The Linton Kitchen

Linton has been crying out for some interesting food options for ages! It's a pretty village south of Cambridge with lots of chocolate box cottages winding down their high street, and now the street is peppered with some interesting places to eat and shop. First there was Jigsaw Bakery, now there is Linton Kitchen, and soon there will be a new butcher's shop opening.

I worked very close by about 3 years ago and the only things of note nearby were the greasy spoon around the corner and the fact that the nearest BP garage had an M&S food. You can imagine. 

Linton Kitchen is a coffee shop and local produce shop run by Gemma, which opened in April. It's a small shop packed with local goodies - Kandula tea, Hot Numbers coffee beans, jams, chutneys, oils, eggs, Saffron Ice Cream Co. ice cream and lots more. She even sells local crafts - tea cosies, little fabric clocks and mugs. 

I'd stopped by soon after opening for a coffee and custard tart, but I was keen to go back with the Mr again and to have brunch. 

There are lots of options - centering around traditional breakfast foods - eggs, mushrooms, sausages and of course bacon - the menu changes daily. There are also a selection of sandwiches for lunch and of course there are sweet treats to be had.

We both had the mushrooms on (Jigsaw Bakery sourdough) toast with creme fraiche, and added bacon for me, washed down with an excellent flat white. The quality of everything really shows in Gemma's food - the mushrooms taste of something, there is a good whack of garlic and the bacon is excellent. You can tell the produce is fresh and well chosen. 

Cakes are baked by Gemma or provided by the lovely Afternoon Tease. There are also housebaked brownies or flapjacks and muffins. You can also find Norfolk St Bakery's custard tarts for sale, which is rather nice for a Shire dweller like me who finds it difficult to get into the city. She even made my recipe for Banana Oat Cake and had it for sale last week, and it is very popular (beaming). 

The Linton Kitchen has only been open for just over 6 weeks but Gemma has already done so much, there is always something new available (which she tweets about each day) whether it is a new cake or some fresh produce that has just come in. There are local strawberries in this week, the first batch of the summer.

If you're a little bit further afield it is definitely worth making the trip out to Linton - there is Jigsaw Bakery, Linton Kitchen and then you can go and visit the Zoo as well! And if that isn't enough you can make lots of Alan Partridge jokes whilst you are there (sadly there isn't a travel tavern). 

I'm looking forward to being a regular customer, it's a lovely spot to chill with a coffee and it's nice to have a proper breakfast / brunch option in the area.

Linton Kitchen

30 High Street 

Linton

Cambridgeshire

CB21 4HS

Open Tues - Saturday (8-6) and Sunday (10-3)

Pin It

#CamShopLocal - So how did it go?

If you read my recent blog post or are one of my Twitter followers you will know that I was taking part in #CamShopLocal - a week without chains, shopping at independents only. So I bet you are wondering if I made it?

Well I did and I didn't. I started off with the most excellent intentions, and the arrival of a four day weekend just before it started meant that I could plan ahead by shopping over the weekend. I got a veg box from Cambridge Organic Food Co., I bought meat and cheese from Gog Magog Shop along with baking ingredients. So by Monday I was raring to go, I had a meal plan too!

The biggest challenge came once I was back at work on Tuesday - there are some options nearby but fitting in lunch, a trip to the Post Office (to send my jewellery orders) and then food shopping is hard to achieve in 1 hour! Most of these shops close at 6pm which leaves me not much time since I finish work at 5.30pm.

I managed really well with what we had in the house until Friday when a long week and a frazzled brain meant that a bottle of wine from Tesco, on the way home, was what we both needed. Then I fell in Waitrose on the last Monday - I had been away all weekend mostly and I just needed to get things for dinner!

Here is what I bought, and ate, over the week:

Gog Magog Shop - lamb for Easter Sunday, merguez sausages, eggs, butter, flour, sugar

Cup of local tea - Kandula Tea

Last Cam Shop Local Dinner  - ravioli from Limoncello (Mill Road), homemade pesto (basil from the grocers on Mill Road, Hilary's). Cheeky bit of Morrison's bread from the freezer!

Jigsaw Bakery - Linton. Beautiful bakery run by Matthew Whitby - sourdough bread, sweet loaves, brownies, shortbread, so many wonderful things, plus great coffee. A lovely local business that has just started - we got a sourdough loaf and a currant loaf which were both excellent and served us well over the week and weekend. 

Sourdough (nibbled) from Jigsaw Bakery

Currant loaf from Jigsaw Bakery

Supplies from Al Amin - we visited on Bank Holiday Monday after a visit to Hot Numbers...

Naan, yoghurt, halloumi and aforementioned ravioli from Limoncello

Hot Numbers Flat White - bank holiday Monday coffee outing

Veg box Parsnip soup - Friday lunch with a chorizo roll from Norfolk Street bakery

Wobbly bottom goat's cheese (from Teacake in Shepreth), Winter Purslane (from COFCO via Wild Co Organics) and Sourdough bread from Jigsaw bakery - Easter Saturday lunch!

