Chorlton Green Farmers' Market

Following the success of the Chorlton Green Farmers' Markets in the run-up to Christmas, when Cracking Good Food ran a pop-up Cooks On The Hop soup kitchen to warm the cockles, the Horse & Jockey team have organised another outing for the new year!

The next market takes place outside the pub on Chorlton Green on Saturday (29 January), between 11am and 5pm, with stallholders selling plenty of local and ethical fayre: free range eggs, organic butter, artisan cheeses from Cheshire and Lancashire, British farm reared and rare breed meat, fresh sustainable fish, homemade cakes and biscuits, local chutneys and jams, and plenty more!

Soup kitchen

On Thursday 9 December, the second Christmas Farmers' Market was held on Chorlton Green, outside the Horse & Jockey. Cracking Good Food was there to warm up the chilly shoppers with a smashing seasonal soup. We dished up an unusual but ultra-tasty apple and parsnip broth, which went down a treat on the dark, damp evening.

This video clip sees Cracking Good Food's Kath and Adele interviewed by local resident Bernard Leach at the Christmas Farmers' Market about the seasonal soup and the next round of Cracking Good classes, running in the New Year. There's plenty to choose from, so why not get yourself, your friends or your family vouchers to put towards one of the three-hour sessions? Just email fiona@crackinggoodfood.org or call 0845 652 2572.

We also have photos from the Christmas Market on our Facebook page. All you need to do is click here to go straight to the relevant album. Remember to tag yourself if you're in any of the pictures and click "like" if you saw us manning our stall!

Soup kitchen special

This Thursday sees the second Christmas Market on Chorlton Green, organised by the folk at the Horse & Jockey and featuring local farmers and independent producers (more details here).


Cracking Good Food's Adele and Kath will be braving the cold snap at the Farmers Market from 4pm until 9pm to set up a special Cooks On The Hop soup kitchen, dishing up piping hot broth to warm the cockles. This week, they're offering seasonal parsnip and apple soup, and as well as being able to give this unusual but delicious flavour a try, you'll be able to pick up a recipe sheet to recreate it at home.

Also available on the stall will be Cracking Good Food vouchers - the perfect Christmas gift for the food lover in your life! Our vouchers are available at various values and are redeemable as full or part payment against any of the cooking sessions in 2011 (vouchers are valid for one year from date of purchase).

If you can't make it down on Thursday, you can still buy vouchers by...

* emailing fiona@crackinggoodfood.org
* calling 0845 652 2572
* logging onto www.crackinggoodfood.org
* popping into Hickson & Black’s on Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton

From Plot to Pot

Join Cracking Good Food and our friends Glebelands City Growers tomorrow in Chorlton Library for a hands-on session as part of Chorlton Book Festival. Learn how to cook home-grown produce supplied by local allotments, then borrow some books to help you get started! Free family event, Chorlton Library, Manchester Road, M21 9PN, Sunday 21 November, 1-3 pm; more on the Book Festival in this online brochure, courtesy The Manchester Lit List.

U Decide

The U Decide funding meeting is tomorrow (Thursday 4 November), from 6.15pm to 8.30pm at Chorlton Leisure Centre. Be there if you want to help decide which local community projects get funded to benefit the Chorlton area - up for well-needed cash are Chorlton's Big Green Festival, which was where Cracking Good Food officially launched earlier this year, and Chorlton Arts Festival, where CGF held a Cooks On The Hop over the summer. After an introduction from each project, everyone present gets to cast their vote (click on the poster above for more details).

Fresh air, fresh food

So remember a couple of blog posts ago, we were egging you on to sign up for market garden goodness? Well, if you did, well done you! And if you didn't, what a day you missed!


It was an amazing and truly inspirational day, and, alongside Adam, Charlotte, Ed and Sally (wearing the aprons), who run coop growers Glebelands, we picked all the ingredients there and then fresh from the market garden. Above are the gorgeous yellow courgette flowers we made fritters from.


We then cooked (and ate): spicy courgette bhajis (see below); fried courgette flowers in tempura batter; basil and cashew pesto; tabbouleh, and squash and kale soup. Yum!

GUEST BLOG: Causing a stir!

By guest blogger AVRIL POVAH


On Tuesday evening, we set up our stall once again at Buckthorn House on Nell Lane in Chorlton to give the residents in the area a hands-on taster of how easy, cheap and delicious home cooking can be. Cooking Leader Kim demonstrated how to make a simple butternut squash risotto: a great rescue meal (especially at this time of year, when squashes are just coming into season) and very nutritious, being a good source of iron.


