Food Festivities
This weekend sees the return of the Exeter Festival of South West Food and Drink. While this may not be the most snappy of titles, it is the most fantastic event and one I really enjoy being involved in. Let me give you a little introduction to this year’s show.
Now, before I go any further, I will answer the question which is no doubt on your mind. Why is the Local Nature Reserve Ranger involved with a food festival? Good point. The closest association between wildlife and food normally arises when a fancy restaurant serves up squirrel or other wild fare. But look around you; unless you happen to be reading this paper in the middle of a woodland (in which case I congratulate you on your choice of venue) any green space you spot is likely to be farmland.
Farmland, as much as EU agriculture mandarins may want us to believe otherwise, is a productive environment which looks the way it does because of the local practices of food production. Only a fraction of Devon’s wildlife is fortunate enough to live wholly within a nature reserve, so it follows that most of our wild plants and animals must find their niche within the agricultural landscape, so the connection between wildlife and farming is intimate to say the least. That’s my reasoning and it’s an alibi I am sticking to ruthlessly!
The festival is a celebration of local food, drink and countryside. It takes place at Northernhay Gardens on the 17th, 18th and 19th April and is set to be an impressive showcase of the best the region has to offer. The main stage will host cookery demos from some of the South West’s top chefs, including Michael Caines; the Tanner Brothers and Nathan Outlaw, and the food exhibitor tents are a temporary local produce super-grocery. The festival will be holding two late-night events on Friday and Saturday evening, when the real ale bar will quench the thirst while the entertainment continues on the main stage.
However these heady heights are not my zone, for the duration of the weekend festival I will be squirreled away on the “Food is Fun” stage, which is the education and family area of the festival. If you are keen to pop along and take part in one of the taste workshops or cookery demos on the Aga kitchen then we should be easy to find as this year the education zone is being housed within three giant tee-pees!
To reflect a project I am hoping to launch later this year, the focus of my cookery slot on Saturday morning will be fish. I’ll be cooking three dishes which are family friendly, cheap and use local sustainable fish species and steer clear of the clichéd ‘big three’ of cod, haddock and salmon. A pollack fish finger, a sustainable species fish pie and finally Beer crab soup, yummy!
There will be so much more going on too, with domestic legend Mary Berry cooking on Saturday morning, a Sunday morning visit from the Exeter Chiefs to talk about healthy eating and food energy, and a Sunday Roast master class from Gerald David butchery. And for the grownups there will be a few boozy taster sessions on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons lead by local experts like Suzy Atikins and the otter valley brewers!
As well as a chance to pop along and taste some wonderful produce and ingredients, the festival is also a chance to meet the people behind the food and this, I think, is the strongest reason for visiting. The concept of a food back-story is something I am really fond of. Knowing the story behind a carrot, or a piece of beef, or a bottle of pink sparkling wine makes the process of eating or drinking it so much more than mere sustenance. It’s something we are increasingly moving towards; a reaction against the sanitised uniformity and anonymity of supermarket shopping I think. I promise you, regardless of what you buy, after a short human-to-human conversation about the item, whatever you cook that night will taste all the better for knowing the individual behind the dish.
In light of this, here’s a tried and tested recipe for Beer crab soup; a real favourite of mine. For four people you will need two large crabs. Buy them cooked and whole and follow these steps to prepare them yourself, it’s dead easy and it saves you money.
Firstly you will need about 1 ½ litres of good fish stock. You can get fish bones from the fishmonger when you buy the crabs, another good reason to deal with a person and not a vacuum pack, and you just need to simmer these gently for an hour or so with carrots, onions and celery for a basic stock.
Now, the crab. Pull each of the thin legs off with a twist and, if you have loads of time on your hands, snap each one to extract the thin piece of white meat from within. Reserve the white meat in a bowl and put the leg shells to one side for the soup. Pull out the body section of the crab, remove the large claws and put these to one side. Remove the feather-like deadman’s fingers and discard, chop the body into four bits after you have scraped away any white meat you can glean, and put the shell sections in with the legs. Smash the large claws and save the delicious white meat within, pop the shell bits into a bowl with the other shell sections. Scrape the brown meat from inside the main shell and save separately, discard the main shell. Finally, pummel the shell pieces in a strong bowl.
Dice a carrot, celery and onion and soften in some olive oil. Add four medium sized chopped tomatoes and the pounded shell remains and sauté for a few minutes. Add a stick of fennel from the beach (optional) and pour over your quantity of stock. Boil for fifteen minutes to extract the flavour from the shells. Blitz the soup, shell and all, in a blender and pass back into a saucepan through a fine sieve to remove shell pieces. Add the brown meat to the soup and warm through, but do not boil! Add salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to taste and serve in warm bowls with the white meat scattered over the top, a sprig of chervil and crusty brown bread.
With local crab in season costing about £5, this is a really thrifty but luxurious meal, with low food miles. Yummy, Beer in a bisque.