MELTON MOWBRAY – It’s tough keep­ing up with Dr. Matthew O’Callaghan as he strides pur­pose­fully across the cob­bled square in the cen­tre of this lovely his­toric town, pop­u­la­tion about 24,000, located in the heart of Britain’s East Mid­lands.
Wear­ing a jaunty beige mini-version of a cow­boy hat he bought in New Zealand, my guide for the day has been a town coun­cil­lor here for 12 years and is a man with a mis­sion.
This is boldly illus­trated by a brand new sign he proudly pointed out at the vin­tage train sta­tion where I arrived after a scenic hour-and-a-half ride from Lon­don with one change at the nearby city of Leices­ter.
It reads: “Wel­come to MELTON MOWBRAY
Rural Cap­i­tal of Food
Home of Stil­ton Cheese
Melton Mow­bray Pork Pies”
O’Callaghan has been splashed all over the news in this coun­try as he tire­lessly cam­paigns to put Melton Mow­bray on the culi­nary map and is on the front page of today’s local paper pic­tured beside his lat­est coup: that train sta­tion sign.
What’s more, he has impres­sive cre­den­tials.
He’s a doc­tor of chem­istry spe­cial­iz­ing in soils who has worked in Bel­gium, Japan and Costa Rica. He’s chair­man of both the Melton Mow­bray Pork Pie Asso­ci­a­tion and the Melton Mow­bray Food Part­ner­ship.
He speaks five lan­guages and has an agile mind packed with facts about his­tory, agri­cul­ture, sci­ence and food.
His goal is “to make the peo­ple in Melton Mow­bray proud of their her­itage and his­tory.”
And his­tory here is plen­ti­ful. It’s a largely medieval town that fea­tures well-preserved build­ings, includ­ing the famous Anne of Cleves pub, assorted churches and the odd cas­tle, all dat­ing back to this period.
Located on the river Eye, this place was inhab­ited in much ear­lier days by the Romans. But, as O’Callaghan explains, his plans for his beloved burg to become a food des­ti­na­tion are rooted in the recent past and what he sees as a rosy future.
His main aim is to elim­i­nate what had been, until recently, high unem­ploy­ment. “We had mad cow, agri­cul­tural prob­lems and the clos­ing of an army depot,” he explains.
But he traces a key cause of the once slug­gish econ­omy to Mar­garet Thatcher. Faced with min­ers’ strikes and mine clo­sures across the coun­try, she tried to revive her image in the 1980s by open­ing a coalmine in resource-rich Melton Mow­bray.
“The shafts were in the wrong direc­tion,” O’Callaghan says, adding: “It blew the tow­ers and the mine closed.”
His clever plan — one that has helped reduce unem­ploy­ment to 1 per cent — involves pro­mot­ing and pro­tect­ing the town’s two inter­na­tion­ally cel­e­brated foods: Stil­ton cheese and the Melton Mow­bray pork pie.
To check them out at the source, we walk past an array of ven­dors with bar­rows sell­ing every­thing from leather hand­bags to fresh fruit to stop at Dick­in­son & Mor­ris: the town’s old­est and most pop­u­lar food shop where they’ve been mak­ing pork pies since 1851.
Iron­i­cally, O’Callaghan is a veg­e­tar­ian. How­ever, he’s a pas­sion­ate cham­pion of the region’s famous meat pie, the his­tory of which is fas­ci­nat­ing.
In the Mid­dle Ages, kitchen uten­sils were unavail­able to the aver­age cook. Instead, a paste of flour and water was shaped around ingre­di­ents to be eaten, then dis­carded after cook­ing. Even­tu­ally, fat was added to the flour/water mix­ture form­ing an edi­ble crust and the pie we know today.
There’s a daz­zling array of cheeses and round pork pies in the dis­play case before us at Dick­in­son & Mor­ris. The lat­ter range in size and style. Some have no top crust but come with a top­ping of chut­ney, apple, cran­berry or Stil­ton.
How­ever, all have the manda­tory fea­tures: An uncured grey-coloured fill­ing sea­soned with just salt and pep­per; a heavy-duty, crunchy crust, and bone stock jelly between meat and crust that keeps the pie sta­ble and stops it from wob­bling.
That trait makes it ideal for one of its tra­di­tional uses – as portable food for hunters who flock to this region for their con­tro­ver­sial sport. Among them are Prince Charles and sons William and Harry.
Stil­ton has had trade­mark pro­tec­tion since the 1960s.The Melton Mow­bray pork pie’s E.U. des­ig­na­tion is due to be signed and deliv­ered any day. This means pies bear­ing this name must be made accord­ing to the authen­tic recipe and come from this area.
As O’Callaghan and I sit down to a delec­table lunch of per­fect pie and a crumbly wedge of pun­gent Stil­ton, I offer con­grat­u­la­tions.
Back in Lon­don, the food is dis­ap­point­ing in com­par­i­son. Meals at sev­eral restau­rants rec­om­mended by Evening Stan­dard restau­rant critic Fay Maschler in her annual round-up are mostly under­whelm­ing and cry­ing out for salt.
That is, until our din­ner at York & Albany, celebrity chef Gor­don Ramsay’s new restau­rant co-owned and oper­ated by his chief pro­tégé: chef Angela Hart­nett.
In fact, the food, ser­vice and ambi­ence at this Cam­den Town din­ing spot is the best I’ve enjoyed in the U.K.
It seems that ram­bunc­tious Ram­say knows how to put his money where his mouth is. If you’re there, try the per­fect Pump­kin Risotto and lus­cious Rice Pud­ding with Prune Arma­gnac Com­pote.
As for Melton Mowbray’s famous pie, var­i­ous ver­sions are sold in many super­mar­kets, British food shops and spe­cialty butch­ers in Toronto. Mak­ing them at home is not an option.
How­ever, incor­po­rat­ing won­drous Stil­ton cheese in soup or salad — not to men­tion serv­ing it after din­ner with crack­ers and fresh fruit — is. Here’s a dish that fea­tures it in a won­der­ful way.
Stil­ton Pear Salad
Per­fect as a din­ner party starter, this appeared in Gourmet mag­a­zine in 1992; I found it on super food web site: www.epicurious.com.
Dress­ing:
2 tbsp white wine vine­gar
½ tsp dijon mus­tard
¼ cup olive oil
Salad:
6 cups mixed let­tuce
1 large or 2 small ripe pears, halved, cored and sliced
About 1 cup crum­bled stil­ton cheese
½ cup pecans, toasted, cooled and chopped *
Whisk dress­ing ingre­di­ents in small bowl until com­bined.
In large bowl, toss greens with half of dress­ing. Divide among four plates. Arrange a quar­ter of pear slices on top of each. Sprin­kle stil­ton and chopped pecans on top. Driz­zle each salad with remain­ing dress­ing.
Makes 4 serv­ings.
*To toast pecans, cook over low heat in dry skil­let about 4 min­utes or until aro­matic.
marion@marionkane.com