Love Northampton food fair 2019

I think its safe to say that food is one of if not the greatest pleasure in life, looking at it, anticipating it, smelling it, feeling it, talking about it, and of course eating it. In fact I had some great food last night cooked by a Nepalese friend, the food was spicy, with so many different flavours and textures, absolutely wonderful, 

If you have never tried Nepalese food you are missing out,

One of the most popular Nepali dishes Momo is a doughy steamed dumpling originating in Tibet and served with a Nepalese spice dip.

The spice dip my friend served was hot, hot, hot, 

Traditionally stuffed with ground buffalo meat known locally as “buff”, they are now more commonly found filled with goat or chicken, I'm not sure what mine were stuffed with but they were very morish.

They remind very much of Chinese dumplings, I had some very good Chinese dumplings in Melbourne which has a big Chinese quarter, great food, great aroma's and worth trying if you haven't done before.

You can get vegetarian alternatives which have  a variety of finely chopped vegetables including carrot, cabbage and potato.

Many versions of the momo abound, deep-fried andif its your thing dessert momos filled with chocolate. Although eaten as a snack, momo can also be served with a rich broth.


During the day I had wandered along to the Love Northampton food fair which was held in the Guildhall, a visually treat of a building both inside and out, located  right in the centre of the town.

The interior of a building can either make you feel alive and inspired, or bring your mood down, the fabric of the building itself can feel alive and make you feel the same way, invigorated, curious to learn more.

Overlooking proceedings are a rather dour looking Oliver Cromwell, don't know what he would have made of the food and drink, and his old enemy Charles 1st, no doubt his court would have  welcomed the wine, although rose may have been a  step too far even for the King.

​The other person pictured is ???

You could even draw a parallel between dull and uninspiring food and dull and uninspiring buildings, Northampton has got some glorious buildings, it's also got some shockers, the Guildhall is one of the former, 

Even on a wet and dull day like yesterday it's great to walk round the corner from the market and cast your eyes over the carved figures that cover the exterior, and I hope the thing is still standing hundreds of years from now.

Northampton has also got quite a lot of fast food outlets, but to balance that it also has some producers of high quality food and drink, and I'm not saying all fast food is bad, but I think it's important to have variety otherwise everything becomes homogenised.

Generally I think peoples expectations of food and drink is way beyond what it was even 20 years ago, we want quality, we have become obsessed with food, look at any night on the television, food programmes.

To see all the small artizan producers who go out of their way to brew great beers, distilling gin, producing meat and poultry without compromising our health, baking wonderful cakes, biscuits, bread, all this is good.

A few months ago I went out for Sunday lunch at a local pub and on the menu was Northamptonshire cheese, it was some of the best cheese I'd tasted for a very long time, that made the meal memorable for me.

​So onto the food fair.

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If you like me like a nice Rose this is very good,


www.fleurfields.co.uk

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This thing of beauty is a breakfast loaf, I picked this up from Whittlebury Bakeries stall, absolutely gorgeous.

I also picked up some gingerbread houses for a friends children, they loved them, I had a little taste, I loved them too.

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I was hoping to pick some Cobblers Nibble cheese but didn't see their stall yesterday, but here's a link

www.eastlondoncheeseboard.co.uk/product/cobblers-nibble


​And here's another link to a cheesmaker I was completely unaware of -


www.neneviewdairy.co.uk/index.html


www.neneviewdairy.co.uk/local-stockists.html

If you have tried any of the cheeses from Nene Valley Dairy please give me some feedback, I'd like to here anybodies thoughts on the various cheeses they produce.

At this point a shout out to Shop Zero -

www.northamptonchron.co.uk/business/take-a-look-inside-a-new-donation-based-food-shop-which-has-opened-in-northampton-this-week-1-8847499

Picked up these nice fridge magnets from Fridge Street I like them all but I really like the one depicting the bandstand in Abington Park.

The St Crispin Street fail was in full swing while I was in town, but the wet weather had obviously put a lot of people off, and I can't blame them.

I stopped at a stall and got myself a tea and listened to the music being played for the various rides, most of it from the waltzer was early 70's stuff like "young gifted and black" and some Eddy Grant, "Electric Avenue".

Some years back I was coming back from work and got off the train at Castle Station and walked up Gold Street which was full of rides and stalls, because it was evening it bought the town alive, it was really good to see.

I know not everyone thinks its good for the town and maybe yeah its looks a bit tacky, but it livens things up a bit, although looking at the stallholders yesterday you could tell they would rather have been somewhere else, somewhere warm and dry.

I also had a chat with Fitzy on his market stall about the what is going on with the old building that was Chicago's, the scaffolding is still there but apparently the roofers haven't been paid so work has stopped.

A great shame as it would be good if the development really got going, as it is it's just another eyesore, not what we need.

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