Yemi Adelekan is a food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in last year’s BBC TV’s Masterchef competition. Every Saturday Yemi will be writing on the Stray Ferret about her love of the district’s food and sharing cooking tips– please get in touch with her if you want her to review a restaurant, visit your farm, taste the produce you sell or even share a recipe.
The Great Yorkshire, in its 164th year, is the crème-de la crème of agricultural shows in the UK. Living in Harrogate means this show is close to my heart and for the past twelve years, I have looked out my window silently welcoming the vehicles travelling to the event.
You know my passion is food, so I wasn’t far from the food hall and cookery stages – the Great Yorkshire theatre and the Game theatre. I wished I could be in two places at the same time.
Tuesday kicked off with the cheese competition and there were many varieties of cheeses from hard to soft, savoury to sweet, butters and creams with award winners in all categories. The hives and honey pavilion was another fascinating place to be with hundreds of varieties of local honeys, shaped beeswax, bee products, honey displays, honey cakes and biscuits and alcoholic honey drinks made from fermenting honey and water with some flavours and spices resulting in really unique drinks.
My time at the Game Theatre introduced me to different game animals and birds as well as fly fishing and cooking trout in multiple ways. There was trout cured with Japanese flavours and finished with finger lime by chef Ben Wright (@that_chef_Ben), pan-cooked trout by Stephanie Moon and roasted loin of venison, served with a fondant potato, sublime parsnip purée, pickled blackberries, heritage carrots and venison jus by chef Mike Baldwin from Provenance Inns. There was also a wonderful venison summer tart by chef Mehdi Boukemach from Fodder.
The highlights from the cookery theatres included seeing the passion Yorkshire chefs have for their produces, their food, sustainable cooking and zero waste with many sharing tips on how they would use what most of us throw in the bin.
Sustainable takeaways I hope you try at home:
Onion skins – I use a lot of onions in my cooking caramelising them, flash frying them, making pepper blend with tomatoes, peppers, ginger and garlic. I always add onion skins to my stock or to my meat when braising them because I realised the skin has a lot of the flavour. Recently I made some onion skin powder by baking the skin in an oven until dried before blending to a fine powder. I use this as additional flavour for my onion-based dishes.
Herb oils – parsley, basil and chilli oils are well known, but you can do more with other herbs like dill tops, chives and spring onions. Most of us will throw away fennel fronds but they can be used to make herb oil.
Beetroot leaves – Fresh beetroots can often come with the green leafy parts but sometimes we only care about the beetroots themselves, so we chuck the leaves in the bin. The leaves are delicious sautéed with peppers and onions with spices.
I tried the smoothest vibrant green purée made from sautéed courgettes cooked in stock and blended with spinach. This was a revelation as many people only steam, pan fry or roast courgettes. It was nice to see courgettes used in a different way.
‘Salt baked turbot, caviar, cabbage, dill and lemon verbena’ by Shaun Rankin
It’s time to grow some our our own food. Farm to table, plot to table and nose to tail approaches to cooking shone through every demo with most restaurants having their own kitchen garden which is an encouragement for us to try and grow some of our own food.
Sustainable approaches to sourcing ingredients came through every chef demo session with most produces coming from local suppliers and only very rarely from outside of Yorkshire.
The variety of Yorkshire produces from cream, milk, cheeses, butter to Game, sea food from the coastlines to locally bred cows, lamb, Pork and chicken show us there are few to no reasons to not eat local. Entire meals can be created using only ingredients from Yorkshire so why not challenge yourself to do just that.
Future Stars
A final highlight for me is seeing young chefs who will be the future of Yorkshire food scene being mentored by chefs including chef Ahmed Abdalla from the Grand Hotel York whose chef, Harry Blades (@harry_blades_) won the Delifresh young chef of the year 2022 and chef Shaun Rankin mentoring young Sarah Szmit who in my opinion has a really promising future in food.
RHS Harlow Carr was well represented by their head gardener, Joe Lofthouse who provided Gilly Robinson (The Cook’s Place, Malton) with produce from the RHS garden and St Aidan’s school was well represented by a group of young ladies who made sweet and savoury dishes.
