Next week on the Good Food Channel, Market Kitchen will be featuring the food scene in and around Birmingham, and Loaf is a part of it! During the summer the Market Kitchen team went on the road on it’s ‘Big Adventure’, visiting food hotspots all around Britain and filming chef’s, producers, and individuals with something interesting to say about food from their region. At the beginning of October they visited Birmingham and regular host Matt Tebutt teamed up with local chef Glynn Purnell to tour the regions food highlights. I had the pleasure of welcoming them both to Loaf HQ (aka my house) to chat to them about what I do, and take them on a little foraging foray down the River Rea. It turned out Matt is pretty familiar with foraged ingredients already, but lots of it was new to Glynn. Anyway we went out specifically for horseradish and nettles which we found, and I even got them eating raw nettles! The studio part of it was filmed a couple of weeks ago in London and my mate and local grocer Paul Leverton went down to the studio to give his expert opinion on all the dishes they concocted in the studio. You can catch Paul several times next week at 7pm on Monday-Friday, but I’ll be on the show on Tuesday. Sadly as I don’t have sky and am out anyway at an event i’m not going to get to watch it, can anyone record it for me?!?
Tag archive: birmingham
Butchery: Nose to Tail Lamb
Last night saw another great collaboration with local artisan butcher Steve Rossiter, as Loaf ran it’s first lamb butchery workshop. We started off the evening with a grand tour of the locally reared organic Texel lamb that Steve had brought along, pointing out the familiar and the unfamiliar cuts. Steve then got to work on one side of the lamb, showing us the traditional butchers cuts. Under his expert guidance, he then passed over his knives and saws to the students, who got to work on the other side of the lamb, taking off first the leg, then the breast, chump, loin, rack, shoulder, and finally the neck – all done very skillfully!
We then had a break to eat our starter – chump chops with cannelini beans and salsa verde, washed down with a nice Cote du Rhone. It was back to the butchery soon though as Steve demonstrated how to bone out all of the joints we’d created, giving us lots of tips on knife skills. He then demonstrated stuffing and rolling on the breast of lamb joint (stuffed with a nice dry spiced chickpea stuffing), and taught us all how to tie proper butchers knots. The students then picked the joint they’d like to take home, and stuffed and rolled it themselves. 
Finally we sat down to a beautiful slow cooked neck of lamb curry with basmati rice and cucumber raita. All in all it was a fantastic evening, and I learnt just as much as the students. Steve is an incredibly talented butcher who shares his huge knowledge and passion with gladness and patience. It makes me realise just how important it is to cherish the artisans we have around us, in any area, but especially in food.
Our next Butchery: Nose to Tail Lamb is on the 10th November, 6.30-9.30pm, and there’s still spaces – book now by emailing cookeryschool@loafonline.co.uk
Apple Day Sunday 24th October 11am-3pm Court Lane Allotments, Erdington.
This just in from Erdington artist in residence Eleanor Hoad:
Dell Road Pizza Night Tonight!
Loaf were due to appear at today’s 24 Carrots farmers market in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, serving hot sourdough pizza’s from the mobile wood-fired oven. All was going well, up at 5am to hand-knead 20kg of dough, an hour of cheese grating last night, lots of kindling chopped and ready, oven looking fine. Having borrowed a van from local organic butcher Steve Rossiter, we hooked up the trailer and headed to the JQ at 8am. I drove really carefully, but sadly when we arrived at the market we were greeted by this sorry scene:
After a few moments of confusion, Jane and I had a cup of tea and came up with an idea to turn disaster into adventure…
So for one night only, Loaf will be hosting the first ever* pop-up pizza takeaway restaurant!
Here’s the deal:
Local artisan baker Tom Baker is firing up his wood-fired oven for one night only (Saturday 16th Oct) to offer amazing hot sourdough pizza’s to takeaway tonight.
only £5 for a 9” pizza
(collection only)
Choose from organic Gloucestershire ham and mushroom, or red onion, black olive and basil.
Call Tom on 07811 178272 between 6pm & 10pm with your order & collect 10 minutes later from 7 Dell Road, Cotteridge!
