Rhubarb rhubarb

I finally achieved a small tick off my 'bucket list' by visiting the Rhubarb Triangle. It's a small (9 sq mile) area between Leeds and Wakefield that is celebrated for growing the tender, sweet, bright pink forced rhubarb. It is grown in long, low, dark, heated sheds and harvested, between January and March, only by candlelight to prevent the stems going green and hard due to photosynthesis. All the work is still done by hand, a back-breaking and labour-intensive process (which explains why it is relatively expensive to buy).

Many gardens and allotments still grow rhubarb. It's technically a vegetable, but used as a fruit. My dad grew it and the stems were thick and green, needing gentle stewing and lots of sugar, but I grew up rather liking the flavour (and the peculiar way the oxalic acid 'coats' your teeth!). The Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb (now an EU protected designation of origin - PDO - like Parma Ham or Champagne) is sought after by top restaurants and stores in the UK and abroad. It's very different from the outdoor kind, having thin stems with a delightful colour, very tender and flavourful.















We visited E Oldroyd and Sons farm. Their website (HERE) has lots of fascinating information about the history, cultivation and uses of rhubarb, a plant native to Siberia (which is why it likes Yorkshire's climate!) We were given a talk and then taken into the rhubarb sheds to look. We had my granddaughters with us, and I have to say they got rather bored as the talk went on for over an hour and was not aimed at children. They were very well-behaved, however, and it is good to give them new experiences.  We bought some stems and I'm going to try gently cooking it in orange juice, as recommended. Yum.

Food, glorious food

Saltaire Festival 2017
The Festival's first weekend has a community feel that increases year on year. Some people open their gardens to visitors and there is a growing trend for 'pop-up' events. They can be anything from record fairs and vintage sales to live music, in people's homes or yards. This year there were a number of food stalls too; there's an enthusiastic 'foodie' movement in the area - gardeners, cooks and food bloggers. A family on Titus Street were selling authentic Spanish paella, cooked on an open fire in a large, traditional pan. I managed to snap a quick photo through the front door. It looked delicious and there was a long queue to sample it.

On Katherine Street, there were next-door neighbours providing food out of their tiny kitchens: one selling soup and a rabbit ragu and the other a range of Portuguese sweets and savouries. Tempting!

Apples

Apples - looked too good to eat.

Fairyfloss

Saltaire Festival 2016 - The longest queues in Roberts Park seemed to be for the candy floss, though maybe that simply reflected the time it takes to twirl one huge ball of the floss on a stick. It is really like magic watching it grow, caught from little wisps of what look like smoke (but are in fact sugar candy) being blown from a machine. It is variously called cotton candy, papa's beard, dragon's beard or fairy floss. In Britain it is generally known as candy floss but the trade name for this seller was Fairy Floss - and it came complete with sparkly sprinkles if you really wanted the extra bling. It's a long time since I tasted any. My vague recollection is that it is a bit like sucking on shards of glass until it softens in your mouth!

Street food

Saltaire Festival 2016 - There are booths set up either side of the entire length of Exhibition Road that sell international street food, confectionery and savoury things like olives and cheese. You can take your pick of dishes cooked in huge shallow pans: paella was on offer here, or you could have had tartiflette (potatoes cooked with reblochon cheese), moules mariniere or a Provencal tomatoey stew that looked pretty good. If you've a sweet tooth... maybe an ice cream, churros dipped in chocolate, massive slabs of chocolate 'rocky road' or a huge pink meringue?

Purple harvest

Another photo assignment for my online photography group .... vegetables. I'm not that fond of turnips; they're pretty tasteless on their own. I thought they'd make a good subject for a photo, though. I love the purple tones and adding the red onion seems to bring the colour out even more. I arranged them on brown paper but a texture layer gave a bit more depth. It gave me pleasure to make something so humble look quite rich.

Confusingly, 'neeps'  - a traditional vegetable in Scotland and the north of England - are actually not turnips at all but the larger, yellow-fleshed swedes. They make up the dish known as 'Haggis, Neeps and Tatties', commonly served on Burns Night in Scotland.

Chocolate!

Also, and perhaps of more interest to this particular 'tourist', I visited Leyburn's chocolate maker: The Little Chocolate Shop. It's not very romantically situated, being on a small business park, but once inside you can watch the chocolate being made by hand - and then buy in the shop, of course.  There are three machines constantly circulating the liquid chocolate (dark, milk and white - shown here). The young man was creating some chocolate sheep (what else, in Wensleydale?!) The factory area is in a kind of central glass cube so it is easy to see what is going on (but limited sight-lines and lots of reflections from the glass make taking photos a challenge).

One

There are some more photos from my holiday to come but I'm interrupting the series, to celebrate that a whole year has passed since my second granddaughter was born. So much has happened in that time and I thank God that all's well. She is adorable (both of them are) - a happy, secure and easy-going little girl. They are settling into their new home in Yorkshire, although there is still plenty to do to get it all how they want it. My daughter found time to make this amazing cake for the birthday party. It's delightful to have them living nearer, so that it's now much easier for the whole family to get together.

I haven't managed a decent picture of either of the girls for ages. The one below was taken by their mum on a recent day out. I love my older granddaughter's expressions when she is looking at her sister - sort of loving and amused at the same time.