Making her own vegetable stock, Kim produced a natural juice from fennel, carrots, leeks and bay leaves to feed the risotto with. The secret to risotto is in the stirring, massaging the stock into all the ingredients to slowly release the starch from the Italian Arborio risotto rice (easily bought from supermarkets and places like Unicorn Grocery). After a final squeeze of lemon, a dollop of plain yoghurt and some fresh oregano leaves, this well-balanced, one-pot meal was devoured by everyone who stopped by to see what was going on.

The great outdoors

After having to cancel our Cooks On The Hop at Plover Terrace on Tuesday 17 August, we were really worried when it was incredibly windy with torrential rain the day before our rescheduled second Hop on Tuesday 24 August. We even resorted to borrowing an ultra-strong gazebo from the local police station for more shelter - just as well, as ours was blown over in a particularly strong gust!

Still, at least the rain held off and Cracking Cook Avril managed to dish up loads more of our by now famous homemade pasta sauces, hopefully providing inspiration for people to give it a go for themselves. Healthier and loads cheaper than from a jar - what's not to like?


Tina Murphy, Customer Involvement Officer for Southway Housing Trust, which manages many of the properties on Arrowfield Road Estate, popped along to see what we were up to. She dropped us an email afterwards to let us know how enjoyable and useful she found it.

"I attended the cooking session recently organised by Cracking Good Food on Arrowfield Road Estate, and I was amazed by how easy it is to create such wonderful tasty food with such little effort or expense. The event was very well organised and the methods of cooking were very well explained by Avril. She knows her stuff! I can highly recommend that you get yourself to one of these events. I'm looking forward to the next event where pizza is on the menu."


The pizza-making session took place on Tuesday (31 August), a week later. You can see more photos from the day on our Facebook page. It was (finally!) glorious weather when residents of the Estate came down to the community allotment run by Action For Sustainable Living. Everyone got stuck in making pizza bases from scratch, kneading and rolling out the dough, then adding tasty homemade tomato sauce and wholesome veg picked straight off the plants on the plot. The pizzas were then baked in the special cob oven that was built in 2008 and served with a freshly harvested salad. Result: smiles all round!

Hop to it!

The next round of Cracking Good Food cookery classes gets underway on Saturday 11 September, and the first six weeks' sessions will be run in conjunction with Unicorn Grocery and feature various Unicorn members of staff who are also Cracking Cooks.


To kick things off, Kath (pictured) will be leading a Cooks On The Hop special outside Unicorn between noon and 4pm this Saturday (4 September). Kath will be working wonders with a wok and serving up samples of stir-fry to try. Come along and taste her heady mix of spices and seasonal vegetables, and sign up for some or all of our Cracking Good classes while you're there!

Another food forage special!

On Sunday 12 September, Cracking Good Food are running another forage special! This time, we have arranged a hop at the pioneering Glebelands City Growers on the banks of the River Mersey in Sale. Glebelands operates under Soil Association organic standards to grow healthy fruit and veg without the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides, and sells its produce within five miles of the site to minimise carbon emissions: you can buy Glebelands grown vegetables in Chorlton's Unicorn Grocery, for example.


Cracking Good Food and Glebelands are inviting you over to forage, cook and eat fresh seasonal produce from the flourishing market garden. The hop takes place between 2pm and 5pm at Glebelands City Growers (between 94 and 96 Glebelands Road, Sale, M33 6JR): please come by bus or cycle if you can. We will ask for a small contribution on the day, but BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL! See our website for booking information.

GUEST BLOG: Hopping in the great outdoors

By guest blogger VIC MASTERS

The weather managed to hold out long enough last Thursday for Cracking Good Food to join forces with Bite to offer two wonderful cooking sessions on the Nell Lane Allotments next to Southern Cemetery.


Bite is a Hulme-based project which works with people who have experience of mental health issues and its aim is to improve the health and wellbeing of people in Manchester through the activities that take place around growing, cooking and eating food. Bite grows food on allotments and community gardens and uses this produce in cafes at day centres and hospitals to provide healthy, affordable meals.

The sessions were led by Nicola, who, as well as being a cook, co-runs Abundance, an organisation that redistributes spare fruit and veg from gardens and allotments to people and organisations who need it. Nicola was assited by regular Cracking Cook Kath (pictured below, mid flow!), who is a chef of many years and works behind the deli at Unicorn Grocery, which supports the Abundance project.


We got cracking gathering together ingredients from the allotment plot. We used delicious freshly picked produce such as sweet beetroot to make a mouthwatering beetroot and lime salad, and Nicola explained how beetroots are an excellent source of folic acid and a very good source of fibre. The salad was a lovely accompaniment to our Spanish bocadillos, a kind of sandwich packed with tasty flavours and vitamins.

