Kokova Magazine

Organisers of this year's Taste Cumbria Food Festival have today revealed an impressive line-up of celebrity chefs who will be joining headliners The Hairy Bikers in Cockermouth on September 24 and 25.

Taking to the stage in The Celebrity Chef's Theatre on the town's Main Street, the guest chefs promise to delight festival-goers with live demonstrations showing how to prepare and perfect original dishes whilst teaching about ingredients and techniques unique to each.

Culinary heavyweights and household names Matt Tebbutt and Tom Kitchin are amongst the impressive talents heading to West Cumbria this year.

Matt Tebbutt is best known for his appearances on The Great British Menu and Great British Food Revival on BBC 2 and was a presenter of UKTV Food's Market Kitchen, whilst Tom Kitchin is the youngest ever proprietor-chef in Scotland to have been awarded a Michelin star.

Tom has also appeared on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, UKTV Food's Market Kitchen and The Great British Menu and has on many occasions joined some of the UK’s most renowned chefs on the Masterchef Final Chef’s Table panel as a judge.

Commenting on their involvement with this year's festival, Matt said: I'm very excited at the thought of coming back to Cumbria, it's an area of the country I've visited on numerous occasions when filming. The county boasts an incredible food pedigree and I’ve been lucky to work with many Cumbrian food heroes who are incredibly passionate about the beauty and the bounty of their home-region.

An ambassador for fresh, locally sourced produce Tom Kitchin is fanatical about working with the seasons, he says: Locality and seasonality is incredibly important and I'm looking forward showing Taste Cumbria visitors how to really make the most of locally-sourced seasonal produce during my demonstration.

Joining Matt and Tom during the weekend will be Ravinder Bhogal, award-winning food writer; and television personality, who was crowned Britain's New Fanny Cradock by Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4's The F Word.

Recently, Ravinder has travelled the globe as roving reporter for Channel 4's new magazine show Food: What Goes in your Basket? and will be showcasing her culinary expertise to the live festival audience on Sunday 25 as well as personally meeting visitors.

Junior chefs are well catered for at this year's event also, with an expanded, dedicated 'Children's Interactive Area', which will be located in the town's Memorial Gardens.

Kid's Food expert Fiona Faulkner, also known as the 'Toddler Chef', will be revealing the tricks and recipes that have transformed her own children's eating habits and those of countless others in workshops within the Taste Cumbria Interactive Area, whilst Stefan Gates, food adventurer and presenter of BBC's popular Gastronuts television series will be doing weird and wonderful things with food - opening junior festival-goers minds (and mouths) to a world of culinary creativity!

Katie Read, West Cumbria Tourism Manager and organiser of Taste Cumbria Festival comments: We have really raised the bar this year both with the calibre and number of chefs joining us in Cockermouth, for the festival and we hope that visitors will enjoy watching their live demonstrations. This year the focus is very much on food education, and we want our festival-goers to leave with exciting and tasty, new ideas.

Tickets to the festival and the Celebrity Chef Demonstrations are available now from the official festival website www.tastecumbria.com and a full calendar of festival events will be available to download in early September.

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Taste Cumbria is funded by the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) funded by Defra and the EU. The festival is organised and managed by Cumbria Tourism and SK Events.