The Bank Holiday weekend was the tenth annual Bolton Food and Drink Festival, where the town center gets taken over by market stalls and marquees selling all sorts of edible loveliness. Full details of it can be found on their website here.
This year we had remembered in advance that it was on and therefore planned to go into Bolton on the Monday specifically to enjoy it. Additionally James Martin (the chef off Saturday Kitchen) was doing a cooking demonstration for only £8 so we bagged ourselves a pair of tickets for that too.
The whole event seemed even larger this year than in the past, with stalls all through the center of Bolton and around Le Mans Crescent (yep Bolton is twinned with Le Mans!) offering everything from street food from all over the world to cheeses, breads and meats to take away. It was also nice that there was a lot more seating provided to take the weight off while stuffing your face.
After a quick reccy of what was on offer we headed in to see James cook. The whole demonstration was about an hour and he did several different dishes in that time. He started with a harrisa seabass with bulger wheat salad. While that was cooking he made a quick crab salad and a vegatable pickle to go with some fresh herring which was impressively cooked with a blowtorch. "A proper industrial one mind not a little cake one". It was then time to show off some sugar work, in theory to show how straightforward it all was even by using someone's walking stick to make a sugar spiral and candyfloss. The final piece was a very fast summer pudding which looked lovely. The recipes are meant to be listed on the festival's website but I can't find them at present. If I can locate them I will link back to them. The seabass is definitely one I will be trying.
After watching all this food being cooked our stomachs were rumbling so we headed over to a souvlaki stall that was extremely popular and joined the queue. It was exactly what we needed, though I would have personally preferred it to have more of a kick.
As the weather was not the best we decided to pick up a selection of goodies and take them home to eat in the warm. We bought some lovely walnut bread and a tomato focaccia (I didn't note the name of this stall sadly) and then an alternative chicken and chorizo pasty from the Cornish pasty company. To finish it all with we bought two cakes from the Little Round Cake company. Then it was off home for a lounge-based picnic topped up with some cheese and pate we already had in.
I would definitely recommend going (with an empty stomach) again next year, it is a shame that Bolton can't host this kind of market more regularly as there is more to try than you can do in one go. My main tip would be if you see something you fancy then buy it, we found a great Portuguese stall but when we went back to buy some of their custard tarts they had totally sold out.
This year we had remembered in advance that it was on and therefore planned to go into Bolton on the Monday specifically to enjoy it. Additionally James Martin (the chef off Saturday Kitchen) was doing a cooking demonstration for only £8 so we bagged ourselves a pair of tickets for that too.
The whole event seemed even larger this year than in the past, with stalls all through the center of Bolton and around Le Mans Crescent (yep Bolton is twinned with Le Mans!) offering everything from street food from all over the world to cheeses, breads and meats to take away. It was also nice that there was a lot more seating provided to take the weight off while stuffing your face.
After a quick reccy of what was on offer we headed in to see James cook. The whole demonstration was about an hour and he did several different dishes in that time. He started with a harrisa seabass with bulger wheat salad. While that was cooking he made a quick crab salad and a vegatable pickle to go with some fresh herring which was impressively cooked with a blowtorch. "A proper industrial one mind not a little cake one". It was then time to show off some sugar work, in theory to show how straightforward it all was even by using someone's walking stick to make a sugar spiral and candyfloss. The final piece was a very fast summer pudding which looked lovely. The recipes are meant to be listed on the festival's website but I can't find them at present. If I can locate them I will link back to them. The seabass is definitely one I will be trying.
After watching all this food being cooked our stomachs were rumbling so we headed over to a souvlaki stall that was extremely popular and joined the queue. It was exactly what we needed, though I would have personally preferred it to have more of a kick.
As the weather was not the best we decided to pick up a selection of goodies and take them home to eat in the warm. We bought some lovely walnut bread and a tomato focaccia (I didn't note the name of this stall sadly) and then an alternative chicken and chorizo pasty from the Cornish pasty company. To finish it all with we bought two cakes from the Little Round Cake company. Then it was off home for a lounge-based picnic topped up with some cheese and pate we already had in.
I would definitely recommend going (with an empty stomach) again next year, it is a shame that Bolton can't host this kind of market more regularly as there is more to try than you can do in one go. My main tip would be if you see something you fancy then buy it, we found a great Portuguese stall but when we went back to buy some of their custard tarts they had totally sold out.
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