It’s amazing what can be cooked outdoors with a few simple, seasonal ingredients. And what’s more, the recipes we made were really healthy too and tasted so great, especially sat in the sunshine! If you fancy cooking and eating your five-a-day alfresco, check out the Cracking Good Food website for recipe ideas and to find out what's in season, and pick up handy tips for healthy eating here.

Rain stops play!

Unfortunately, this week's Cooks On The Hop at Plover Terrace had to be cancelled due to Manchester's inclement weather. However, don't worry - we'll be back on Tuesday 24 August between 5pm and 8pm, dishing up healthy homemade grub to show you how quick, easy, cheap, tasty and fun cooking from scratch can be.

And the following week, on Tuesday 31 August, the Hop will be down on the Lost Plot community allotment on Nell Lane Allotments, cooking up fresh ingredients plucked from the ground and picked from bushes and canes there and then!

GUEST BLOG: Plover Terrace Hop

By guest blogger AVRIL POVAH

Cooking on a windy field in the middle of Southway Housing's estate just off Nell Lane seemed a tall order, but once me and fellow Cracking Cook Lorenzo had worked out how to erect a gazebo in the gusts, we were away! (Never take us away camping!)

On the menu on Tuesday 3 August was pasta and homemade sauces, full of all those Mediterranean flavours of fresh garlic, purple and green basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil and plump fresh red tomatoes. There were lots of children around that evening, especially after we set up at 5pm; and while we set about boiling and chopping, Adele (our children's entertainment manager) kept them amused with a nutrition game explaining the Eat Well Plate and what foods to eat to follow a balanced diet.


It's so easy to make your own tomato-based Italian sauce for pasta and so much cheaper than buying ready made. Fresh sauces just taste so much nicer too, especially alfresco. We prepared different types of pasta, including wholewheat, and we added fresh broccoli to one of our sauces to get those extra vitamins. Everyone lapped up the tasters we provided and we couldn't cook it quickly enough, especially as we served up around their teatime!

The Hop at Plover Terrace was organised as part of the Lost Plot project on Nell Lane Allotments and funded through Action For Sustainable Living. You can see more photos of the Plover Terrace Hop on our Facebook page!

Cooking session #6: Mexican Tapas with Fernanda

Cracking Cook Fernanda Alvarez (pictured on the right, during one of our training sessions led by Rob) works at Unicorn Grocery, where she cooks up the fabulous creations for sale from the deli counter.


Fernanda will be leading two sessions teaching you how to make delicious Mexican delicacies from scratch using fresh flavourful ingredients, from tacos and tortillas to re-fried bean, salsa and guacamole dips. The first class is on Tuesday 13 July at Chorlton High (6-9pm) while the second takes place on Saturday 17 July at St Ninian's (11am-2pm).

All details on the June and July sessions, which cost just £15 for three hours (£10 concessions), are on the Cracking Good Food website here.

**On Saturday 4 September, Unicorn will be the location for one of our famous Cooks On The Hop events. Pop it in your diary and make sure you say hello between noon and 4pm!**

GUEST BLOG: Volunteering with the picnic in the park

By guest blogger MARY LUNDQUIST

On Saturday 5 June, Cracking Good Food set up in Manley Park, Whalley Range, for a wonderful community picnic in honour of World Environment Day. Various other local groups were involved, including Manchester Friends Of The Earth, Eat Your Streets, Adopt A Tree, Celebrate Your Alley Gates and Meat Free Monday.

Kim from the the Cafe at Islington Mill was the lead chef and, together with Adele, coordinated the cooking of four main dishes. On the menu was Egyptian Falafels (pictured below), Turkish Couscous, Butterbean and Sun-dried Tomato Pate (also pictured below), and Warm Potato Salad.


Kim picked up most of the ingredients at independently owned shops, which were very local (just across the street!), and Kat from Friends of the Earth and I pitched in with setting up the stall. The cooking was a real group effort and the work of many helping hands, and it was wonderful to see so many people getting involved, making for loads of cooking and conversation. We even sent everyone off with recipes, so they can make it all again at home!

All those who participated had a great time making then eating the food, and everything was delicious. People also came with their own lunch, and some provided music, and soon we had a grand picnic spread out over the grass. Even the sun came out!


There are loads more photographs from the day on our Facebook page.

