Monthly Archives: January 2014

Always mind the scallops

Posted on by under Europe

DSC_2560‘Dredging for scallops is like trying to pick up your wallet on the fast lane of the M25, in the fog.’ Nick Harman meets the Rye ‘scallopers’ just ahead of Scallop Week

It’s all a bit quiet down on Simmonds Quay in Rye, East Sussex. The scallop boats are moored tight and the fishermen are in their huts. The stormy weather that hasn’t ceased battering England for weeks is once again stopping them from going to sea.

‘We haven’t been out more than a couple of times since Christmas,’ sighs one fisherman sadly. At this time of year scallops are an important harvest, but the boats are small, under 10m long, and crewed by just two men. The big seas would be too much. Continue reading →

In a Maltese City Garden

Posted on by under Europe, Southern Europe

At the Phoenicia Hotel they take luxury and food very seriously. Nick Harman goes into their garden to meet the head chef and to taste the Maltese difference.

Saul bounds away up the vegetable patch like a puppy in an apron, still talking to me over his shoulder. Then, after grabbing a few tomatoes off the vine, he comes hurrying back. ‘The freshness is fantastic,’ he said biting into one ‘and with the kitchen just over there it gets straight to the plate.’ Saul could be any keen cook enthusing over his vegetable plot, but this particular patch is a massive seven and a half acres in size. It’s the back garden of the Phoenicia Hotel, Malta and Saul’s the Head Chef.

The gardens are grand and have bird’s eye views over the harbour, especially from the luxurious Bastion swimming pool. These verdant acres have been many things since construction began on the hotel in 1939, including being bombed in the war and used as a children’s playground, although no one is saying which did the worst damage. Continue reading →

Blessed are the cheesemakers

Posted on by under Europe, Northern Europe

DSC_1185Up early in the morning  to walk through dappled light to the dairy that’s nestled by a babbling brook. The cheese makers’ life? Well not exactly, as Nick Harman finds out

‘I don’t like getting up too early, so I don’t,’ says Philip Wilton  of Wildes Cheese leading me into his dairy. Outside far from being a vista of green fields and rolling hills, the view is of grey skies glowering over the streets of North London, as well as the bulk of Spurs’ football stadium just down the road.

‘You should have seen this place when I took it on,’ adds Philip as we wet our shoe soles in antiseptic and put on white coats, ‘it was a right mess.’ Actually he uses a stronger description; his cheerful conversation is peppered with expletives. He has created a proper dairy, three fully fitted out rooms, in a tiny unit on an anonymous industrial estate, a dairy so small you couldn’t swing a kitten in it, much less a cat. Continue reading →