I GOT PRESS PASSES!!!

Did I tell you that I got press passes to a food festival? I’m not going to lie, I was immensely excited!  Taste Festival is aimed at showcasing local/regional food producers as well as a demonstration tent with various chefs throughout the weekend. I could rattle on about everything there was, but I don’t think I’d have many readers by the end of this post.

We couldn’t have been more blessed with the weather as the weekend of 18^th was an absolute scorcher, we only lasted a few hours before wilting under the heat so my hat goes off to everybody who was exhibiting and selling at event. I suppose I should get started telling you about them! I’m a bit of a condiment fiend, particularly because they are often the sort of thing that one struggles to replicate as well, and boy were there some good ones here.

No, its not a condiment, but I felt I had to mention Toffee Vodka somewhere!

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE chilli jam and it is on my list of things to make for myself one day, so I was quite delighted to notice at least 3 chilli jams around the place. They were all of a really high standard but I ended up buying mine from The Versatile Sauce Co, and I’m pretty sure that’s just because the people were so lovely. But now I can’t stop eating it! It goes so well with everything and we enjoyed it that night with barbecued sausages from Spot on Produce.

There was one other condiment that day that I feel deserves its own special mention, Rosemary Jelly from Kush Cuisine. A bit like mint jelly with that sweetness but instead of mint, there’s this wonderful taste of rosemary. I imagine its absolute heaven with roast lamb, I was just sad my wallet didn’t stretch quite that far.

I’ll get back to more of the stuff on sale later but first I HAVE to tell you about the barbecue train! Yes, that’s right, a barbecue that looks like a steam train! The pulled pork they were making looked delicious; unfortunately I decided to have slow roasted lamb for lunch that was HORRIBLE! I thought the point of slow roasting is that it’s all soft and delicious, this was just dry and stringy, very disappointing.

Hiding away in the corner of the field was Herbal Haven, who seem to be following us around as we saw them at the Winchester Hat Fair (not to do with hats) very recently. I was drooling over the selection of herbs then, so I couldn’t resist a second time. His range is incredible, more types of mint, basil, thyme, coriander (to name but a few) than you could hope t o remember and he even does a range of medicinal herbs and plants. I came home with Vietnamese coriander that took me straight back to Hanoi and a beautifully sweet apple mint that I can’t wait to try and make tea from.

There’s so much more to tell you but I imagine I am probably boring you so I’ll finish off by telling you about ale-gar. ‘Ale-gar?’ I hear you ask, yes ale-gar! It’s vinegar made from ale instead of wine, and is made from a medieval recipe and was probably the most intriguing thing on sale. It comes with a pretty hefty price tag however, so I decided to go home with some deliciously sweet and syrupy blueberry vinegar from the lovely ladies at The Blueberry Co.

I hang my head in shame

For I am a terrible person not to have blogged for weeks! I know, how will you ever forgive me?

Let’s see if I can make up for it. As some of you will know I spent a week in Italy with Italian Housemate’s friends and family. We stayed in a little farmhouse in Baratti, a tiny village in Tuscany; beautiful scenery, beautiful weather and oh my, the food! The kitchen in Baratti was Massimo’s territory, and I know a territorial chef if I see one.

So instead of cooking, for my Italian week I watched and learned, asking annoying questions to Massimo who cannot speak English and receiving answers in Italian. It is not only the English that react to somebody not understanding by speaking LOUDER AND S L O W E R.

It turns out the Italians do like to stay true to stereotype; I have never eaten so much pasta in my entire life! I think I practically rolled home, but boy it was worth it.  I’m sure you don’t want to hear about each and every meal I had, but I’ll go through a couple of the highlights…

Dried Aubergines with Mint

The Italians have a rather different relationship with vegetables than we do (and food in general), they are seen more as a course in themselves as opposed to something we have to eat or to go with meat, and with dishes like this I can understand it.

Aubergines are a funny kind of vegetable, I’ve always quite liked them, but they seem to be rather hit and miss. Sometimes they can be ever so soggy and when I have one in the fridge I often am just not sure what to do with it. Well, I have a new favourite aubergine dish. Simply dried in the sun for 24 hours (that’s the Italian sun, not the English sun) and fried over with mint (yes, mint!)  they are seriously superb.

The mint was just growing wild near the house!

I have tried to replicate this dish twice since I have been home, with both fantastic and disastrous results. First time I dried them out in the sun (it was a very hot day) for a day and left out in the kitchen overnight with salt on, they worked perfectly. However, with the recent spat of good weather I decided to repeat the experiment and IT WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA! I ended up with mouldy aubergines after only a day. It seems you need a very dry heat for this dish, I’ll come back with a recipe once I have worked out a suitable alternative to good old sunlight.

Fresh Pasta

You know, I don’t think I have ever tried fresh, home made pasta before…I’ve missed out. I couldn’t even hope to give you any quantities here as Massimo just threw the flour down, I do however know he used semolina as well as flour (not in most recipes) and less semolina than flour.

I’ve just had my first go at pasta this week, I was really pleased with the results but it’s such hard work! I thought my arms were fairly used to kneading, but kneading pasta is on another level. It took the combined efforts of Italian Housemate, New Housemate and me to get this going, Massimo made it look easy.

Once kneaded, it sits covered in the fridge for an hour before rolling out. Massimo would roll it out, then sprinkle flour all over the dough and then wrap and roll the dough around the rolling pin.

I’m not entirely certain as to why, but when I was doing it myself I think it helped show up where the dough was unevenly rolled. Once thin enough, pasta was cut into long thick strips and laid on floured foil until ready for cooking.

The pasta was served with pesto, there was nothing new or different about Massimo’s pesto, it was just the quality of the basil. As he was grinding it down in the pestle and mortar (metal affects the taste of the basil) the whole house smelt of it, it was truly wonderful and a perfect complement to the fresh pasta, and that was just the starter!

I think I should probably stop now for risk of boring anybody, though I really haven’t touched on half the dishes. Mussels cooked in seawater, the mysterious ‘palamito’ fish (which translates to trawl line, not exactly a fish!), tomato risotto (with the tomato juice and no stock or wine) not to mention the Carpaccio or even the basic tomato sauces. What I really took away from the food this week was that you really can’t beat good quality, fresh ingredients…or Italian sun!