Sheffield Food Festival treats

Sheffield Food Festival treats

• Monday, 25 May 2015

Afternoon all! 

I hope you are all having a lovely relaxing bank holiday?

On Saturday I popped into Sheffield city centre to have a browse around the Sheffield Food Festival. The festival is into its fifth year and provides local producers and resturanteurs the opportunity to share their products and cooking ideas with people from across the city.

The 2015 festival promised to be tastier than ever before with a full artisan food market and lots of delicious street food traders dotted around the city centre. There was also a festival demo tent in which the professional local chefs were given the opportunity to share their culinary secrets with the public. When i visited the tent Justin from Silversmiths was there with one of his chef's cooking up a rather tasty dish, talking through how to select the right herbs and spices.

I loved spending an hour or so having a peruse around the stalls and seeing what products they had to offer- of course its always a bonus to have a little sample of their tasty treats too!

I am a huge lover of hummus so when I saw that Hummusija had a stall on at the Peace Gardens I had to pop over and try some.

Hummusija try to be as organic as possible- all the vegetables they use to prepare the hummus comes from a local farm and they even pack the hummus in compostable tubs! They swear by soaking their chickpeas for 12 hours and then boiling them before getting down to making the tasty hummus.  

They had three types of hummus on offer- their original hummus, a vibrant beetroot hummus and a coriander and lemon hummus. 

 I opted for the lemon and coriander- I wouldn't normally go for this one as ones I've had from supermarkets in the past have always been really too lemony for my liking but this one delicious- a nice light lemon flavour with a hit of coriander and the texture is just how I like it.. just the right texture between smooth and coarse. 

MMM look at that! I love hummus topped with a bit of Harissa!

We polished half of the tub off last night with some paprika crisps- such a good flavour combo.

After sampling the delicious hummus I needed something sweet so headed to the Oooh Fudge stall- I was drawn in by all the vibrant colours of the fudge and just had to have some! 

Chocolate orange swirl

Cherry Bakewell tart

Raspberry Ripple

Mint Chocolate

  I decided to go for the Cherry Bakewell tart fudge –a smooth cream and butter fudge flavored with almonds and raspberries topped off with whole cherries.

This fudge is so delicious, it really does taste of Cherry Bakewell tart and the texture is really light in comparison to other fudges I’ve had before. The only downside of  the fudge is that it strangely gives me a headaches.. too much sugar I think!

I'm always on the look out for a good indian snack to take my tastebuds back to the 2 months I spent in India a few years back so when i saw the Karkli stall I had to go and try some.

Karkli is Kumar Kolar's take on the chakli,an indian pretzel shaped lentil snack.

These spikey little snacks are made of lentils,rice and chickpeas mixed with spices including coriander,cumin, pepper and turmeric.

I'm chomping on these as I type this post up and OHH these are good!  They aren't too spicy and have  such depth of flavour.

Karkli are homemade by Kumar and are gluten free and vegan. 

If you'd like to try these you can find them at-

Kumar's Facebook page

or visit-

Sheffield Tap

The Greystones

Porterbrook Deli

I also popped along to the Riverford Organic stand in the Peace Gardens to see what they had on offer- I keep saying to the Mr that we waste so much fruit and veg when we buy it every 2 weeks in our shopping that we should think about having a delivery box every other week so we can plan our meals before hand.

Riverford do a number of different veg boxes varying in size and content- for example, the one that I'd choose is the small veg box with less root veg working out at £11.15 per week. You don't have to have it delivered every week if you don't need it and you can swap and change whether you have root veg or fruit depending on what you're planning on cooking that week. 

For me I think this type of delivery would work really well- each week before the boxes are sent out for delivery you can see what you are going to receive which means you can get planning the meals in advance. I hate it when we do our shopping and I buy what seems like a ton of veg only to bin most of it a week later- as the portions of veg in these boxes are smaller it means you are less likely to waste it- who needs a huge bag of carrots that go off within a few days?!

I got talking to the lovely Riverford man and mentioned that I have a blog and he has kindly organised for one of their recipe boxes to be delivered to me later this week! The recipe box contains all the ingredients needed to make 3 meals for 2 people- literally everything you need from the oil and seasoning to the meat. 

Some of the other bits I loved seeing at the festival were-

Birdhouse Tea- a Sheffield based tea company! They create the most delicious concoctions of flavours to jazz up your brew- my faves are Coles Corner and Stawberry lace- check out their Facebook page here. 

OH look at this amazing rainbow cake-this is for sure something i want to create one weekend when I have time!

Hash brownies amazing ice-cream cocktails...

I'd never heard of this company before visiting the food festival and OH my they are good. Basically they make very scrummy alcoholic cocktails with all sorts of sweet treats in them.

I went for the boozy red velvet which contained-

Vodka,red velvet cake,vanilla, chocolate sauce, milk, ice cream topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a huge cube of red velvet cake!

 All in all I had a lovely afternoon full of tasting samples and buying some treats for our bank holiday weekend.. I'd recommend going to the festival next year for sure.. its great to see so many local businesses get the attention they deserve from Sheffield and I love the atmosphere of the city centre when we have stuff like this on. It was great to do some networking with local businesses and its given me a few ideas for future #TheCityGirls events- maybe we should have a food based event and get lots of foodie bloggers to come along!

Did you visit the festival this weekend? 

Tell me some of your fave food companies that i should check out!

XOXOX