Wilderness Festival

Chefs and restaurants headline this summer’s festivals, as the Wilderness festival (12-14th August) in Cornbury Estate Deer Park, Oxfordshire, has started a new phenomena of putting festival food first.

Food is an essential part of any festival experience, but that usually involves over-cooked chips or a dodgy falafel wrap that doesn’t merit the 20 minute queue. Wilderness Festival are changing all that, however, as Michelin-stared chef, Skye Gyngell from Petersham Nurseries Café and Sam and Sam Clark from Spanish-inspired Moro restaurant will make their festival debuts and ‘headline’ two unique banqueting experiences.

Skye Gyngell, Petersham Nurseries Café

Chef Thomas Hunt will host a seasonal Friday night feast, with Moro cooking up the Saturday night banquet and Skye Gyngell creating a sumptuous Sunday afternoon feast. At £27 for three courses, wine and the most elegant table setting you’ll see at any festival – it’s much better than standing in that queue for the falafel. Moro’s menu, for example, will include tapas and mezze such as prawn ceviche, slow roast pork and chiparones squid. Main course will be a choice of charcoal grilled lamb or grilled aubergine with a rocket salad, with yoghurt cake and pistachios for dessert.

Since every farmer and his entrepreneurial dog seems to run a festival in his field these days, it’s refreshing to find an event that has a genuine point of difference. Curated by the organisers of Secret Garden Party and Lovebox, Wilderness knows a thing or two about how to make a festival feel both authentic and fun.

Sam and Sam Clark, Moro restaurant

The chefs are recognised as artists in their own right who deserve to be listed alongside the other big stars playing this weekend, including Anthony and the Johnsons, Gogol Bordello, Mercury Rev and Laura Marling, as well as featuring the London Folk Guild, a masked ball and a one off late night party ‘Where the wild things are,’ hosted by Secret Garden Party.

Wilderness festival is not all about the food, however, as this multi-arts festival also hosts biology classes, lecture on didactic farming poetry, theatre from the Old Vic, debates and talks, a Wilderness Spa, children’s entertainment, lake swimming, boating and hot tubs!

Tickets are still available from the Wilderness website, starting at £27.50 for one day and up to £120 for the weekend.

Drop the whole lot on the floor.

Taken on Broadway Market, Hackney.

An elderly woman walks through the park each morning, scattering bread crusts and bird seed as she goes. The birds all recognise her – or her battered shopping trolley full of breakfast, more to the point.

Why do only old women and young children feed the birds?

Almost all proper leftovers require a hot pan, and a knob of fizzing butter… or a well-seasoned wok, thin egg noodles, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and the brisk slap of chilli. Think leftover potato and cabbage, crusting up nicely in a nimbus of frothy butter for bubble and squeak… or a stir fry of indeterminate provenance, designed to use up fragments of last night’s bird, flavoured with the contents of almost every bottle in the cupboard.

Rather than seeing leftovers as bad planning, Rayner encourages his readers to over cater on purpose. Although dishes that use leftovers can be slightly mongrel in appearance and “less virtuous than the dish which begat them,” the imagination and spontaneity a cook uses to ressurect leftovers can often result in a moment of genius.

One thing Rayner fails to mention however, is that it is really hard to over cater and then not over eat. I live in a shared house, and all too often the smell of food bubbling on the hob will bring my housemates out of the woodwork. It is not uncommon for me to be cooking ‘for one’ (over catering of course) and then find myself serving seven hungry mouths round the table. Of course, sharing food is one of the joys of cooking – but sharing makes leftovers more difficult… I feel a bit tight siphoning off food to hide away in a tupperware, just so I have something left for the day after. Perhaps I should start over-overcatering?…

If you can manage to resist warm, fresh risotto, here is one of my favourite recipes for the leftovers:

Arancini: crispy fried cheesy rice balls

Left over mushroom risotto (about enough for 3-4 people)

Fry the crimini mushrooms for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes. Once cool, stir mushrooms with parsley and mozzarella. This is your filling for the arancini.

With wet hands, take a heaped tablespoonful of the risotto and flatten into the palm of your hand. Put a teaspoonful of the Mozzarella mixture in the middle, and mould the rice around it to form a ball. Seal the ball completely so no cheese escapes whilst frying – don’t be too greedy and overfill them. Roll each arancini in flour, shake off the excess flour, then dip each ball in beaten egg and coat in the breadcrumbs. When all your arancini are ready, heat the oil until a bread cube turns golden in 20 seconds. Fry the arancini, in batches, until crisp and golden all over. Drain on kitchen paper.

I can guarantee you there will be no leftovers.

My home county’s village farm, Fanny’s Farm, ran a marmalade competition last month. Prizes were available for best female, best male and an additional prize for marmalade-inspired memories – all to be judged by JoAnne Good from the BBC London. My mum has been making marmalade for as long as I can remember, so she entered the women’s section, whilst I submitted my Marmalady piece to the writing competition.

We both won first prize!

Well, that’s not strictly true. My sister actually won first prize, but she used my mum’s recipe. Even though Mum didn’t win herself, I’m sure she is still proud to know that her recipe informed the winning marmalade, and her marmalade inspired the winning story.

Take a small, clean glass jar and fill it just under half way with double or whipping cream. Shake!

Depending on how fast you can shake the jar, the cream whips to a firm texture in no time. My dinner guests were pretty over excited when a race emerged between two competitive shakers – just make sure the lid is firmly on each jar to avoid catastrophe. 

I’m now wondering what else I can take my jar method to; whisking eggs? frothing milk for cappuccino? mayonnaise? … watch this space.

375g dried spaghetti

50g/ unsalted butter

1 tsp Marmite, to taste

freshly grated parmesan, to serve

• Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling, salted water, according to the packet instructions.
• When the pasta is almost cooked, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the Marmite and one tablespoon of the pasta water, mixing thoroughly to dissolve.
• Reserve half a cup of the pasta water; then drain the pasta and pour the Marmite mixture over the drained spaghetti, adding a little of the reserved pasta water to amalgamate if required.
• Serve with plenty of grated parmesan.

This recipe comes from Italian cookery writer Anna del Conte, by way of Nigella Lawson. I’m yet to try it – but I think I know what I’m having for tea tonight.

I sit at my kitchen table, slightly flummoxed by the parcel, nibbling on the edge of hard cheese like a disbelieving mouse. The cheese breaks like old butter between my teeth; a harder grain, like salt or a slightly more fermented cheese, emerges to carry tartness to the edge of my tongue. The rind tastes like confident parmesan; the body of the cheese like rambunctious cheddar.

I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this slice of boisterous, enigmatic cheese. But I like it.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said it would be a cinch to make this game terrine; it was twenty past midnight by the time we took our crafted brick of layered meat out of the oven, and pressed it with the weight of three bricks and a cookery book.

I don’t think I’ve ever handled so many different types of animal meat in one evening, as chicken liver, pheasant, duck, pigeon breast and sausage meat each passed through my hands, layered one atop the other with a sprinkling of salt and pepper in between. This morning the kitchen is heavy with the smell of thyme, parsley and rich, mellow meats; this hearty, solid terrine seems like the only thing we should be eating at the turn of winter.