Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival

Despite being a Health Psychologist I specialise in Exercise behaviour (as opposed to healthy eating!), which incidentally means I try to exercise lots and therefore I don't have to skimp on any foodie favourite - or so I tell myself!

I timed my visit to Brighton absolutely perfectly by going the same week as the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink festival, which is now in it's 11th year. There are two times this festival runs each year, one representing the Spring Harvest at Easter, and as I was attending in September, this was the Autumn Harvest. When I looked at the programme online a few weeks prior to visiting I was actually absolutely gutted I wasn't a resident as the activities and various restaurant deals were available for the two weeks prior to the market weekend, so I definitely suggest checking it out if you haven't done before and you live locally.

I woke up on the Saturday morning and headed straight for the arches between the two piers on the Brighton seafront. After a tip off from a Brighton resident, I had my heart set on one place, and that was Jack and Linda Mills' smokehouse. I was informed that this would be the freshest smoked fish I would ever taste, and with that in mind my rubbling stomach and tingling taste buds led the way!



Outside the shop

Upon entering the tiny space I was filled with joy about how passionate this lovely couple were about the freshest seafood and asked for their recommendation, which, as it was breakfast time, ended up being a smoked kipper sandwich...no sauce, just proper butter, in a perfectly crisp tiger bun.



Kipper bun

Whilst the kipper fillet was placed into the griddle pan, I had quick chat with both Jack and Linda who were so lovely, and despite being an absolute institution in Brighton, seemed genuinely grateful for my custom. At £3.20 this was great value for a wonderful juicy bap, and I also thought it was uniquely refreshing being just the bread and the fish, it really made you appreciate the flavour, something you can sometimes loose in the complexity of dishes available nowadays.

Herb stall

Unfortunately the weather was not on our side being very unsettled and freezing cold. Therefore with most of the stalls being outside I have to say I wish i'd brought more layers with me so I could really have taken advantage of all of the wonderful things available. There was a mixure of both produce stalls, informative and interactive tents for both adults and children, the usual live food theatre and also some of the best known brighton restaurants giving mini samplers of the food they have to offer for a small fee.

Brighton Community Food tent

Bread Salad



Tomato and Basil Soup

The Brighton and Hove Food Partnership had a tent which was cooking affordable food, and also educating on reducing food waste in the home. It is a non-profit organisation which works on all aspects of food, delivering community based projects teaching others to cook, educating on healthy eating, weight management and also food growing. I loved this tent, I could really see how this would benefit all over the country, and to make me happy there was lots of free tasting samples which were very tasty too!

 

Savoury Snack stall



Bread Stall

Fresh Seafood

As you can see there was an excellent selection of fresh produce to indulge in, and this is without mentioning the wondeful food stalls, such as meat and seafood wraps, indian curries, spanish paella, and vegetarian tapas. There was even a stall catering to gourmet canine cuisine, with treats such as beetroot flavoured biscuits and doggy popcorn.

 

Canine Cuisine

Whilst I was in Brighton I decided to attend the extremely well reviewed CanTina Supper club (blog post to follow soon), which meant I met with some lovely people, both from Brighton and further afield. Among the new friends I made was Nick Beddows who bought along his excellent sourdough for all of the guests to try. The bread was absolutely delicious, and much to my delight he mentioned he was doing an hour long masterclass during the food market the following day, which I simply couldn't miss!

Explaining the history of sourdough

Nick was very informative throughout our time in the class, and as I recall, this was purposefully done as he wanted us to really understand the background of sourdough and exactly how it works to really get an idea of why it tastes the way it does, and encourage us to make it in the future.

 

Getting our pizza dough out

Teaching us how to knead

We were all given the opportunity to have a go at getting our pizza base ready, by kneading it for a short period of time. This was great, as a complete novice to bread making it was really key I thought, to be able to be hands on in the production process. We made one veggie pizza with homemade tomato sauce, roasted peppers and mushrooms (from the foraging talk which happened just before our session), and a meat one, with smoked chorizo.

Before

The pizza was really tasty, crispy on the crust and had that distinctive sour taste which matched the sweet peppers and smokey chorizo perfectly. I can imagine it would have been even better in a proper pizza oven too as the dough would have been crispy throughout but unfortunately we were in a make shift kitchen and had an oven which didn't get much hotter than 220 degrees!

 

After - Meat Pizza

As you can probably tell, I absolutely loved my day at the Food Market in Brighton. It really was great to see all of the local produce, and restaurants come together, and also the excellent community initiatives Brighton and Hove have to give those less fortunate the opportunity to love and enjoy both growing and cooking food.

 

I recommend this food festival to anyone in the Brighton area, but also those travelling there in the hope of an Indian summer and a little taste of London by the sea, you definitely will not be disapointed.