Foodies Festival returns to Hove Lawns on May 25,26,27 to bring you the most exciting mix of food, drink and culinary talent.

Join us in the Chefs Theatre for cooking demonstrations from Michelin starred and TV chefs including Michelin star Stephen Crane from Ockenden Manor, Gordon Ramsay’s Charita Jones, Michael Bremner and Matt Gillan.

TV’s Alex Mckay will teach budding young chefs in the brand new Childrens Cookery Theatre while you relax in a deck chair with an ice cream on the Jamie magazine City Beach, and try food from around the world in the new Street Food Avenue.

Foodies is delighted to welcome Loyd Grossman to the Brighton Foodies Festival. Loyd will be in the Chefs Theatre to give insider tips on how to refine your palatte and in the Loyd Grossman marquee where you can enjoy delicious recipes using a variety of sauces.

Tickets for Foodies Festivals are available now by phoning 0844 995 1111 or by visiting www.foodiesfestival.com

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LAWNFEST, a boutique, family-friendly festival will be held on beautiful grounds in Sevenoaks, Kent on the 30th June 2012.

Prepare to have your taste buds indulged this year, with chef Nicole Walshaw heading up the Lawnfest Food Shed.

Reflecting her core values, Nicole has identified local Kent based produce, which has been responsibly farmed.

“All the food I have located for the event is in season and grown with care so it will not need much tampering with. I’m really there just to enhance the natural flavours – this is what the love of food is all about”.

Guests will enter the Lawnfest Food Shed enclosed in a fully covered vintage style Marquee with tables lovingly dressed with flowers and potted herbs. As the sun goes down, over the grounds, the festival will transform into a warm, lantern lit atmosphere, where delicious food, cold drinks, music and art will enchant and captivate the audience.

Fitting in with the ethos, very special guests, Street Kitchen, will be cooking up hand-made gourmet burgers with their famous sweet potato fries.

These comforting delights will be accompanied by organic iced “freshies” made with fruit tea kindly provided by Clipper Teas. The London Distillery Company will donate premium organic, London Dry Gin to The Lawnfest Food Shed, made with Kent’s finest botanicals.

After being inspired by the local culinary dishes, guests can then visit the Lawnfest farmers market to pick up the ingredients – before refreshing themselves with offerings of Chapel Down wines and Shepherd Neame real ales and lager.

The Food Shed will serve chilli con carne and veggie chilli, made in a traditional style with real ale and cocoa, served with corn chips, crème fresh and coriander, or tempt with a summer squash, spinach and sesame tart beside a wild rocket salad or step-up to a grilled apricot, watercress and cured gammon ciabatta. That’s just a taster.

Finally, for those that fancy a sit down traditional English tea, Violet’s Vintage Teas will be serving freshly made cakes, finger sandwiches and scones with a huge dollop of real clotted cream.

“Lawnfest is all about the feel-good,” says Camilla Al Fayed. “It brings together the ingredients in life that make us feel great. Music and art play a big part of this, and are particularly important in helping the pupils of West Heath start moving forward with their lives. But food enjoyment is equally fundamental. Nicole is brilliant at creating food experiences, and together with her farmers’ market, Lawnfest is going to be an interactive celebration of food.

BOOK YOUR EXTENDED EARLYBIRD TICKETS NOW! www.lawnfest.co.uk
£20 Adults
Free Children aged 8 and younger
£10 Children 9 years and above
£40 Family (two adults, two children)

Please note, Lawnfest Food Shed uses 100% recyclable or biodegradable packaging across the festival.

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Dozens of restaurants from across Devon have signed up to a new initiative and will be holding special events to celebrate the county’s best food and drink throughout the month of June.

More than 30 businesses are taking part in Devon Restaurant Month and have organised a series of exclusive promotions and offers, as well as unique menus as part of the campaign. Each eatery has its own dedicated listing which can be found at www.devonrestaurantmonth.co.uk.

Food and drink fans will be able to enjoy a wide range of discounts off meals, cookery demonstrations, wine tasting sessions, steak nights, fish and seafood evenings, four course lunches, Italian and French themed events, suppers, dinners and fine dining experiences.

