Life is sweet at the Biggest ever Crail Food Festival

NEWS from the Crail Food Festival about their 2014 event - spread the word!:

Life is sweet at this year's Crail Food Festival with an expanded programme including a House of Sugar, children's workshops and lots of opportunities to taste more local produce than ever before. This year's event is spread across an even wider range of venues, thanks to support from Event Scotland and Homecoming Scotland 2014.

Taking place on 14 and 15 June, highlights include special Children's Workshops with the opportunity to get hands-on with food: from jam making to moulding your own chocolates. A Food Trail will allow families to explore Crail's food delights while The House of Sugar will play host to a Crail inspired 3D cookie art installation created by local company Sucre Coeur. Visitors will be able to get involved and ice their own cookie to create an edible mosaic across the weekend. 

Over 50 local foodie participants will take part in the two-day festival with a special Tasting Theatre and Food Market with free food sampling all day. Meet the Producer workshops will allow visitors to learn new skills and experience new tastes with activities ranging from whisky and chocolate matching, cheese and wine pairing, to a pie and a pint. Local food and drink on offer will include cheese, venison, smoked fish, gin, craft ales, and of course, the shellfish for which the East Neuk of Fife is famous.

A Cookery Theatre will feature demonstrations by a range of local cooks and chef patrons, from Michelin star fine dining themes to award-winning cookery writers such as Nicola Fletcher. This bespoke country kitchen is kindly sponsored by Ardross Farm Shop, recent winner of the Farm Shop of the Year award and supported by the professional catering team from Elmwood College.

The Crail Museum will use the festival as an opportunity to tell visitors about the historic local delicacy, the Crail Capon. With details taken from an 1812 poem, the Crail Capon (haddock smoked traditionally in a chimney) will relive its glory days over the course of the weekend.

Sunday 15 will include an extra dimension with Sunday Lunch at the Harbour. Using the iconic Crail Harbour as the backdrop, street food vendors and local producers will come together to host a massive picnic for visitors. Shellfish, smokies, ice cream, game and pizza cooked in a converted horsebox while you wait are just some of the goods on offer at the harbour. Local businesses will provide potted shrimp, home baking and more. 

A local seafront guest house will share its stunning seashore location with evening visitors by becoming a Pop-Up Tasting Bistro with local food, music and drinks.

Graeme Anderson, the Event Manager said:

"I'm thrilled at this year's enriched festival programme. The 4th annual Crail Food Festival will certainly put our village on the map for anyone who's a fan of food. We've worked hard to ensure visitors of all ages get a real flavour of Fife. It's going to be great fun and a wonderful way to share Crail with a wider audience."

The full programme can be found at crailfoodfest.co.uk and here's the event flyer:

Crail Food Festival 2013 part 1: cookery demos, gingerbread streets and dancing

I had been looking forward to the Crail Food Festival (www.crailfoodfest.co.uk) for a long time. I'd never been before and had been helping in the preparationa and promotion by being part of the blogging team. When the weekend itself, 15-16 June, came closer I realised that in fact it co-incided with the East Neuk Open Studios (www.eastneukopenstudios.org) event as well. Brilliant combination I thought - a weekend of great food, art and even music in fantastic settings!

Day 1, Saturday 15 June, was all about cookery demos, Cellardyke artists, gingerbread streets and dancing.

After the boys returned from the inevitable golf match (at Craighead Links, Crail Golfing Society), we headed to Crail Community Hall for our first taste of the Crail Food Festival. We weren't alone - the hall was packed full of enthusiastic foodies, going round all of the stalls to sample and buy tasty local produce. The good people from the excellent Grill House restaurant (www.grillhouse-restaurant.co.uk) in St Andrews were having absolutely no trouble at all getting takers for their hot food samples. I however was having trouble getting to them in time before they all disappeared! A cookery demo by Craig Millar was announced. Craig is chef and owner of Crail Millar @ 16 West End restaurant (www.16westend.com), a great place right on the shore in the lovely East Neuk village of St Monans. The hall slowly emptied as the Chef's Theatre filled. We all went in except for R, who had identified this as the ideal opportunity to get the lion's share of the food samples (a cunning and very successful plan!). However he missed out on an entertaining, amusing and informative demo from Craig, as well as a taste of the finished product.



