Food is essential to life.

From nourishment we learn nurturing. We learn to share and so to build family and community relationships and friendships. The word festival comes from the word feast and as such we ask you to take the time to come with us and make your journey of food in Earls Court both an adventure and a celebration of the best producers. Above all let the producers guide you through their offerings; passion is both infectious and requires sharing to satisfy!

Here is a whistle stop tour around some of the highlights of the show...

Grow your own
Time to get your hands in soil, it's not dirty, in fact along with the sun and the rain it's vital to our life on the planet
In his book The Carbon Fields, Graham Harvey puts a compelling case for returning to pasture farming. He argues that most of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere could be returned and ‘trapped’ in the soil by returning to pasture farming. Although changing the farming patterns of a country will take some time, growing our own produce is the first step to this change. Even if only a pot of herbs in a window box we become involved and learn about the soil.
Garden Organic are sponsoring practical demonstrations on all aspects of growing and the soil. From planting and digging up vegetables to worms and composting.

Planting seeds for change was the intention of Seeds of Italy when they sent each G20 Summit leader a pack of Vegetable seeds. The company is an Italian family business founded over 220 years ago .MD Paolo Arrigo’s aim was to draw focus to the need for vegetables to be grown everywhere where there is appropriate space; school grounds, municipal areas, factories etc.
Paolo said: "Seeds still germinate during a crisis and we all need to eat, but an increase in domestic vegetable production and a shift change in government policy is needed to safeguard the future of our children. No part of growing vegetables is bad - the produce is good for you, the plants are good for the environment. To all the leaders on the planet Earth we say ‘what you sow, you reap’."

A Continental Affair

The classic Italian favourite Insalata tricolore – salad with the three colours of the Italian flag can now have a British twist as the ingredients are now home produced. Tomatoes, especially Campari variety from The Tomato Stall have always been a favourite and you can either buy from basil from the Culinary Herb Company or grow your own from Rocket Garden seedlings or from Seeds of Italy
Now Laverstoke Park is making the only mozzarella on these shores to complete the trio! Come and chill out with Petal the Water buffalo who provides the most nutritious milk for the spun and cut cheesed.

While there is no European substitute to a York cured rare breed ham, some intrepid and enterprising folk have been embrasing the continental cure with great success

Trealy Farm Charcuterie folk have been curing in the continental style with great success

Deli Farm Charcuterie has also embraced the European influence and can be seen here at their air drying room

The Garden party, lunch on the lawn, a picnic in the park

Brockleby’s Organic Melton Mowbray Pork Pie is made to a 200-year-old recipe using local ingredients, including organic Saddleback pork raised by farmer Richard Mee, of Hathern, Leicestershire. The crunchy, hot-water pastry is made from flour ground at Whissendine Windmill, close by. a perfect picnic partner is the award winning Hafod cheese from Wales’ longest certified organic dairy farm, Bwlchwernen Fawr and a glass of Tom Olivers Cider!

and to finish how about a nice piece of cake from Winona...

Tea is a quintessential English drink that portrays bygone relationships with the Far East
The standard of teas available at the festival are outstanding, here are a few pictures to wet your appetite

Jasmine Pearls Green Tea is one of the prettiest treasures from the world of tea. It grows in the mountains of southeast China. For more than 100 years, only the finest and youngest leaves have formed the basis for this rarity. While the leaves are not quite dry they are mixed with fresh, delicately smelling jasmine blossoms up to six times, then sieved and rolled by hand into small pearls. When you infuse these pearls in your tea cup, you will see the top two leaves and the bud come to life and you will also see some small ‘hairy down’ on the bud of the leaves - this denotes superb quality and very careful and delicate handling.

The extraordinary flavour of these Jasmine Pearls is due to the time of plucking, the new tea season starts in China in late March/early April (dependent on weather patterns) and it is during the first 4 weeks that the best teas are manufactured. Jasmine Pearls are made from leaves plucked in the first 3 weeks of the new season which coincides with the first fresh Spring bloom of Jasmine flowers, only the most fragrant blossoms are used from bushes known to produce the most fragrant flowers! An extraordinary taste experience!

Real Bread Campaign

With the strains of the Dvorjacs New World Symphony in the background, a boy carries a loaf of bread a cobbled street giving a look and feeling of yesteryear. There is a particular nostalgia invoked by bread, but what we call bread nowadays would be hardly recognisable to folk from whence this sentimental image heralds.

The Real Bread Campaign promotes going to go back to the future by promoting real bread which:-
• must be made of flour, water, yeast (natural or processed) and salt (optional)
• must not contain ‘improvers’, additives or processing aids (including enzymes) of any kind
• may include other natural food ingredients such as nuts, fruits, vegetables and fats, providing these themselves contain no colourings, flavours, emulsifiers, humectants, stabilisers, fillers or additives of any kind
• must not be made only with refined white flour; stone-ground white flour is permissible and higher extraction rate flours are recommended
• must be fermented for a minimum of four hours
• must be mixed, fermented and baked in one continuous operation, i.e. part-baked, bake-off, frozen & re-heated and similar products are not allowed.

Less than 5% of our bread is made this way, find out who is making Real Bread in your area and only shop there.