Some high-profile restaurants and chefs taking part include Bovey Castle, the Tanner Brothers, The Horn of Plenty, Southernhay House Exeter, Mill End Hotel and Restaurant, Gorton’s, The Cary Arms and Torquay’s Michelin-starred The Elephant.

‘Devon Restaurant Month’ has also received the support of the county’s tourism organisations Visit Devon, Visit South Devon and Discover Dartmouth, as well as Taste of the West and Food and Drink Devon.

Jeff Cooper, Devon Restaurant Month’s Founder and Organiser, says,

“The amount of interest that Devon Restaurant Month has received has been just fantastic – each restaurant taking part has pulled out all the stops to come up with some exciting and innovative ideas. It is great that everyone is so passionate about celebrating the best food and drink that Devon has to offer. Each event is unique and now we really want to encourage people to take the opportunity to see where their nearest event is, book their place and go along and get involved.”

A competition has also been organised where entrants are being offered the chance to write their own ‘Devon Restaurant Month’ menu which will be prepared by one of Devon’s top chefs and served in their restaurant throughout June.

The author of the winning entry, and three friends, will be guests of honour at the Elizabethan Inn, in Luton near Newton Abbot, on Friday 1 June to sample their own menu with specially selected wine to complement the food.

Entrants should visit the website and submit their contact details, starter, main course and dessert, along with a sentence or two explaining why judges should pick the menu.

It is hoped that ‘Devon Restaurant Month’ will help lead to an increase in custom for the businesses involved and raise awareness of the quality and breadth of the county’s award-winning food and drink offer.

For more information about ‘Devon Restaurant Month’ visit www.devonrestaurantmonth.co.uk or the dedicated Facebook Page.

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A rather tastefully designed biscuit tin; stylish enough to lift it from the ‘naff’ and ‘tacky’ even with the addition of a wind up musical box that plays ‘God Save The Queen’.

Inside this glorious tin is a generous helping of an entirely new Fortnum’s biscuit, invented especially to celebrate our monarch’s Diamond Jubilee. Made with Cornish clotted cream, each digestive is half-dipped in dark chocolate and embossed with the Fortnum’s logo. The elegant tin is decorated with a parade of royal beasts, all dancing in jubilation – and if you wind the key in its base, it will play ‘God Save the Queen’. A deliciously royal experience.

The Jubilee Muscial Biscuit Tin is available from Fortnum & Mason for £12.95

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Celebrate the Diamond Jubilee with a handpicked hamper full of right royal treats from famous Yorkshire deli Hunters of Helmsley.

This medley of majestic goodies showcases the very best of British, including handmade chocolates from innovative brand Montezuma, biscuits from Yorkshire bakers Cookielicious and even a delicious jam based on the Cherries Jubilee recipe devised for Queen Victoria’s own Jubilee. With funky Union Jack packaging aplenty it makes you proud to be British!

An ideal gift or perfect to share with friends and family over the Jubilee bank holiday, the hamper contains:

• Butlers Grove Cherries Jubilee Jam
• Cookielicious Union Jack biscuits
• Cookielicious Bearskin soldier biscuit
• House of Dorchester 85g Chocolate bar
• Montezuma Lemon Meringue Pudding Bar
• Grandma Wild’s London biscuit tin
• Brewhaha British Teabags
• Montezuma Great British Pudding Truffles

Attractively gift boxed in blue with a Union Jack sash, UK mainland delivery is included for the price of £42.50.

For more information or to purchase a hamper visit www.huntersofhelmsley.com. Hampers can also be ordered in the store on Helmsley’s historic Market Place.

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The European Commission has banned the UK’s meat producers form using Desinewed meat (DSM); the flesh left on bones after butchering that is grated off mechanically to create a cheap mince-like substance. This is then used to ‘bulk up’ food products to portray a higher meat content and quality to consumers.

Kevin McWhinney, MD of McWhinney’s Sausages commented:

“To our huge disappointment and disgust even the majority of our own industry ‘experts’ are outraged that DSM can no longer be considered as meat. We are overjoyed that this is now no longer the case, as we have always argued that DSM is not meat. Despite its ban some manufacturers have used new technology to produce this product, but have called it by a new name to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the industry and the consumer.”

