YORK FOOD FESTIVAL

On Thursday 12th August, 7pm, York Food Festival goers had the opportunity to join Yorkshire Venison Farmer Nigel Sampson of Holme Farm and Chef Stephanie Moon of Rudding Park for an amazing cookery class.

But fortunately, you don't have to miss out completely - you can still have the opportunity to enjoy this menu, on Tuesday 21st September, at Stephanie Moon's Dinner in the Mansion House.

We watched Stephanie demonstrate the Venison starter and then the main-course, while she and Nigel explained why Venison is prepared and cooked as it is, and how to keep the meat moist.
We also learned about food presentation and using the plate as a frame to build our food picture on.
We then each made our own starter, which included preparing a raw quail's egg yolk as part of our 'Picture on the plate' and then shared a communal meal of the food cooked.

• Starter: Assiette of Venison :Venison Tarter, Marinated venison salad, and Peppered scorched venison
• Main course: Venison steak with Herb crust, Carrot dauphinoise, summer greens and Rosti potato.
• Dessert: Bailey's and Coffee Meringue Roulade with Hazelnuts and Summer Fruits.

Ronald Smith, pictured right with his starter said, "This has blown me away! The Food was wonderful." While Sarah Waite, who was working beside Ronald said, "I just loved the Venison Tartare - I didn't expect the raw meat to taste so good, it was full of flavour!"

The event highlighted the 2010 Festival's theme “Meet the Yorkshire Food Heroes”. See yorkfoodfestival.com/festival.php?cat=1 for more information.

• The Cooking Rooms is a new cookery school in York offering a range of food and drink experiences for all ages and abilities to the people of Yorkshire and beyond.
• Stephanie Moon, daughter of a Yorkshire farmer, is Consultant Chef at Rudding Park and loves to share her favourite recipes and ideas for wild food in her “Wild Cooks” blog http://wildcook.wordpress.com/ .
• Nigel Sampson is Managing Director of Holme Farm Venison and a farmer who uses the entire animal, in every sense of the word. That is, he makes clothes even from the skin.

A huge thank you to Nigel, Stephanie and Luke for a brilliant evening, where we learned so much, enjoyed a fabulous meal and just had fun!