Huntly Hairst
This Huntly festival is the highlight of the food year and a celebration of local food and local producers. On the main day (the first Saturday of September) the town is crammed with stalls and wagons from local food producers. There’s music and dancin’ and much celebrating at this wonderful harvest festival.
The Hairst organisers work flat out for months to get everything in place and many local folk and businesses add to celebration by offering parallell events and competitions. The town also hosts a much celebrated 10k and half marathon event where the benefit is definitely ending in a square crammed with the most delicious food!
Every year I join in and this year the Hairst organisers asked me to repeat something I’d done before. A few times a year I make up recipe kit bags and give these away free in the local community. These are very popular and it’s great being able to give these away. The Hairst generously provided me with enough funding and support to create enough bags to give away over 400 portions of free food.
I was also asked to do a cooking event for both youngsters and adults. This was great fun to plan and deliver. The event for youngsters was a Fakeaway Cooking Workshop and on 31st August 15 youngsters came and learned how to make pizza from scratch. Thanks to Hairst and community food funding I was able to make this whole event free for the participants. Everyone had a great time and they all went home not only with a big family pizza and dough balls to pop into the oven, but the reusable pizza tray, recipe and aprons to get cooking again at home.
On the day of the Hairst we invited top chef, Tim Maddams , to come along to Huntly and do a cooking demonstration in the Stewart’s Hall. Tim was fantastically patient with us as the tech failed to work properly (of course) and I generally looked like a total amateur trying to host this thing. Thankfully Tim is such a pro and was charming and entertaining while cooking up a storm. His food was so delicious and I’m very glad we all got a taste. He kicked off by cooking a 2 course family meal for 4 for under a tenner. It was a superb handmade beef wrap meal with beef so succulent I’m hungry just thinking of it now! He followed that up with a steamed plum pudding and I’m reliably informed that lots of folk went home and immediately dusted off their pressure cookers.
For the second cooking session Tim’s brief was to “go to town” - literally. In the morning he went around the local producers’ stalls and picked up ingredients for a “ 2 course upscale date night” menu.
Wow.
The starter was a crab Caesar salad (which he prepared from scratch to show us which bits of a crab to avoid - very handy because I’d never prepared one before), followed by a pan fried loin of venison with a wild mushroom sauce, rounded off with the quickest and tastiest chocolate mousse I’ve ever tasted.
The Hairst is a truly remarkable thing and it is testament to the work of the funders, the organisers and the vast network of volunteers who help to make everything happen. The day after the Hairst there is a huge picnic out at Leith Hall, a local stately home, and the food and celebrations continue. It’s all an incredible feat of planning and every year seems to get a bit bigger.
I love the Hairst and always seem to agree to do more every year, but I’m very glad it’s only once a year!
Find out more about the Hairst, the Room to Run, and the many other activities and events that take place around that date - follow the Huntly Hairst on Facebook and/or visit the website.
Huntly Hairst Facebook page - click here
Huntly Hairst website - click here
For more about private chef and food industry consultant, Tim Maddams - click here
