What does it take to win the Stirrup Cup? Festival of Hounds launches popular Hunt Picnic Competition
The organisers of the Festival of Hounds and the 136th Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show are delighted to once again invite hunts to enter the popular Hunt Picnic Competition, in the hunt lorry carpark at lunchtime on Wednesday 17 July. Competing for the coveted ‘Stirrup Cup’ basket of port.
Local award-winning food writer Jenny Jefferies, and Country Life chief subeditor Octavia Pollock, are once again returning to one of the toughest but most sought-after tasks at the Festival of Hounds, judging the Hunt Picnic Competition! The Hunt Picnic Competition helps to highlight the unique community that surrounds hunting, from farmers to foot-followers, the local butcher who supplies pork pie for the meet, to the retired hunt master who now supplies flowers for the picnic table arrangements.
With silverware, candelabras and groaning tables full of locally produced dishes and drinks on offer, we asked the judges for their top tips for this year’s entrants. Jenny Jefferies advised: “My top tips are to prepare what you all enjoy back at home, to share the food you love, and to relish the good company. What I enjoy the most about judging the competition is the variety of food on show and appreciating the absolute joy and effort that goes into preparing a winning picnic.
“Majestic pork pies, delicate salmon en-croutes, quality sandwiches, colourful salads, home-made cider, pickles and jam, candelabra, pretty crockery and tablecloths; the abundance of delightful and quintessentially British gastronomy and presentation can be both captivating and epic. Don’t hold back!”
The Festival of Hounds is a unique opportunity for members of the hunting and wider rural community to get together and celebrate the countryside, its traditions and people. Jenny said: “My favourite part of this festival is the unique heritage and the variety of not just the hounds but also the people. I am very much looking forward to celebrating the 136th year of Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show!”
Last year, the hotly contested Stirrup Cup prize of a basket of port for the hunt’s opening meet went to the Wheatland Hunt, spearheaded by Mrs Sula Baugh, who commented: “Our ideas for a successful hunt picnic revolve round two main themes – showcasing local produce and connecting it to the hunt by having some of the same homemade food we produce for meets and after-hunting teas – sometimes I think we must consume more than any other hunt! So, we like to use local butchers, with meat produced on one or two of our farms, if possible, Shropshire cheeses, local beer and wine, (even local Sloe Gin). We are very lucky in that Shropshire has a wealth of small producers and excellent products.”
“We also have some very good cooks and bakers in the Wheatland Hunt, so we like to have that staple of the meet – home-made sausage rolls – as well as quiches and other savouries, including some very famous (among the hunters) quite peppery ‘Heather’s cheese biscuits’. For Peterborough, we went the extra mile with home-made Scotch quails eggs – boiled for 2 mins and 20 seconds precisely so that they are still slightly runny after the Scotch egg has been deep fried! Then of course we have cakes, meringues, biscuits and (also famous) Chris’s chocolate squares.”
Mrs Baugh has been kind enough to share the recipe for their hunt picnic-winning cheese biscuits:
The Wheatland Hunt’s ‘Heather’s Cheese Biscuits’
Ingredients: Equal quantities of butter, flour and cheese (this can be any odd leftovers, basically hard cheese) – 4oz cheese, 4oz plain flour, 4oz butter, ½ tsp chilli flakes, a sprinkle of pepper, a few nuts – any type.
Method: Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees. Whizz all the ingredients except the butter in a food processor. Then add the butter and whizz again until it all comes together. Roll it into a sausage, cut into rounds, put on greased or lined baking tray and sprinkle with salt. Cook for about 15 to 20 minutes.
Tickets are now on sale for the 136th Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show alongside the Festival of Hounds, supported by key sponsor the Countryside Alliance. The East of England Agricultural Society, who organise the Festival of Hounds, along with the Chairman and committee of The Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show Society (PRFSS), are expecting a solid turnout of packs of Modern and Old English Foxhounds from the length and breadth of the United Kingdom as a real spectacle of the very best of hound breeding and traditions.
Tickets for the Festival are available by online pre-order only at www.festivalofhounds.com
To enter, all you need to do is turn up – but please give prior notice of your wish to be judged to the organisers via email, to foh@eastofengland.org.uk if possible, as the hunt lorry carpark is a busy space.
Festival of Hounds 