Mary Lundquist is a Cracking Good Food volunteer. As well as the picnic in the park, Mary has helped with the Chorlton Arts Festival Street Feast and will be on hand to assist during our second session for the general public this Saturday. If you would like to volunteer to help with Cracking Good Food events, email adele@crackinggoodfood.org

Festival fever!

On Sunday, Chorlton Arts Festival comes to a close with a huge Street Feast from 5pm-7.30pm in Chorlton Precinct. There will be tables in a big long line down the middle and a cracking good community atmosphere is guaranteed! Everyone is encouraged to bring decorations to make their table the best dressed and it would be great to see as many people as possible there donning their best bib and tucker. Cracking Cooks Rob, Kath and Vic will be manning the Cracking Good Food stall, purveying their wares alongside other local food and drink vendors, and performers will be providing entertainment for the troops!


It's a free event, but you need to get tickets in advance - you can pick these up from the Festival Hub in the Precinct (open Wed-Sat 10am-4pm), by calling the ticket hotline on 07794 860305 or by emailing tickets@chorltonartsfestival.com

GUEST BLOG: Seeing the Cooks On The Hop in action

By guest blogger SARAH-CLARE CONLON

Having been helping out Cracking Good Food with their press and PR for a while now, I was beginning to feel a tad guilty that I hadn't yet managed to see the Cooks On The Hop properly in full swing. Yes, I was there for the launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival, and even put my name down for a session, but demand was so great on the day that I had to step aside so non-Cracking Good Foodies could have a go. Not that I'm complaining - I want as many people as possible to try out the fantastic stop'n'chop idea!


When Adele told me that the Cooks On The Hop gazebo was going to be rocking up outside nice new Barlow Moor Road deli Hickson & Black's today, the date was straight in my diary. Obviously for promotional purposes (I hope you're keeping up with events on our new Facebook page, BTW!), but also so I could finally get a piece of the action.


Well, I know I'm biased, but the wait was certainly worth it! When I rolled up, Steve (the Black of Hickson & Black's) was in full swing serving up perfect pasta on paper plates. It was less about getting hands on and more about taste testing, but trying to decide which I preferred between the Putanesca and the All'amatriciana was tricky stuff, I can tell you. The smoky pancetta gave a lovely depth to the All'amatriciana, while you could taste the freshness in the subtly spicy Putanesca. (In the end, my favourite was the Putanesca - absolutely chockablock with flavour.)


If you were also lucky enough to snaffle a sample today, great news, because Steve's colleague Jay (as in Hickson) will be running two workshops for Cracking Good Food in July. All the details about the Pasta Plus courses are on the Cracking Good Food website, along with details of all the new sessions running in June and July. Hey - maybe I'll see you there!

Sarah-Clare Conlon is a writer, editor and press officer who lives in Chorlton and does PR for Cracking Good Food. You can read her award-winning blog about arts and culture here.

Celebrating good food!

On bank holiday Monday (3 May), Whalley Range played host to the Celebrate Festival at St Margaret's Primary School on Withington Road. Events kicked off at noon and ran right through the afternoon until 6pm. Cracking Good Food was there with the Cooks On The Hop gazebo and we had fantastic fun helping festival-goers make their own lunch.

It was another great chance for Rob (below, in the white pinny) and Juliet (above, also in the white apron) to show off their Szechuan sauce stir-frys. There was an abundance of fresh produce to choose from, and hungry participants eagerly selected what they fancied, duly peeled, chopped and tossed their veg'n’tofu around the woks, and threw over coconut, pineapple and sesame seeds at the end. Even Gerald Kaufman MP popped by and was obviously delighted by what was going on.


What’s more, Laura and Anghi, two wonderful Year 10 Chorlton High School students, were keen to help out, having loved their time at the wok during Cracking Good Food's launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival in March. We’re hoping to see more of these two… they're truly inspired chefs in the making!

Cracking Coordinator Adele

Cracking video!

The Cracking Good Food team star in this video of the launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival last week. As you can see, loads of people of all ages joined in with the different cooking sessions and everyone looks to be having a really great time in the Cooks On The Hop shelter!

Cracking new leaflet!

Do you like our new leaflet? We're going to be handing them out at our official launch at Chorlton's Big Green Festival tomorrow. We'll also be asking festival-goers to fill in a quick questionnaire to let us know what kinds of workshops they'd like to see Cracking Good Food offer, so come over and give us your thoughts and say hello! Lots of the team will be around, including coordinators Adele and Jess, and three of the Cracking Cooks - Avril, Lorenzo and Rob - will be running cooking sessions in St Clement's schoolyard from noon until 4pm. It's your chance to stop and chop with the Cooks On The Hop!