Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival

Large crowds turned out today for the seventh annual Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival / Gŵyl Bwyd a Diod Y Bont-Faen (29-30 Oct 2011), in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan. With over 80 exhibitors, cooking demonstrations, food and drink talks, entertainment and children’s activities, it has become one of the regions top food festivals.

We arrived early and parked in a farm on the edge of town – part of the free park and ride service. The main marquees were bustling with activity by mid-morning. Although the festival is centred on these marquees, events occur throughout the market town.

In the main Festival Marquee and the Cheese & Wine Marquee there was a great selection of fine food and drink to sample and purchase. We seemed to sample a lot of cheese, and lingered at Teifi Farmhouse Cheese, Cothi Valley Goats (cheese), Caws Cenarth Cheese, Slade Farm Organics, Wernddu Wines & Vineyard, and many more stalls besides. You can see Cardiff’s The Parsnipship in the foreground of the photo taken down the main marquee.

There was some tempting cooking smells emanating from the hot food marquee. Glam Lamb and the Venison Burger stalls, and the hog roast, were attracting sizeable queues. We opted for Taste of Persia, sharing a Lamb Kebab and a Pomegranate Chicken with Walnuts and rice. Based in Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire, they are regulars at Cardiff’s Riverside Food Market.

Taste of Persia’s owner Kamran Khanverdi was among the chefs doing demonstrations today in the True Taste of Wales exhibition trailer, in the Town Hall car park. Others included Kurt Fleming of ffresh Bar & Restaurant. Martin Cowley (Cowley’s Fine Foods) was demonstrating historical meat-drying techniques.

Bev Robins from the Otley Brewery and Deryck Mathews of Preselli Coffee are among the contributors to the drinks talks programme in Cowbridge Town Hall. A Real Ale Festival was well underway by lunchtime today at the Vale of Glamorgan Inn.

Other events around Cowbridge include a Craft Fayre, a Champagne Marquee & Bar, and a circus (from the Belgian twin town of Mouscron). The festival continues tomorrow (Sunday 30 Oct: 10am-4pm). Entry to marquees: £4 adults (under 12s free).

Last year the event was awarded the National Tourism Awards Wales: Best Community Event 2010. If it continues to be this successful, the organizers might have to get bigger marquees to fit in all the visitors (they already have many more applications for trade stands than they can accomodate). 

Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival is already pencilled into our diary again for next year, with a note that we need to spend much more time there to do justice to all the events!

Cowbridge Food & Drink Festival:
http://www.cowbridgefoodanddrink.org/

Penarth Apple Day

Apple Day was first launched as an annual food awareness day in 1990 by the environmental charity Common Ground. Today (16 Oct), Penarth’s local environmental group Gwyrddio Penarth Greening (GPG) organized Penarth’s first Apple Day in Belle Vue Park.

Among the stalls was a display of different apple varieties, with notes on their history, and a comparison tasting of three stewed apples (Bramley Seedling, Tom Putt and Golden Noble). An apple press was being put to constant use, making freshly-pressed apple juice from local apples. You could buy apple chutneys and preserves, cider and apple wine and apple juice, and apples from an orchard “picked on Thursday.”

Hampton’s were selling half-a-dozen different types of apple cake and tarts. I went for a large slice of the Apple Date and Cinnamon Cake, which was generously topped with toasted nuts. This kept me going for the rest of my cycle ride from Dinas Powys.

La Crêperie de Sophie were cooking apple-themed pancakes.

In addition to organizing the Apple Day, GPG have been running the Harvest Penarth scheme. Anthony Slaughter of GPG said that this involves some complex logistics. Groups of volunteers have to be organized to visit gardens around Penarth that have unwanted and surplus fruit. They have harvested over 20 trees from residents who are happy to support the scheme. The idea is that the fruit is distributed to care homes and charitable organizations in the area. Some of the damaged and bruised fruit collected was used to make the chutneys on sale today.

PGP also organize the Penarth Food Festival:

http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/07/penarth-food-festival_17.html

PGP:
http://www.gpgpenarth.org.uk/

National Food Weeks

This week it is apparently National Curry Week, Chocolate Week and British Egg Week.

There has been a proliferation of National Food Weeks in the UK (and globally) over the past ten years or so. These promotional or awareness weeks are initiated by corporate concerns, government bodies and pressure groups. They are usually promoted uncritically by the media. No wonder National Food Weeks are so popular - it’s free advertising!

In addition, there are any number of food promotion days (e.g., Yorkshire Pudding Day falls on 5th Feb 2012) that are too numerous to record here.

There are also health awareness weeks most weeks, highlighting medical conditions that are often food-related (e.g., Food Allergies and Intolerances: 23-28 Jan 2012). The medical conditions rising in incidence the most alarmingly, such as diabetes, are linked to overeating and obesity (National Childhood Obesity Week: 4-12 July 2011).

If you want to start your own awareness week, you better get in quick as there are not many weeks left free (in fact, most weeks are double-booked!). The more they stack up, the more ineffectual they are going to become.