Oops. Last day of Cam Shop Local. Finished work at 6pm, where to go? Good old Waitrose I'm afraid. 

Overall I enjoyed finding some new shops and trying some new produce - things like the salad leaves from COFCO were fantastic as was the ravioli from Limoncello. I definitely see a difference in quality when shopping for locally sourced foods and I think this is the key to why you should shop local. 

In all honesty, I think it is pointless searching around for local shops selling laundry liquid, toilet roll, cat food and petrol because it is all much of a muchness - you are still buying from big brands, Persil, Andrex, Felix or Shell in the end aren't you? 

If you support a local food producer then you are getting salad leaves grown 5 miles from your house, meat reared to high standards at a local farm, bread baked fresh that day by the owner or goat's cheese made from milk from goat's nibbling on grass in the field next to the dairy. That kind of thing. 

I'm always on the look out for local producers as it is, so this just upped my game a little more than normal. I was lucky that week in that I had to be in Cambridge city centre more often than I would be normally, usually I only visit once a week at most - so I had a chance to visit Mill Road shops for local produce, and grab a coffee at Hot Numbers, and finally visit the lovely Norfolk Street Bakery.

Without going on too much, I'll try to sum up! I love local producers and the interesting things they are doing and I will search them out if they are doing something a bit different. I also like what the supermarkets are doing, there are some brilliant small brands being stocked such as the Collective Dairy (yoghurts), Peanut Butter Co, Lily's Kitchen (pet food) to name a few. They are also making great strides in stocking more world foods and also more interesting fruit and vegetables - have you seen some of the new style Morrison's fresh section lately? It is pretty great - not many supermarkets sell fresh turmeric root, purple potatoes, samphire and 15 different kinds of herbs. There are obviously things they are doing wrong like squeezing the price of dairy and meat so farmers continue to go out of business by the day along with opening massive stores and spoiling previously nice areas. 

I think for me I will continue to support both - I need supermarkets for convenience but I need locals for interest, quality and being part of the foodie community. 

Pin It

Asparagus Pesto

Didn't I promise you another asparagus recipe? Here it is!

To break from the rut of asparagus/egg/bread which whilst being delicious is a bit of a standard way to have asparagus, I decided to whizz up the stalks into a nice fresh pesto.


Asparagus makes a beautifully green pesto which is creamy and light, not as strong as the basil variety and perfect for a quick dinner.

Use any pasta you have to hand, spaghetti or linguine would be lovely as well as any other pasta shapes.

Asparagus & Walnut Pesto - serves 2
adapted from local lemons

8 stalks of asparagus
50g parmesan
handful of walnuts
few basil leaves or any other soft herb
pinch of chili flakes
handful of fresh spinach leaves
good quality olive oil
salt and pepper
1 small clove of garlic - add less if you don't like raw garlic
approx 150g - 200g pasta

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, you will use this to gently cook your asparagus and cook your pasta. Put the asparagus stalks in whole, woody ends removed. Cook for only 2 minutes, they will be just tender enough in this time.
Remove them from the pan and then add in your pasta.

Chop your asparagus into roughly 1 inch pieces, put the tips to one side.
Blitz the rest of the chopped asparagus with the other ingredients (except the olive oil) in a food processor. You can use a pestle and mortar for a rougher pesto. Add in approx 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil and pulse, adding more oil if it needs be to loosen up the pesto.

Drain your pasta, reserving a few tablespoons of the cooking water. Return the pan to the heat with the pasta, add in your pesto and the reserved stalks and mix really well. Serve in warmed bowls with another grating of parmesan.

Pin It

Cherry picking, pitting and er.. pieing?

Well I did have a rather lovely start to the weekend. Where I work there are several small farmers, nurseries and vegetable growers so every now and again something fabulously seasonal, local and yummy comes up food wise.

There is a chap who sells Asparagus in early May, the nursery next door has a fabulous selection of weird and wonderful squashes in the autumn and there is talk of raspberries in the summer from someone else.

This month it is cherries. I think amongst all the talk of Wimbledon and strawberries, cherries do get rather lost. They are just as great when in season and fresh, local cherries aren't a patch on the rubbery supermarket types.

Driving into work last Thursday I saw a great big sign for 'CHERRIES - 2MILES' - hurrahing slightly to myself, I came prepared on Friday with change and flat shoes, with my sights set on cherry pie.

I picked a generous 1/2 kilo of during my cherries (£2! bargain!) during my lunch hour and returned to work just in time for a cuppa and a biscuit before the desk job continued - the kind of lunchbreak I like..

{stems on one side and pips arranged neatly on the other - weird?}

I found this recipe for Sweet Cherry Pie on my favourite food blog, Smitten Kitchen. I had a few pastry problems when preparing it, but we'll gloss over that and I'll show you this instead...


I'm going to go back at the end of the week with plans for a kind of black forest gateau. We also had cherries and pancakes on Saturday morning, which were fabulous, but I forgot to take a picture unfortunately for I am still a novice food blogger ;)

xx

Pin It