Stirchley Market 5th July

It’s Stirchley Market time again, love the new poster, see below:

Big Green Food Weekend at Northfield Eco Centre

I’ll be selling some bread this Saturday at Northfield Eco Centre’s Big Green Food Weekend, where they are also celebrating the national ‘Big Lunch’. More details on the flyer below:

New Course: Earth Oven Building Weekend

Just a brief post to notify you of a brand new course that we’re offering this summer which we’ve just advertised on our cookery school pages. Our Earth Oven Building Weekend will take place on the 16th and 17th July, and is a unique opportunity for you to come and learn how to make an earth oven for outdoor cooking and bread making in your own back garden. We’ll be making an oven together over the weekend in the very same style of the oven that we use to run our bread courses and community bakery from. You can see all the details of the course over on this page, and if there is enough demand for the first course we may run a second course this year before the weather turns.

Popstrami round up

I get to do some pretty exciting things these days, and a lot of them I get to call work, which is really a huge pleasure. The latest of these things, and probably the best to date, was ‘Popstrami’, a pop-up NY style kosher deli that I helped to run yesterday in Bournville. It was the brainchild of friend and long-time customer of Loaf Nick Loman, who was inspired by trips to such places on his American travels, and I think just wanted to get himself a decent meat sandwich in Birmingham! The date was set, the venue was changed (twice), the team was assembled, and the recipes were tested, adjusted, re-tested, re-adjusted, re-re-tested, and finally multiplied up to feed the hoards. We all started the day at about 8am – me to bake the bialy’s, Nick to get the meat steaming, and Hannah, Amy, and Mark to turn Leverton and Hall’s into an American Deli. Gordon, the babka-touting barista, swung by my place in his Landy defender and gave me a ride with my rye loaves and bialy’s at about 10am, and we were followed by Lap and his awesome vanilla cheesecakes half an hour later.

We swung open the door at 11.30 and the customers trickled in for the first half hour, sampled the sandwiches and gave us some lovely feedback. Come 12 noon, 3 or 4 people had started to queue to get in, and by 1.30pm the queue stretched to the corner of Mary Vale Road, about 50 people long. We owe you guys a lot for bearing with us, thanks so much for sticking around in the queue – we had to wait for the meat to be suitably steamed so it was warm and tender for you, we didn’t want to rush and serve anything substandard. The feedback remained good all day, despite some customers queuing for 2 hours for a sandwich. The team grew from 5 to 7 to 10 by the end of the day (thanks so much to Mark, Amy, Mike, and Nick’s parents for jumping in head first). The vibes were great with fab American music in the back room (see playlist at the bottom of this post), and the American soda’s going down a treat (Wild Cherry Pepsi was so popular!). We killed the queue at 4.30 as we were running out of food – I even had to run home and grab some more bread to feed the last few people in the queue. We ended, over 180 sandwiches later, at about 5pm with champagne and meat sandwiches for the team. What a flipping day!

A couple of people asked on Twitter for the playlist, so here it is, in full (click to download pdf): popstrami playlist. Or check it out on spotify.

Popstrami, Sunday 13th March

This weekend I’m proudly helping to serve up the best meat sandwiches ever served up in Birmingham, probably. Several months ago one of my bakery customers Nick Loman suggested we have a crack at running a pop-up Jewish New York Deli, ‘just-for-the-hell-of-it’. We kept the idea in the bank for a while, but when a potential venue came up in Stirchley we started baking and brining like nobody’s business in preparation for this weekend. As it happens the venue is now in Bournville, and Nick has enlisted three others onto the team, but we’ve all been perfecting our various recipes in preparation for serving you a perfect meat sandwich, and other accoutrements, on Sunday.

I’ve made several test batches of what I’m calling a New York Deli Rye, and settled on a 20% rye recipe that also includes caraway seed and grated raw onion. I’ve also been trying to create the perfect sized loaf, giving lots of equally sized slices to minimise wastage, and ensure you have a suitably sized bready handle to hold onto on Sunday. This has involved careful shaping and lots of linen tea towels.

