Episode 7 - Cornwall
Ade visits bee-keepers and mead producers, Mick and Carol. They taste a variety of honey made from different floral areas before trying Mick and Carol’s special Cornish meads.
A Guide to Cornwall…
Cornwall is bordered to the north by the Celtic sea, the English Channel in the south and to the east by Devon, over the River Tamar. It’s home to stunning beaches and dramatic coastline, quaint little fishing villages, sheltered bays, ancient moor land and soft river estuaries and is an iconic destination. Mapped separately from England until the first Elizabethan era, Cornwall has its own distinctive culture and history.
Food the Cornish Way…
Cornwall has a strong culinary heritage, heavily influenced by both geography and social history. As a peninsula, it’s perfect for fishing and there is a very strong fishing industry in the county. Newlyn is the biggest fishing port in the UK in terms of the value of the catch landed. Television chef, Rick Stein, runs a restaurant in Padstow and Jamie Oliver runs Fifteen Cornwall in Watergate Bay.
Cornwall is ideal for growing the rich grass required for dairy and clotted cream is a famous export which in turn makes Cornish fudge and Cornish cream ice cream. Yarg cheese is another Cornish delicacy and before being left to mature, it’s wrapped in nettle leaves to form a rind. For the sweet tooth, local cakes and desserts include saffron cake, classic Cornish fairing biscuits and whortleberry pie.
Stargazey pie
At the end of the programme, Ade cooked up a traditional Cornish dish, Stargazey Pie. The main ingredient of the pie is pilchards or sardines, which now enjoy protected status and are abundant in the waters around Cornwall. There used to be a huge industry of catching and canning pilchards but as the market for the pilchard decreased so did the industry. This was, however, revived with the re-branding of the pilchard to the sardine. The pie is iconic as the heads of the fish are poked through the pastry ‘gazing up at the stars.’ The pie is said to have originated in Mousehole, where because of a prolonged period of bad weather, no fish were able to be caught and the village was starving. One fisherman, Tom Bowcock, was so concerned that he went out to sea and gave all the fish he caught to feed the village. It is thought that the heads were left on the fish so that there wouldn’t be anything wasted and also to show how plentiful fish were that day.
Get Ade's recipe for Stargazey pie
What Ade did...
The Cornish pasty in Lizard
Synonymous with Cornwall is the Cornish pasty and it’s been around for over 800 years, though it officially became known as such in the 18th Century. The pasty is traditionally associated with tin mining as it was easily picked up and eaten with hands. It was filling and hearty and there is even suggestion that the crimping around the edge of the pasty is there because it would prevent the miners getting arsenic poisoning from their fingers as they threw the crimp away. There’s also rivalry with Devon about the origins of the pasty though the Cornish pasty has recently been granted protected status. Ade went to visit Ann Muller in Lizard, to find out a little bit more and to try one for himself.
Next stop was to satisfy the sweet tooth and to discover another Devon Cornwall rivalry with Cornish cream tea. Ade visited Jane Holmes at the Rosemergy Guesthouse and sampled tea and scones the Cornish way.
Cornish hedging
Hedges are an integral part of the countryside, not only do they enhance its beauty, they keep it in order. The landscape of Cornwall is easily identifiable by its hedges. There are about 30,000 miles of hedges and almost three-quarters were anciently established. With their history preserved in their structure, they consist of stone-faced hedge banks with bushes or wildlife growing along the top. Typically, a hedge needs a cycle of repair every 150 years and as such, building new and repairing hedges is a very skilled craft known to ‘the master hedger’. Ade went to meet one such man, Colin Nankervis. At 63 years old, he has been building and restoring hedges since he was 16. He’s passionate about the style of the Cornish hedges and explained to Ade how hedging allows him to leave his mark on the landscape for the next generation. Colin’s name incidentally means ‘valley of the stags.’
Beekeeping & Cornish mead in Redruth
Bees are incredibly important, mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey. Where would we be without them? Well, we’d have a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice and a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers. It’s estimated that a third of what we eat is dependent on honey bee pollination so bees contribute £26billion to the world economy! The landscape in Cornwall is huge and incredibly varied with a high ration of plants per yard and so a really good place for honey and keeping bees, it goes back hundreds of years and you can still find ‘bee bowels’ which are little cupboards in the outside wall where bees used to be kept. Ade (complete with beekeeping suit) went along to a farm in Redruth to meet Carol Allen and Mick Jordan who not only keep bees but use some of the honey they harvest to make Cornish Mead.
Mead one of the first alcoholic drinks and the art of making it was preserved for centuries inside the monasteries. With the demise of the monasteries came the demise of the drink. However, more recently in Cornwall, these ancient recipes have been revived. Ade went along to the farm to learn about beekeeping and taste some of their special honey. Also, the word ‘honeymoon’ comes from an association with mead and marriage. In Pagan times, the happy couple would drink honey wine and their wedding and then for a month afterwards.
A quick stop at a well known Cornish family bakery, Warrens, where Ade went to try some Hevva Cake. A traditional Cornish cake flavoured with sultanas, it comes from the days of the thriving pilchard industry in Cornwall. A ‘huer’ would stand at the top of a cliff top to help locate shoals of fish and alert the fishermen by shouting ‘hevva!’ When the wives heard this cry, they’d rush back to make the cakes ready for when the crews returned.
The Camborne Town Band
Cornwall has a distinguished history associated with mining and at one time boasted 2000 tin mines. Camborne is located in what used to be one of the richest tin mining areas in the world. Though the north of England lays claim to being the birthplace of brass bands, it wasn’t long before the miners down south embraced it in the 1800s. Ade met the Camborne Town band which originated in the 1840s. The chairman is Marcus Dunstan and they performed two songs, Poldice and Camborne Worthies, at the end of the programme.
