Litfest 15 a great experience

In just its 3^rd year Litfest, or the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine is established not just in Ireland but globally.

A three night, two day, sensory experience it just has to be on your Must Do list.

Rory O’Connell, one of the Directors, summed it up by saying, “You have to have written a book to be a guest speaker” but it is not just about speakers. Hell, these are people who write about food, many of them chefs, brewers, winemakers so there are a lot of masterclasses, pop ups and tastings going on.

Some of the big names sell out in minutes and with names like Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Rene Redzepi and Yottam Ottolenghi that’s hardly surprising.

Based on the farm at Ballymaloe House and in the Cookery School a couple of miles down the road a number of venues are available and all are used hard.

There are formal venues, The Grainstore, Carrigaun Room and the Demo Room and kitchens of the Cookery School, but the Farm buildings are converted into venues, The Drinks Theatre, The Big Shed and, it is a Literary Festival after all, The Book Shop.

Displays and talks extend to the gardens with guided tours and this year a very strong Grow It Yourself presence and, for the first time The Garden Tent, a marquee set in a corner of the formal garden.

There’s activity from 9:30 till gone 6 and then a host of dinners and events to fill your evening with some great entertainment and a host of really good local food producers staging popups.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My big formal events this year were the coffee sessions with Tim Wendelboe, learning about cupping and expanding my knowledge of the beautiful liquid far beyond its prior understanding, A Beer tasting with Garrett Oliver of the Brooklyn Brewing Company and a talk about Spices with Arun Kapil of Green Saffron. Janet chose Wine and Soil as her highlights. It’s that kind of event, and we were disappointed to find that the pop up restaurant by OX Belfast sold out in 5 minutes so we didn’t get to taste Northern Ireland’s finest.

 

Tim Wendelboe talks about influences on Coffee

 

Mark from Golden Bean pours tasters for cupping

 

1 of 6 tasted

 

 

Oliver Garrett of Brooklyn Brewery took us up the alcohol scale to 13.5%

 

There’s a very lively Fringe at the Festival, Demos, Blind Tastings and entertainment in the Big Shed and the Garden Tent hosting more informal events such as Caroline Hennesey hosting “Ravenous” the Cookbook Chronicles where anyone can talk about their Favourite/Least Favourite, Oldest/Newest cookbook.

 

Joe McNamee,  who writes the Menu column for the Irish Examiner, hosted a series of Rants, Raves and Ruaille Buaille. Again anyone could take part and had a chance to win the prestigious Golden Gob Trophy. Children’s Menus, Lack of Food Education in schools, Hipster Food such as Dude Slaw and Small v Big Food Business all got debated and in the end, I have to confess, the title came back to Wales as a result of my rant about Vegetarian Options on menus.

Joe

 

In full flow



 



The Golden Gob Trophy

Food and Drink wise it is very easy to graze all day with a host of pop-ups available in the Big Shed, We had superb Chicken on Sourdough from Annie’s Roasts and Arbutus Bread respectively, my caffeine habit was fuelled by Badger & Dodo and The Golden Bean throughout the weekend, Iyers Café had tasty Vegan food from Kerala, Jane Russell’s sausages filled a few gaps and on the sweeter side of life Yum Gelato lived up to their name and we had a Carrigeen Panacotta made with milk from the rare breed Kerry Cow.

Discovery of the year though was Oh My Goodness Minty Limey Keffir made with triple filtered rainwater. Such taste and so refreshing too. Their quirky stand won the Best Dressed award.

 

But away from both the formal and fringe side of the festival it is a great chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones.

We always have great catch ups and meet new people. One nice touch is that Ballymaloe Relish make badges for anyone who wants one with their name and most importantly their Twitter handle on. Often you bump into someone you follow on twitter, but have never met and the handle leads to lots of “Oh, so you’re” conversations. My own this year was with Peter from Blackwater Gin a new distiller from Waterford. We had been discussing Gin online and were hoping to arrange an impromptu Gin Off between his and our Da Milhe Seaweed Gin from Wales. Sadly the Blackwater had proved so popular that it had sold out entirely so the match might take place at Ginapalooza in London later this year,

Nonetheless a tasting took place and the aforementioned Minty Limey Kefir proved the perfect mixer for the Seaweed infused. Though we didn’t get tickets for the OX pop up, we were introduced to them on the basis that the restaurant has a Gin Bar and they were looking for new and great ones. More friends made, and an increasingly hazy evening.

 

But that is what Litfest is all about, lots of people with Food in common coming together to learn, talk eat drink and celebrate.

Personally I can’t wait for next May to bring around #Litfest16

 

 

Foraged Food and Fun

Last September The Felin Fach Griffin ran an event called Hiraeth, a farm to food day which I missed as I was in Italy. The second will be this September and, once again, I shall miss it as I shall be at Ballymaloe and then the Celtic Cook Off.

But!

The Griffin was the venue for Garden Party Gatecrashers, a day of foraging, fun and food and this time I could make it!

Bringing together two great Foragers, Liz Knight of Forage Fine Foods and Adele Nozedar, with Hedgerow Tea specialists Fine Pluck and the culinary skills of Ross the FF Chef a great time was guaranteed for all, and the weather ensured that it was.