This week I’ll be perfecting my bialy recipe (kind of like a bagel without a hole), which’ll be stuffed with lox (cured salmon) come Sunday, and deciding how to pasteurize the sauerkraut that’s fermenting in the utlity room.

We’re calling this crazy event ‘popstrami’, and you can see the when and where below. Hope to see you Sunday, don’t miss it!!

When

Sunday 13th March

11.30am to 6pm

Where

Leverton & Halls Deli and coffee house

218 Mary Vale Rd, Bournville, Birmingham, B30 1PJ

You can check out the full menu and other details at http://popstrami.co.uk

A taste of Cotteridge in Brazil

I had a lovely visit from a fella called Rene last week, a former Birmingham University PhD student who now lives and works in his home city in Brazil. He’s a keen home baker and lives as part of an intentional community trying to reduce their impact on the planet and live more self sufficiently. He’s thinking of setting up a community bakery as part of this, and came to have a chat with me whilst he was over here doing some guest lecturing at the Uni. I packed him off with a copy of Knead to Know, a couple of sourdough recipes, and a jam jar of the starter culture for my Cotteridge Sourdough bread. He’s just got back to Brazil and sent me a great picture of his first Cotteridge sourdough loaf, Brazilian style. I love the fact that there’s a small taste of Cotteridge in Brazil now, and a simple mixture of flour and water can help the birth of a new community bakery thousands of miles away! Good luck Rene…

Taste no more…

On Wednesday the news broke that Marketing Birmingham had decided to wind down the Taste of Birmingham festival which happens every July in Cannon Hill Park. I for one am glad to see the back of it, and it seems I’m not the only one. To be fair I only went once in 2009, before that I couldn’t afford it, and in 2010 I got as far as the gate, and turned back. Although the food I had was undeniably good in 2009, the shiny corporate schmaltz left a rather sour taste in the mouth, and as for the producers area (easily missed, tucked away in an awkward corner), there was barely a Birmingham producer to be seen, perhaps because of the ridiculously high weekend rates to hire a spot. What the festival has done though, is help raise the profile of Birmingham as a rising star in the fine-dining world, and that isn’t a bad thing. I have for years wanted to get my act together and run a fringe festival somewhere nearby at the same time, featuring great small-scale producers, organisations and chefs from in and around Birmingham, but alas I have never got round to it.

Perhaps now I won’t have to. Accompanying the news of Taste’s demise, was the hopeful news of a brand new food festival for Birmingham which will take place in October 2011. Marketing Birmingham are at the reins again, and are promising the festival will “celebrate the city’s diverse gastronomy and ensure visitors experience more of the city’s restaurants and local food and drink producers”. According to Richard Mccomb the festival will be city-centre based, which although a little disappointing for those of us out in the villages, is understandable for the first year of a new thing. Fortunately Marketing Birmingham are encouraging input from the earliest possible stage and have put a suggestions page up on visitbirmingham.com. If you want a food festival that truly reflects Birmingham, I strongly encourage you to have your say – at the very least it gives you the right to have a good moan in October if it’s not what you wanted, but at the most it’s a real opportunity for us to help shape an annual food event we can be proud of.

HAVE YOUR SAY – CLICK HERE

I’ve put my tuppence in – I suggested that we turn the outdoor bullring markets into a street food market in the evenings – taking inspiration from Marrakech’s great Djeema el Fna street food market, we could turn an unused spaced into a vibrant evening destination for great rustic food and entertainment (any snake charmers out there?!). It would both complement and juxtapose the new Spiceal Street developments at the Bullring, and could be an excellent grassroots contribution to the festival. Comments welcome!

Taste no more…

HAVE YOUR SAY – CLICK HERE

Bake a Cake for Cancer Research!

