Blog North's Food Glorious Food in Leeds

You know, food and drink bloggers aren't just greedy people. A certain enjoyment of the scran is required, but they're performing a service. Most of them do what they do out of passion for good food, are self-taught, do it in their spare time and don't expect any compensation. There are more of them every minute. Consider the stuffed-to-bursting food and drink section of that Manchester blogroll to your right: it's easily the fastest growing section of the Mancunian blogosphere. And what food bloggers say and think and eat and drink has never been more important.

Consider the lot of the restaurant owner/chef/producer/PR bod, working hard to get their restaurant or product some coverage. With the "national" food press fixated on London, and the regional food press shrinking, food bloggers and tweeters are becoming increasingly important. So what we have now is a culture of blogger tasting evenings and invited review meals where bloggers can meet chefs. Meanwhile, samples of artisan pies and bottles of beer and jars of jam are winging their way to bloggers around the country. And home cooks are letting dust gather on their cookbooks as they source interesting recipes from a blogs, often via Pinterest or Twitter.

The current culture of DIY food writing has sprouted practically overnight. And while professional restaurant critics or food writers may have their own codes of conduct, food bloggers don't (though this may not be a bad thing; asking bloggers to sign up to a code of anything is like herding cats, as this old Word of Mouth post and its comments ably demonstrate). So we all have to learn as we go: How do you build credibility with restaurants and readers? Is it okay to accept a sample of food and then not write about the product? How do you deal with producers/brands/restaurants who are unhappy with what you've written? Is it important that readers know you ate for free and the restaurant knew you were coming? If you're chummy with the chef and know she follows you on Twitter, are you really going to be comfortable writing an honest review of you less-than-awesome meal at her place? If you're posting your own recipes on your blog, how can you make sure no-one steals them? If a national newspaper asks to feature your recipe or writing, should you insist on a fee?

Fortunately Blog North Network's upcoming event, Food Glorious Food, will provide the time and space to get to grips with these issues. April 13 in Leeds is a full day of workshops, talks and schmoozing just for us. It's a chance to brush up on your food writing and photography with talented professionals, refresh your social media and marketing skills and hear inspiring stories of homegrown and independent foodie success. You'll meet lots of other people as greedy as you are food bloggers to swap stories, recipes and tips with. And there will be food and drink on offer. Of course there will be food and drink on offer. Booking and all the details are here. I'll see you there (I'm one of the organisers.) And if you see a surprisingly-shaped jelly, don't eat it. It might be art.

Image courtesy of the lovely Clandestine Cake Club, who will be taking part in the event.

Eating local in Ramsbottom

Over the past few months, two tired old pubs have reopened under new ownership, all shiny and newly kitted out, with food of a quality to create a stir around my 'hood of Ramsbottom. I'm talking about The Eagle and Child and Hearth of the Ram. Both are doing the same kind of thing: enlightened updates of the sort of hearty fare that Lancashire mill workers would have eaten. If you're a fan of the food at Nigel Haworth's Ribble Valley Inns, or Robert Owen Brown's cooking at The Mark Addy, you'll know just what to expect. Inventive uses of black pudding? Check. Offal? Check. Local producers namechecked on menu? Check. Old school puddings? Check. It's crowd-pleasing stuff.

I was impressed by The Eagle and Child, just a short walk up the hill from Ramsbottom centre in the village of Shuttleworth. It's got all the earmarks of a great local, a comfortable but not fussy interior with nice views over the valley and fireplaces for chilly days, and a family-friendly atmosphere. Impressively, they've worked with the Incredible Edible Ramsbottom group to create an edible beer garden behind the pub which will grow food for the kitchens, and there is an innovative apprenticeship programme in place.

The food was very good, with generous portions served in a pleasantly relaxed fashion. My starter, a salad of new peas, broad beans, nuts and goats cheese in a light, sweet dressing was fresh-tasting and moreish. The perfect foil to my burger, a toothsome mouthful on a foccacia bun. It was a traditional British approach to the burger (season the beef and cook it through) rather than the American one I prefer, but pretty good for all that. The Lancashire cheese and tomato relish in there was a nice touch. Extra points for near-perfect onion rings.

