Spot of Bother, 21 Jan 2008

The search was on. From where was that squeaky-toy noise coming? With people dispatched to all points, the source was found deep under the duvet in the Tea Together master bedroom!

Just as dinner guests began to arrive, famous TT Jack Russell, Amy, was delivering her first puppy. She may have held a mystified expression throughout the process, but amazingly she instinctively knew what to do as one after another four little Jack Russells arrived.

With a healthy count of new mouths to feed she happily retired to the nursery in the kitchen.

Ruby Rhubarb Season, June – August 2007
This season, Thierry Jeanssen, whose farm is only fifteen minutes away from Tea Together, has grown a couple of rows of a ruby red rhubarb variety especially for us. Whereas most rhubarb turns a dowdy green when cooked, Valentine has an exquisite colour that shines clear and bright in the final jam. It's hard to grow and French rhubarb buyers ask for green, to sprinkle on top of Tartes a la Creme. They know nothing and care less for the English tradition of shocking pink early forced rhubarb, so prized in British first puddings of Spring. Now we have found Valentine, and it makes the perfect jam along with a little Lemon and a few stems of Angelica from the Tea Together
garden.

Cheese Crunch
Right now, we are developing a range of aperitif-type biscuits that use three different artisanal cheeses, all by makers with big local reputations.

We have already been widening the circle of demand for the Cabot Cheddar biscuits made by Dorcas
Sommerhof in upstate New York. Now we have found a local baker and patissier from Desvres to take on the task of developing a different kind of biscuit using the brilliant Tome de Brebis made by Sylviane Henguelle, whose sheep farm is at the top of one of the region’s most beautiful valleys, the Crequoise.

We have given Thierry the baker, a jar of the Espelette Pepper that Tea Together sources from a young producer in, well, Espelette (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Currently two key clients are testing, and we shall see from their responses whether or not to tweak and tweak again, or to go with what we now have. These are strong, clear tastes with crunch, and punch, and have the simplest of ingredients - cheese, butter, flour, salt and spices.

The Spirit of Cotentin

Last October, Tea Together took best-selling author Simon Winchester and the new Mrs. Winchester on a trip to Normandy to discover the mysteries of making Calvados.

Simon lives on a farm in Connecticut and has 22 acres of apple trees. He wanted to go several steps beyond Cider to make an All-American Calvados. The perfect instructor, we reckoned, was a farmer in the Cotentin peninsula, M. Michel Laurent, who makes a fiercely local version. His implements are inherited from his father and his grandfather before him. Although he has at present a small dairy herd, he is looking forward to his retirement when he will dust off the old press to up his present production, which for now is just enough to sell from the farm. Soon he will be selling his Calva on market days at nearby Cherbourg.

 After a day spent with the Bayeux tapestry and another day visiting the D Day beaches, we arrived one crisp October morning chez M. Laurent.

Watch Movie “Michel Laurent Calvados” (Video Clip)

Simon was later invited as a special guest to the world-famous Calvados-Boulard distilleries, where the latest scion of the Boulard dynasty, Vincent, was ready to explain the process of making Calvados on a rather larger scale than M. Laurent’s

Watch Movie “TT Calvados-Boulard” (Video Clip)

Watch “Making No.14” (Video Clip)

Watch “Ancient_Montreuil” (Video Clip)