If you attended the Taste of Summer event today at The Garden Store Billing – please bear with us whilst we get the recipes onto the site.

In the meantime we hope you enjoyed the tastings!

Our chefs will be demonstrating a range of mouth watering dishes over the two days with ingredients supplied by the exhibitors.

We will be kicking off our first demo at 10.30 on Saturday with some mouth watering Caribbean flavours- ceviche of bass, jerk salmon with rice and beans.

12 noon- Vegetarian heaven - watch our chef create two fabulous vegetarian dishes – Courgette and saffron risotto, Mediterranean puy lentil casserole.

2pm – Chicken feast – learn how cook chicken infused with flavour.

4pm – Home made beef burgers – a real bbq treat.

Sunday
11.30 Fruit frenzy – Summer fruits Eaton mess, flambe strawberry cheesecake.

1.30 Pan fried Moroccan pork with cous cous and yoghurt.

3pm - Fishy flavours Pan fried trout with asparagus

Come along and join us – meet the exhibitors and taste the flavours at the Billing Garden Store

Bethany Dare, 15, Market Harborough, a finalist in the national, Future Chef competition, will join a prestigious panel including Northamptonshire’s own, Michelin starred chef, Adam Gray, in the final of the competition.

The event, organised by Shires Cookery School, in Northampton and aimed at 8 to 11-year-olds, is searching for enthusiastic young cooks from the local area to prove their creative, hidden talent.

Entrants can either work on their own or team up with a friend to cook up a two course “Taste of Summer” menu using local ingredients of up to £10 and demonstrating an understanding of nutritional value.

Bethany, who fought off nearly 8,000 other youngsters, through four stages, into the final of the Future Chef competition faced strict judging at the hands of top chefs including Theo Randall from London’s InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane, and celebrity chef Lesley Waters.

She says she’s delighted to be passing on some of her own experience. “I’m looking forward to helping up and coming talent,” she said, “it’s actually very exciting. “However, I remember how it felt when I entered and competed, so I aim to be very fair, I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end!

“I always think when you cook you reveal a little bit of your own personality because you have to be creative and I can’t wait to see what the competing chefs come up with.” Bethany is currently studying food technology and chemistry at Robert Smyth School, in Market Harborough, aiming for a specialist career in catering.

The three finalists in the Budding Chef competition will have the chance to cook their dishes with the help of a professional chef  at  Northamptonshire Foodshow @ Holdenby sponsored by Bell Sunday, August 29th. Shires Cookery School owner and competition organiser, Wendy Carter, says she’s thrilled to have Bethany on the judging panel, “We wanted a teenage, talented chef to encourage and mentor the other young competitors and we were so excited when Bethany agreed,” said Wendy. “I think it encourages them to aspire to bigger and better things just as Bethany has and they can relate to someone closer to their age group.”

The overall winner of the budding chef competition will receive £200 worth of cookery equipment plus other individual prizes. Deadline for entries is 23 July. Download the  Entry form

Due our exciting expansion and development plans, we are looking to add demonstration/teaching chefs to our team. We have a large number of events coming up over the summer in and around Northamptonshire, and new classes being added to our calendar each week. The majority of the assignments will take place over the weekend.
So if you have experience of cookery teaching or demonstrations drop us an email outlining your experience and what knowledge you could bring to our crew. info@shirescookeryschool.com

 Dont forget 7 – 13 June 2010

You can organise any kind of event you want, from bake sales and coffee mornings to dinner parties. For some inspiration take a look at some of the events that took place in 2009.

 
If you can’t organise an event during this week, please organise your event whenever is convenient for you.

