Cabbage of the fens

Just back from a short break at the Lamb at Ely, a place we have been using off and on for a few years now, once independent and now a member of the Old English Inns family, a family which is itself a member of the Greene King clan, perhaps better known for their fine IPA. Especially fine when taken near Bury St. Edmunds.

We had lunch there yesterday, quite busy for a Monday lunchtime and more relaxed than some of the places nearby, on which I shall report in due course. No slightly manic if attractive waitresses, with something a little more mature instead. In fact, all one would hope for in an old hotel in an old market town, which, cathedral apart, is what Ely is.

One feature of the slightly more relaxed style was their take on seasonal vegetables. I did not think that the stunt that I pulled with a cabbage at reference 1 was going to work here, warfarin levels notwithstanding, so I opted for what was described as seasonal vegetables with my sausages and mash, the gravy for which, very properly provided in a jug, rather than all over the sausages, is just visible bottom right. Chablis top left.

The seasonable vegetables came in the interesting little container illustrated and consisted mainly of frozen peas, quite nice frozen peas, which had not been soaking for hours in a bain marie. And, to be fair, there were some other bits and bobs lurking inside. But a far cry from crinkly cabbage, vast numbers of which are very probably grown in the fens round about this very town, for export to the home counties, where they are eaten by older people such as ourselves.

PS: but error followed the Chablis. In the Cloisters antique and secondhand book emporium opposite the Lamb, I turned up a good condition copy of  'An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Cambridge: Volume I: West Cambridgeshire' for £18. The inventory being a sort of higher grade version of the more commonly seen Pevsner. A rather bigger book than the Pevsner, with rather more text, and, I suspect, rather fewer of the rather catty and know-all remarks that the writers of the Pevsner series allow themselves. Turned down on the grounds that we were in North Cambridgeshire rather than West Cambridgeshire, opting instead for the rather cheaper 'Cook's Travellers' Handbook: Rivieras of France an Italy', a rather handsomely produced pocket guide from 1927. Bought on the grounds that it would be an aid to reading 'Liberty Bar', my current Maigret story.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/a-tribute.html.

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