It’s important you don’t get intimidated in competitions, but entrants into the 10th South West Chef of the Year competition would be allowed a whimper when they see the judging panel includes Michael Caines, Nathan Outlaw, James Tanner, Simon Hulstone, Mark Hix, Nathan Outlaw and more.
Entries are now open for the competition aimed at experienced pros, up and coming young chefs and amateur cooks.
A new class is being launched this year, the Junior Class, aimed at children aged 11 to 16.
St Austell – Proper Job, Moor’s Revival, Cotswold Spring’s Old Sodbury Mild and Butcombe Bitter were among the winners at the 2013 Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in London.
They didn’t win the top prize of Best Beer in Britain, which went to Yorkshire brewery Elland’s 1872 Porter, but there were wins in the bottled and cask beer categories.
Celebrity chefs Michael Caines, Mitch Tonks and Anton Piotrowski, the winner of Masterchef The Professionals 2012, will join established Plymouth culinary stars James and Chris Tanner for the tenth anniversary Flavour Fest, which starts on Friday.
Autumn is set to be late this year, but when it arrives it should bring a bumper crop of fruits and berries in the countryside, according to the Woodland Trust.
The autumn fruiting is expected to be delayed as a result of the late spring, but the recent warm weather means wild berry crops will flourish, according to early data collected by the public the Trust’s nature’s calendar project.
The promise of a bumper autumn is good news for wildlife, which suffered in the face of exceptionally poor crops of wild fruit last year when trees and shrubs were affected by the washout summer, and then were hit by this spring’s cold snap.
Prosenjit Sanjay Kumar, head chef at the Headland Hotel in Newquay Cornwall, is passionate about bringing the flavours of Saudi Arabian Kitchens to Cornish produce.
Having gathered cooking experiences from around the world, Sanjay champions healthy eating. Through cooking demonstrations Sanjay aspires to introduce a new generation of chefs to the joys of cooking.
Community Pubs Minister Brandon Lewis will announce at the Great British Beer festival on Tuesday that 100 pubs in England have now been listed by councils as Assets of Community Value (ACV), which affords them greater protection from being sold off for redevelopment.
Mr Lewis will make the announcement while opening CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival, “Britain’s Biggest Pub” with over 800 real ales, ciders and perries on offer to 55,000 people this week.
Under new Community Right to Bid powers introduced through the Localism Act listing a pub as an ACV with the Council means a pub can’t be sold on without the local community being told.
It gives the council greater ability to refuse planning applications from developers and the community up to six months to put in a bid to buy the pub should it be put up for sale.
Mr Lewis said: “CAMRA’s campaign to list your local is doing a fabulous job raising awareness of our new Community Right to Bid and I am delighted that in 100 loved locals have now been listed as assets of community value. Cheers to each and every one!
“We have known for hundreds of years just how valuable our locals are. Not just as a place to grab a pint but also to the economies and communities of those they serve and that is why we are doing everything we can to support and safeguard community pubs from closure.”
CAMRA’s chief executive Mike Benner added that he was pleased that the Government has recognised the vital importance of pubs and “empowered communities to protect them”.
“By listing their local, communities are ensuring that if the pub is under threat in the future, there is a much-needed extra layer of protection which “stops the clock” should it be put up for sale,” he said.
The announcement that 100 pubs have been listed as ACVs means pubs are the most listed community building and among the most popular listed asset overall, second only to playing fields, he added,
“CAMRA’s List Your Local campaign is aiming to get 300 pubs listed as community assets. We’re a third of the way there and we encourage communities to make the most of these new powers to help us achieve that goal,” he continued.
The Great British Beer Festival will be officially opened by Mr Lewis on Tuesday August 13.
A new concept in cooking and education – Pop Up Pies – has begun to appear across Devon and Cornwall thanks to chef Sanjay Kumar.
Pop Up Pies is the brainchild of Sanjay, who, as well as holding down a full time job at the Headland Hotel, Newquay, is expanding his own social enterprise School of Cornish Sardines (SOCS).
He’s also a Foodies South West veteran!
The Pop Up Pies concept is based on the traditional Cornish Stargazy Pie – which has fish sticking up through the pastry lid – and involves story telling as well as cookery lessons and other activities.
He said, “If we can teach people to cook and eat healthily from scratch it will help them to live healthy lives.
“If poverty is an excuse to eat unhealthily you are never going to go forward. One of the core values for my project is education.
