Local and Great Live - the delayed preview

I really do believe that small strong local food producers and businesses are the way forward. By eating locally sustainably and seasonally we can reduce carbon footprints, lower food miles and support local economies and communities. Oh yes and heat a better, healthier diet!

This blog is a celebration of all of the above and concentrates on great producers and the benefits that accrue to our communities.

I was delighted, therefore, to be invited to run a session on Local and Great foods at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, and even more pleased to learn that I would share the stage with Alun Davies the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and European Programme.

Amongst Alun’s responsibilities are:
Promotion of Welsh Farming and Food businesses
Rural development and European Funding
Agriculture
So who better to share a platform with?

Strenghtening rural communities and economies is vital for the continued development of the verall economy and retaining the money where it is generated. It is estimated that of every £1 spent locally 75p stays in the locality. Spend that £ in a supermarket and only 45p remains, buy online and the net retention is negligable,

Strong producers with strong local markets and producer networks are an essential.

Not only do they generate income but they provide real local jobs not just part-time minimum wage shelf-stacking or check out jobs.

So how do you illustrate this?

For me this was a simple question to answer and I headed off to Trealy Farm to collect some goodies for the demo.

Trealy make great award winning charcuterie, multi Great and True Taste winners they also sit at the centre of some local producer networks. Though a lot of their meats are home raised they also use local farms which meet their standards to ensure a consistent supply of high quality meats.

Some of their meats require smoking and here they are helped by Jo and Jonathon Carthew of Black Mountain Smokery who also smoke Blaenafon Cheddar for Susan Fiandr-Woodhouse. In addition to a range of smoked or flavoured cheddars Sue also produces Abergavenny Goat Cheese.

So armed with a good range of meats, Lamb,Pork, Beef and Venison all featured , and including a special Venison Kabano Style sausage developed for the Olympic Village, I headed for home and the production of some additional goodies.

First up a Smoked Salmon Quiche using Black Mountain Smoked Salmon, local organic eggs and Green Saffron Cubeb Pepper. This would certainly satisfy any pescatarians in the audience and for te vegetarians a Goat Cheese, Tomato and Spring Onion Tart using Sue's Cheese and vegetables from Ty Mawr Organics and Whitebrook Organics, with a light sprinkle of Halen Mon Sea Salt to finish and add a texture.

So lots of savouries but I needed something sweet as well.

Luckily I had recently been gicven the starter for a German Friendship Cake which would fit the bill relly well, and re-branded as a Community Cake would also fit the ethos of developing food communties.

A swift ferment and bake later the finished article was ready to roll!

The Community  Cake Instructions

A sourdough cake. It’s supposed to sit on your worktop for 10 days without a lid on.

You CANNOT put it in the fridge or it will die. If it stops bubbling, it is dead.

Day

1. You get a starter and put it in a large mixing bowl and cover loosely with a tea towel.
2. Stir well
3. Stir well
4. Add 1 cup each of plain flour, sugar and milk. Stir well.
5. Stir well
6. Stir well
7. Stir well
8. Stir well
9.  Add the same as day 4 and stir well. Divide into 4 equal portions, one to bake, one as a new starter and two to give away to friends with a copy of these instructions.
10. Starter is very hungry. Stir well and add the following:

1 cup sugar

• half tsp. (teaspoon) salt
• 2 cups plain flour
• 2/3 (two thirds) cup of cooking oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla essence
• 2 cooking apples cut into chunks
• 1 cup raisins
• 2 heaped tsp. cinnamon
• 2 heaped tsp. baking powder

Mix everything together and put into a large greased baking tin. Sprinkle with a quarter of a cup of brown sugar and a quarter of a cup of melted butter. Bake for 45 minutes at 170-180C.

The batter will be very thick but don’t worry, the melted butter will filter through as the cake rises and you will have a lovely light moist cake!

 When cold cut into finger pieces. Cake freezes well and is also delicious warm with cream or ice-cream.

If you don’t get given a starter no worries they are very easy to make.

