Sunday 5 September 2010

Jarrold’s deli

With the terrible pies of last week, the Pie Master went to a known good supplier of quality pies: the Deli in Jarrold’s, last sampled at Holkham on February 10th 2008, where they scored 8.5. To sample these, 9 munchers and two dogs headed to Foulsham. Parking in the street we walked east, past the church that had a “Savage” manhole cover, to Batesmoor. From here we headed back west along Mill Lane a little way before heading north over what was the old airfield, passing the site of the former 60,000 gallon, Foulsham water tower. The field edge provided us with blackberries that we consumed as we walked along. We were afforded a lengthy view of deer before we stopped at 3½ miles for lunch in a field corner. Here we watched a couple of raptors overhead as we ate. We headed back south to Foulsham via a permissive path along side Wood Norton Road, taking in views of Stanfield and Bintree water towers at the same time. Then along Sneck Lane, calling in at the Queen’s Head for pints of Adnams. We returned to the cars and took our tea to the Holy Innocents church we walked past at the start. We looked around this dial-less church before having tea in the churchyard. Straight into the good looking pies that released an appetising aroma when sliced, revealing a nicely textured pink filling surrounded by jelly. This was a really good pie, very tasty and the pastry good too, though it wasn’t as crisp as some. All agreed and it romped in with a score of 9.05556 and a low standard deviation of 0.30046, so a normalised score of 9 – the highest this year, for Jarrold’s Deli. Canapés followed: stuffed baby peppers – these were quite hot, so a wise decision to have these after the pies, followed by the Shortbread finale.