A new pie for us this week; small pies from Oxfordshire family butcher M. Newitt & Son's, distributed through Budgens. Aparently Newitt's were voted Britain's Best Butcher's Shop 2002 by the Meat Trades Journal. The location for the pie tasting and the start of our pre-pie walk was
St. Swithin's church, Frettenham, with three
scratch dials! We headed east towards the B1150, North Walsham Road, taking in some cracking views of the unique 6-lobed, 500,000 gallon
water tower at Horstead, built about 1973.
Crossing the B1150 and heading south we came to St. Peter’s church, Crostwick. This was our lunch stop, no scratch dials, but it did have snowdrops in the grounds – the first we’d seen this year. Crossing the B1150 again, we headed northwest through Hillside horse sanctuary with many frisky horses romping in the fields, our destination being the Rose and Crown in Frettenham. Here we enjoyed a very pleasant pint of Harviestoun's "
Bitter & Twisted". A three quarter of a mile trip back to the church and on to the munching... First on the menu was an offering from Manola, bursting with flavour: Tomato & Basil King Prawns and Parmesan Grissini for dipping in Spicy Red Pepper Houmous. Our pies had a lot to live up to after that, slicing the pies revealed a well jellied, pink meat filling. Lacking aroma, the filling was tasty, but sadly let down by a soft pie crust – I would imagine a baked-on-the-day pie, from the shop, would be very good. However, despite the poor pastry, the pies returned a respectable, spot on 7.0, with a standard deviation of 0.95743. We ended with the customary Shortcake.
Crossing the B1150 and heading south we came to St. Peter’s church, Crostwick. This was our lunch stop, no scratch dials, but it did have snowdrops in the grounds – the first we’d seen this year. Crossing the B1150 again, we headed northwest through Hillside horse sanctuary with many frisky horses romping in the fields, our destination being the Rose and Crown in Frettenham. Here we enjoyed a very pleasant pint of Harviestoun's "Bitter & Twisted". A three quarter of a mile trip back to the church and on to the munching... First on the menu was an offering from Manola, bursting with flavour: Tomato & Basil King Prawns and Parmesan Grissini for dipping in Spicy Red Pepper Houmous. Our pies had a lot to live up to after that, slicing the pies revealed a well jellied, pink meat filling. Lacking aroma, the filling was tasty, but sadly let down by a soft pie crust – I would imagine a baked-on-the-day pie, from the shop, would be very good. However, despite the poor pastry, the pies returned a respectable, spot on 7.0, with a standard deviation of 0.95743. We ended with the customary Shortcake.