* It might not be the first-ever, but we’ve certainly never heard of one. We’re making history people… 🙂
Soul Food Project unleash new menu
I was excited last week, to be invited to attend the ‘gastro evening’ launch of Soul Food Project’s new menu, the cheffy equivalent of an album launch if you like. Soul Food project occupy the kitchen upstairs at The Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath, and serve up southern-style food to discerning eaters, and drinkers with an appetite. That’s the essence of proper pub food I suppose, you have to attract a few people that would normally head to a restaurant, but maybe want to save a quid or two, but also feed the tipsy reveller who suddenly gets the munchies. The question then, I suppose, is does the Soul Food Project’s new menu hit the mark?
During an enjoyable evening comparing oven temperatures and bakery start times with the smiley Sarah Frost, we were given samples of 7 or 8 dishes off the new menu as we washed it all down with pints of Purity’s finest. The first, and finest of them all, was the Sierra Nevada hush puppies, a moorish deep-fired savoury doughnut made with corn and Sierra Nevada pale ale. Next out came the burgers, chunky locally made beef patties in a sturdy bun with a punchy soul sauce, good stuff. We sampled the consistently good Jambalaya, a great sunburst salad with halloumi and sweet potato, veggie gumbo (I thought gumbo had to have peanuts in it – am I thinking of somehting else?), and SFP’s SFC (southern fried chicken), of course. The thirty-strong crowd were visibly stuffed by this point, but when chef’s Carl and Matt emerge with trays of the famous brownies and stunning churro’s to finish us off, who can turn that down?!
Their repertoire has massively expanded and now fills a glossy A3 menu (complete with photos!), and there are many intriguing dishes that I still want to sample (pork crackling with a bourbon sauce for a starter? yes please!). So have they managed to hit the hungry-boozer/gourmet-diner-on-a-budget balance? I think they pretty much have. The dishes are certainly good value – starters are £3-4 and mains just £5-7. The dishes aren’t refined and showy like a flashy restaurant, they’re hearty, which is how soul food should be, and perfect for fuelling-up for a night out. The resounding thing that struck me though is that there’s no one else really doing this kind of food in Birmingham, so although there’s no smears of chestnut puree or embellishments of pea shoots on the plates, I urge foodies, gourmands, and anyone wanting some honest, original pub grub, to head down and check out the new menu. I know i’ll be returning soon…
Abundance Birmingham
A month or so back I heard on twitter about a new project called Abundance Birmingham. I’d been following the progress of ‘Abundance Sheffield’ for a few years now, so I wondered if these were connected. To my joy I discovered on their website, that Abundance Birmingham is indeed a community fruit distribution project in the vein of the Sheffield project. This is taken directly from the about page:
“Abundance Birmingham is a voluntary run project that collects and distributes soft fruits that grow unharvested around our city on trees and bushes in both public and private spaces.
Fruit is distributed to groups, volunteers and the local community. Damaged fruits are turned into juice, preserves, jams and chutneys. Any money raised is put back into the project to help with running costs. We are also creating a detailed reference map of Birmingham with location and tree information for future harvests.
As part of the project we aim to raise awareness of the great abundance of local tasty and healthy food that is available for everyone and for free!”
It’s great to see this project starting in Birmingham, and Loaf will be offering any support we can to help promote it to a wider audience. If you have a fruit tree in your garden with surplus fruit, or spot one growing wild, let Abundance Birmingham know by emailing abundancebirmingham [at] gmail [dot] com, or tweeting them.
Come Dine With You?
Just received this email from ITV – any Birmingham blokes fancy applying for come dine with me?
Channel 4’s television show ‘Come Dine with Me’ is coming to film episodes in Birmingham this September! We are looking for fun people from all walks of life; so if you are over 18, based in Birmingham and think you are a dab hand in the kitchen get in touch ASAP!!
Casting closes very soon so the sooner you get in touch the greater your chance of getting on the show!!
We’d love to hear from everyone, but are particularly keen to hear from men so do feel free to forward information on to any gentlemen you think might be interested in taking part!
