Top food writer at festival - and thats just for starters (From Western Telegraph)

Top food writer at festival - and thats just for starters

Award-winning writer Elisabeth Luard is to bring her experience of Mediterranean cooking to one of Wales leading community food festivals. Elisabeth, who collected 300 recipes for starters, including tapas, mezze and antipasti - from Spain to the Balkans - will speak on Food for Sharing at the expanding Narberth Food Festival in Pembrokeshire.

The author of Saffron and Sunshine, Family Life and other successful cookery books has a home near Aberystwyth. Until recently she was cookery editor of Womans Journal. Her Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cookery was made into a 13-part series for BBC 2.

The festival, which mixes cookery demonstrations and workshops with street theatre, cabaret and other entertainment, will be held on Friday and Saturday. Uniquely, its an event run by volunteers in the local community.

Another highlight this year will be an eve-of-festival night of Poppadams and Poems at Narberth's Queens Hall. Performance poet Ifor Thomas from Solva will provide rhymes and humour. Indian snacks come courtesy of locally based East West Cuisine.

And the mysteries of the French menu will be translated and explained by Peter Preese, a local food and drink enthusiast and self-confessed francophile.

The festival, organised by shopkeepers and other local businesses, will include demonstrations by TV chef Ena Taylor.

Ena, a favourite with viewers of S4C, will be joined by local chefs Tom Hunt and Roger Bannister from Tenby, John Daniels from Warpool Court and Junior Welsh Chef of the Year Gareth Duyer. The demonstrations will be co-ordinated by Pembrokeshire County Councils food and craft officer Kate Morgan.

One of the festival organisers Jackie Palit said: While the cookery may be exotic, the idea is to provide a showcase for home-grown produce and local businesses in the historic country town of Narberth.

Whats unique about this festival is that the whole community joins in. Shops, pubs, cafes - in fact the whole town will be taking part in an event which spills out into the street and gives visitors a chance to taste local food and drink

To add to the fun, therell be street entertainment by Stickleback Plasticus, Maynard Flip Flap the Human Box, and the Bread and Butter Theatre Company.

Indoors, the Cambridge Footlights will perform at the Queens Hall and the Real Macaws, a seven-piece band, will provide musical workshops for children at Narberth School. Therell also be a food quiz and a film show organised by the Narberth Film Society.

The Narberth Food Festival is backed by PLANED (Pembrokeshire Local Action Network for Enterprise and Development), the Welsh Development Agency and other local organisations.