This week I cooked curry, scrambled eggs and ate chocolate (not all at the same time), but I refuse to believe that it had anything to do with National Food Weeks.

Below I list some of the main promotional weeks in the UK with dates and the names of the organizations behind them.

National Farmhouse Breakfast Week (22-28 Jan 2012) is a government promotion of cereal farming by the Cereals Division of AHDB (Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board).

Bramley Apple Week (5-12 Feb 2012) is bought to you by The Bramley Campaign.

National Chip Week (21-27 Feb 2011) is an initiative from the British Potato Council.

Fairtrade Fortnight (28 Feb - 13 March 2011) is Fairtrade organized.

British Pie Week (7-13 March 2011) is bought to you by Jus-Rol Pastry, a division of General Mills Berwick Ltd.

Bacon Connoisseurs Week (21-27 March 2011) is a Red Tractor initiative - a government agricultural promotion.

British Sandwich Week (15-21 May 2011) is organized by The British Sandwich Association and supported by Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Ginsters, Greggs, Prêt a Manger etc.

National Vegetarian Week (23-29 May 2011) is organized by The Vegetarian Society of the UK and supported by Cauldron Foods.

British Food Fortnight and Welsh Food Fortnight (17 Sept - 2 Oct 2011) is sponsored by Aramark.

British Cheese Week (24 Sept - 2 Oct 2011) is organized by The British Cheese Board and sponsored by Ryvita. Events include The Great British Cheese Festival in Cardiff Castle.

National Cask Ale Week (1–9 Oct 2011) is a brewing industry initiative.

Chocolate Week (10-16 Oct 2011) is sponsored by Hotel Chocolat, Thornton’s, Divine Chocolate and others.

British Egg Week (10-16 Oct 2011) is organized in association with British Lion Eggs (the egg marketing board).

National Curry Week (9-15 Oct 2011) is supported by ASDA, Cobra Lager and Pataks.

British Sausage Week (31 Oct -6 Nov 2011) is an initiative of The British Sausage Appreciation Society (supported by several commercial sponsers).


National Taste of Game Fortnight (5-19 Nov 2011) is organized by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC).

National Eating Out Week (20-26 Nov 2011) appears to be a spin off from National Curry Week, supported by Indian restaurants among others.

Of course, being a food writer, I am as guilty of passing on National Food Week marketing as the next blogger. Sometimes it just can’t be resisted.

Here’s a previous post on British Pie Week:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2011/03/british-pie-week.html

For a complete list of US National Food Holidays see:
http://foodimentaryguy.wordpress.com/today-in-national-food-holidays/today-in-food-holidays-food-facts/january-food-holidays-foodimentary/

Red Mullet

Back in the day, we thought a mullet was a haircut. Nowadays, we know it’s a fish; a fish that is becoming more common on UK fish slabs.

We need to change our fish-eating habits. Cod stocks are depleted and switching to whiting, mackerel, coley and other sustainably-fished species is desirable. However, there is another change coming: global climate change.

A recent report by marine biologists concluded that global warming will lead to profound changes in the populations of common fish species in the waters off the UK. Rising sea temperatures will adversely impact cold-water species such as cod, haddock and pollock. The good news is that the study demonstrated responses to warming in 72% of common species, with three times more species increasing in abundance than declining. The study is supported by recent data from actual catches. Red mullet, hake and dab are among the species that are now being caught more frequently in British waters.

It is therefore a good time to look out some recipes for red mullet and other warmer-water species. You will not find them in British seafood cookery books; you have to look to Mediterranean cuisine.

Red mullet or surmullets are actually two species of goatfish (Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus), which are unrelated to grey mullet. They have been eaten in the Mediterranean since Roman times, when they were reared in pools (an early example of fish-farming).

The Silver Spoon, Italy’s best-selling cookbook, has the following recipes for red mullet: with fennel, Livorno-style, with herbs, and with beans. The book advises that red mullet be touched as little as possible, since the tender flesh breaks up easily.

On Monday, I had Red Mullet with Anchovies and Herb Crème Fraiche, cooked by guest chef Shaun Hill, at ffresh in Cardiff Bay (see October 4 blog). It is a pretty pink fish, with delicately flavoured white flesh. On that occasion it was cooked to perfection.

I was going to cook red mullet tonight, but didn’t manage to get hold of any (rather undermining the thrust of today's post!). However, I did cook sea bass; briefly under a hot grill and then roasted with fennel seeds, lemon and a splash of wine, and served with ratatouille and some apple smoked sourdough made by Geraint here in Dinas Powys. The fennel seeds inside the fish cavity imparted a pleasing flavour.

References:
Continental Shelf-Wide Response of a Fish Assemblage to Rapid Warming of the Sea. Stephen D. Simpson, Simon Jennings, Mark P. Johnson, Julia L. Blanchard, Pieter-Jan Schön, David W. Sims, and Martin J. Genner. Current Biology, 15 Sept 2011.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(11)00891-8

The Silver Spoon. English Edition. Phaidon Press. 2005.

A previous post on tilapia:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.com/2010/07/tilapia.html