Get in touch via email or phone stating where you’re from and please provide a contact number so that one of the team can get in touch for a chat!
rebecca.dibley@itv.com
0207 157 4655
thanks
The Come Dine With Me Team
A Butchers Apprentice
I just spent an enjoyable hour with Steve Rossiter at his butchers shop in Bournville. Steve showed me around his meat hanging cold rooms, we chatted about the business a bit, and then he proceeded to demonstrate how to take apart a side of lamb. It’s fascinating to watch a craftsman at work, and even though he slowed down for me, he still did it bloomin’ quick! I’m getting really excited about our next collaboration, a Lamb Butchery workshop on the 20th October. I really like working with Steve, and love having the opportunity to put on courses like this for people, mainly because I just want to learn it all myself too! I’ll be writing the course description for the workshop up in the next few days, so stay peeled to the cookery school pages for that. In the meantime, here’s a pic of Steve at work with his meat cleaver splitting a lamb in half:
Sourdough loaves for sale today
I had lots of dough leftover after yesterdays wash-out food festival at Winterbourne Gardens, so I called up my mate Carl who has an enormous wood-fired oven in Stirchley. He fired it up mid-afternoon, and we popped round in the evening to bake the remaining dough, and turn it into these whopping 1kg loaves of sourdough bread. Wander down Dell road in Cotteridge today and you can pick one up for £3, or email tom@loafonline.co.uk to reserve one. Now what to do with all the leftover cheese and ham…
Happy Birthday to us – Loaf is One!
Well, on this day on in 2009, Loaf was officially incorporated with Companies House as Loaf Social Enterprise Ltd. It’s amazing what can happen in a year, although I had (and still have) grand plans for Loaf, I’m still staggered with what we’ve achieved in a year. In the original plan I was going to continue working part-time with the NHS until April 2011 – this happened a year earlier. I’d like to share with you a few pivotal moments as well as some interesting facts to celebrate this auspicious occasion.
19th June 2009 – Tom starts www.loafonline.co.uk as a food blog
13th August 2009 – A board of directors is formed, sworn in, and the company is officially registered with Companies House as a social enterprise (company limited by guarantee)
16th October 2009 – Tom is featured in The Birmingham Post in an excellent feature by Richard McComb. This coverage kicks off a whole load more press coverage in the coming year.
14th November 2009 – Tom attends ‘The Rise of Real Bread’ conference in Oxford, has one too many beers with Dan and Johanna McTiernan from the Handmade Bakery, and plots his exit from the NHS on the train home.
18th November 2009 – Loaf Cookery School launches with the first Handmade Pasta course.
21st November 2009 – Tom runs the first Bread: Back to basics course, soon to become the most popular course at the cookery school.
22nd January 2010 – Tom starts the Community Supported Bakery supplying sourdough bread to 10 subscribers and Capeling & Co.
3rd February 2010 – Loaf provide bread for the Soil Association’s annual conference. Tom gets to meet his bread hero Andrew Whitley, who approves of the bread – phew!
May 2010 – Tom appears in the Virgin Trains onboard magazine and cookery school bookings go through the roof!
3rd July 201o – Loaf launch the third strand of their business – the mobile wood-fired pizza oven at the CoCoMAD festival in Cotteridge park – Tom and team make 180 sourdough pizza’s in six and a half hours.
27th July 2010 – Loaf are involved in launching Stirchley Community Market, a one-of-a-kind local food and crafts market in Birmingham. 36 loaves of bread sell out in 30 mins.
4th August 2010 – Tom appears in the Guardian Society as part of a discussion on the inaugural Stirchley Market and the role of local food in community building.
August 2010 – Tom’s bread courses are so popular that they sell out for the rest of 2010.
Since January 2010 Tom has made approximately 1500 loaves of artisan bread for the community bakery. These were all hand kneaded and baked at home.
Since November 2009, 153 people have attended courses at Loaf Cookery School.
Phew, what a year, thanks to everyone for helping us make it work this year, we couldn’t have done it without all our loyal bread buyers, course students, and of course, Richard Mccomb. A massive thank you as well to my amazing wife Jane Baker of Greensnapper Photography for being so supportive and for allowing her home to be turned into Loaf HQ. Here’s to a second successful year!
Winterbourne Garden’s Outdoor Kitchen – 14th August 10am-6pm
This Saturday Loaf’s traveling pizza oven will be appearing at ‘The Outdoor Kitchen’ at Winterbourne House and Garden. Winterbourne Garden is part of Birmingham University and features seven acres of botanical gardens surrounding a gorgeous Edwardian villa. At the public Outdoor Kitchen event on Saturday you can (taken from their website)…
“Learn from the experts how to grow your own veg, with top tips on looking after your kitchen garden. Watch cooking demonstrations, take part in vegetable garden master classes and meet local food and drink producers. There will be tasting sessions running throughout the day and fruit, veg, cheese, bakery and deli stalls selling treats to take home.”