Liz

Adele

Fine Pluck Produce

Ross in Action

The event started with a Forage Hunt. A table covered in empty jars and printed labels confronted us. The challenge was to fill each jar and match each label with foraged items from the area around the pub.

Whilst Janet and others including fellow bloggers @gomezadams and @babettesfest searched out the esoteric and rare, I contented myself with demonstrating that I could identify Cow Parsley and Hogweed (not the Giant type).

The treasure hunt table soon filled, and demonstrated the immense diversity of edible plants that are in any small area.

After a refreshing glass of Rhubarb Shrub, a fermented Rhubarb drink not a small bush, it was time for the serious discussions about foraging so whilst Janet joined the group I decided to sample the delights of the Foraged Bar!

 

All the while Ross had been working away on the barbecue, Lamb and Chicken were rubbed with foraged herbs and flowers and regularly basted with foraged marinades, whilst Yesterdays News ( vegetables cooked in Newspaper Parcels) steamed away on another grill. Even the mops used to baste were foraged plants!

Finally the food was ready and a horde of ravenous foragers descended like Locusts to annihilate the fresh food, now accompanied by salads and fresh potato salad before a summery dessert of fresh Strawberries and Cream. Being allergic to Strawberries I had a lovely Rhubarb brulee and got jealous looks from all.

Whilst, and after eating we had a chance to talk with the foragers and Janet bought a copy of Adele's book The Hedgerow Handbook, a beautifully illustrated tome on foraging and using local wild plants.

 

 

The drive back to Cwmbran was interspersed with regular spotting of ingredients in the hedgerows as we passed and Janet determining that foraged alcohol was the way forward!

 

 

We had been lucky enough to get some recipes at Gardenparty Gatecrashers as well as picking up Afdle's book so Janet had a small arsenal of potential to mine.

 

As our roses were in fine bloom Janet decided that Rose Petal Gin and Vodka would be the first drinks from our homebased distillery and an orgy of petal plucking and separating ensued.

Whilst Janet needed fresh petals for her drinks, I needed then dried for later incorporation into dishes and rubs so mine went into a very low oven overnight.

In the meantime Janet was infusing petals with either Gin or Vodka and leaving them for 24 hours.

 

Removed from the alcohol the petals were discarded (after Janet had taste tested each one individually) and the now flavoured Gin and Vodka bottled. it will be some weeks before it is tasted, though the ones I tried at Garden Party Gatecrashers indicate that will be a pleasant duty!

 

My petals were stored safely and have already made appearences in rubs and garam masalas.

 

 

A cracking day with much learned, good food and good company. I hope that the Felin Fach Griffin repeats the exercise, possibly a winter forage? and I promise I will get to Hiraeth at some stage.



Mother's Ruin, Sloely, Sloely

To celebrate the Millennium Monmouthshire County Council designated an area of the grounds at County Hall “The Millennium Meadow”, grown as a traditional hay Meadow this patch of land had become an invaluable educational resource for local school children. The diversity of plants has increased exponentially and the wild life, mammalian, insect and avian has also increased greatly.
Best of all the boundaries were marked by a hedge of indigenous species, including dog rose, hawthorn and sloes!

So, on an unseasonably warm Saturday morning in October, I hied myself over to forage the hedge for the beautiful blue sloes.

Sloe Gin is one of those heritage recipes beloved of country folk using free ingredients to improve the taste of what can be a fairly rough alcohol and produce a smooth, sweet, deeply coloured winter warmer that makes you feel good just looking at it.

Naturally with all old recipes there are many ways of making Sloe Gin but all have four things in common: Sloes, Sugar, Gin and time. The trick is to use the time to get the colour and taste out of the Sloes and sweeten the gin.

The traditional way of extracting the juice from sloes is to prick each one several times with a needle, but modern technology has come up with a faster method – just freeze them and bash with a heavy implement such as a rolling pin the next day. Given that each sloe weighs about 1 gram and that I had over a kilo of them I, unsurprisingly, opted for the freezer method.

So, sloes frozen and bashed they had to be combined with sugar, and here the recipes vary as to the amount. In the end I did two methods a 2:1 sloes to sugar and a 3:2. The resultant liquors should have different characteristics and a boozy tasting session is assured for the future. Then Gin added and sealed into sterilised Kilner Jars the production part of the process was over.

Now, Sam Galsworthy of Sipsmith –producers of Sloe Gin to the Gentry –and anyone else who wants to buy it – would fundamentally disagree and say that the sugar should never be added until the juices have combined with the gin so that you know the degree of natural sugars in the liquid.
I understand this approach but Sam, in fairness, is looking for a totally consistent product, and rather good it is too, whereas I am looking for a totally artisan one and, to quote Scott –one of the chefs at Ballymaloe House- “Artisan is a synonym for Inconsistent”.

Anyway, sloes sugar and gin combined and bottles sealed I sat back to start the next process. Actually there isn’t a lot to do. For the first week or so you shake the jars on a daily basis to ensure that the sugar dissolves fully, then weekly for the next two months and then … well just sit back and let nature take its course.

A minimum of three months should be allowed to develop both taste and colour though the longer the gin sits on the fruit the better. In any event after 6 months the gin should be passed through a muslin cloth to filter the fruit and then bottled.

It was a record breakingly hot day in October when I picked the sloes, when I try the Gin in February some of that warmth will brighten the depths of Winter.

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