My friend's fish pie tasted amazing but proved tricky to eat as it was so liquid it threatened to cross the border into souptown. For dessert, we demolished a plant pot full of tiramisu. With a few leaves stuck in the top layer of chocolate biscuit crumbs it was almost too adorable to eat, but not quite.We left full and happy.

Just down the hill near the banks of the Irwell is Hearth of the Ram. This pub has a different feel about it. It's more of an adult atmosphere, and I wouldn't be in a hurry to take kids here. I really like the interior, which is warm and stylish but a few shades more salvage-chic fashionable than the Eagle. When we went to celebrate a friend's birthday on a Friday night it was absolutely rammed, but some of the congestion should ease when a dining room opens upstairs. I was told it has the latest license in Ramsbottom (2:30 am, night owls) and definitely had an after hours vibe going on with some good James Brown on the stereo and lots of people drinking cocktails out of jam jars.

As you'd expect from the higher spec interior, the food is a more cheffily ambitious version of what we had at the Eagle, with microgreens, reductions and purple vegetables entering into proceedings. I ate from the a la carte menu. They offer another, lighter menu with burgers and the like at other times, but we weren't allowed to order from this menu, which seemed odd (and unfortunately prevented me from doing a burger-to-burger taste test). But I didn't really mind, as my pork cheeks were full of flavour and beautifully matched up with butternut squash and potato terrine, and the very large glass of Pinot Noir was excellent, though pretty expensive at £8. I stole a few bites of a friend's tasty rabbit and black pudding sausages, which I'll order next time. A dessert of berry baked Alaska was good but not great. The service was good, and we all enjoyed ourselves so much we ended up lingering over drinks into the wee hours. I'm really looking forward to my next visit.

A small rant: Weirdly, neither of these restaurants has prices on their menus online. It's just ridiculous not to give people some idea what they can expect to pay, especially when you're charging quite a bit more than the previous tenants for food. This is especially true at Hearth, where everything was priced just a couple of pounds higher than I thought it really needed to be. I understand they are trying to do a more ambitious thing with the food, and quality costs. But sadly, the price point means this will probably be a place I save for special occasions. The Eagle might see us more often. Nevertheless, both are extremely welcome additions to Rammy's dining scene. And with the similarly reinvented Shoulder of Mutton up Holcombe Hill apparently serving up cracking food too (though I haven't made it there yet to see for myself) this place is fast turning into gastro-pub heaven. Something the army of walkers, day trippers and steam train aficionados who descend on the town every weekend will surely appreciate.

Images: Hearth of the Ram, top, by Robert Wade via Flickr. All other images courtesy of The Eagle and Child.

Fress to impress

Aloha, shalom and Happy New Year. I'm back from my maternal sabbatical to return to regular, or at least, regularly intermittent, blogging service. And I'm here to talk about food.

First, I'd like to call your attention to the resurgence of the foodie blogging scene in Manchester. Erstwhile Mancunian Foodie Sarah has cooked up a tasty little google map with all the food bloggers in the north of England plotted on it. Thanks Sarah! I'm adding the foodie bloggers in the Manchester area to my blogroll - quite a haul including Denton duo Eat Out Eat In, Stockport's Cookbook goodness, Foodographic in Chorlton and Mancfoodian.

A bit more digging revealed a few more new additions to the food blogging category: buttered crumpet, beccabakescakes and curry fiends Flavours of Manchester. Also, I'm not sure if The Greedy Girl is based in Manchester or just a frequent visitor to our delicious city, but I'm adding her anyway. Missed anyone? Let me know.

In other foodie news, the supper club trend hasn't missed Manchester, but most of the action has been taking place in twitterland. First, Gastro Club has been making a few fressers of my acquaintance very happy indeed. If you haven't heard about it before (you might have read this excellent summary on Inside the M60) it's a growing group of hungry folk who meet on the second Tuesday of the month for a themed dinner at a city restaurant. Some nice photos of past events here including the picture above by Samscam.

It was also on twitter that I also heard about Spice Club, a monthly Indian supperclub run by Monica from her Manchester home. She blogs about cooking at Monica's Spice Diary. Nice to have some off-menu culinary action in the city. More please.