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Make your own ham

6/7/2018

Winter is the perfect time to make your own ham, using a leg of pork from Langdale Farm! It's easier than you think.

All you need to make your own ham is plenty of salt, a large food grade container, some lard, some weights for squishing the ham down during the salting stage, and plenty of time.

Cauliflower Soup with Bacons Bits

5/31/2018

Nothing goes together better than winter and a warming velvety soup. We make a cauliflower soup regularly and keep pots of it stashed away in the freezer, bringing it out for lunches and light suppers. We like to serve it with things on top - a drizzle of olive oil, a drift of chopped parsley and best of all, a sprinkled of bacon bits sizzled up in the pan. Our streaky bacon or lardons work brilliantly for this.

Here's a recipe to keep you warm through the winter months.

Yes, we have gluten free sausages!

4/22/2018

Gluten free pork sausages Tasmania

At last we've cracked it! For many a year we've been trying to make a gluten free sausage. And we've never found the right ingredient to replace breadcrumbs.

Then we got a tip from Peter Twitchett, Head Chef of brand spanking new restaurant Grain of the Silos in Launceston. He told Oliver, who makes all our sausages here on the farm, to try potato starch. We tried it, and we loved it!

Massimo Mele visits Langdale Farm

3/15/2018

Massimo Mele with Langdale Farm bacon

We had a great morning on the farm yesterday when chef Massimo Mele brought the team from Launceston's new Peppers Silo Hotel and its restaurant Grain to visit.

We met Massimo last year for Farmgate Festival. He was feature chef and created a beautiful menu for the festival dinner using our pork and produce from other farms in the festival.

So it was great to welcome him to our small patch in the Tamar! Sausages were cooked, the smoker was smoking, pigs were visited, and even the Examiner visited!

Massimo and the team have been touring farms and producers in Tasmania, and Grain will have a focus on product from businesses like ours, local and producing something a little bit different.

Pheasant for dinner

8/31/2017

One of our customers gave us a pheasant for dinner. We had to google how to prepare it.

There’s a tradition in rural Tasmania of swapping foodstuffs. It’s the edible black market in things from the river, the land and the larder. Over the years we’ve dealt in eggs, pork, salmon, venison, wallaby patties, Riesling and sausages. When we became artisan food producers and joined a farmers’ market everything went up a notch, and now it could be craft beer, sourdough bread or kombucha.

Now, we have been gifted a pheasant. The benefactor is a customer, a man who likes Oliver’s bacon so much he buys a whole side at a time. He takes it on holiday with him to far flung islands and invites friends along for epicurean feasts. This man went on a pheasant shoot in Victoria and shot more than his own tastes required, so gave us a bird.

I collected it from the drop-off point, a Launceston providore where the girls were a little freaked out by the sight of a fully feathered dead pheasant, and had popped it on the floor of the cool room in a corner, with its head tucked under a cabinet.

Holy Smoke!

7/31/2017

Why we'll be smoking sausages at events from now on

It's unexpected, but Oliver has turned out to be right about something. This is unprecedented in the course of our marriage. It may only be about the matter of sausages, but to us it's a big thing. Over the years, we have agreed. I am generally right, and he is generally wrong. Obviously he continues to disagree with me even though he realises this, on principle.

Things I’ve been right about include coming to Australia, moving to Tasmania, and having children, although the jury’s still out on that one. But it turns out that Oliver is proven right about using the smoker to cook our gourmet sausages at events.

Oliver made all four of our smokers himself. They stand around our bush block looking a bit like Ned Kelly costumes. Each one is bigger than the last. They're made from barrels, steel boxes and old air compressors and Oliver entertains himself by carving a pig face into the fire chamber. The latest is made from a double fridge he brought home from the tip. One day I’ll push him too far and you’ll find me swinging in there by the ankles in a fog of apple smoke.

Pride of place - Langdale Farm pork at the Sprout Tasmania dinner at Stillwater

5/26/2017

Somebody asked me last night whether I’d be better off stacking shelves at Coles than I am running a small farm and food business with my husband and writing on the side. Luckily he was a charming person so I didn’t mind being asked.

I have no idea what you’d make stacking shelves at Coles. But I didn’t need to know that to answer the question.

What a farmers' market means to the producer

10/19/2016

As owners of a small farm and food business, Langdale Farm, we’ve been hanging out our shingle (or in our case, our flying papier-mache pig) fortnightly at Harvest for a couple of years.

The most far-reaching thing Harvest did for us was to stabilise our business. Before becoming stallholders there, we tried a few other markets with little success. We supported a couple of new markets, at Lilydale and Deloraine, where ultimately there just wasn’t the population or demand to support the markets or our stall.

Chorizo and Apple Salad with Zesty Sour Cream Dressing

11/21/2015

We launched our Chorizo sausage earlier this year, and have been playing with other flavours that complement its lovely warm paprika notes - smoky but not too hot!

For the summer months, we’ve come up with this zingy salad to tempt, refresh and nourish! Perfect for a bite to eat at a market, or a light lunch.

Ingredients, for two:
One chorizo sausage
Rocket or leaf mix of your choice
Manchego or Parmesan
One Apple
Sourdough bread cubed

For the dressing:
Sour cream - half cup
Dijon mustard - 2 tsp
Lemon juice - third of cup
and zest - 4 tsp
Salt and pepper
Olive oil - half cup

First make the dressing. Combine all ingredients except sour cream and whisk or shake in a jar. Then slowly whisk in the sour cream.

Delia's Braised Bangers with Cider

9/13/2015

Imagine our delight when Brady's Lookout Cider appeared two stalls along from our own this week at Harvest Market Launceston! Pork and cider - that well known match made in heaven - and the possibility for a dinner with ingredients entirely from the West Tamar.

We purchased a bottle of Premium Cuvee with its soft bubbles and fruitiness and just a hint of pear. Caroline and Chris are using natural fermentation techniques and fresh apples rather than concentrate, and it makes for a lovely subtle, soft flavour with a beautiful fine fizz.