Well bless my giddy aunt if I didn’t go and manage to shift the lot. Not even the teeniest muffin crumb remains. We raised a fantastic £350 and will be whacking the profits straight over to Amnesty International and Great Ormond Street.

As predicted, the keema lollies were very popular and a great talking point, despite the ribbing I received on Twitter for them.

However the first to go were the spinach rolls, I had the same people coming back again and again for extra bags of cherries and a couple of customers actually stood in front of me and argued over who should 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 it.

There’s something about standing around the middle of London in an apron that’s guaranteed to bring out one’s inner fishwife. I spent most of the day heckling passers-by and generally having a ball. My faith in the British public has been somewhat rejuvenated and I also adored the camaraderie with the other stall holders, the Blitz spirit of putting on a brave face together, and the roll out the barrel mentality of passing around glasses of Prosecco (it was too hot for tea) in the face of it all.

If you’ve been contemplating running a stall, I would say go for it. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing the amazed grins on faces as people take that first bite into a mouthful of something you’ve spent hours slaving over, and then paying you for the privilege.

In retrospect, I should have made double the amount of food and tagged it all a lot higher. We were after all, slap bang in the middle of London, and our main punters were tourists, so I would have got away with double some of those prices. However, I only charged what I would have paid for myself; and I’m a notorious stinge bag. If you’re thinking of setting up stall it’s worth checking out what the competition are selling, working out how much you can make in advance and, of course, having lots and lots of fun.

After riding this crazy culinary wave, today feels like a bit of a come down. After all my regimented planning, and baking and researching, that’s it. It’s all over, I’ve lost my voice and it’s just back to cooking for two… sigh!

Find a world of treats for eating on the streets

More food blogger fun: When 4Food met MsMarmiteLover

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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.

Find a world of treats for eating on the streets

More food blogger fun: When 4Food met MsMarmiteLover

When I hear the word homebrew, it’s impossible to forget my dad’s numerous failed attempts when I was a toddler to put our family name on the real ale map (I haven’t checked although there probably is one). One of his worst efforts turned our house into a battle zone with my mum chasing me out the front door after I knocked over a vat of his ‘finest’ gunk. The kitchen smelt like a John West tuna factory for a week.

So this was a chance for me to have a crack at it myself and I felt pretty damn cocky as I printed off the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe. But the first problem I had was locating some elderflowers. How hard could this be? Unfortunately, all the fields near me were completely elder-less so I was reduced to the less than dignified act of trying to sniff some out.

“Pssst. You got any elderflowers? Hey, hey, keep it quiet man…”
In the end I lucked out as my girlfriend’s mum came up trumps with a big bag of the beauties. I was on my way…

The trip to the hardware shop for equipment was a real experience. I’ve just hit the ripe old age of 31 and I wondered why I’d not spent a Sunday in this haven of delights before now. (Screw you Alton Towers, this is my retreat now.) I marvelled at the array of buckets, gasped at the selection of funnels and glass bottles, and fantasised about brewing up enough to give as gifts to all my friends. I relayed this to my girlfriend and she looked at me like I’d just slapped an orphan. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.

My only hope for the champers was that it would be drinkable. Not tasty. Not even memorable. Just bog standard drinkable. There’s a certain rustic charm to making any food or drink from scratch and the frustrated caveman within me certainly came to the fore as I lashed hot water into the bucket and aggressively mixed it up with the sugar. That animal feeling pretty much evaporated as I scraped the zest of lemon into the mix and tossed the flower-heads around like a culinary version of Morrissey.

I had forgotten to buy any muslin so an old tea towel was used to cover the mix. This brought on a wave of anxiety as my sensible side told me I was already flirting with failure by not following the rulebook. But I was caring enough to check on my baby and add some yeast when it looked exactly the same two days later. When the time came to sieve and decant into the bottles there was a strong but not unpleasant fruity-chemical odour emanating from the bucket, like a packet of Starbursts doused in Lynx Java.