Also includes a cupcake-eating competition, amazing… (click to enlarge)

Soul Food News

Our buddies up at Soul Food Project in Kings Heath sent us over a bit of news, so we’re just passing it on…

Firstly, they have an exciting opening to join their growing team. They’re looking for a Front of House/Marketing assistant, and you can check out all the details on the attached job description: Staff Vacancy – Front Of House Assistant

Secondly, they are throwing one helluva party for Mardi Gras on the 5th March – headlining is Craig Charles coming straight down to the Hare and Hounds after recording his Funk and Soul show for BBC 6 music in Birmingham. There’ll also be DJ sets from Coldrice and Sweat and live music from Whitmo Deans and Atlantic Players. All accompanied by the best cajun food in brum, what’s not to like?

Community Cafe in Stirchley

Stirchley is really putting itself on the map now with lots of cool little things popping up. Here’s the latest:

Turners Austrian wine night

This looks interesting if you’re into you fine food and wine and have a spare ninety five quid (sadly, I don’t):

Turners Restaurant would like to invite you to an evening of fine food and Austrian wine with our special guest Johann Donabaum.

To those who are involved closely in the wine industry it is no suprise that the British appetite for Austrian wine has leapt beyond measure in recent years with sales tripling since 2006. Due to the unique flavour profiles and food friendly nature of these wines people are now catching on to these oft-ignored vinous treasures.

When the opportunity presnted itself back in November to join a vineyard visit with Connolly’s wines to four of Austria’s most highly regarded wine estates, no further encouragement was needed. After meeting with Johann Donabaum I was delighted that he accepted my offer to host a wine maker’s dinner back in Birmingham the following February.

This is a five course dinner from Richard Turner served with five carefully selected fine Austrian wines.

The dinner is priced at 95 pounds per person – spaces are limited, so to avoid disappointment book soon by calling us on 0121 426 4440.

If you would like more information about Johann Donabaum or about the wines of Austria there is a wealth of knowledge at Connolly’s wines 0121 236 92 69.

I hope you can join us on the 16th February for what I am sure will be a memorable night.

James Thewlis

Restaurant Manager.

Turners is located at:

69 High Street

Harborne Birmingham, B17 9NS

Phone: 0121.426.4440

Limited Edition Real Bread Tote Bags for sale!

I’m very excited about our first foray into fashion – we recently commissioned Get a Grip studio to screen print 100 organic and fairtrade tote bags for us with a very special real bread design by The Loop Project – now they are yours to own! The bags are 40x38cm, and have short handles.

If you’d like a bag, you can go to our shop page and pay via paypal or email me to pay in cash in person. – they’re £5 each plus 80p P&P, or if you’re in Birmingham we may be able to arrange collection/delivery. I’ll also be selling them at the next Stirchley Market on the 1st March.

Click the image to enlarge it.

And the winner is…

…Capeling & Co! A huge congratulations to Capeling & Co who have won by a trounce the inaugural Birmingham Independent Food Business of the Year award for 2010. Capeling & Co opened on the trendy York Road in Kings Heath in November 2009, offering something truly unique on Birmingham’s food landscape. Capeling & Co not only offer a fine selection of handmade artisan cheeses from across the UK and Europe, as well as other hard-to-find deli ingredients, but they deliver it with passion and style too. So much passion that they’ll even have run-ins with the British Cheese Board to ensure South Birmingham is eating the best cheddar possible. Their little shop is becoming a haven for foodies because you simply can’t get most of the things they stock without traveling outside of Birmingham. I first visited a couple of weeks after they opened, and have been a regular there ever since as both customer and supplier. They had a great 2010, building slowly, educating the public, reinvesting in the shop, venturing out to markets and events, and sourcing great cheese throughout. They topped off 2010 with a fantastic Christmas and New Year, improving the Christmas cheeseboards of half of South Birmingham seemingly, including mine!

There’s only a handful of businesses in Birmingham that take as much care about their food sourcing as Capeling & Co, and the whole point of this competition is to celebrate those great food businesses and hopefully find out about new one’s that we’re not already aware of. I hope everyone’s enjoyed reading, nominating and voting. I’m personally very excited about what 2011 holds for Birmingham’s grassroots food scene, happy new year!

After taking out duplicate votes the final scores for the top three were:

1st – Capeling and Co – 45 votes

2nd – Kitchen Garden Cafe – 21 votes

3rd – Rossiters Organic Butchers- 14 votes