Recipes, Food Stories, Food Tips and more

The first ever Suppa Club took place last weekend at the Ironworks in Elsecar Heritage centre, Barnsley. The event is planned to be a monthly occurrence, so we went along to see what food and drink delights we could gorge ourselves on. 

The food stalls were located outside the Ironworks building and there were queues at the vendors despite the bracing cold. 

The range of foods on offer were varied, but not extensive. There were only 5 food vendors to choose from on this occasion, but we hope that this is something that will increase in future Suppa Clubs as the reputation of the event grows. (Fingers crossed)

Here are a few photos to get your taste buds tingling....

Vaso Kitchen Indian Street food (Facebook: @vasokitchenmcr) preparing some impressive Indian cuisine- 

The burger making process by the friendly guys at What’s Your Beef (Facebook: @WhatsYourBeefUK) - The quality of the ingredients makes these beef patties amazingly tasty. -

Canadian style ‘Pioneer’ Poutine provided by Gravy Train (Twitter: @thegtpoutine) accompanied by a Northern Monk craft beer from the Maison Du Biere bar -

Two other vendors provided wood fired pizza and churros, but unfortunately we did not sample their produce (being extremely full after the poutine, which was heavily loaded with toppings and textures).

We have not really focused on the drinks element of the event in this post, but there were 2 bars for craft and standard beers, a gin wagon, a hot drinks vendor and a van selling mulled wine - so plenty on offer to accompany the live music and party vibe of the whole Suppa Club package.

The Ironworks venue is a large space, so there is plenty of scope for expansion of the event. Suppa club takes place over 2 nights, so it would be interesting to see if the clientele varies during the afternoon session on the Saturday. The event is both child and dog friendly, so I’m sure more families attended during the daytime when the ambient temperature and light levels were higher.

We are looking forward to sampling the Suppa Club again next month for their Ginter Wonderland edition. If you are interested the details can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/suppa-club-ginter-wonderland-edition-tickets-71509124717?aff=eand

We found ourselves in London over Halloween, so thought it was a good excuse to try a vampire themed pizzeria we had heard about on the web. Lost Boys Pizza is famous for it’s black pizza bases, and since Lost Boys is one of our favorite films we thought it was worth checking out the decor too.

The restaurant is smaller than we anticipated and very quiet at lunch time (we expected it to be packed with other Halloween tourists) but the waitress was very friendly and attentive. We soon opted for the £5 lunch offer of a slice of pizza and the salad of the week, which is very reasonable - especially for London prices. As northerners we were expecting to have to use the infamous ‘Yorkshire war cry’ when purchasing our lunch in the big smoke, but it shows there are good deals to be had if you know where to look.

I chose the chorizo pizza as part of my meal deal, but I could have opted for plain cheese. The black pizza base fits the theme of the pizzeria and was the interesting oddity of the meal. The salad was cauliflower, kale and pomegranate and I have to admit I would never have ordered that combination off a normal menu in a million years. Despite this it was absolutely delicious - crunchy and tangy, proving to me that I need to be more adventurous with my salad selection in future.

If we had not opted for the lunch deal there are a range of pizzas you can order off the menu with names like ‘coffin dodger; and ‘fangs for the memories’, as well as salads, meatballs and sides. They also offer cocktails and plenty of vegan/vegetarian options.

Another bonus of taking a bite to eat here is the killer 80s soundtrack. I don’t think they played a bum tune all the time we were there. Although the younger member of our party didn’t know some of the classics, it was a pleasure to educate her over lunch offering her insights into the nostalgic film/music treasures of our florescent, cheesy and wonderful youth.

To find out more about Lost Boys Pizza please visit their website at www.lostboyspizza.com

The Cottage Cookbook team headed down to the Flavours Food Festival at Elsecar Heritage Centre last weekend to sample the tasty treats and watch the live cookery demonstrations with Jean-Christophe Novelli & the Bake-off’s Karen Wright.

The two day festival is in its fourth year and we are ashamed to say it is the first time we have ever ventured to the event, despite living within a 3 mile radius of the venue. It has become clear from day's entertainment that we have clearly been missing out. The festival is still quite small compared to other local festivals, such as Huddersfield Food Fest, but it has a kind of charm that makes its size appealing. The cookery demonstrations seem quite intimate and the food stalls were mostly local, so it adds a homely feel to the event.