Craig Millar provides a cookery demo, Chef's Theatre, Crail Food Festival 2013

Hebridean sea salt and Israeli couscous were two recommendations I resolved to try at home. Craig also revealed he tends to go local by using Scottish rapeseed oil rather than olive oil - I'm with him on that. Some of Craig's recipes can be found in the Relish Scotland, Second Helping book, along with recipes from other great chefs based in some of Scotland's finest restaurants. I bought a (signed) copy of the book on the day for the rose cottage cookbook collection and would thoroughly recommend it.



Relish Scotland - Second Helping - book of original recipes from Scotland's finest chefs and restaurants



Back in the main hall we had the chance to purchase a great selection of foodie treats from the Fife's finest producers on the stalls all round the hall. I ended up buying raspberry jam from two of my favourite farmshops, who had stalls there: Balgove Larder (www.balgove.com), near St Andrews and Ardross Farm Shop (www.ardrossfarm.co.uk), near Elie. You can never have enough raspberry jam in my book!

 

Balgove Larder, farm shop near St Andrews - one of the stall holders at the Crail Food Festival 2013

However the icing on the cake on that chilly afternoon was the warmly comforting hot chocolate from our local chocolatiers, The Pittenweem Chocolate Co (www.pittenweemchocolate.co.uk). To die for!

Time was ticking so we departed for Cellardyke to see some of the East Neuk Open Studios (ENOS) - more to come on this in my ENOS blog soon. 



That evening we were back in Crail for more Food Festival fun - this time dinner and dancing. In just a few hours the Community Hall (an old church) had been transformed into a dinner and music venue. The hall was noisy, buzzing with chatter at this sold-out event. We shared a table with a Scottish family. The parents lived in California and were finding Crail rather cold in comparison! (More on this in Part 2!) 



A three course meal followed. Starter and main course from Hatters & Co (www.hatterscatering.com), caterers at the Edwardian tearoom in Hill of Tarvit Mansion House, were quickly scoffed. However  the highlight for me was definitely the dessert from Sucre Coeur (www.sucrecoeur.co.uk), creators of an entire gingerbread street which was displayed in the window of Crail Gallery. One of the band members (more on them in a minute) also serenaded us with a little ukulele number at our table while we ate.

 

Sweet treats. From top: East Neuk Street made from Gingerbread and Dessert, both by Sucre Coeur for Crail Food Festival 2013

Wine was provided by the St Andrews Wine Company (www.standrewswinecompany.com), who have a great wine shop in Bell Street, St Andrews. They select wines to have labelled as their "house white" and "house red". They were also manning the bar and doing a great trade in beer from the St Andrews Brewing Company (www.standrewsbrewingcompany.com), who created Crail Ale for a previous year's Crail Food Festival. It was so popular that they kept making it and it recently won a craft beer competition and will be available in Sainsbury's supermarket so more of us can get to enjoy it! Unsurprisingly that night the Crail Ale had completely sold out but R and I enjoyed the IPA instead and it went down very well indeed. 

 

Dinner over and bellies full, it was now time for the music to begin. If, like me, you loved the soundtrack of quirky George Clooney film "O brother where art thou?" you would have loved the first local Fife band who took to the stage: Black Cat Jook Band. They transported us from Crail to the Deep South with their madcap bluesy sounds, even making what seemed to be a box with a stick and a piece of string into a quivering, deep bass. It was utterly impossible not to tap your feet along. 



From left: Black Cat Jook Band, King Creosote's Band and Crail Ale

  

Then it was time for a second local band with a bigger reputation: King Creosote (www.kingcreosote.com). With one of the band members hailing from Crail it was definitely a home crowd for them. They masterfully entertained us with a more mainstream sound, including a song about Crail which had the dance floor packed. The atmosphere was great.

When King Creosote's band finished their set on a climatic high the party was over. Off we went, weary but happy, to get some rest ready for Festival Day 2! My Part 2 blog is coming soon with all the details! .

Text and photos copyright Sara Scott 2013