OMG – How scarey – I did my first public cooking demonstration at the Cornwall Food and Drink Festival in Truro on 25th September. I looked down at all the cooking kit I brought with me and wondered how on earth I was going to find the right things at the right time and god only knew if I'd get the timing right between cooking and talking. All mic'd up and ready to go. I had brought so much wild food with me to show everyone from seaweeds to mushrooms to greens to flowers etc. and there was sooo much interest from everyone that it felt GREAT. I cooked up some mackerel with a wild salsa verde made with rock samphire, black mustard, wild apple mint and pickled 3 cornered garlic flower buds. Then a meadowsweet carragheen seaweed pannacotta with fennel flower shortbread and blackberries. Yum. It all got wolfed down by the audience. Luckily Simon, our helpx volunteer saved me by coming up to chop the greens for the salsa verde whilst I got on with talking- it would have been a painfully silent 5 minutes of chopping otherwise. Crispy laver seaweed went down well too. I was really pleased to find some Cornish Rapeseed oil on sale at the food fair, so bought a bottle and used it instead of olive oil in the salsa verde.
Lovely ladies.
Got a little over excited when the demonstration had finished and downed a pint and a half of Cornish Rattler – perhaps not the best drink when you're just about to lead a 2 hour wild food walk. It was all good fun even if I was a bit inebriated. xx