Feast of Cumbria

The assistant keeper at Kendal's Museum of Lakeland Life has just spent a year researching A Cumbrian Feast, the delicious summer exhibition which is bound to be a crowd-puller for the folk of these parts as well as those visiting them.

The display which opens on May 1 and runs until August 30 comprises a vast and varied menu; from Kendal Mintcake and Cumberland sausages to farming and food production, recipes of yesteryear and the dishes of today.

If you are a fan of local food then you will love the menu for A Cumbrian Feast. Here's a little something to whet your appetite

As a Lancashire lass, my first taste of Cumbrian food was the tatie-pot my best friend's mum used to make.

Workington-born, she transformed my home county hotpot into a Cumberland version by the simple addition of black pudding.

As a teenager I loved it but didn't want to be a traitor to my Lancashire roots. Now, however, I can eat Cumbrian tatie-pot' without a guilty conscience because, as I write, it's exactly 17 years since I arrived in the Lake District to start work at The Westmorland Gazette. Little did I realise then that the food of Cumbria ie, this food column would come to play such an important part in my life.

It has certainly been a fascinating journey, if not without its ups and downs.

The local food scene was just starting to get really exciting and then the county was devastated by foot-and-mouth.

What I have found, however, is that in local food terms the county seems to have bounced back even bigger and better than before.

Some of that success stems partly from such excellent campaigns as the Countryside Agency's eat the view' which aims to help people make the links between the products they buy and the countryside they cherish.

But turn the clock back a couple of hundred years and you wouldn't have needed a publicity campaign to point out that link to the people of Cumbria.

In her research for A Cumbrian Feast, assistant keeper at the Museum of Lakeland Life, Liz Shaw, discovered that there was no escaping the relationship between farming and the countryside and the food our forbears ate.

"What they ate, and how they lived, all tie in with the climate of the area and the landscape," said Liz. "They had a very wholesome and healthy diet. They lived off the land."

- The hardy Herdwick, for example, made it onto the menu at the coronation banquet for Queen Elizabeth II.

- Clap bread a thin, biscuit-type loaf - made with oats (too wet to grow wheat), lukewarm water and a nut' of lard and called clap bread' because you clapped it into shape on a special board.

- Smoked meat it would have been a common sight in Lakeland kitchens to see a whole animal carcass being smoked in front of the chimney in order to feed the family for the coming year. Westmorland was especially famous for its smoked hams, many of which were sent for sale in London.

- Butter and cheese made by farmers' wives, a useful way of preserving the life of milk products.

- Fruit and vegetables eaten when they were in season, as they should be; and. in the richer lands of the Eden valley and south of Kendal, small but healthy orchards.

- Home-brewed ale was the accompanying drink at all meals for adults and children. Tea and coffee were too expensive for the average family before the 19th century.

And all that before you even get to Grasmere Gingerbread, Cumberland Rum Nickie, Westmorland Pepper Cake and Borrowdale Teabread.

"There are so many great food traditions connected with the area," said Liz who uncovered some superb food-related exhibits in the museum's store cupboards. Items such as an exquisite potted char dish modelled to represent a pie crust (pictured below).

"We have got a lot of things from our own collection but other people have been very generous too."

Staff at Cumbria Archives, for example, who have trawled their records for a selection of recipes to be reproduced for the exhibition some of them dating back to Elizabethan times.

Cumbria County Council and the new South Lakeland Food Forum have both given grants to help fund the exhibition, organised partly because of the devastation caused by foot-and-mouth to the local food industry and as a tribute to the way in which it has bounced back since.

A Cumbrian Feast has also been timed to coincide with the summer visitor season but Liz expects to draw people from much closer to home because of the huge interest here in locally-produced food.

There'll certainly be no shortage of souvenirs for those who visit A Cumbrian Feast.

The Museum of Lakeland Life is pulling out all the stops to co-ordinate the feast across the board including recipe cards featuring some of the region's traditional recipes; a family quiz with a foodie prize; books which refer specifically to our food heritage; and locally-produced foods such as rum butter, Cumberland sauce, Kendal mintcake and Cumberland mustard on sale in the museum shop.

And as if that wasn't enough, visitors to the exhibition will also be able to head for nearby Abbot Hall coffee shop where catering manager Dorothy Cross and her team will be cooking up their usual feast of local produce with some mouth-watering extras.

Check out Woodalls of Waberthwaite air-dried ham and melon; Morecambe Bay potted shrimps; ploughmans' lunches with cheeses from Thornby Moor Dairy near Carlisle; ham sandwiches with Cumberland mustard from Alston; Hawkshead relishes including scrummy Westmorland Chutney; cream teas with Lyth Valley damson jam; and for pudding, English Lakes Ice Cream made in Kendal.

- Both the Museum of Lakeland Life and the Abbot Hall Coffee Shop are open Monday to Saturday from 10.30am to 5pm. Call 01539-722464 for more information or visit the website at http://www.lakelandmuseum.org.uk

April 24, 2003 11:00