Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival Fringe - Call for events

26 September - 4 October, 2009

‘The most significant food festival in Britain’ Rose Prince, The Telegraph

I have been asked by the Directors of the Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival to coordinate the Festival Fringe and I'm looking for farms, farm shops, delis, butchers, bakers, pubs, cafes and restaurants to host events across East Suffolk as part of British Food Fortnight.

Please have a look at the information below and contact me if you have a suggestion or would like to host an event:

The Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival takes place this year from September 26 – October 4 for the fourth time. In 2007 we introduced a programme of events taking place on farms and in shops, pubs and restaurants across East Suffolk to highlight the diversity and quality of the area’s food and drink to both visitors and residents.

Would you host an event during this period to welcome the public to your farm, kitchen, shop, pub or cafe to learn more about your business and meet the people behind it? It’s a great way for you to reach a new audience and build loyalty with existing customers.

This year we aim to expand the programme of Fringe Events and increase the attendance at each event. This year we will run the Fringe event after the main Festival at Snape Maltings (Saturday 26 – Sunday 27 September) to coincide with British Food Fortnight. This will enable us to profile the Fringe Events at the Festival and to encourage more people to get involved.
In the past the Fringe Events programme has included:

• Farm walks
• Butchery demonstrations
• Cookery demonstrations
• Talks and debates
• Behind‐the‐scenes tours
• Meet the producers events at farms shops & delis
• Festival menus at pubs, cafes and restaurants.
  

We’re looking for unique events that will give people a unique opportunity to find out more about local food. Why not consider teaming up with other organisations nearby, for example a farm walk followed by lunch in a local pub. We’re particularly keen to have some more events for children this year either after school or on either of the weekends.

If you would like more information please contact Polly Robinson, Festival Fringe Coordinator,
on 01728 621380 or 07966 475195 or email polly@foodsafari.co.uk.

Real Food Festival - Suffolk producers where were you?

I made a rare trip to London at the weekend to visit the Real Food Festival at Earls Court. I love going back to London. It was home for over 10 years and I miss it more than I admit!

Bizarrely almost the first person I saw outside Earls Court was someone I'm more likely to see at Suffolk farmers' markets, Ian Whitehead from the Suffolk Salami Company. We're fans of their sausages and bacon (branded as Lane Farm) but I was pleased to try their chorizo which was delicious and my first purchase of the day.

Suffolk Salami was one of the few Suffolk food producers represented at the Festival, others were Munchy Seeds, Casa del Oli (olive oil) and Stark Naked Foods (pestos made with herbs grown on the family's 150 year old farm) and the big boys, Aspalls. I was disappointed not to see a stronger representation of Suffolk food and drink producers there and, with the exception of Aspalls, there was nothing there that was unique to Suffolk. Where were our micro-brewers, cheese-makers, beef or pork farmers?

Other regions were represented by their Regional Food Groups and clustered together - Wales had a very strong presence. Rumour has it that Tastes of Anglia, our own Food Group, didn't get the funding they needed to be there; but with stands costing as little as £200 each, I think that's a poor result. My friends at Grain Brewery sold so much beer they had to drive back to the Norfolk to get more to sell on the Sunday. Watch this space - next year Food Safari will be there and I'll bring as many of my friendly producers with me as I can to show the rest of the country what great foodie things are coming out of Suffolk.

In the meantime for a true taste of what Suffolk has to offer come to the fourth Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival on September 26-27, 2009. I'm going to be organising the programme of fringe events with producers, farm shops, delis, pubs and restaurants running September 26-October 4th.

Festival report: Aldeburgh Food and Drink 2008

There was a real sense of excitement and anticipation at Snape Maltings when we arrived – gorgeous late September weather certainly helped as around 3,000 visitors were expected to take part in what has been described as Britain’s most influential food festival.

A good number of food celebrities could be seen at the festival adding to the buzz: Matthew Fort of the Guardian, chefs including Mark Hix, Tom Aitken and Fergus Henderson as well as Tom Parker-Bowles and Sheila Dillon of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme.

Tim Rowan-Robinson (no relation but a charming guy who manages to find time to run a string of very successful local business interests as well as the festival), co-director of the festival described the festival as definitely ‘bigger than last year’.

Most of the better known local producers from Adnams and Aspalls through Maple Farm flour and veg, Jules and Sharpies’s hot relishes and Jimmy’s Farm pork were well represented. Tim’s personal highlights included “some outstanding and very reasonably priced beef from Somerton (Aberdeen Angus/Simmental cross hung for 29 days), River House smoked Salmon from Dominic Kilburn and a superb chorizo from Emmett’s of Peasenhall who are already well placed on the UK food map”.

However, the festival doesn’t and perhaps cannot showcase every local producer and there’s certainly more to Suffolk food and drink than could be found within the marquee – a disappointing range of local beers to try and buy although the delicious new East Green from Adnams (Britain’s first zero carbon beer) was on draft in the stylish Adnams outdoor bar. With real ale reported to be the only beer segment growing the UK it would be nice to see a beer marquee or zone at next year’s festival to show that natural beer isn’t all beards, bumbags and Camra worthiness.