The Food Standards Agency is enforcing this new ban because the European Commission sees DSM and MSM (Mechanically Separated Meat) as the same.

“Unsurprisingly, the ‘big boys’ of the industry – the British Meat Processers Association (BMPA) are horrified that using DSM is to cease. These are the manufacturers that see profit as king, with product quality a distant second. I’m not portraying any manufacturer as having done anything illegal- as they haven’t. I’m simply delighted that after all this time the industry is soon to be on a level playing field. This product can no longer and under the (2004) regulations, should not have been, referred to as meat.”

McWhinney’s has a clear ethos on using any variety of mechanically reclaimed meat- never has, never will. The company hasn’t an issue with other manufacturers producing cheap products with the aid of DSM, but it has always battled the fact that with the laws allowing DSM to be classified as ‘meat’, its customers have struggled to understand the reasons for our higher prices.

Now with this new law announcing DSM as non-meat, many others are now adapting their product in order to remain legal.

McWhinney states: “Since we have never used DSM, we have always been more expensive and buyers have always been able to source other sausages cheaper. Given DSM’s right to be called meat, the fact that others in the industry were getting away with it was just a hard pill for us to swallow. Now, a new era is beginning when the entire industry will be legally obliged to declare the meat content of a product separately from its DSM content. Our reaction…it’s about time.”

McWhinney’s Sausages advise that this is taken a step further whereby product details are available not only on retail food packaging, but throughout food consumption. The experts suggest that diners in restaurants, bars, and cafes must be in a position to know what they are eating.

McWhinney added: “

It is vital to let every food consumer decide what they want and what they don’t. In terms of the use of pork and poultry DSM- by all means allow those who use it to use it, but clearly and concisely declare it and let the public know that it is in their food! Let the customer make their own informed decisions.”

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Exquisite handmade chocolate maker Holdsworth Chocolates has launched a Union Jack chocolate box to mark the summer of celebrations in the UK.

The 240g box features delicious quintessentially British-themed chocolates, such as clotted cream truffle, praline cup, and apple and geranium cream. Designed to be re-used as a keepsake gift box, the Union Jack selection box has been created to celebrate both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics.

Holdsworth Chocolates, which is based in the heart of the Peak District at Bakewell in Derbyshire, has a team of skilled chocolatiers led by creative director Genevieve Holdsworth. Each chocolate is handmade – not just hand-finished – and a number have been awarded gold star rating in the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards…the Oscars of the speciality food industry.

“Holdsworth Chocolates’ Union Jack Box is a traditional British product, filled with chocolates that have been made in the heart of the UK using the finest ingredients,” said Genevieve Holdsworth.

“It makes a wonderful gift or an indulgent treat, and of course the box can be re-used as a gift box as a reminder of the historic events of the summer of 2012.”

Available nationally in selected stores and directly from Holdsworth Chocolates via www.holdsworthchocolates.co.uk, the recommended retail price for the Union Jack Box is £14.95.

The company was created by Barbara Holdsworth in 1988. Spurred on by a passionate belief in making chocolates by hand, she developed her own recipes. Barbara handed over to daughter Genevieve in 2002.

Stockists of Holdsworth Chocolates include Harrods, Selfridges, Waitrose, Chatsworth House shop and Chatsworth Farm Shop and Ibbotsons of Ashford.

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Blue Elephant, London’s most iconic Thai restaurant – and soon to be cooking school – has now relocated to its stunning home on Imperial Wharf.

On Friday 11th May, the new Blue Elephant will welcome a very special group of visitors, when monks from the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, the first Thai Buddhist temple to be built in the UK, arrive to perform a beautiful traditional blessing ceremony.

The colourful and vivid occasion will provide a rare opportunity to witness a traditional Buddhist rite that encourages good fortune and prosperity for the new building and its inhabitants.

The monks will perform a blessing for the restaurant and the Suphannahong, the magnificent replica of the famous Royal Barge of Thailand which now takes pride of place in the restaurant’s Blue Bar. With its figurehead fashioned in the shape of a swan and intricately carved and gilded hull, it has been painstakingly carved out of a single trunk of teak by Thai master craftsmen.

