The room was immediately filled with the warm and rich smells of a beef consommé with a good splash of aged Sherry added. This we then poured over an old fashioned rabbit casserole with rosemary, celery and roasted carrots and let it simmer on a wood burning stove. The taste is good farmhouse cooking, intense flavours of fresh tomato soup as well as honey roasted sweet potatoes prepared with ginger, cumin and coriander. With water a sweet earthy note is added reminding some of us of compost using pine sawdust and pine needles or of peat stacks out to dry. The taste now welcoming and juicy like a tender pork stew with light herb dumplings.