Festival reports from producers were good although perhaps the hot weather had put off some visitor from buying as much perishable food as anticipated (tip: if any enterprising cool-bag vendors wants a neat sales opportunity in 2009 check out this festival – you could probably sell a shed load!).

The Food Safari team (in other words the Robinson family) were out in force handing out postcards for Sunday’s walk.

A very sad note at the festival was the tragic death this week of Max Dougal, head chef at Ruth Watson’s Crown and Castle Hotel in Orford. Watson herself understandably pulled out of a planned workshop. The Suffolk food scene lost a key figure this week.

John Gummer talk on the future of food and farming

To the Brudenell Hotel in Aldeburgh on a sensational September day to hear lunchtime talks from John Gummer MP (Suffolk Coastal) and former environment secretary and Professor Jules Pretty of the University of Essex on Suffolk's role in feeding a future world of changing climate. It was a very civilised occasion with about sixty people gathered in the bright restaurant of the Brudenell restaurant and we had a great lunch.


MC for the day was local mover and shaker William Kendall: farmer and serial entrepreneur - Covent Garden Soup and Green & Blacks are just two of the businesses he has transformed. He farms at Maple Farm, Kelsale.

I've uploaded some video of highlights from the talks . One of the most interesting thoughts came from Jules Pretty: as human beings we need stories to help us identify with food and stop it becoming a commodity where price is all that matters. He spoke eloquently about the effects of convergence and how important it is that we develop a divergent food culture. Part of this is helping consumers make a stronger association between the food we eat and where it comes from. The Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival and Food Safari are both part of an effort to bring out the unique stories behind the producers who supply us with the food we eat.

John Gummer spoke on a wide range of global issues, of their intersection with the local Suffolk food scene but on a more personal note about the opportunities for greater levels of micro food production in gardens and allotments, railing against the decision to grub up allotments in densely populated Ipswich to allow more room for housing. Surely the two can go hand in hand? A widely publicised case of east London allotments being lost to Olympic development is charted in Sam and Sam Clark’s most recent Moro East recipe book. Gummer cited the pride he now takes, and his father before him, in producing most of his own vegetables. Gummer also dismissed biodynamic production and organics as rubbish. What do you think?

A tale of three game birds

Tim has just got back from a game bird butchery event that Robert and Paul at the Wild Meat Company in Blaxhall have hosted as part of the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival. Apart from the splendid looking boned, prepared Mallard duck he's just put in the fridge which 'had feathers on it at 5'o clock' he's also brimming with enthusiasm for the evening:

"Having never tackled a game bird in my life I was slightly daunted by the idea of preparing one from scratch but under Paul's expert tuition the group quickly got stuck in. The process of preparing a wood pigeon, partridge or mallard duck (yes, we tackled all three) is pretty labour intensive compared with say a farmed chicken. I can understand now why prepared, butchered game isn't particularly cheap to buy although shot game is often a bargain.

The first stage was to remove the feathers from the birds, all of which had been shot locally. Unlike the straightforward plucking routine home cooks might be famiilar with, a professional operation like the Wild Meat Company needs to speed up the process as much as possible without compromising on quality.

First we removed most of the feathers with the help of a machine that gently pulls them away from the bird. Then after a dip in a bath of hot wax and a short cooling period we removed the rest of the feathers and fluff as easily as removing the shell from a hard-boiled egg - a strangely satisfying experience. The next stage was supposedly the gory bit - eviscerating the birds - but in practice with wild animals that have recently freshly killed there's nothing nasty - I found the experience perfectly pleasant. Paul demonstrated classic butchery techniques to remove the insides with the minimum fuss- slightly different for each type of game bird. The real insight for me was realising that the different birds have very different bone structures and anatomies which affects the way you approach them as a butcher.

Although none of us struggled with any aspect of the course, the trickiest part of the evening was definitely boning the birds, especially the duck which was slightly fiddly. However, it's essentially about confidence once you've been shown the ropes by an expert. Less than two hours from starting the course we were all able to stuff a boned duck (with some pretty sensational orange, thyme and sausage-meat stuffing) that wouldn't disgrace even the swankiest table.



And here's the proof. Not bad huh?"

Launching at the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival

At Food Safari we're supporting the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival 2008 which takes place at Snape Maltings by launching the business and holding our first event!

We feel very excited (and privileged) to be able to use the festival as a launch pad for our new venture. This month the festival was described by Rose Prince, Telegraph food writer as "the most significant food festival in Britain". That's saying quite a lot as dozens on festivals have sprung up in recent years to meet the seemingly insatiable demand from foodies for food information, entertainment and insights into local producers.

The main festival is taking place this weekend 27-28 September at Snape Maltings (an amazing place if you haven't been) which is home each to the world famous Aldeburgh Festival of music and for the last few years has also played host to one of the UK's most succesful food festivals.

The Food Safari team will be at Snape on Saturday and then over at our friends' Rob and Karen White's organic farm - Peakhill - at Kelsale on Sunday to host a farm walk and festival feast to wrap up what promises to be a fantastic weekend. Hope to see you there.

And I'll be on BBC Radio Suffolk on Thursday morning at about 11.20 talking about Food Safari and this weekend's event.