To find out more about Winterbourne Gardens, visit www.winterbourne.org.uk. Loaf will be serving wood-fired sourdough pizza’s from about 11.30 onwards – should be a great day.
Loaf in the Guardian!
Loaf had the privilege in helping launch and take part in Birmingham’s newest market last week at Stirchley Community Market. The market was a huge success with hundreds of people coming down to check out what was happening and support the fantastic stall holders that were there. Loaf took down 36 loaves of bread which sold out in the first half an hour, but fortunately we were also making wood-fired pizza’s which we sold out of a bit nearer to the end (though I promise we’ll make more next time!!). The place was teeming with journalists too, and the market has had lots of coverage this week, with the Birmingham Press featuring us last Friday, the Birmingham Post today, and the Birmingham Mail tomorrow. Amazingly the first market also made the national newspapers, with freelance journalist Chris Arnot writing a feature in Wednesday 4th August’s Guardian Society. You can read the full article by clicking here. There’ll be more to come hopefully, with a potential feature on BBC WM early next week – we’ll keep you posted!
Quest for the Perfect Balti ends!
Well tonight, the quest for the perfect Balti, which I’ve been documenting on this dedicated blog, officially comes to an end, as I present my findings to a public debate on ‘how the Balti was invented’, at the Midlands Arts Centre. It starts at 7.30 and the full details of the event can be found on this page, but in the meantime, here’s a couple of my slides to whet your appetite:
Stirchley Community Market is Born!
Loaf, Stirchley Happenings, South Birmingham Food Co-op and Birmingham Town Centre Partnerships are proud to bring you Stirchley’s first ever community market in the summer of 2010.
Stirchley Community Market, which launches on Tuesday the 27th July with it’s first market outside Stirchley United Working Mens Club on the Pershore Road from 4-8pm, will feature stalls selling wholefoods, bread, hot curry, wood-fired pizza, artisan preserves, cupcakes, local fruit and vegetables, and local arts and crafts. The market will give the local community, as well as commuters on their way home from work, an opportunity to find out what Stirchley has to offer, meet some excellent food producers and craft makers from within Birmingham, and pick up some tasty groceries for their weekly shop.
Loaf will be there selling wood-fired pizza’s straight out of our mobile pizza oven, and artisan bread.
The market has a dedicated wordpress blog, which will be updated with stall holder info and other details as the first market approaches – check it out at stirchleycommunitymarket.wordpress.com
Soul Food Project – review
I tend to avoid going to pubs for a Sunday roast these days – years of overcooked meat, soggy vegetables, overly salty gravy, and flabby potatoes have left me wishing I’d gone to my mums instead! I suppose not many people actually make a Sunday roast these days, so despite the crap food, I guess these pubs are providing a historo-cultural service at least!
So I must admit that on arriving for my much awaited first meal at the Soul Food Project in Kings Heath’s Hare and Hounds pub, there was a tinge of disappointment to learn that the normal menu had been set aside in favour of Sunday roasts. The disappointment didn’t last long though, as I met Alex from the Soul Food crew at the bar, who recommended the cajun beef roast and gave me a nod and wink concerning desserts!
So the beef was what I had, and I was mightily pleased with my choice. The cajun rub on the joint, which was served deliciously pink as promised, really came through on the outer edges of the beef, and permeated the gravy – it wasn’t overly spicy, but just enough to let you know it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill joint. Accompanying the beef were cooked-to-a-crunch broccoli and carrots, sweeter-than-sweet slow-roasted sweet potatoes, and a generous portion of home cooked yorkshires enveloping a spicy pork stuffing. I said at the time it was one of the best roasts I’ve had in Birmingham, and I still remember it fondly a week later. 
The guys behind Soul Food Project Carl, Alex and Matt, kindly brought us down a sharing plate of their fine desserts, showing off an unctuous carrot cake with thick cream cheese frosting, and my favourite, their tray bake chocolate brownie with vanilla bean ice cream. All round a great sunday roast, a gentle introduction to the Soul Food Project’s southern flavours, and a desire to return mid-week to sample their daily menu – nice one fella’s!