Saturday, February 8, 2014

Local treasures

This week I decided to go exploring, so instead of buying my ingredients from the local supermarket I wandered around the market in Cambridge and a couple of the local shops instead.  And here's what I came back with:


A pack of smoked deer sausages (yes you read that correctly!) from Wild Game Meat's market stall (You can find them in Market Square, Cambridge on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I think)
A block of cheese (similar to parmesan) from The Cambridge Cheese Company and a bag of very exciting pasta (also from the Cheese Shop which sells way more than just cheese - I would highly recommend their pork pies).  The Cheese Shop is great not just for the range of cheeses but also for the staff who are friendly and are always happy to talk to you about the different cheeses.

Anyway, back to the pasta, it's actually produced in Italy and made from durum wheat, semolina flour and natural ingredients with no colourings and you get so many different flavours in a bag; paprika, beetroot, curcuma and spinach!  It looks great and tasted really good too.  The pasta was nice and thick so it didn't just fall apart once cooked.

All the different colours of the pasta

As I wasn't feeling particularly inspired I simply cooked the pasta, grated the cheese and melted it over the pasta, then fried the sausages and added them to the pasta.  Although simple it was actually very tasty.  The cheese went well with the smokiness of the sausages and you could still just about detect the subtle differences in flavour of each of the colours of pasta.  All in all it was successful.  I would definitely have deer sausages again (which is lucky as I have some left over) and am keen to try more exoctic meats (on to wild boar next)!  The meal would actually taste great if I were to have used the cheese to make a green pesto and used a small amount of that as a sauce - maybe next time.

The finished dish - pasta, cheese and deer sausages
The finished dish


Tegernseer Hell - beerI finished off my dinner with a bottle of 'Tegernseer Hell' (a light lager from Tegernsee, an area near Munich, Germany).  I bought this beer from another local favourite of mine, Bacchanalia Wine Merchants - you can visit their website here, follow them on Twitter or have a look for yourself, they're at: 90 Mill Road, Cambridge, CB1 28D (or 79 Victoria Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BS).  I love this shop as it is one of the only places I've found in England so far where you can buy beers from Bamberg, Germany (the town where I lived for a year).  Unfortunately they haven't had my favourite beer in since the start of the year (Zwergla, from the Fässla brewery) but they do have an amazing range of German beers from your more common Augustiner to other lesser-known beers.  They also have a wide variety of wines and beers from all over the place.  It is definitely worth popping along at some point to see what they've got!

Look out for more 'local treasures' posts as I'm hoping to make it to a local farm shop I've heard good things about as well as some of the delis on Mill Road.

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