There is plenty to do for the family, with craft activities for the kids and street food vendors & alcoholic tasters for the adults. Live music was performed on the Sauce Pan stage and local pupils from Horizon school showed off their dancing skills. Hallam FM were on site to entertain the crowd outside in the yard and the Glasswork’s team brought a large digital screen to showcase the architectural animation of the re-imagining of Barnsley town centre. It came across as a celebration of local produce with the main focus on getting the community involved.  

The real highlight of the festival was the live demonstrations, which took place in a pop-up auditorium at the rear of the Ironworks building and were compared by George Akid. We watched Karen Wright make soda bread, Tim Bilton prepare Yorkshire mussels with Jean-Christophe Novelli and the Barnsley College students show-off their Christmas dinner menu. All the demos were of a good standard, but the goose breast served up by the catering students really made us want to invest in a sous vide machine. It was delicious paired with a homemade sausage roll and cranberry sauce. 

As usual at a food festival we spent far too much money, but we have all the ingredients to make an epic Christmas Eve buffet, which is a tradition in our house. We bought charcoal cheese from Kick-Ass Cheeses, Firecracker salami from Shaw’s meats and a universal curry paste from Mr. Hudas. We are currently looking for a good recipe to prepare the hare meat that we purchased and plan to make our own batch of ‘Biscotti Al Burro’ with the Worsbrough Mill flour and semolina we sourced, as the samples on offer at the Miller’s Tea room stall were amazing. 

The Cottage Cookbook team headed down to Kelham Island yesterday to sample a few beers at the Steel City Beer & Cider festival.

With over 250 beers and 50 ciders to try, choosing which tipple to sample next can be quite overwhelming. With so much on offer you need to plan your purchases wisely as even the biggest drinkers out there will only be skimming the surface of all the liquid goodness on offer here. Luckily all the drinks can be purchased in 3rds, so you can maximise your tasting abilities before potentially falling over. Paying the extra 50p for the programme on entry is a good idea, as the tasting notes help you to find out exactly what is on tap and where you can find it. The beers are also colour coded according to type, so it is quite easy to identify all the pale, ruby and stout beers by their signs at the bar. My preference was for the light green markers, as these denoted specialty beers, which offer your palate something a bit different to the norm.

The festival is sprawled over the various buildings and outdoor areas of Kelham Island industrial museum. There is a large marquee in the courtyard, a keykeg bar and an upper hall, where live music is performed in the evenings. It is worth wandering around the site to see all the festival has to offer, as there are stalls selling street food and brewery memorabilia. The Millowners Arms pub is also on site, where Bradfield Brewery are selling a selection of their cask ales.

The KeyKeg bar in the Brearley room had a good selection of keg beers on from breweries including Abbeydale, Saint Mars of the Desert, Left Handed Giant & Wander Beyond. Lost Industry’s Praline Stout had already sold out by Thursday afternoon, so I opted for a Cherry Tonkoko from Brew York. It was probably not wise to start with a 9.5% stout, but having drank the original Tonkoko before, I did not want to miss the chance to sample the cherry edition.

We then took time to wolf down a wood-fired margherita from the Sunshine pizza van. There is quite a selection of food available at the festival including bratwurst, burgers and burritos. Kevins Pies were upstairs with some impressive looking sausage rolls and Oddfellows chocolate had a stall selling a range of sweet delights including scorpion death chocolate.

The bars in the marquee and the upper hall display the beers in alphabetical order by brewery name. This means you have a good chance of hunting down any beer you discover in the programme. The cider bar is also upstairs in the upper hall next to the bottle bar that sells a selection of world beers. You pay for your drinks with vouchers that you purchase from a stall in the marquee. Fortunately, your entry fee includes £5 worth of beer tokens, so you can recoup some of your initial costs. Your beer glass is also refundable and worth £2 if you remember to hand it in on your way out.

We did not visit the River Don steam engine this year, but it is worth a gander if you have not been to the Kelham Island museum before. The engine is operated at set times during the festival and is located in the engine room near the far end of the marquee.

The beers that we tried varied in brilliance, but we managed to get quite a few scored on Untapped (a beer rating app for certified beer geeks). One of the beers we both enjoyed was the sour by Top Rope brewery called Mega Sours: Macho (Raspberry). At only 3.7% it proved that beer does not need to be strong to be packed full of flavour. Other highlights included Chin Chin’s Dead Disco stout, with touches of chilli & chocolate and a 12% bourbon aged imperial stout called Necessary Evil by Thornbridge.

The festival is running until the 19th of October 2019, so there is still time to go down there and see the range of beers for yourselves. We have tried such a small percentage of the available brews, we may have been tempted to return…. But we don’t think our livers would appreciate it!

More details can be found here: steelcitybeerfestival.co.uk