What motivates food bloggers?

‘So what are they all doing in there’ asked the guy in the coffee shop, gesticulating at the arts centre next door. 'Blawggers or somefink?'

What indeed? How do you explain why 150-odd people should choose to spend a sunny Saturday indoors listening to people tell them how they should shoot pictures of their dinner and share them with total strangers?

Food Blogger Connect, which has been taking place in south London this weekend, is one of a number of blogger events that take place round the world attracting delegates from Canada to Finland - and of course the UK. It brings together a group of people who have nothing in common but their passion for food and desire to express it. Almost all of them are women (curious, that. Do male bloggers reckon they have nothing to learn or simply not enjoy sharing what they do?) Most, I’d guess, are under 35.

Many think bloggers are in it for the giveaways, the free meals and trips but that’s not been my impression. In fact the more seasoned bloggers are scornful of cack-handed attempts by PRs and companies to hijack their blogs and get them on-message.

Most are driven by real passion for food, one that can’t necessarily be shared with family and friends who roll their eyes wearily when dinner is delayed for that perfectly lit shot. To network with like-minded individuals who share that obsession is invigorating.

Some have jobs that fail to stimulate them and find blogging an outlet for their creativity, daring to dream of a career in food - maybe even that elusive book deal (though most are realistic enough to know that only a few will clinch one). Still, there’s always self-publishing these days . . .

But coming from the business background that many of them do they’re not leaving anything to chance. If they’re going to blog they want to do it as well as they can - write better content, take better photos, build a bigger audience. Blogging is driven by the American ethos of 'could do better'.

Some have more money than others to invest in their ambitions. At £300 for the weekend*, tickets to Food Blogger Connect don’t come cheap but nor do tickets to the opera or special interest holidays. Most hobbies are expensive. But you don’t need to be rich to write a great blog - you just need to invest the time and energy.

Which brings me neatly to my next post. What makes a food blog stand out in the crowd? More thoughts on the lessons from #FBC5 - and elsewhere - tomorrow . . .

* £150 if you booked an 'early bird' ticket.

If you have a food blog - or any other kind of blog - why did you start it and what makes you keep it up?

If you enjoyed reading this post you might also be interested in:

What makes a great food blog?

10 practical steps you can take to improve your food blog

Picture of blogger (and former lawyer) Ren Behan doling out bigos (a Polish hunter's stew) at her Polish Kitchen pop-up at Food Blogger Connect

Food and Bordeaux: What they served at the gala dinner at Mouton Rothschild

I make a point of not going to Vinexpo, the biennial wine fair in Bordeaux (too hectic, too noisy) but it does mean you miss out on the occasional treat like the gala dinner that was held at Château Mouton Rothschild to celebrate the opening of their new chai.

A colleague* who went told me about it though and the menu and wines sounded so extraordinary I thought I must share them with you.

Guests were apparently served glasses of Baron Philippe de Rothschild champagne when they arrived then treated to a foie gras trolley that was wheeled around with terrines of foie gras, walnut biscuits and fig jam. (Even though I don’t eat foie gras I must admit that sounded amazing)

The first course was equally show-stopping: soufflés de brochet (pike) served in a copper pans - some feat for 600 - with 2005 Mouton-Rothschild and 2005 Clerc-Milon: an unconventional but apparently successful pairing.

Then blanquette de veau (a creamy veal stew) with imperials of 1975 Mouton-Rothschild (see above). An interesting - and wise - choice for an old wine, avoiding an intense jus that might have fought with the wine - and definitely more flattering than cheese with which I gather the same wine was also paired (correct me if you were at the dinner, and I’m wrong on that)

Finally a cherry clafoutis (batter pudding) which was served with a 1989 Château Coutet, apparently also an admirable match. It sounds like quite some feast.