There is so much to write about so follow my food feature as I have lined up appointments with many chefs, restaurants and food companies and I will be bringing their stories to you. Watch this space.
I am doing chef demos at the Yorkshire Dale Food festivals next Saturday and will share some of my highlights from the event.
Read More:
- Yemi’s Food Stories: A Lamb Affair at Yorkshire Farmers Meat Company
- Yemi’s Food Stories: My highlights of the Harrogate Food and Drink Festival
Yemi’s Food Stories: My highlights of the Harrogate Food and Drink Festival
Yemi Adelekan is a food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in last year’s BBC TV’s Masterchef competition. Every Saturday Yemi will be writing on the Stray Ferret about her love of the district’s food and sharing cooking tips– please get in touch with her if you want her to review a restaurant, visit your farm, taste the produce you sell or even share a recipe.
Summer is always agog with loads of food festivals and I was looking forward to the Harrogate Food and Drink Festival this year. It’s always exciting to see the range of local artisan products from charcuteries, honeys, chilli jams, chutneys, balsamic vinegars to different bakes and cakes.
I got to sample salt from Yorkshire Sea Salt company and was privileged to get my hands on one of their upcoming products. The salt was quite intense in flavour and a little goes a long way; the texture is perfect for crumbling between fingers, adding to salt grinders or used as a finishing salt. Richard explained their process and how it differs from other companies’ processes. I found someone who was as passionate about salt as I am.
I tasted some incredible balsamic vinegars – original flavour, white balsamic, pomegranate balsamic and apple balsamic – and I could immediately see how they could elevate marinades, salad dressings or be used to finish roasted vegetables.
Highlights from the two day event included the food demonstrations by various chefs including Scott Masey from Leeds Cookery School, Stephanie Moon from All Things Food, Owen Diaram from MasterChef UK 2023, Whaheed Rojan from Round Table Dining, Babna from Babna’s Patisserie, Norman Musa who is a chef, author and TV host, award winning Bobby Geetha from Fleur in Leeds and I get to throw myself into that mix as I did a demo on the Saturday.
What I love most about the demonstrations is the diverse and eclectic range of dishes from summer spring rolls celebrating the produces from Rudding Park Hotel Gardens by Stephanie, surprising Asian prawn noodle dish from Bobby, spicy Malaysian curry from Norman, cooking with whole chicken and chicken curry from Scott, Turmeric rice, Massaman Curry and Salmon rolled in seaweed dish from Whaheed, Mongolian sweet chilli chicken with sticky Jasmine rice from Owen and my Nigerian Jollof rice, fried plantain and Salmon with a red sauce.
The dishes were a celebration of flavours and cultures with surprising twists.
Desserts included Brioche soaked in berries from Steph and show stopping Paris-Brest, a French dessert made from choux pastry and praline flavoured cream from Babna. She created two flavours including the traditional hazel nut and almond version and a more modern one with pistachios and rose petals.
Taking part in the demo gave me an opportunity to talk about some incredible spices that aren’t commonly used such as Grains of Selim and Grains of Paradise.
Grains of Selim known by many names including African pepper, Negro pepper, Guinea pepper is from the seeds of the shrub Xylopia aethiopica and it has a musky flavour. This is toasted to release the aromas and features in Nigerian Jollof rice, pepper soup and other stews.
Yemi’s demo dish – Jollof rice, fried plantain and pepper sauce
Grains of paradise is an aromatic spice originating from West Africa with notes of cardamom, coriander, citrus, ginger, nutmeg and juniper rolled into one. It looks like black peppercorns but the more complex flavour means it is versatile for both sweet and savoury dishes.
My other highlight was connecting with fellow chefs and foodies whose passions for their crafts have resulted in change of careers, training and competing at the highest levels whilst still being really grounded.
I made some new friends and I can’t wait for next year’s event.
In the meantime, I look forward to sharing some of the recipes, new food ideas and my Jollof rice recipe with you in the coming months.
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