Fun, Flavour & Foraging for all the family at The Forest Showcase Food Festival 2019

From the nutritional and healthy, to the indulgent naughty but nice, The Forest of Dean comes alive on Sunday 6th October with its Annual Food Festival held in the grounds of The Speech House Hotel.

The Forest Showcase is an event with a lot more going on than most food festivals…featuring the best fresh regional produce from over 100 top local & artisan producers, from gourmet burgers and handmade scotch eggs, to award winning preserves & chutneys, fine cheeses, farmhouse ciders and speciality wines, ales & plenty of flavoured gins!. It’s a great opportunity to get a real taste of the best of the area.

This year we will be offering free family foraging sessions brought to you by The Rewild Project. You can join local foragers as they take you on a family foraging walk through the beautiful Speech House woods. As you walk, you and your children will learn how to identify and gather a range of wild foods including spices, seeds, nuts, berries fruit and more, turning what grows in your garden and in the wild into store cupboard ingredients. With expert guidance, you’ll learn how to preserve all these finds to make your winter diet packed full of delicious flavours, there will also be some wild cooking on rocket stoves and washing drums.

The cookery theatre will bring you a variety of cookery demonstrations from some of the areas top chefs including meat based, vegetarian and plant based diets, designed to get you cooking with hints, tips and secrets from the experts. Gareth Jenkins, head chef at The Speech House Hotel will be preparing a dish using a pigs heart from Plump Hill Farm and Wye Valley gin. Yvette Farrell, owner of the Forest of Dean’s premier award winning cookery school will be showcasing some Free From recipes and Dan Blewitt from Esse Stoves will be making Butternut squash & chickpea curry with fragrant rice, garlic & coriander flatbreads.!

Our new talks & tastings area will bring you classic gin cocktails from Duncan Fox, owner of Haven Distillery,  Matt Newell from Wye Valley Meadery, a classic cheese board from Debbie Jones owner of The Forest Deli and Kerry Voke talking teas from Leaf & Petal. 

Also returning this year will be our very popular Parent & Child cookery classes with healthy eating advisor & cookery teacher Glyn Owen from ‘Kids & Food’. This year we will be making Bean burgers flavoured with sage, rosemary and spring onion. Places are limited & you can book your place on these classes & the forage on the Forest Showcase website.
After you’ve done your foodie shopping, you can sit and listen to some great live music whilst  enjoying tasty hot food from some of our top street food vendors & a refreshing drink (or two), we have some great gins, prosecco, beers, wines & ciders to try!. 

The event will feature children’s activities with entertainment throughout the day from Jitterbug Circus, we have a Mad Science show with a lab bursting with foodie inspired chemical concoctions. There are also plenty of free food related arts workshops. With a selection of arts & crafts on display along with green ideas on composting, an animal or two!, a vintage cider press crushing apples, tips on vegetable growing & keeping bees this really is an event worth visiting, so come with empty tummies & we promise you will be full to bursting when you leave.  

The Forest Showcase will be held in the Speech House Hotel grounds, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire,on Sunday 6th October from 10am, tickets can be purchased in advance to avoid the queues from the website www.forestshowcase.org