So get your aprons on and oven mitts out

Adam Gray, Head Chef at Gary Rhodes’ eponymous one Michelin starred restaurant “Rhodes Twenty Four” in the City of London returned to Northampton last week. Adam has had a high profile career starting as pot washer at the Red Lion in East Haddon , and soon after, moving to London to work at the Four Seasons Hotel under the tutelage of Bruno Loubet. Australia then beckoned, where Adam and a friend established a renowned restaurant in Melbourne which won “Australia’s Best New Restaurant Award” in it’s first year of operation. Adam then returned to Blighty where he worked as Chef de Partie at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons with the acclaimed  Raymond Blanc. Gary Rhodes then appointed Adam as Head Chef of his City Rhodes restaurant, where he maintained the existing Michelin star. Adam then went on to open Gary’s new restaurant “Rhodes Twenty Four” where he won a Michelin star in 2005, which he has maintained to this day. Adam is responsible for developing all menus and uses predominantly British produce, allowing quality to shine through by not combining too many ingredients in any one dish. This means that every single component has to be cooked to perfection making the task even more daunting! 

In 2003 Adam set up the “Chef’s Academy” at Northampton College where he was a student. The Academy offers work experience to gifted catering and hospitality students. Over 30 students have completed work experience placements at Rhodes Twenty Four with some securing full time employment. Every year Adam returns to the College and transforms the college’s kitchen and restaurant to Michelin standards as part of a two day intensive training course for selected students. At the end of the two days the students cook and serve a six course meal, accompanied by selected wines, to 80 specially invited guests. The menu last week showcased wonderful Northamptonshire produce:
White Tomato Soup – Amuse Bouche
Free range Pork & Sage Haslet Terrine, crisp Apple & Radish salad
Pitsford Trout Fishcake, crisp Fennel & Farrington’s oil lime dressing
Slow cooked Northamptonshire Lamb with Buttered Broad Beans & Apple Mint Jelly
Iced Sticky Date Mousse with Toffee Sauce 

At some point Adam has his sights fixed on returning to Northamptonshire and setting up his own restaurant/s. Until then, we must wait with bellies rumbling  in anticipation; watch this space…..

Copy and pictures supplied by www.grazeandguzzle.co.uk

The families will start by running their shop in the 1870s for one week. Then they will be fast-forwarded through time and spend a week running their shop in different key eras of British History – the Edwardian era, the 20s and 30s, the Second World War, the early 1960s and finally the 1970s.  In each era, the shopkeepers and their families will have to live and run their shop as authentically as possible.  
 The series will be filmed during the summer of 2010. The shopkeepers and their families will relocate for the duration of the filming to a modern-day market town in the South West.   It’s an ambitious and exciting way to stage this fascinating living history project and gives the shopkeepers an unprecedented chance to demonstrate to an entire town the challenges which their forebears would have faced on a daily basis.
 
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a family to explore the history of their trade.  It’s a chance to celebrate Britain’s rich history of independent trading and to showcase a ‘baker’ who is an expert in their craft.  The ‘baker’, along with their family, will have the chance to learn old time skills in their shop, which will be meticulously decorated and fitted out.  They will get to grips with baking bread in a traditional Victorian bread oven.  They’ll need to tempt modern customers with once-fashionable recipes and use traditional methods to create them.  And they’ll grapple with the challenges of rationing and other rules and regulations laid down by history during the war years.  It’s a chance to experience the evolution of the British High Street first hand. 
 
So if your family fits the bill please get in touch with Zoe Acourt on 0207 482 6137 or you can email at zoe.a’court@walltowall.co.uk

Bake with Compassion is Compassion in World Farming’s annual supporter fundraising event.

The idea is to bake using free-range or organic eggs (remember to use other high welfare ingredients as well, such as organic butter, milk and chocolate) and to sell your baking creations or ask for donations to raise funds to support our work.

This event is also a great opportunity to talk to people about their consumer choices and the welfare of laying hens.

You can organise any event you like around this week, from cake sales and coffee mornings to dinner parties. Whatever you organise, it will be helping to fund our campaigns to end factory farming and raising awareness in your local community.

Visit the website to give you some key tips and ideas to help you organise your very own Bake with Compassion event. So get your aprons on and oven mitts out to join in.

Call 01483 521953, email supporters@ciwf.org or visit bakewithcompassion.org