In a large bowl mix together

1 cup of plain flour

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of milk

Cover with a tea towel

Starter Made!

<

Visit UK Food Bloggers Association

Hiraeth At Felin Fach Griffin

An intriguing tweet, from Julie at the Felin Fach Griffin, meant a slight adjustment to our planned morning at Brecon Farmers Market. Instead of meeting fellow blogger Gomez Adams (Corpulent Capers Blog) to shop and then head for coffee we headed straight to The Hours café to meet Julie who “might have a little something to tell you”

Arriving first we grabbed fortifying double espressos and waited for the others.

Mark (Gomez) had barely settled into his cappuccino – despite it being after 11 and therefore not acceptable in Italy – when Julie and Max the Felin Fach Dog arrived.

The little something that Julie had mentioned turned out to be a big and very exciting something indeed and we were the first to learn of it!

The Felin Fach Griffin are planning a one evening food and music festival on 7^th September from 6 till late!

Entitled “Hiraeth” which has no direct Welsh-English translation but means longing, homesickness, nostalgia and yearning has a very direct context of place, and it is place that lies at the heart of this one evening festival.

Most exciting was that it would be a "Field to Fork Production with a Musical Finale"

All of the activities, foods and drinks will have a direct connection to the Felin Fach Griffin and the garden in particular.

First the drinks that you would expect to be associated with a pub. Wines will come from Ancre Hill the Monmouthshire vineyard famed for their award winning sparkling whites made by the method champaignoise. Pip’s Cider will be available as it is every day in the pub and beers will come from Brecon Brewing and Waen.

Both Brewers have a good range of beers with Brecon having some seasonal ales including Six Nations – only available during the International Rugby tournament, and Merry Cwrw-istmas a cunning bilingual pun!

So where’s the link to the garden?

Both brewers will be making special festival beers incorporating ingredients from the garden in their flavouring. A Brew Off  between the ales will take place on the night with drinkers voting for their favourite! Just to ensure that you try both the admission price will include a voucher for ½ pint of each and you drop the voucher into a box of your preference.

Food on the night will come from the pub’s award winning chefs and incorporate ingredient from both the garden and Penpont Organics who supply vegetables to the kitchen. Meats will come from the regular suppliers and there could well be a butchery demonstration to boot, whilst there will be a large input from Black Mountain Smokery.

The award winning Talgarth Mill are also involved and may be producing a festival flour especially, but will certainly be providing the basis for rolls, tarts and cakes.

All of the foods on the evening will be cooked over either wood or charcoal and are all included in the admission price.

And if you are feeling full of good food and drink you can work off some of it by dancing! Several bands and artists are lined up including Johnny Crow’s Garden band led by the Griffin’s own Head Gardener!

A full range of demonstrations and talks are planned and for children there will be a wild life nature trail (adults can forage) and vegetable art.

Admission will be by ticket only at £20 for adults and £12.50 for children but with the food and some drinks included that looks an absolute bargain.

To get your ticket ring  01874 620 111.

See you at the Felin Fach Griffin on Friday 7^th September!

Visit UK Food Bloggers Association

Abergavenny Food Festival -The Excitement Mounts

The countdown has begun. At 9:30 this morning the box office for the Abergavenny Food Festival went live! As usual I was waiting with phone and card in hand though not counting down as per Euro2012.

Thanks to a subscription to Fork Magazine I had received the programme some weeks earlier and had time to plan my two day experience.

In addition to the 200 plus stalls there are a range of Tastings, Master classes, Food Talks, Book signings, Chef demos and foraging opportunities, a real cornucopia of choice. This year’s really big hitters have to be Richard Berthinet, Atul Kochar, Yotam Ottolenghi, Claudia Roden and Pierre Koffman so demand for tickets for their events will sell out rapidly.

 If you feel brave enough the scary Monica Galetti is running a master class and I am sure she is a lovely person in life and not at all like her television image!

