So there is only one thing on the lips of Cockermouthians this week - can you guess what it is? Nope not that. It's the extravaganza that was the Taste Cumbria food festival this past weekend, which was a huge deal for the county, although someone should have told the South Lakes - there were nowt but laal West Cumbrians theyer, aye, not even yan from Westmorland! Aye. Yan tan tether, yam and watter. Well they would never understand the language anyway.
My Taste Cumbria weekend began on Friday night when I singlehandedly manoevered not one, but two marquees into the Badgermobile and took myself up to my home town of Cockermouth to stay with my obliging parents. At 7am on Saturday morning I was on my way into town, and at 7.05am I was stuck in the mud on Memorial Gardens (only halfway through the entrance gates). My goodness. One push from old man and 3 hours later I was the proud owner of a huge and slightly mismatched stand. Here it is with Nikki and our chef for the weekend, the legend that is Justin Woods from the Castle Green Hotel in Kendal. And nope your eyes do not deceive you, the marquees are actually pitched in the United States of Mud.
So here's how Day One went:
07:00 - 07:05 leaving house and getting stuck in mud, yes we already know.
10:00 chef Justin arrives and starts doing his thang (cooking)
10:30 members of the public begin wandering past so we get our first lot of free tasters out on the table. Looking forward to the day ahead. The full day of giving out free tasters of expertly cooked gurnard, coley and mackerel. Yep, all day long...
11:00 we run out of food.
Alright maybe we lasted a couple of hours longer than that, only because thankfully Justin ignored me when I suggested that 50 tasters of each dish might be enough. Ahaha well people do say I am funny.
Clearly the menu of a fragrant Thai green curry with gurnard, a delicate pickled mackerel with fancy mushrooms and a good British beer battered coley with chips was always going to go down well in Cockermouth. All three dishes were truly incredible and I could have eaten that Thai curry all day. If we hadn't ran out. Chicken and egg...
People kept on coming and by the end of the day we had done somewhere in the region of 500 little mini plates of delicifishyousness, and when I say 'we' I mean I asked Justin to be there, and thus take some of the credit. Day two was very much the same and I have to say that Justin made the production of an astounding 1,000 Borrower-sized portions of sustainable seafood over one foodie weekend look like a fun-filled walk in the park. But that may have been the mud.
It was rather interesting how few people had even heard of gurnard. (Well it's interesting to me!). No wonder we only eat cod and haddock. If I put 'gungemeister' on the fish counter you wouldn't buy it would you? Of course not you've no clue what it is! So why would anyone buy gurnard if they've no idea what it is or how it tastes? Gurnard is brilliant, so here goes, your gurnard lesson! You knew it was coming, don't act surprised.
There are three types of gurnard - red, grey and yellow (or tub). Don't ask me where the 'tub' comes from. All three are edible but I gather that red and tub make for slightly better eating. To me that just smokes of a challenge, so I wouldn't worry which one you get. All three are fast growing fish which mature early, so make for good 'takers' of fishing pressure and in fact, studies have shown that they will be able to withstand the increased pressure that the diversification of British tastes in fish might incur. So the best thing about gurnard? It has special laal fins which are like spiky legs that they can 'walk' around on and with which they can stir up food from the seabed. Brilliant! I'm going to 'stir up' my lunch with my legs tomorrow and see what everyone thinks.
Many Cockermouthians also raised the question of where might they actually buy lesser-known fish like gurnard, and of course in Cockermouth there is only Sainsburys, although I did hand out millions of Donnan's discount cards over the weekend so they might have a rush on. Also if you are near Penrith, ask The Fish Cellar for some gurnard because Mark was telling me just how much he likes filleting them...(*smirk*).
Woman walks into Donnans: "Hello"
Richard Donnan sounding very tired: "Hello"
Woman: "I'll have one bit of coley, one bit of mackerel and one bit of gurnard please. I'm going to make beer-battered coley, pickled mackerel and Thai green gurnard curry. I want to be just like Lindsay, apart from the hair."
Richard Donnan: "But I haven't slept since Taste Cumbria!"
Quick step back onto the subject of Sainsburys I would like to say (and I'm not crawling) that more than one member of the Cockermouth public mentioned the Sainsburys 'swap a fish' initiative and said that it had made them try new fish. So credit where credit's due for that (and a little to my Nectar card, that's right just there... magic).
Kidding!
Coley proved to be better known than gurnard but still there were many who hadn't eaten it before, and of course there were those who consider coley to be a second-rate cod; I like to call those people the Cod Squad. After Justin's little sample they are official converts to benefits of the Holy Coley.
Generally I felt as if the weekend on the stand was really successful and the response was so lovely and positive. When one lady walked away and was overheard saying "I really want to try to eat sustainable fish", I think I may have misted over a little. In fact she should consider herself lucky she didn't get wrestled to the ground in a gigantic hairy bear hug.
So it was great and as promised, I have put the two recipes for which we ran out of hard copies over the weekend onto blog pages (scroll up and peruse to your right). I also had wicked fun catching the eye of people I went to school with, babysat for, lived nearby when I was growing up... and watching them try to plaice me (*snort*). However when I put on that black polo shirt it's just like when Clark Kent takes off his glasses - noone can tell my true identity! Apart from the ones that did. Maybe I need a phone box.
Anyway, go Cockermouth, you rock! My favourite quote?
"Look she's even got Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's hairdo!"
Thanks Ryan Blackburn - genuinely for your Fish and Shellfish masterclass, which was brilliant, and sarcastically for the loud and publicly-staged Hugh hairdo comment!
