Radio Lancashire appearance for Lancashire Week

                               
I am back on the John Gilmore show on the 26th November, taking part in the week long celebrations for Lancashire Week !

We will be on the Flag Market in Preston with the BBC bus, so come along and join in the fun, if you are in the city centre. We hope to be on air from about 2.30pm and will be talking all about food in Lancashire and especially "Butter Pie" as a traditional Lancashire delicacy.

Also this weekend !

Wow, its been another busy week in food in Lancashire, what with Lancashire Courting cake being featured on Great British Bake Off , this week end sees in addition to the normal fabulous range of farmers markets there are several other food festivals taking place in the county.

The Great British Food Festival comes to Stonyhurst College, near Clitheroe on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, check out our earlier post on whats on offer, including oneself judging cakes on the Saturday.

                   

Bolton Food and Drink Festival - Friday to Monday featuring demonstrations by many TV chefs and cooks and other events all around Bolton.

Its also Aughton plum pudding festival, this is only held once very 21 years and is being incorporated in Aughton village festival on Bank Holiday Monday.

And lastly if you are a fan of John Whaites Winner of last years Great British Bake Off you can catch up with him locally at Avant Garden Centre on Sunday for their Cake Festival along with BBC Lancashire's John Gillmore, who's show I regularly appear on.

Tosset Cakes

A couple of month's ago I was contacted by none other than Jamie Oliver's production company Fresh One. Once I had picked myself up off the floor, I had a lovely chat with one of their researchers about the long forgotten Lancashire delicacy of the "Tosset Cake", very similar to the now infamous Goosnargh cake.

          

After a bit of a chat I helped put them in contact with the local womens institute (WI) and also identified a St Oswalds church in the next village to where they where originally looking (having a bit of local knowledge you see !). The research team then came to check out the venue for later filming, so we met up for coffee and a further chat and discussed other local forgotten recipes too, at the same time I also mentioned it on one of my slots on BBC Radio Lancashire to see whether anyone knew more about the cake and its history.

Little did I know a few weeks later the man himself, that's Jamie Oliver is in Lancashire filming !! eek ! very exciting. Unfortunately, due to work commitments, I can't make it to the Tosset Fair at Parrox Hall, but I'm sure it will be a great event.

                             

The Tosset cake is supposedly linked to the festival of St Oswald and is said to have been celebrated in Stalmine, the community of Preesall is now claiming ownership to the cake, the recipe for the cake can be found here on the Foods of England website. Unlike the Goosnargh which is just traditionally caraway, the Tosset cake has with both caraway and coriander seeds

The programme is being recorded for later in the year and there is an open invite for the people of Lancashire to attend

Tosset Feast - Wednesday 14th August commencing 2.30 p.m.

Come along to a fun-filled free afternoon at Parrox Hall on Wednesday 14th August at 2.30pm. As part of their new Channel 4 series, Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty are helping to revive the historic Tosset Feast and would like you to take part. They are inviting YOU the people from the villages of ‘Over Wyre’ to come together for this traditional feast to celebrate St Oswald’s Day. There will be food, drinks and plenty of fun activities in keeping with the Tosset Feasts of yester year! Bring along your home-baked Tosset Cakes to add to the original spirit of the feast. So please join in with this great day out and let’s make the Tosset Feast the biggest event on the local calendar, once more. 

N.B. Plenty of space of lots of people to attend but entry will be come on a first come first served basis.

Pendle Hill Cakes

I love looking at handwritten family recipe books and archives, the yellowing papers which hold our counties culinary heritage, recipes which are handed down from generation to generation. I have been kindly lent by my neighbour his families recipe book which I think dates from the early 1900's and runs through his Mother's early married life and their rich local cooking and baking heritage.

Within its bounds I have discovered a number of recipes which I have never heard of before, one of which is Pendle Hill Cakes ,which would appear to be a form of a sweet biscuit. The Pendle area of Lancashire is a wild and achingly beautiful place, forever associated with the infamous witch trails of 1612, interesting given that the recipe book is from the Leyland area at least 20 miles away from Pendle Hill.

Following the recipe in the book which didn't include an oven temperature or the length of time to bake for , we have baked the Pendle Hill Cake, and if we do say so ourselves its pretty delicious and definitely deserved to baked again. The resultant "cake"  is actually  in texture a biscuit,  what is it about "up north" where everything is a cake ! Chorley Cake, eccles cake  goosnargh cake, shortcake, etc, but they aren't cakes in the traditional sense.

On my recent visit to BBC Radio Lancashire I also made an appeal for "lost" forgotten food recipes so we will have to see what other culinary delicacies turn up. I can't trace any other recollections of the Pendle Hill Cake. The recipe contains flour, meal (I am assuming oatmeal), sugar, butter, egg and a little baking powder, then baked in a hot oven. The instruction said to roll out 1/4 inch thick and cut with a round cutter. So here we are ta dah ! the Pendle Hill Cake a re found classic.

The resultant "cake" is deliciously oaty and crumbly and stores well in an airtight tin. I haven't posted the full recipe as its still work in progress and still very variable when baked, humidity seems to make a big difference to the resultant "cake".

Radio Lancashire appearances

Mr Lancashire Food aka as Synergy Digital Imaging has very kindly edited the recordings of my other appearances over the years on BBC Radio Lancashire and they are now avaliable on Youtube.

http://youtu.be/S2bfKduUs-w 2009

http://youtu.be/h_ShK9BwNcs 2010

BBC Radio Lancashire Visit - Cakes, brown sauce and elderflowers

I was recently invited to the BBC radio Lancashire studio to chat to Sean McGinty on his Saturday Summer afternoon show. I regularly tweet my local radio station and I am lucky that they follow me on twitter, so Mr Lancashire Food and myself packed our car with some goodies and trundled to Blackburn, at one point we were concerned with all the local flooding that we might struggle to make it to the studio, but we made it in plenty of time.


We arrived in Blackburn and after getting caught in a another rainy deluge we were admitted to the studio and offered a brew whilst we waited for our slot, everything they say about BBC tea  is true by the way !

After listening to a live artist we went into the studio and were warmly greeted by the team, Sean, Gareth and another chap. This is the 3rd time Lancashire Food has been featured on local radio and I know that the staff and presenters enjoy a good homemade cake.
We had decided to take along a couple of types of cakes, a twist on the fabulous Jo Wheatley's Tiffin and Apricot and Almond Loaf, we also took along samples of Elderflower cordial, mint syrup and Rivington Pike Sauce.

I used the opportunity as well as promoting my blog to promote the South Lancashire Clandestine Cake Club, Preston Cake City, Elderflowers, Leyland Festival bake off and the wonderful local supermarket we have in the North West - Booths and Chris Rawlinson, Head Chef at the The Red Cat at Wheelton.


It was great fun chatting about local food with Sean and we even had a link up with Julie from Clitheroe Food Festival too, helping to promote this local event , a strictly Lancashire food festival.


I am fairly sure that all the goodies were enjoyed by the team and was more than happy to leave the leftovers for more members of the team, Sean however wouldn't be parted from his sample of Rivington Pike Sauce, just waiting from the phone call from Booths now to sort the manufacturing rights !!