To prevent any explosive ‘incidents’ as experienced by some users of this site, I carefully carried the bottles to my garage, handling them as if they were grenades. Whilst doing this I loudly whistled a happy tune to diffuse any of my on-looking neighbours’ fears that I may actually be a terrorist. Then came the waiting game…

A week is a long time to wait for a drink, especially one you’ve brewed yourself. Despite still having a suspiciously murky green colour to it, the brew smelt and tasted OK – very tangy, sweet and quite thick for a Champagne, but definitely drinkable. Hurrah! Job done! I’ve given a couple of bottles to friends who’ve seemed less than grateful so far, but for a first effort it’s not half bad.

So, I’m off to neck a bottle in the car park – who’s with me?

Try Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe for yourself.

View Sam’s step by step guide to making elderflower Champagne.

I don’t go crazy for food crazes and am not that good at being in the know. I accidently live in a fashionable part of London where even the mini Tesco’s thinks it’s subversive and the local kebab shop doubles as a headquarters for the fashionably pained. ‘I’m not wearing an ironic hat but I still want some griddled meat – deal with it’.

Anyway, it was therefore with some trepidation that I headed out to dinner at MsMarmitelover’s underground restaurant. Would this be a taster of a worthwhile dining revolution or painful fashionistas serving sardonic snacks whilst musing on the concept of food as performance? I took a deep breath and rang the bell.

The door was opened with a smile and we were ushered into a bustling living room beautifully decked out with eclectic crockery and linen table cloths. It felt and looked like a restaurant, if a little intimate and the waiting staff were much friendlier than your average stressed out servers. But as we awaited the first course of our Japanese banquet I was still to be convinced.

The idea of a home restaurant straddles the concepts of home cooking for friends and paid for professional cuisine, without fully adhering to the rules of either. I was sceptical as to whether this could work. I’ll forgive my friends a plate of burnt lasagne because, well, they’re my friends. But when I pay for food I want to be wowed with dishes I couldn’t cook at home. MsMarmitelover had a fine line to walk and, with a complex Japanese-themed menu, that line was looking thin.

First out was kushi katsu – an assortment of skewered veg served with Japanese mayonnaise between soft white bread. Like some ultimate Japanese hangover sandwich it was absolutely delicious. Vegetable tempura, cucumber and wakame salad, salmon sashimi, maki sushi; the food kept coming thicker and faster than my word count will allow, all ending on a high with wasabi meringues.

I was impressed. MsMarmiteLover delivered above and beyond my restaurant level requirements and turned out top notch Japanese cuisine with a subtly eccentric twist. But what really made the evening enjoyable was the camaraderie of the diners, all assembled for their love of food. When the lady herself was released from the kitchen, the room hummed with desperate requests for recipes and jolly banter fuelled by plum wine. You don’t get this from your average night ordering a la carte.

For me the proof of ‘underground restaurants’ was definitely in the eating and I’ll happily admit my preconceptions were wrong.

I’m sure there’s a swathe of pretentious eating opportunities out there where you’ll pay above the odds for substandard fare. And perhaps these will increase as the concept of underground restaurants continues to soar. But what is also out there is a refreshing dining experience where, amid all the doom and gloom of a global recession, you can eat affordable and creative cuisine cooked by accomplished chefs whose pleasure it still is to cook you dinner.

Read 4Food’s Q&A with MsMarmitelover

Images appear courtesy of gastrogeek

a) The toilets and
b) The food.

Part A is really not a suitable topic for this site, or indeed any website (or any conversation) but Part B is one of the great parts of Glastonbury for me.

Whereas most festivals years ago were content to wheel a few battered old burger vans in for the weekend, with the more cosmopolitan amongst us queuing for hours at the oh-so- extravagant noodle truck, these days they’re much better equipped for the gourmet festival goer.

Glastonbury is better than most, with tastes from around the world on offer and all to a pretty high standard. I was pleasantly surprised at the wooden (and biodegradable, Earth-fans) cutlery which makes eating any meal a whole lot easier that using your fingers, caveman-style.