Festival food and drink

                                                                                                                                                              Joining the queue for Traditional German Sausages might be the wurst decision you make at the Saltaire Festival.

Joining the queue for a beer could introduce you to a Saltaire Blonde - or you might be more interested in a Triple Chocoholic. The children, meanwhile, will be happy to meet the Aagrah elephant, whilst their parents are probably queuing for an Aagrah curry.

Impressions of Bruges #11

'Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy'.... and so are chips. I don't drink beer, which is a pity as Belgium is famous for its beer and there are reputedly over 500 different varieties to be sampled... but I was happy with the chips, piping hot from a van in the Markt and served with a lavish dollop of rich mayonnaise. When in Bruges, do as the Bruggians do...

Music and cupcakes

There was music at the dragon-boat festival too. This is a player in the Hall Royd Band, well wrapped up against the cold. They cheered everyone with some lively tunes and it's always good to see the bandstand being used by a brass band. I'm not sure what the instrument is; perhaps a euphonium but I find them hard to tell apart from tubas...

If music is the food of love, cupcakes are the food of treats. There were some pretty ones on offer in the food market. It's a good job I can't eat such things. (I have to stick to gluten-free). I'd probably have ballooned to the size of a small elephant if I could eat cake, as I have quite a sweet tooth.

Bradford is twinned with the town of Hamm in Germany, and there was a team from Hamm in the dragon boat race, cheered on by their city's mayor. They did rather well, coming second. Perhaps in honour of that there was also a stall in the market selling traditional German sausages, which smelled very good.

Fish'n'chips

Long before we had Chinese takeaways, curry houses, kebab shops, McDonalds or KFC, the fast food of choice for most Britons was fish and chips: haddock (or cod) deep fried in batter with a large portion of thick-cut chips, often accompanied by a carton of 'mushy' peas, all drenched in plenty of salt and malt vinegar. It used to be a regular Saturday dinner-time (ie: lunchtime!) treat for our family when I was a child. We'd walk down to the nearest 'chippie' and queue, hurrying the treasure home wrapped in greaseproof paper overwrapped with large sheets of newspaper. It was hot and heavy and smelled enticing. We'd hope it hadn't gone cold by the time we got it home, because the batter went soft if you had to reheat it.

When I first came to Yorkshire as a student, I was taken as a treat to Harry Ramsden's fish restaurant in Guiseley. Dining on humble fish and chips (accompanied by bread and butter and huge pots of tea) under beautiful chandeliers, seemed somehow thrilling and different. The restaurant, opened in 1928, thrived for years, a regular stop-off for coach trippers. They even had a resident pianist 'tinkling the ivories' while you dined.

In the 1980s the business was sold and expanded, developing franchise operations in the UK and abroad. By 2011 however, the original Guiseley restaurant had hit trouble and was closed, causing considerable dismay and quite an outcry locally. Happily, it was bought by the Wetherby Whaler group and given a full refurbishment, retaining the opulent feel with wall-to-wall carpets, the 1920s stained glass windows and oak panelling and those glorious chandeliers. They still have a resident pianist playing on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

We had a lunch out from work the other day, to mark a colleague's leaving the team. I can tell you that The Wetherby Whaler's fish and chips are Very Good Indeed! They even do gluten-free batter if you ask, so for the first time for years I was able to enjoy the whole meal and not just pick the fish out from the batter. Yummy - though I was so full afterwards that I didn't need another meal for about three days!

Sheer indulgence

I met friends in Cartmel and we wandered into a coffee shop, just intending to have a drink. Then we spotted the meringues and they looked so wonderful that we all decided to enjoy one! I had a rosewater meringue - pink and tasting of roses, which sounds horrid but was delicious. I could have had ginger or hazelnut too. I tell myself that there is a lot of air in a meringue... (but who am I kidding?)  The reviews on TripAdvisor suggest I am not the only one who rates the meringue - see Cartmel Coffee. It was a really pleasant, modern café too, with a relaxed seating area as well as standard tables, and bookshelves and newspapers to browse if you really wanted to chill out.

Feast

It's a little known fact that the area just south of Bradford - a triangle between Morley, Leeds and Wakefield - is a major rhubarb growing area, celebrated for its Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb (now awarded EC Protected Designation of Origin status like Champagne and Parma ham).  For the past 170 years, rhubarb has been grown here, in long dark sheds that force early growth to produce the delicate pink, sweet stems (see top photo), which are traditionally harvested by candlelight.  I love it, though it is quite expensive - about £2.50 for six stems. The tender forced stems are very different from the much tougher stuff that people grow outside in gardens and allotments.

This association has given rise to an annual Rhubarb Festival in Wakefield, a food festival where you can sample all manner of delights made from rhubarb, from cakes through pickles to alcoholic drinks - as well as lots of other choice local foods. There are cookery demonstrations, real ale, music and morris dancing. Tours of the rhubarb sheds can be arranged too.  It's all good fun and a bright, colourful lift to the spirits in the middle of cold, grey February, often considered to be England's most depressing month. If the horsemeat scandal isn't enough to turn you vegetarian, maybe this colourful veg would.