Throughout spring and summer Britain’s food bloggers have been setting up a stall at Covent Garden’s food market to try their hand at feeding the masses. 4Food caught up with self-titled gastrogeek, Rejina Sabur, on the eve of her big feed debut…
What a magnificent blur of caramel-salting, muffin-mixing and erm, wooden lolly stick sourcing my life’s become. My kitchen increasingly resembles a bomb site and I’ve devoted an intensive five hours of my life to answering searching questions about hazard analysis and listeria. I’m the proud owner of a Food Safety and Hygiene Level 2 certificate and what I don’t know about napkins and disposable gloves ain’t worth knowing. When I merrily signed up for the UKFBA Covent Garden Real Food Stall earlier this year I had no idea August 13th would come around quite so soon, but upon me it looms and quite frankly I’m giddy with excitement.
There’s a lot more to running a food stall than knocking up a few fancy butties. I’ve enlisted fellow food blogger Scandilicious to share and we’ve roughly divvied up into sweet (her) and savoury (moi). I’ve factored in the type of crowd we’ll be punting to (mainly office workers/tourists) worked out pricings and pain-stakingly scribed out ingredients labels. Then there’s the presentation – hours spent pondering stall size and how our groaning table of goodies will appear from every bountiful angle.
Food-wise I’ve gone for quirky and seasonal whilst ensuring that the portable luncheon factor is high. So, between 12- 8pm tomorrow I’ll be flogging spinach and Coolea rolls, a Salcombe crab, saffron and broad bean quiche (using fresh, hand-picked brown meat), Ottolenghi’s salted caramel and macadamia nut cheesecake and a savoury feta and olive cheesecake – perfect summer time grub all divided into take-away friendly wodges.
There’ll be packets of ginger chocolate-coated cherries (a doddle to make) and as part of my anti-cupcake backlash I’ll be serving up hot smoked salmon and chive muffins, and Gruyere, sage and spring onion muffins.
I’ll also be showcasing my keema lollipops. These were inspired whilst watching “There’s Something About Mary” on Film4 the other night. At one point Mary laments the veritable dearth of meat snacks on sticks and it struck me how very perfect it would be to have a spicy, lamby treat in pastry-coated lolly form. I reckon I’m on to a winner with these little hotties.
As this is all about the culinary-love, I also thought it would be nice to donate to charity so will be slipping any profits over to Amnesty International.
Right, the muffins have risen, the quiche has been sliced – let the trading begin!
Rejina’s tips for ginger chocolate-coated cherries
1) Whack on Channel 4 news
2) Melt a bar of ginger chocolate
3) Dip in cherries.
4) Chortle at Jon Snow’s tie.
5) Leave to set overnight. Seemples.
Comments
[...] Channel 4 food published it here: [...]
“Chortle at Jon Snow’s tie.” That’s gold-dust. Am going to try out your stall on my lunch break.
[...] You can read more about Gastro Geek’s stall on the Channel 4 website here. [...]
[...] be entitled to the last piece of salted caramel and macadamia nut cheesecake. Smashing! Despite my pre-stall whining and mewling about aching feet I absolutely loved [...]
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