash, Hay on Wye, and Brefu Bach, all of which would pair very well with some nicely cooked, or even raw asparagus and a glass of something cool and delicate. On this front we can happily recommend Judith Beck's gossamer Pink or La Lunotte's rare and fine Haut Plessis, a white which sings of spring with it's grassy, herby freshness.
Thank you for reading, we wish you all the very best,
Kate and Hugo