Abergavenny Box Office News

Just a week until the Abergavenny Food Festival Box office goes live on Wednesday 16 July. The full programme will be released that day on line on line at abergavennyfoodfestival.com and tickets can be bought there or through the Borough Theatre on 01873 850805. If you buy buy tickets on line you will be entered into a prize draw. One lucky winner will walk off with a fabulous Flint & Flame Classic Knife Set worth over a thousand pounds.(This is an on line only draw)

As always there is a stellar line up of chefs demonstrating, holding masterclasses or talking about food and their craft which this year includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who’ll be appearing at the Borough Theatre on the Friday evening,

With Wahaca opening its first restaurant outside London in Cardiff this autumn Tommi Miers will be a big attraction.

Cyrus Todiwala has long been a Festival Favourite, whether for his spicy delights served up in the Castle area or for his entertaining views in the Rude Health Rants, and this year he is teamed up with Incredible Spice Men partner Tony Singh. Whatever the pair get up to will be highly entertaining and full of flavour.

There's a distinct taste of the  Middle East as Sam and Sam Clark of Moro bring their Moorish foods  and Iranian born Sabrina Gayhour introduces the taste of Persiana, 

More chefs will be appearing but these may just whet your appetite. Though demos in the market hall are free some events are ticketed and the Box Office can supply those that you want.

The Children's Food Academy has been a consistent feature, this year sponsored by the Organic Centre Wales, and adults get their chance too.

Amongst the new skills you can acquire at The Artisan Kitchen School (in the Masonic Hall) are making Bacon with James Swift from Trealy Farm, brewing your own Sake with Marie Cheong Thong and entering the world of Seasonal Fruit Liqueurs with Lindy Wildsmith. 

 With a full programme of events around town, over 200 stalls and a brand new Night Market on the Saturday with Street Food in the Lower Brewery Yard, as well as the Party in the Castle there really is something for everyone.

Stroller Tickets  for the main markets start at £6.50 (early-bird prices) and children accompanied by a paying adult get in for free, the Night Market is free to Stroller holders or £2 if you don't have one. Ticketed events start at £8.

The Box Office goes live on 16th July and you can download a full ‘diary at a glance’ to help plan your visit.

Finally a question, What do Abergavenny Food Festival favourites Tommi Miers, James Ramsden and Arun Kapil have in common?  They all trained at Ballymaloe Cookery School and were taught by Rory O'Connell.

Rory is a highly regarded chef and teacher and his first book Master It was Observer Food Magazine Book of the Year 2013.

I'm delighted to say that Rory will be taking part in the festival this year and is a MUST!

Check http://www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com/ for further information and to book tickets from 16 July or call The Borough Theatre 01873 850805

Festival Fever

Many years ago my summers were a procession of festivals. The Isle of Wight, Weeley, Bickershawe, Plumpton and Pilton. For the younger generation of reader I should point out that Plumpton and Pilton are probably better known these days as Reading and Glastonbury.

Check out the line ups in these posters and goggle at the prices!! I'm sure that inflation since then is slightly lower than the 50,000% plus that seems to have occurred. Might be cheaper to get a payday loan.

 

These days I am unlikely to consider three days camping, even in a modern fully fitted glamping yurt, and my diet has improved since the days of the macrobiotic diet (Mung Beans done 500 ways for the uninitiated) and nicotine topped up by regular "vitamin" supplements. Dark Star is less a 30 minute Grateful Dead track and more of a lovingly crafted artisan Boudin Noir.

But the Summer and early Autumn are still Festival time for me, though -despite music being the food of love - it is the food festival that I now attend regularly.

Of course the Glastonbury of the Food world is the Abergavenny Food Festival and I can hardly wait for July  2nd when the line up is announced and the tickets go on sale.

21st and 22nd September are the key dates here and a great time is guaranteed for all.


Before that there is a new festival in South Wales.
Valleys FaCE (Food and culture event) is set for July on the Festival Park Shopping outlet in Ebbw Vale,

 

Valleys FaCE is   not -for-profit community regeneration project, organising a two day food and culture event within the Heads of the Valleys area.  It is hoped that ValleysFaCE will become a sustainable biannual event that will look to “relocate” in a different local town each year.

 

The aim is showcase existing SME’s within the local area, incorporating local artisan food, drink and craft producers.  It will also be an opportunity for local cottage industries with long term plans to create a solid customer base and possible viable future business to “test the water” with their products. Updates are available here http://www.valleysface.com/ 

 

I will be baking for a stall at the festival so come along and meet me and my breads,

 

 

August will certainly involve some festival activity though my exact itinerary has yet to be confirmed.

 

Early September means a trip back to Ireland.

 

First up it's the 30th Anniversary of Ballymaloe Cookery School, and a weekend of activity and celebration is planned. Immediately after I shall be moving from East Cork to West Cork and the town of Skibbereen.

