Fine Food Fayre – St. Andrews

courtesy of owl eyes magazine

Last Sunday, Jac from Tinned  Tomatoes and a few of our friends visited the Fine Food Fayre inSt. Andrews. This is a yearly event run in association with The University of St. Andrews Raising and Giving Week to raise funds for a number of charities.

There were 50 stalls to visit, each exhibiting the best food and drink Scotland has to offer. There were a few exhibitors I had visited at the BBC Good Food Show back in October last year, but there were also a few new faces I hadn’t seen or tasted their wares. I wanted to mention just a few of the delicious treats I came across.

courtesy of the wee fudge company

 When I first entered the Fine Food Fayre, the stall that I approached was The Wee Fudge Company. I gave them one of my business cards and when they saw my name, it turns out that the nice people behind the Wee Fudge Company know some relatives of mine. We had a chat whilst I browsed the flavours they had on display including vanilla, maple, chocolate, strawberry and white chocolate. The one flavour I went for was Hebridean Sea Salt and Caramel. I love sweet and salty together and this was very salty, but also very sweet. A perfect combination in my books!

courtesy of mademoiselle macaron

 A very colourful stall was Mademoiselle Macaron. The Mademoiselle in question had a groovy beehive and retro glasses, and her business card had a wee caricature of  her on it. She had great flavours of macaron on display including salted caramel, gingerbread, lavender and many more. I bought four which were the salted caramel, to compliment my fudge of course, early grey tea, Hendricks gin and Innis and Gunn beer. The flavours might sound a bit 'out there', but I can assure you they were all as delicious as they looked. I told Mademoiselle that macaron were something I have yet to master. I hope to try very very soon.

I picked up a delicious bottle of something called Drink or Drizzle. It’s a bottle of fruit, in my case Strawberry mixed with cinnamon, which can be drunk as a juice or drizzled on ice cream, or whatever you fancy. There various flavour, gooseberry and elderflower, rhubarb and more Sadly, I cannot find details of this company on line to share with you. But I loved the juice will be using it in the future for various things.

I also came across Tipsy Mallow, a new company, they told me they were just 6 weeks old. They make artisan marshmallows which come in huge cubes, in lots of flavours such as Kir Royal, Irn Bru, Gin and Elderflower. I went for Lemon Meringue Pie flavour. The block was huge, but I polished it off with aplomb. Very tasty.

Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier was also there with exquisitely designed chocolates. These award winning chocolates were on sample to try and I thoroughly loved them. I just wish I had gone back and purchases some.

There many others stalls, offering savoury bites from local cheeses and oatcakes to dips and anti-pasti type nibbles which we enjoyed on our way round. There were also some displays going on with a Masterchef semi-finalst, Tony Singh from the BBC Spicemen series and other events. Sadly we didn’t get a chance to see these.

When we left, our last port of call was the stand for TheEden Brewery. This is a local brewery who gave us a sampling of their many beers. These included craft beers,  wood cask conditioned beers and Aristeuein beers, which are progressive beers brewed in limited quantities. My favourite was an wood cask beer, called Rum Barrel. You could actually taste chocolate, coconut and lime in the beer - delicious.

We left not long after, with our purchases and with fuller tums than when we went it. The fayre is a good way to discover and support companies more or less on our doorsteps.

I’m looking forward to the 2015 fayre already!