I will be going to Atul Kochar’s “Curries of the World” master class on the Sunday. Having loved his food at Corrigan’s – tasting menu by Atul and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron – I really want to find out more and, short of a spell in his kitchen at Benares where better?

The other master class that I will attend is Tom Parker Bowles, Matt Tebbutt and Matthew Fort on the Saturday cooking recipes from Tom’s new book –Let’s Eat. Two years ago they put on a totally entertaining 45 minutes, the highlight of which had to be overheating chillis to the extent that a wave of chilli hot smoke rolled down the room reducing the audience to tears as if they had been gassed by Chinese Riot Police. Though a repeat is not hoped for the three have a chemistry that sparkles.

I shall, however, start on Saturday morning with Raw Milk 2. A tutored tasting. Last year Abergavenny Food Festival hosted the world’s first Raw Milk tasting, despite concerns raised by some over letting the public taste the stuff as nature intended. What was clear was that Raw Milk tasted a lot better than pasteurised and infinitely better than a certain “Triple Filtered” brand. The same held true for creams and butters. This year will be a taste off between unpasteurised milks, creams and butters from Jersey, Guernsey, Friesian and Shorthorn herds, with the audience determining the winner.

Just one other ticketed session is on my agenda (at the minute) Scott Davis from Cnwd leading us through the Gourmet Harvest of West Wales and, having enjoyed his Smoked Sewin from Riverside Market, this is  a must for me.

Beyond that there are new tastes to try, old friends to meet, Chef Demos to see and purchasing plans to be drawn up. You can’t do everything in a day so two days is the only realistic option and they will be two full days!

Most of Wales True Taste ward winners will be there including local producers such as Trealy Farm, Ty Mawr Organics,and Black Mountain Smokery. Otley Brewing will run the Blorenge Bar and a burgeoning Fringe Festival is developing year by year.

So get there! You can order weekend wristbands on line or by phone on 01873 858805 and get tickets for the talks master classes and tastings the same way. Whatever else happens on September 15^th and 16^th Abergavenny Food Festival is the only place to be.

Visit UK Food Bloggers Association

Ciabatta! Baking and teaching

I love Bread, and bake daily. Whereas baking cakes and biscuits are mere chemistry, get the formula right and the end result is good – and predictable, bread is different. It is a living thing; there are so many variables even though it is just flour, water, salt and yeast. The type and age of the yeast, the flour you use, the temperature and humidity on the day you bake all have an influence on the outcome.

Whether it is a simple flatbread or something altogether more complex like Brioche, baking is an amazing process and good bread cannot be beaten.

Italian breads are amongst my favourites, the lovely Olive Oil flavoured fluffy pillows of a Focaccia, sometimes with Sundried Tomatoes, or Olives often just as it comes with a little fresh Sea Salt scattered over the surface before baking or some sprigs of Rosemary poking through the crust. Ciabatta is my other must have Italian bread, a crisp crust containing a crumb closely related to a sourdough but softer.

Raspberrybush Supper Club, run by Julie of Raspberry Catering was soon to hold an Italian themed supper and I was asked to show them how to make Ciabatta in advance of the event. I was more than pleased to agree as, the only thing better than good bread is sharing the knowledge of how to make it.

Ciabatta is one of those recipes that is best demonstrated rather than learned from a book as the dough is not for the faint hearted and, if faced by it for the first time the tendency is to add loads of flour and destroy the end result, as it is sticky and very, very elastic –think Mozzarella on a Pizza and you get the picture.

It is a two day job starting with making a Biga. This is a starter, not too dissimilar to a Sourdough starter but made with fresh yeast as opposed to the local airborne yeasts that surround us. Flour, Water and Yeast is mixed together and left in a covered bowl for 12-24 hours to develop.

Once the Biga has doubled in size, and got lots of air holes in, it’s time to move to the next stage.

The Biga goes into a Kenwood or other mixer bowl along with Water, Milk, Olive Oil and more Yeast. This is blended together with the usual mixing beater and, when fully integrated more flour is added. Carry on beating until the dough starts to form then change to the dough hook and knead at full speed.