 

 

During West Cork Food Week the town hosts the Celtic Cook Off in the West Cork Hotel. Chefs from the Celtic Regions, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany cook off in a competition using West Cork produce.  More on this event as the line up finalises.

 

Back from Cork to Abergavenny and barely will the dust have settled on the UK's biggest food festival than it will be time for the Newport Food Festival on October 5th.

 

 

Now in its third year, it is bigger and better than ever with more stalls, great chef demos and some hands on food activities for visitors. I shall be hosting a couple of hands-on bread making sessions in the Market Hall and all participants will take home some rising dough to bake at home.

 

Again the line up is still finalising but more on the blog as it comes clear.

 

Not quite the festival season of my youth, but equally enjoyable and still a highlight of the year for me.

 



Crumbs! It's Sourdough, but not as we know it

I have always baked.

My long suffering family and friends have had to suffer an endless procession of bricks of textures varying from gravel to impenetrable Kevlar and rolls that would have gone down well in a medieval siege machine.

 

Over the years, however, something bread like began to emerge and the number of blue tits with bent beaks in the garden reduced. Sometimes people even asked whether there was any home-made bread in the kitchen, and not to decide that a fast food restaurant on the way home was the gourmet option.

Two people though reignited my love affair with bread and baking. Tim Allen taught us some of the mysteries at Ballymaloe Cookery School and baking on a daily basis for three months honed the skills. The other person I met through Ballymaloe, Declan Ryan, a great artisan bread maker from Cork. In addition to sampling his fine wares at Middleton Farmers Market we visited the Arbutus Bakery as part of our school trip and I was able to get a Sourdough Starter from him.

Back home I decided to maintain the routine of baking on a daily basis and soon every spare corner of the house was filled with different flours, bannetons and tins whilst the brewery smell of fresh yeast and sourdough cultures was an organic Febreeze, eliminating all other odours.

Eagerly I devoured Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters, trying recipes and absorbing the writing, soon I was reading Richard Berthinet’s Crust and Dough, trying his recipes and techniques. My delight at getting a day’s course with him as a birthday present was immeasurable and there were two other ex-Ballymaloe students there as well!

Life settled down as I tried Fougasse and Batons in my newly acquired moulds. Bread was a fact of life and daily experimentation the norm.

Then in the spring of 2012 I met Duncan Glendinning from Thoughtful Bread in Bristol and life changed gear again. Duncan and Patrick Ryan had a book out Bread Revolution and reading through some of the recipes I decided that it would be the new bible. That doesn’t mean that others were dropped, Waterford Blaas (Niam Shields’ recipe from Comfort and Spice) remain favourites but the range of recipes had to be tried.

Anyhow this is all by way of a preamble.

A recent trip to Kent led me to Macknade near Faversham an excellent food store with a wide range of flours available.

The one that caught my eye was a bread mix for a Simple Sourdough! That can’t be right I thought, Sourdough relies on air borne yeasts and a long slow rise. But, it had to be bought and tested.

The list of ingredients were worrying, bread is simple – flour water salt and yeast (wild in the case of Sourdough).Why did the mix need 16 including dried yeast and potato flakes along with something called Dried Wheat Sourdough Powder?

When I bake the only tools used are my hands and a plastic scraper, following Richard Berthinet I do not use floured surfaces, just work the dough until it comes clean of the surface in a soft, springy ball.

“Add water and vegetable oil to the dry ingredients and mix together for 5 minutes until it forms a ball of dough, transfer to a floured work surface and rest for five minutes before kneading for 2 and shaping your loaf” were the instructions on the pack.

Hmmm, the sticky mass resolutely refused to form a ball and as much was transferred on to my hands as onto the surface. Using the scraper I cleaned my hands and doubled the size of the blob on the counter top. Perhaps the 5 minutes rest would allow the gluten to develop to a point at which the dough would start to form.

10 minutes of the bread equivalent of mud wrestling and the addition of more strong flour to the surface and I had a “ball” of dough. Now I was going to give this every chance so a bannetons was floured and the dough set to rise. 30 to 40 minutes to double in size promised the packet and indeed 1 hour later it had. A couple of quick slashes to the top and into the oven.

Allowing the packet, and my normal, cooking time of 30 minutes I returned to the kitchen and removed the loaf from the oven.

“Crusty on the outside, chewy in the middle” someone called Peter Sidwell had endorsed the packet. It was. However, despite using only Sunflower Oil the taste was more Focaccia than Sourdough and the annoying little pieces of Kibbled Rye gave it a Granary loaf texture.

Probably if you use an electric breadmaker and usually have only Sliced White Pan as your mainstay bread you would like this but for me, I’ll wait the hours and days and bake proper Sourdough anytime!

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