We broke our lockdown social starvation in style when we cooked escarcot with the Wild Bastards when they came to visit our farm.
Two foodie enthusiasts, one a Game chef (Jaimie), the other a film maker (Tom) who, along with an Australian (Dan) have a mission to be the Top Gear team of food. Enter lashings of booze and sweary words.
I found them via the Somerset Stories podcast– a lovely collection of tales of people who are making their living in wonderfully creative ways in this fabulous county. Jaime Haselock, otherwise known as Gamey Jaimie was featured and talked about his mission to make food reporting much more interesting, and maybe a little rebellious. Cooking escargot had to be on their menu!
I set them a challenge to cooking a delicious escargot dish, but they didn’t know about it until they arrived! The Sheppys Cider seemed to be incentive enough and like an al fresco Ready Steady Cook, Jaimie combined the ingredients I provided into a bowl of delicious, buttery, cidery, garlicky goodness, with a little bit of chilli chucked in for a peppery kick.
We slurped all the cider and a bottle of Prosecco. Weekdays/weekends – who knows the difference after lockdown?!
The conversation roamed like a snail looking for a cabbage to chomp. We ruminated about the flavour and unexpected texture of our cooked escargot – not at all chewy as many people believe. Fresh and slow cooked escargot is entirely different to the experience many people have had of tough, chewing gum textured, tinned escargot.
Delicious
We imagined the delights of a organoleptic forest explosion – which is the description given to escargot caviar.
Jaimie set me a challenge to cook my future festival food of snail bombs (garlic cream and breadcrumbs).
And we ambled onto my love of Peaky Blinders (being a Black Country girl originally) and the style of leadership in kitchens.
Spontaneous afternoons like this are a pure joy. The fact that we had never met and had only spoken the day before made it even more delightful.
Archie and Bonnie
Even Archie had fun. We lost our lovely springer spaniel Millie at the beginning of lockdown and Archie our adorable Labrador has been in need of a companion. Jaimie brought along Bonnie, who, like Archie is a red fox Labrador. They looked like a match made in heaven! Sadly Archie can’t make puppies anymore, otherwise there might have been plans for a little love match!
Listen to the Wild Bastards podcast episode 7 to hear some snippets of their visit.
This fabulous video sums up the day perfectly and includes an aerial view of our farm.