But that’s not to say there isn’t an incident or two along the way. One of my most desperate moments as an adult was in 2005 when an overnight deluge of rain had transformed the whole site into a mud bath not seen since The Battle of The Somme. As we trudged past the floating Portaloos, and the girl paddling away in a canoe (what kind of determined pessimist brings a canoe to a festival?!?), the skies opened again so we took shelter in the nearest bar. Half the punters in the South West also had the same idea so it was a little cramped to say the least as I ordered my breakfast baguette.

As the roof leaked rainwater down the back of my neck I found my usual chirpy demeanour being compromised by the foolhardy decision from the staff to include not only sausage and bacon in my open bread roll, but also a runny egg, sloppy mushrooms, and baked beans. Baked beans! In a sandwich!

I was hungry, wet, and half-cut from the night before so my anger subsided as I tried to eat this puzzling creation, moving the pieces around like some savoury Rubik’s Cube. First my friends, and then the wider public began to take an unnatural interest in my plight, as schadenfreude kicked in and everyone found a victim worse off than themselves.

As the wet sausage plopped out of the baguette and into my crotch, log-flume style, I wished I’d brought my own butties.

My dad has never been bothered with Father’s Day. Is any father? I love my dad but it definitely takes a back seat to Mother’s Day and even comes beneath the, quite frankly meaningless, Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on my List of Important Events.

I used to get my old man a Yorkie and a four pack of John Smith’s, which always led to an embarrassing exchange of firm handshakes in the hallway and an agreement that; ‘It’s all a load of commercial shite this. But thanks anyway son,’ as he cracked open the first can before I could even shut the front door.

He was certainly much happier with this than when I insisted on taking him out for a ‘proper meal’ last year which, due to his obdurate eating habits, was a speedy lasagne in the mighty Wetherspoon’s round the corner.

I like Wetherspoon’s. Our local establishment banned smoking long before the 2007 ban, didn’t play music and frowned upon swearing. Despite this making it sound more like a funky library than a boozer, it still attracted the same salt-of-the-earth punters as before.

As my father and I placed our order and sat down for the worryingly short wait for our food to arrive, we looked around at the sea of characters surrounding us. I felt like I was in the bar on Star Wars. The food was plopped down onto our crumb-ridden table and I overheard one old geezer ask his mate how his cyst was. Lovely.

I had dinner with my folks last week and foolishly suggested I take him out again this year. My dad almost choked on his credit-crunch special corned beef bourguignon.

Read more Father’s Day memories

Show us your foodie ideas to tell dad you love him

I love weddings. The dressing up, the all-day drinking, the bitchy comments about the bridesmaids… I love it all. I seem to be reaching a point in my life now where I’ve got stag nights and weddings coming out of my ears and it’s depressing. This is amplified when close friends talk about this truly magical wedding day experience of theirs when all I have in comparison is a front row seat at a Prodigy gig in 1998.

I was in Sorrento, Italy recently for a friend’s wedding and couldn’t help notice the difference attitudes that the Italians had at the reception.

Even towards the end of the night the men were all still immaculately dressed and, despite a concerted effort, I couldn’t find one male with his tie wrapped round his inebriated forehead. That was probably a result of the guys sipping espressos instead of Carlsberg, and all greeting the groom with a delightfully camp wave rather than a string of ‘friendly’ obscenities.

When the buffet was opened there was none of the January-sales-style-borderline-queue-violence-hysterics that you get at most British weddings. (I use the word ‘buffet’ with some reluctance as it’s a word that dredges up soiled memories of crusty vol-au-vonts and hairy sandwiches. There isn’t a more depressing situation than arguing with an angry pensioner over the last chicken leg. And losing.)

Nor was there the wanton desire to tactically pile high the food like some horrifically edible Jenga tower, for fear of others taking the spoils.

“This second plate’s for our Julie,” when we all know Julie went home an hour ago.