I gather Bordeaux leading chateaux always vie with each other to put on the best spread during Vinexpo, even if not normally quite on this scale. My colleague Jane Anson, who reports from Bordeaux for Decanter, told me about this meal at Chateau Pavie (excuse the rather loose translations):

Saumon Mariné, avocat pilé, perles d'oeufs de saumon avec Champagne Egly Ouriet 2003 en magnum (marinated salmon, crushed avocado and salmon roe)

Homard en cote de Romaine, petits légumes juste croquant, vinaigrette au piment d'Esplette avec Monbousquet Blanc 2010 (lobster in lettuce, possibly? with just-cooked vegetables and a spicy hot pepper dressing)

Agneau en file rôtie, frotté aux herbes, carotes fane et marmelade d'aubergines fumées, jus d'agneau tandoori with Pavie 1998 in Imperiale (this sounds pretty wild: Herb-crusted roast lamb with a smoked aubergine compote and tandoori lamb jus)

Food for thought here: the Bordelais don't necessarily stick to conventional accompaniments and seasoning with their best wines.

If you went to any of the other dinners during Vinexpo this year do let me know what you ate and drank.

*Charlotte Hey who works on the marketing for this website

Photograph © Lucy Shaw of The Drinks Business.

Pairing Indian wine with Indian cheese

Chef Shaun Kenworthy reports on what he believes to be a unique tasting of Indian wine and Indian cheese.

Shaun writes: "There is a rumble of change in almost every facet of life in today’s India. If we go back not too many years the idea of drinking wine as opposed to whisky and any other cheese than the processed stuff that the whole country has a fascination for made by enormous companies such as Amul and Britannia were little known anomalies.

That said, India does have an artisanal tradition of cheese and wine making that goes back a couple of hundred or so years to the Portuguese and British. A scant few traditional cheeses are still made in the mountainous regions of northern India and I’ve personally taken some around the world demonstrating with them and showing them off but how much longer they have left, being made in such small quantities is sadly anyone’s guess.

India’s wines have traditionally been produced along the hilly ridges of southern India, which run through Maharashtra and Karnataka but by the 1950s whatever little interest there was in wine, dwindled once India became independent and it wasn’t until the 90s, that a whole new generation of winemakers started to come through using modern wine making techniques.

There has been much talk about Indian wines in India recently, so much so that sales have been doubling each year, with all the 5 star hotel chains and higher end restaurants in the major Indian cities putting home-grown wines on their lists.

A sommelier friend of mine, Keith Edgar and I were recently asked by the Calcutta Wine Club to do a cheese and wine tasting. It was such a great opportunity that we decided to do a completely blind tasting of four wines and six cheeses so that we could keep secret the fact that they were all Indian.

I’m not quite sure what the members were really expecting but more than likely some domestic and imported wines and imported cheeses?! Of which there are few that find their way into the supermarkets other than the likely suspects such as ricotta, mozzarella, gouda, parmesan, cheddar, Danish blue and brie although as hoteliers with access to wholesale suppliers we do get much more to choose from.

The local cheeses I chose were fresh and smoked Bandel, both a little salty and crumbly in texture, round and small in size, still produced in a small Portuguese settlement town, around 60km from the city, Kalimpong cheese which is still made in 12kg and 1kg wheels by a few different cheesemakers, the texture being like a rustic Caerphilly: white and crumbly in the centre and yellowy inside the rind with a bit of a tang. It’s made in Kalimpong, a small hill station around 200km from Calcutta.

The other three, relatively new cheeses made by La Ferme, Auroville, in the old French city of Pondicherry, close to Chennai (formerly Madras): a good strong tangy Cheddar, their Auroblochon (but don’t let the name seduce you into thinking otherwise - this cheese is similar to an intensely ripe Pecorino) and their delicious semi-soft Gorgonzola.

Thankfully it’s easier to introduce our wines for the evening as you’d know what to expect from the grape varieties but again they were all Indian: a Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012*, Fratelli Sangiovese 2011, Four Seasons Cabernet Sauvignon 2011and finally, India’s only dessert wine, Sula’s late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012.

