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Good afternoon everybody,
We are feeling the love this year, and since we have just been joined by Stefan and Sofia, bakers from Miami who are with us for the duration of 2026 (you’ll be hearing more of them in the future for sure), we have a few extra hands with which to make some sweets for your sweets. There’ll be little bags of Pump Street Chocolate and brandy truffles, sandwich biscuits with blush pink blood orange curd and chocolate-dipped Viennese hearts. We hope you and your nearest and dearest enjoy. If you wish to say it with alcohol as well as baked goods, allow us to recommend Rosé de Meunier, a properly gorgeous pink Champagne that's classy and easy, or our frisky Alsation pet nat, Les Bulles, for maximum refreshment. Finally we've just received a chunky delivery from our favourite brewery, The Kernel - plenty of Pale Ale, IPA, Table Beer and London Porter up for grabs.
Now for the belated report on our trip to Leicestershire last week, courtesy of our General Manager, Harriet.
Last Monday Team Hamblin took a trip to Sparkenhoe Farm in the small village of Upton to meet with mother and son duo Jo and Will Clarke. As we pulled onto the farm we were met by a pair of very friendly sheepdogs and a series of beautiful red brick buildings set amongst acres of rolling countryside. The family have been farming the area for generations. With their efforts now focused on regenerative agriculture, their 300 acres are farmed as both pasture and arable producing feed for their dairy herd and sheep. After a bracing stomp around the site, leaving some members of the group with rather muddy shoes, we visited the milking parlour and met their herd of pedigree Holstein-Friesians.
Cheesemaking is a much more recent endeavour for the family with Jo explaining that it was poor milk prices that provided them with the impetus to start, despite their lack of know-how. A chance trip to the pub cemented Red Leicester as the choice for their focus, with the family initially discounting it due to the poor reputation of the more mass-produced versions. The Clarkes used a combination of old books, local advice and guidance from Neal’s Yard to determine their recipe and are now the producers of Britain’s only raw milk clothbound Red Leicester.
As the morning progressed we were kitted up and taken into the cheesemaking facilities by Will, who heads up all things dairy. We watched the cutting and draining of curds from the morning’s milk and discussed the addition of annatto, a natural plant dye obtained from a South American bush that has given the cheese its distinctive colour for hundreds of years. Will then went on to explain the next steps in the process: pressing the curds in moulds and cloth binding with lard to prevent the loss of too much moisture. We finished up in the ageing room where each cheese develops its characteristic range of moulds and is turned by hand each week. As it matures, the texture dries and the flavour strengthens and deepens, from savoury, smooth and mellow to nutty and rich. Our tour concluded with some tremendous toasties and the opportunity to try a couple of the Clarkes' newer cheeses which we also packed up and brought back for you to try too.
This week’s batch of Red Leicester reminded us of warming tomato soup with a buttery and lightly crumbly texture. The Sparkenhoe Blue is toothsome, rich and savoury with a peppery note from the blue veins. If you would like to know more about Sparkenhoe Farm there's an episode of 'On Your Farm' available on BBC sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002ntnv
Thank you Harriet, and thank you all for reading, enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Kate and Hugo
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