When the dough starts to come away from the edges of the bowl, about 10 minutes usually, turn off, remove the dough hook – the elasticity of the dough first shows through here – cover the bowl and leave to rise for about an hour.

This is the scary point, and the one at which panic could lead to the addition of far too much flour!

Turn the dough onto a VERY well-floured surface. When I say turn I don’t mean turn as much as pour!

The well-floured surface is essential to stop the viscous, sticky dough adhering to the worktop, then using a plastic cutter or palette knife divide the dough into 4-6 pieces dependent on the number of loaves you mean to make.

Roll them over once in the flour then shape into rectangles. DO NOT knock back.

Take the dough over to a well-floured baking sheet, the elasticity will allow you to stretch them to full size and dimple each piece as you would for Focaccia. Cover with a cloth and allow to rise for 45 minutes or so. They don’t rise much but will still bounce back if prodded with a finger-tip.

Dust with flour and place into a 220c oven for 20 minutes or so before cooling on a rack.

So how did it go?

I was to bake with Julie and three of her staff, two of whom were studying for NVQ qualifications. I arrived and after introductions told them about the bread and the method, showing them the Biga that I had made the day before. Having examined it the girls set about making their own which would develop for 24 hours and be used the next day.

Combining the Biga with fresh ingredients in the mixer we had time to talk about bread, the kinds of yeast available, and why Real Bread would always defeat the Chorleywood processed stuff.

As it rose we covered other aspects of baking and took a coffee break before checking that the dough had risen.

At this point we needed the work-surface floured, and there was mass amazement at the amount of flour we used to ensure that the Ciabatta dough would not stick to the surface.

Despite considerable doubt that the soft and sticky dough would turn into the crusty bread that I promised we managed to select a volunteer to pour it out.  Quickly dividing the dough and rolling it over once in the flour we got ready to move on. Most of the girls wanted to flavour their breads and the rising time had allowed for fresh herbs to be picked from the garden or sundried tomatoes to be chopped.

Three quarters of the ingredients were placed on the dough before it was folded over to ensure that they were in the middle and the dough, join side down, went onto the baking tray. With the top thoroughly dimpled the remaining flavourings were added and the proto-Ciabatta set aside to rise.

45 minutes meant that a small but acceptable rise had taken place and the breads went into the oven for 20 minutes.

The results were outstanding and within minutes bowls of Olive oil were produced and a tasting session ensued.

Great fun and the Real Bread message had been spread a little wider, more importantly another four people discovered that it is easier than you think to make bread by hand, and fresh each day.

I rang back the next day to see how the session had gone and was delighted to learn that not only had the girls enjoyed their first solo session but that the warm breads had been served at a function they were catering and the client loved them for their authenticity!

Fancy making some Ciabatta? Here are the ingredients and the method is in the blog.

For the Biga

7g Fresh Yeast

400mls warm Water

500g PLAIN Flour

For the Ciabatta

7g Fresh Yeast

125mls warm Milk

300mls warm Water

1tbsp Olive Oil

475-600ml Biga

500g PLAIN Flour

15g Salt

Enjoy!

Visit UK Food Bloggers Association

The Kings Arms and Otley - A great Local

Regular readers will know that I like micro-breweries, those which are using malt, hops, yeast, water and time to produce beer -  rather than a huge industrial process that bears as close a relationship to beer as Sliced White does to real bread.

Recent posts have covered Tiny Rebel, Tudor, Waen, Dingle Brewing, and the CAMRA award winning Star Inn Llansoy where Kingstone and many other regular and guest beers are on tap. What I haven’t covered in any depth is Otley Brewers, though I have enjoyed their beers and ales at Abergavenny Food Festival.

The Cilfynydd based company was started in 2006 by the three Otley brothers; Nick, Charlie and Matthew all beer aficionados who decided to branch out on their own.