We started off, as you would expect, with the milder cheeses and lighter wines, not wanting to make this too challenging a test for the wine club. After much discussion and many ooo’s and aaah’s, we ended up with very few hits but at least we’d conducted what was probably the first completely Indian cheese and wine tasting in the world to date!

Our top Indian wine and cheese pairings:

Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012

I think we both expected this to go better with the salty fresh Bandel but it wasn’t unpalatable and maybe a little extra fattiness in the cheese would have helped

Fratelli, Sangiovese 2011

A good pairing with the fresh and smoked Bandel and Kalinpong

Four Seasons, Cabernet Sauvignon 2011

The smoked, Kalimpong and the hefty cheddar worked best

Sula late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012

And I don’t think anything could take away from this star of the show with the Auroblochon and the Gorgonzola."

For more information about Indian cheese read this article in the Telegraph, Calcutta.

UK-born and bred, chef Shaun Kenworthy began his career in Yorkshire but worked for some of London’s best known restaurants including Bibendum, The Atlantic Bar, Coast, Air, Mash and Quaglino’s. Since he arrived in India in 2000 he has worked as an executive chef and consultant in Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. In whatever little spare time he has left he writes about his love of good food.

* which seems to be available in the UK if you'd like to try it.

Four (now five!) great craft beer events coming up

One of the most welcome aspects of the craft beer movement is a new wave of beer events that involve learning about and trying different beers rather just than knocking them back in quantity (well, that too but it’s not the main focus . . . ). And they involve food - proper food (hallelujah!)

London Beer Festival (with cheese) June 5th-9th

Next week there’s a five day beer and cheese festival at the Strongroom Bar and Kitchen in Curtain Road in Shoreditch involving 30 London breweries who will be pouring over 60 different beers. There will also be cheese stalls and masterclasses on beer and cheese matching which you can book here. And the festival organisers will unveil a beer brewed to go with cheese called (groan) Camembeer. Right up my street!

Liverpool Craft Beer Expo June 14th-16th

Liverpool’s first craft beer festival takes place mid-June at Camp and Furnace following a similar format to Manchester’s Indy Man Beer Con (see below). Over 80 keg and 50 cask beers are promised along with a ‘dirty food’ menu of burgers, dogs and savoury doughnuts from the Camp & Furnace kitchen and live music from the ‘Beer Barrel Musical Bunker’.

There will also be live brewing demos with participating breweries creating unique beers on site. More details on the festival website. (note the Saturday evening session is already sold out). Follow them on Twitter @LivCraftBeerExp

European Beer Bloggers Conference, Edinburgh July 12th-13th

If you’re a beer blogger - or have aspirations to be one - Edinburgh is the place to be the second weekend in July when it hosts the European Beer Bloggers conference. The same weekend, according to one of my Guardian readers, the CAMRA-organised Scottish Real Ale Festival (from the 11th) and an Edinburgh Independent beer festival (@EIBF) also takes place in the city.

Garrett Oliver is the keynote speaker at the EBBC, there’s a Friday night party and feast at Stewart Brewing and a pre-festival pub crawl on the evening of the 11th organised by the ...er...Department of Awesome.

For more on the Edinburgh beer scene follow local Edinburgh beer blog The Beer Cast

Indy Man Beer Con October 10th-13th

Looking ahead to October there’s the second Indy Man Beer Con in Manchester which this year will stretch over four days from October 10th to the 13th. Same formula as last year - the best of British craft brewers - plus some Italian ones this year - and a slection of food stalls, co-ordinated by Guerilla Eats and a beer and food dinner. I went last year (see my report in the Guardian) and it was a blast. Follow @indymanbeercon on Twitter for updates.

For other UK-based beer events check out Perfect Pint's list of beer festivals. They also have a downloadable free app which shows which beers are being served in a pub near you.

Since I posted this I've heard of another good event:

Birmingham Beer Bash July 26th-27th

Similar formula (nothing wrong with that) - top craft beers, street food, two beer dinners with local restaurants and a 'fringe'. More info on the BBB website.