Instead these Italian revellers swaggered past the mountains of gnocchi and picked and poked their way through a sensible amount of the beautiful food on offer. Even this couldn’t stop my inherent British buffet-greed from coming to the surface as I smuggled pasta underneath strategically placed bread, retiring to a safe corner of the room to scoff my winnings.

Just goes to prove, you can take the boy out of Britain, but you can’t stop him from being a greedy pig.

Get prepped for the season of meringues and wedding cake. Read up on when wedding proposals in restaurants go wrong and DIY wedding buffets for the credit crunching bride.

I saw a sign in Pizza Hut this week saying, ‘Mother’s Day bookings now being taken’. Hardly the best way to show the person responsible for your very existence your appreciation is it? With a deep pan Meat Feast and an all-you-can-eat salad bar? (Actually, they do a nice salad bar in there, but still…)

This reminded me of perhaps the only time I’ve ever made a fuss of my dear old mum at this time of year, because as she always says, ‘Every day should be Mother’s Day’. (In theory I agree, but surely with nation-wide obesity on the rise, the last thing we need is a daily fix of Chocolate Oranges.)

I intended to take my mum out years ago and had booked this fancy restaurant in a nearby village that everyone was raving about. “Ooh, the black pudding is to die for!” one friend had boldly claimed, which I always thought was an unusual expression, as I’d never heard about anyone giving up their life for a dish consisting of mainly blood. (And surely the story of the Black Pudding Martyrs would be an important part of the curriculum?)

So the table was booked long in advance, with flowers and all the trimmings awaiting our arrival. As we drove across the country roads towards this haven of delights that awaited us, I felt that just for once, I was the son my mother had always wanted.

Then we saw the massive ‘CLOSED DOWN AWAITING INSPECTION’ sign that popped up on the horizon, and the day was ruined.

Disappointment kicked in first, followed by some rather choice language from my (increasingly less) dear old mother. We tried in vain to find somewhere else to salvage the afternoon but it was impossible, and I didn’t help matters by magically recreating that special feeling of panic normally reserved by men for Christmas Eve in the John Lewis perfume department.

Still, we were out, we were hungry, and suddenly The Colonel was calling. A KFC drive-through was the furthest thing from our minds earlier that Sunday afternoon, but as we scoffed our way through a family bucket (what better way to bond?) in my battle-weary Fiesta, I looked around the car park and saw we weren’t the only ones in this predicament.

Proof that Mother’s Day can be finger-lickin’ good.

Not keen on the restaurant route? Bake your mum a cake

As an adult I’ve always felt pressured to make an effort for Valentine’s Day meals, but as a fresh-faced 18 year old I wasn’t so fussy. Whereas some folk say it with flowers, I was more likely to say it with flour.

At the time I was plying my trade in a distinctly second-rate heavy metal band (not a good start) and on 14th February 1997 we were off to London’s LA2 to play at the romantically titled ‘St Valentines Day Massacre’ sponsored by the equally charming music mag Metal Hammer.

I was 18, bubbling full of hormones and this was my chance to impress my first ‘proper’ girlfriend with a morning Valentine’s gesture that only Shelley and Keats would truly understand. (I’d had a girlfriend the year before but we’d severed ties after she refused to let me use the chocolate body paint she’d bought as a Valentines gift. I ended up eating it on toast on my own like Nutella – how erotic.)

As we were leaving for the Big Smoke at 9am, I hastily arranged a romantic Valentine’s breakfast for my loved one and I… at Little Chef for an hour before. Yes, this quintessential British roadside institution was to be our very own Paris…

The conversation was excited, the food was greasy, and the damp condensation dripped off the window onto my jumper. There was a slightly older couple on the table next to us with the strongest Scouse accents in the world. Their declarations of love for each other showered us in saliva and bits of chewed food and it was only the laminated menus that kept our food safe.

But I thank you Little Chef, for that perfect Valentine’s Day full English with extra bacon and a side order of French toast. The coffee was good too. We split up a week later…

Peruse more Valentine’s tips, techniques and recipes on 4Food.