Agog in Accrington

Although a lot of food related stuff has gone on over the past weekend I'm going to do this out of order and start with my visit to Accrington for the Lancashire Food Festival.

Sun 2 April 2006

Doors for the festival opened at 10am and by the time we arrived around midday things were certainly in full swing. The town of Accrington didn't seem to have embraced the festival entirely - the first town centre car park we came across was closed! Anyway, car parked we headed towards the Town Hall and made our way through the variety of Morris dancers bouncing around in the street. We investigated the food marquee first - there was a pretty solid representation of local butchers, as well as a smokehouse, icecream maker and a cordial maker. Initially we tried a pork pie from Dales Traditional Butchers and a sausage roll from Entwistle's Delicatessen. I really enjoyed the sausage roll (a vast improvement on the monstrosity I bought from Ainsley's a few weeks ago, although not as good as my own homemade ones!) but was a little ho-hum about the pork pie. Andy - who knows more about pork pies than me - preferred the pie. We also invested in a couple of small black puddings from the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse. This stand had a really interesting array of all sorts of smoked goodies and it was actually quite a disappointment that they didn't have a bit more of it available for tasting.

We moved to the Town Hall and wandered around the display. Although this was the Lancashire Food Festival for some reason there were lots of displays of things like olive oil, French wine and other mediterranean goodies. The ballroom was absolutely jammed full of people which made it quite difficult to look at, taste and buy produce. In a pioneering spirit I did manage (on my third attempt) to buy an icecream from Mrs Dowson's - the chunky chocolate. And it was very good. I also picked up some Lancashire cheese from Shorrocks Cheeses (I was not such a fan of their many and varied 'flavoured' cheeses - but I don't like my cheese mucked around with ...), and some little ginger biscuits from Angela's Pantry (I haven't tried them yet).

At this point it was almost time for the cookery demonstration with chef Philippa James, so we shuffled into the council chamber and waited. As an aside, I was pretty disgusted with the woman who parked her child's stroller in front of the (clearly marked) fire exit and rather disappointed that the staff (who had to step over and around the thing) didn't reprimand her. Grumbling about that proved to be the most interesting part of the demonstration.

I'm not sure what Philippa's credentials are but, cooking aside, she should polish up her presentation skills and learn how to operate the cooker!!! To say she wittered on is being rather kind ... she made a Lancashire tortilla (that would be a black pudding, potato, pepper and tomato omelette) and a fruit smoothie - this took the best part of 45 minutes and was totally shambolic. She spent most of her time talking about non food related stuff and turned the cooker on and off about 5 times ... I don't think she realised that the halogen bulbs go on and off to regulate temperature ...

At the first opportunity we hot footed it out of the demonstration and went and bought another icecream (from Huntleys - again - chocolate and nowhere near as good as that produced by Mrs Dowson), a pie from the Weatheroak Ostrich Farm and some Saddleback and Old Gloucester Spot cross back bacon.

And then we decided we'd seen and done enough - so we called into the information office in the Town Hall to find out if there was anywhere interesting to get some food or afternoon tea in Accrington. We were informed that most places were shut on a Sunday. In disbelief we actually found an open coffee shop just a stone's throw from the Town Hall. Unfortunately, Over Coffee was doing Accrington any touristy favours. I ordered a hot chocolate, with cream (well, it was with stuff out of an aerosol can cream) and a plain scone with jam and cream. The fact that I wanted a plain scone caused a bit of kerfuffle (people who own food serving establishments should really insist that their staff learn what is available!) ... but nothing (not even the bad hot chocolate) prepared me for the thoroughly nasty scone. The scone was STALE, stodgy, hard and horrible. The whipped cream had been whipped to within an inch of becoming butter and frankly, tasted rancid. This for £2.25! I was tempted to send it back but left the whole thing bar a mouthful, on my plate. The staff didn't even ask what we'd thought!

So - the Lancashire Food Festival ... so many ideas on how it could be improved ... in its present format it is really just a glorified farmers' market ... the exhibitors should be encouraged to do things with their produce that hungry punters can eat ... where was the Lancashire hot pot? The bacon or sausage butties? What about frying up some black pudding and mash? The cookery demonstration should have been a lot more focussed - using local ingredients (I guess she got that sort of right) to cook some simple, interesting and even traditional dishes. The space used needed to be a lot less crowded and with much more emphasis on LOCAL produce. I hadn't driven from Leeds to Accrington to taste olive oil!

And finally - the town of Accrington needs to get behind the festival ... be open (shops and car parks), have additional and complementary activities, have an information service that knows what's going on ...

Perhaps someone from the organising committee should visit York's Food and Drink Festival later in the year ...

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