Developing a range of craft beers they also took on a couple of pubs in the Pontypridd area with The Bunch of Grapes rapidly winning a reputation for its food under Chef Sebastien Vanoni. The commitment to using local ingredients sensitively and seasonally is the real power behind this rise.

Now in a unique partnership Otley have taken on the Kings Arms in Pentyrch, a Brains pub and are serving a range of their own, and Brains Beers. On the face of it a small brewery entering partnership with Wales leading brewer looks an unlikely partnership though Brains have recently started to develop their own craft beers as well as the more famous SA and Dark.

The newly refurbished Kings Arms opened with a flourish and a tasting of both beers and the menu. The weekend was dedicated to a beer festival with a Barbecue and live entertainment. Following on from the Welsh Beer and Cider Festival it offered a chance for those who missed out when Otley became one of the first to sell out!

Nick Otley led the tasting and introduced the Thai-Bo, a beer infused with Lemongrass. Lime and Galangal that actually tasted like a Thai Green Curry in a glass. The beer was developed with the beer writer Melissa Cole, and since then Otley has teamed up with several beer writers including the outstanding Pete Brown to enhance their range,

A nice drop, launched last summer as a seasonal beer, but clearly destined to be a session beer, it would also go very well with the aforementioned Thai food. In the same way as Tiny Rebel’s Coriander infused wheat beer could be a serious contender with Cobra in the Indian restaurant market Thai-Bo could take on the Changs and Tsing Tsaos of the Oriental restaurant firmament. Actually the flavours of the beer would be good not just for oriental food, but to accompany most chicken or fish dishes too

A classic Brains SA Gold followed with the “true taste of Cardiff” coming through strongly before a return to the Otley stable.

Croes-O is a golden ale using American hops and with a citrus nose and slight aftertaste it is reminiscent, but totally different to the Thai-Bo. At 4.2% this is another beer that would be good for a session.

Next up Brains “All At Sea” their craft beer and the first from the new Craft Brewery. An IPA made with a mix of Admiral and Bramling Cross hops a light brown beer that is remarkably thirst quenching, this beer really hit the mark. A second IPA “Barry Island” is on the way using American hops which will give a different finish and give a smooth taste but with a bitter finish.

Finally on the beer front I had to try Motley Brew, an Otley with a powerful 7.5% ABV. Nick Otley had explained that it had yet to settle properly and was slightly cloudy, but well worth a try. Ok there was a little opacity to the pint, but an amazing nose and a well-rounded but powerful taste in a deep red beer made it one to return and try once it had settled properly!

But what of the food?

Though, for the launch weekend, it was a Barbecue based menu man of the regular dishes were on. Several colleagues spoke highly of the Black Pudding stuffed Lamb. I opted for the Grilled Mackerel that had been line caught on Chesil Beach. This little gem was about as sustainable a fish dish as you could wish, and came with a new potato salad, marinated Olives, tapenade, an onion jam with a deeply anise undertone and grilled sweet corn. Thick pork chops looked to be an excellent choice and colleagues commented on the taste.

Chef Vanoni sources much of his meat from WJ George, a craft butcher in Talgarth, and the careful sourcing and skills of both butcher and chef shone through. I wish that I could have been there for an evening service when I shall definitely have to try the Mussels with home-made bread, the Pollack in Otley Beer batter and Madgetts Farm Chicken with a Chorizo and Otley Ale jus.

What really pleased me was that the breads were made fresh each day on the premises. Bread may be a very simple component of the menu, but it is usually the first thing that you try and a good bread can set the tone of the experience to come. These are really good breads!

Relishes and chutneys are also made on site and are available to buy to take home. Fresh Bread, good cheese or charcuterie and a pint of Otley Ale – what could be better?

I was impressed by the Kings Arms and will definitely be back. If I lived nearer it might just become my Local, in any event it is Great.

Most photos are my own but some have been shamelessly copied from the Brains and Otley Websites, and some from fellow blogger Gourmet Gorro who wrote his own review here http://gourmetgorro.blogspot.co.uk/

Visit UK Food Bloggers Association