“Pop Up Pies is a story telling session with cookery and interactive fun. Participants get to learn the history and trials and tribulations of Cornish fishermen; prepare a modern version of the pie – and taste and smell it and see what good food is like – and take home a recipe for that pie.”
Sanjay has worked with fellow Cornwall School for Social Entrepreneurs (Cornwall SSE) graduate Diana Padwick, who designed and made special boat shaped bags with a twist exclusively for the events.
Sanjay has cooked in India and worked for the King of Saudi Arabia for two years and for Raymond Blanc in the UK.
He is currently chairman of the Slow Food movement in Cornwall.
The first Pop up Pie event took place in July at Clovelly Maritime Festival and another has been booked by the pre-school Learning Alliance centre in Lanhydrock village hall on October 5.
Sanjay is looking for many more bookings and is hoping to involve schools as many organisations as possible including schools, museums, information centres and visitor attractions.
Cornwall SSE was the seventh SSE to become established in the UK with support from the ESF (European Social Fund) Convergence Programme co-financed by DWP as part of Cornwall Works for Social Enterprise.
Nathan Outlaw has announced plans to open a new restaurant, Outlaw’s Fish Kitchen in the heart of Port Isaac in Cornwall later this month.
With two popular restaurants at the St Enodoc Hotel in Rock, including his eponymous two Michelin star restaurant, as well as another in London which opened last year, Outlaw promises a different offering within the popular fishing village.
The restaurant is due to open at No 1 Middle Street, replacing the Harbour restaurant, run by chef Emily Scott and partner Jason Brain for the past five years.
The first beef burger to be successfully grown from scratch in a laboratory from cow stem cells hit oil in London today – and it was a Cornish chef holding the pan.
The burger was cooked in a little sunflower oil and butter by Richard McGeown, head chef at Couch’s Great House Restaurant in Polperro, Cornwall.
The round, pink mass sizzling in the frying pan looked like any other burger, and probably one from the cheaper end of the market.
But this five ounce patty, costing the juicy sum of £250,000, was far from ordinary.
Some believe it could usher in a food revolution.
Two food experts, one a writer and the other a nutritionist, tasted the “cultured meat” in front of an invited audience of 200 journalists and VIP guests.
Their verdict? It’s looks like beef, feels like beef but does not quite – yet – taste like beef.
After browning for a few minutes it was served up with an accompaniment of lettuce, tomato and bread buns.
American food writer Josh Schonwald, author of the book The Taste of Tomorrow, said after chewing thoughtfully for some time: “The texture, the mouth feel, has a feel like meat.
“The absence is, I feel, the fat. There is a leanness to it. But the bite feels like a conventional hamburger.
“What is most conspicuous is definitely the flavour.”
Fellow guest, Austrian food scientist and author Hanni Rutzler, who was the first to try the burger, said: “I was expecting the texture to be more soft.
“There is a bite to it. There is quite some intense taste.
“It’s close to meat – it’s not that juicy but the consistency is perfect.”
Next to take a bite was Dutch scientist Professor Mark Post, who produced the burger in his laboratory at the University of Maastricht, from stem cells taken from two living cows.
“I think it’s a very good start,” he said.
“This was mostly to prove that we could do it. I’m very happy.”
The tasting event took place at London’s Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on a stage converted into a kitchen/diner.
Prof Post believes laboratory grown cultured meat could appear in supermarkets in 10 to 20 years time
It took 20,000 tiny strips of muscle tissue grown from stem cells to make the burger.
Other ingredients included salt, egg powder, breadcrumbs, red beetroot juice and saffron.
Mr McGeown, who has held positions with top chefs including Marco Pierre White, Raymond Blanc and Gordon Ramsay, appeared surprised and impressed as he prepared the most exclusive and expensive dish of his career.
Close up images showed him spooning fat over the browning patty on giant monitor screens.
“There’s a very subtle smell,” he said. “It’s literally cooking like any other burger I’ve cooked before.
“It’s held up incredibly well. We’ve got a fantastic colour; it looks incredibly appetising.”
St Austell Brewery has teamed up with Bohetherick Farm in the Tamar Valley in Cornwall to create a limited-edition beer with a difference – a Belgian-style kriek beer.
You know these beers, small bottles, high alcohol content, flavoured with fruit, usually cherries or raspberries.
They are beers brewed in the “lambic” tradition, using wild yeasts, and flavoured through a refermentation with fruits rather than hops.
Continue reading St Austell Brewery to launch Belgian-style kriek beer with Cornish cherries
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