Yemi Adelekan is a Harrogate-based food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in the 2022 series of BBC TV’s Masterchef competition.

Yemi writes for the Stray Ferret about her love of the area’s food and shares cooking tips.

There is something special about cooking demonstrations outdoors in the summer. Maybe it’s the combination of sunshine, the smell of food drifting through the air and the anticipation of the audience.

This summer has taken me to some amazing food festivals, and my final outing at the Great British Food Festival at Wentworth Woodhouse in Rotherham felt like the perfect way to bring the season to a close.

My festival season has been a busy one. I have cooked at the Great Yorkshire Show, East Anglian Game and Country Fair, South Manchester Food Festival, The Good Food Show in Birmingham, Living North’s summer event, Mount St John Kitchen Garden open day and Festival Italia, where sizzling food demonstrations sit alongside the roar of racing cars. Then there were eight appearances in six locations for the Great British Food Festival.

Across those events, I have cooked dishes including labneh with sauce vierge, seaweed butter salmon and spiced potatoes; suya-spiced pheasant for the Game Theatre at the Great Yorkshire Show; harissa brown butter trout with coconut rice and charred sweetcorn relish; and my tiramisu-inspired puff puff, glazed with a honey-coffee syrup and served with mascarpone and whipped cream, finished with a dusting of chocolate.

The joy of these events is not simply standing on stage and cooking. It is the conversations that happen afterwards. People come to tell me they have tried a recipe, ask about an ingredient or simply want to talk about food. Sometimes they are long-time followers, sometimes they have only just discovered what I do. Either way, I always come away reminded that food has a wonderful ability to bring strangers together.

For my final demo at the Great British Food Festival, I cooked some of my favourite things: smoky honey beans, salmon with seaweed and garlic butter and Aleppo chilli, fried plantain and red pepper sauce. I wanted the food to feel generous, colourful, and full of flavour, but there was one more element that turned out to be particularly memorable.

I paired the dish with a slice of cinnamon butter toast using the wonderful cinnamon butter from Yorkshire Kitchen. There was nothing complicated about it. I gently toasted one side of the bread until lightly golden, spread it generously with the cinnamon butter, then returned it to the heat until the butter melted into the bread and the surface developed some caramelisation.

That simple piece of toast worked beautifully with the sweetness of the honey beans. More importantly, it took me straight back to Nigeria, where beans and bread are a classic pairing. Sometimes the simplest combinations carry the strongest memories.

For this final demo, I was joined by Anisha Kant, a Harrogate resident, who had just completed her GCSEs. Anisha loves baking and wanted to shadow me, and what better place to begin than at a food festival?

I entered her into the cake competition, and she finished in joint third place with her beautifully decorated piña colada-inspired cake.

Her cake felt like summer on a plate. The coconut-flavoured sponge was paired with a pineapple filling and decorated with delicate coconut meringue kisses. It was thoughtful, colourful and a fitting tribute to the flavours of the season. I was delighted to have her alongside me.

But this summer has not been entirely about food festivals and happy occasions. It has also been a difficult season of my life, with several bereavements, including the loss of my brother-in-law and my mum. I made two trips to Nigeria within two months, carrying grief alongside the practicalities of family, work, travel, and everything else.

Through all of this, food became an anchor. Cooking gave me structure and routine when so much else felt uncertain. The festivals gave me something to prepare for, people to meet and moments to look forward to. Standing on a stage, talking about ingredients, and sharing food with an audience offered a welcome sense of normality.

So, as summer draws to a close, I am grateful for the food, the people and the opportunities this season has brought. And perhaps most of all, I am grateful that even in a difficult season, food continued to give me reasons to gather, to cook, to remember and to keep moving forward.

Now that I am back, I am declaring a new year starting on September 1; a year when I can realise some new food dreams. 

My mum kickstarted my passion for food and her passing seems like the perfect opportunity to take my passion to the next level.