The ceremony will start at 10am.

The new Blue Elephant has quickly found favour with customers and food critics alike. Of particular note has been the superb menu created by the renowned Thai chef Noroor Somany Steppe, the award-winning founder of the Blue Elephant group who has been regarded as the Culinary Ambassador of Thai Cuisine since 1980.

The stand alone cookery school on the first floor is due to open later this year. Run along the same lines as Blue Elephant’s very successful schools in Bangkok and Phuket, this facility will offer students a fascinating introduction to the wonders of Thai cuisine.

Blue Elephant, The Boulevard, Imperial Wharf,
Townmead Road, London, SW6 2UB
www.blueelephant.com/london

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Weeton’s of Harrogate is launching an historical hunt for the original carving implements used at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Ox Roasting on the Stray – an event that the award-winning farm shop is painstakingly re-creating for the Diamond Jubilee weekend in June.

Weeton’s – and the Jubilee Committee – are calling for help to find 10 of the original 13 missing carving sets for a Jubilee roasting re-enactment, which first took place on the Stray in 1887.

The spectacular ox roasting and carving, which celebrated Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year, was originally performed with the 13 carving cutlery sets, and although two of the sets now reside in the Royal Pump Room Museum in Harrogate – and a set is owned by local historian and Freeman of the Borough, Malcolm Neesam – the location of 10 of the sets still remains a mystery.

“We want our Jubilee ox roasting to have all the pomp and ceremony of the original occasion and finding the specially commissioned knives and forks that were used at the Victorian event will ensure we can rise – and roast – to the occasion!” says Weeton’s operations director Jo Loftus.

While the blades of the carving knives are made from steel, the handles are fashioned from carved bone, with Neesam’s set inscribed with the words: “Specially made to carve the Jubilee ox, roasted on Harrogate Stray, June 21st 1887”.

In honour of this summer’s Diamond Jubilee event, Weeton’s will be donating an ox from its own herd of Red Polls, which has its own ‘royal connections’, as one of the herd is the offspring of Appleton Fourpence, who came from the Sandringham estate – the country retreat of HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.

The Queen has already given permission for a fire pit to be dug in the Stray – land that remains in the ownership of the Duchy of Lancaster – and plans are afoot for Jeremy Ravenshaw Fowler, top BBQ chef and grill master to mastermind all the cooking.

And while inventor, philanthropist and former Harrogate Mayor, Samson Fox, who donated the original ox and commissioned the 13 carving sets at his factory, The Leeds Forge, was master of ceremonies at the first roasting, in June, his mantle will be taken on by a Cabinet Member of Harrogate Borough Council.

The main spectacular will take place on Sunday 3 June, when the Mayor of Harrogate Borough lights the pit and a symbolic papier-mâché ox is set on fire. Revellers will then be able to tuck into delicious beef rolls from the real roasting, which Weeton’s will be selling directly on the Stray. All proceeds from the event will be going to St Michaels Hospice.

Tickets to the event, and for the food, will be on sale at Weeton’s and Harrogate Tourist Information Centre from early May. For more information call 01423 507 100.

So can you carve your place in history by discovering Harrogate’s hidden treasures?

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Boris Johnsonand Ken Livingstone have been created out of Mini Babybel cheese by miniature artist Aidan Campbell who has a rather unusual love for the cheese! Aidan decided to create the two politicians in time for the Mayoral elections tomorrow.

Stats:

Each cheese took approximately six hours to create

The artist, Aidan Campbell, worked his way through over 50 cheeses to achieve the perfect likeness of Boris and Ken

Aidan spent 77 hours on the Boris and Ken (and rejected) cheeses until he felt he reached the final product

Carving the cheese was more challenging than first thought – typing in boxing gloves comes to mind!

The tools of the trade to create the Mini Babybel artworks are nothing more than a surgeon’s scalpel and an old needle in a bent bit of wood for a handle, heated in a candle flame if needed to melt, blend and re-adhere more small bits of wax to correct mistakes

Holding the Mini Babybel cheeses for more than about ten minutes generated enough heat to soften the wax, so it was repeated stints in and out of the fridge working on three cheeses at a time, one in hand and two in the fridge

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