Meeting Kavey Eats
Sep 5th, 2009 by admin
I’ve been a member of the UK Food Bloggers Association (UKFBA) for a while now, having joined not long after starting World Foodie Guide nearly two years ago. I’m a rather lazy and not at all pro-active member, yet have been meaning for months to visit the UKFBA stall at the Covent Garden Real Food Market, a weekly event that has taken place every Thursday since April. Every week, the stall is manned by a different member or pairs of members (I’ve so far met Signe from Scandilicious, Rejina from Gastrogeek and Pei from Teanamu), and it never ceases to amaze me just how many dedicated and passionate food bloggers there are out there. Kavey from Kavey Eats is one of them.
I got to know Kavey on Twitter. We both happened to be at Konstam on the same evening, but we didn’t know this until she found out on Twitter from Lizzie of Hollow Legs that I was the food blogger she had seen taking food photos (I had also noticed someone taking photos out of the corner of my eye!) and got in touch. Kavey is a relatively new food blogger, but full of enthusiasm for anything food, travel and photography-related. She’s also a keen grower of garden produce, while her mum Mamta has her own food site at Mamta’s Kitchen, a ‘living cookbook’ specialising in Indian recipes. So when I heard that Kavey and her mum were preparing delicious Indian and British produce including spicy tomato ketchup, tamarind ketchup, apple and sultana chutney, chilli and ginger pickle, lemon pickle and nectarine and amaretto jam – to sell at the UKFBA stall, I decided to go and say hello, particularly as I know Kavey has spent literally weeks preparing for the event.
When I turned up, Kavey, husband Pete and Mamta, proudly kitted out in smart Mamta’s Kitchen aprons (which I think are still available on her website), were busily serving the Covent Garden lunchtime crowd. A sea of jars, large and small, of which I must have tried at least four, were displayed before them. I instantly fell in love with Nana’s Spicy Tomato Ketchup, which I could imagine being a perfect condiment to quite a few dishes, for instance a succulent field mushroom burger. The recipe for Nana’s Spicy Tomato Ketchup comes from Mamta’s father (‘Nana’ means grandfather in Hindi), a sugar chemist who was in charge of making sugar, sweets, sauces, pickles and chutneys at an Indian sugar factory. Should you decide to follow the recipe, Kavey and Mamta also added red peppers ‘to give a little added complexity of flavour’…’We used 3 kilos of red tomatoes and just 3 long thin red peppers, the ones that are chilli-shaped but much much bigger and are sweet, not hot’. I used my little jar of spicy tomato ketchup to accompany some breakfast bacon, then a batch of Indonesian crabcakes. It’s incredibly addictive and I now regret not having bought three large jars of it!
Apart from the jars, there were some incredibly jammy jam tarts, orange zest shortbread biscuits (of which I bought two packets that lasted no more than a single sitting) and sweet pastry pieces or shakkar pare – an Indian sweet made from flour, ghee, sugar, water and oil. Plus spicy roasted peanuts, treacle scones and three types of traditional British tablet (hard fudge), almond using chopped roasted almonds and almond extract, ginger using stem ginger chunks and syrup and whisky using Breton whisky.
Impressed? I certainly was! Check out Kavey Eats and Mamta’s Kitchen for other great recipes, while the entire set of Kavey Eats photos on Flickr can be viewed here.
Covent Garden Real Food Market is held every Thursday from 12.00pm – 8.00pm, and it has just been announced that it will run to the end of the year, which is excellent news.
Lovely post, Helen, and great to see some pics of the market and Kavey and family that I have heard so much about. Hope to meet up with some of you if there is another photo session planned at the Scandinavian Kitchen.
What a fantastic post! I loved Kavey’s homemade ketchup too, and the tamarind sauce was incredible. I really hope she does another stall so I can stock up on some more…
Oh, how lovely. Helen thank you so much for your lovely, lovely post and for visiting. It was such a pleasure for us to meet you and mum enjoyed sitting and chatting to you.
I’m so pleased you enjoyed the tomato ketchup, it sold at the stall, which was gratifying!
Claire, would be lovely to meet up. Am always up for meeting fellow food bloggers so just shout if you fancy doing something. I’m @kaveyf on twitter.
Rej, so pleased you enjoyed your jars too. I hadn’t been intending to do another stall, but next time I make more of the tamarind sauce, I’ll let you know!
Great post! Salivating heavily now at the prospect of opening my jars of lemon and ginger jam and tamarind ketchup which Kavey kindly brought me yesterday…
Fantastic write-up. Sorry I couldn’t make it down, looks like it was a fab day!
I read this post with interest. I have known Kavey for quite sometime now, mainly from the BBC Food Forum, we also chat on twitter and occasionally leave messages on each blogs, but we have never met in person. I hope to one day, she also seems to be visiting old my old haunts back in UK which she has posted reviews on, we seem to like the same pubs LOL. Seems Kavey & Mamta have had quite a public week as I posted about one of Mamta’s curries a few days ago.
What fun! I think you hit upon what was unexpected for me and what I love most about food blogging: meeting and developing friendships with incredible people around a common interest in food and culture. Also being to meet up at great food events like the one you described and being able to meet the people behind the food – does it get any better?
What a nice post, thank you so much
. It was nice meeting you.
I enjoyed our day at the Covent Garden, but it is not something I would ever want to do for a living. It is far too much hard work for very little return. It was great fun though.
For those of you who liked the tamarind ketchup or my dad’s tomato ketchup, they are very easy to make, look for the recipes on my website.
One of our regular site visitors Winton came to meet us at the market and he brought me a jar of nectarine chutney, bless him. He had made it using my dad’s plum chutney recipe. It is delicious!
Lovely post. You met me there too!
Although admittedly, not as part of the UKFBA stall. I loved Kavey’s stall and food. Can’t wait to try the recipes.
I am totally in awe of Kavey and Mamta – the products on the stall look amazing. Nectarine and Amaretto jam? Yes please!
Claire – thanks! Yes, I’d like to go to the next photo session at the Scandinavian Kitchen, so it would be nice to see you again.
Gastrogeek – I definitely need to stock up! Should Kavey do an online shop perhaps?!
Kavey – I am now officially addicted to Nana’s Spicy Tomato Ketchup! It was fantastic meeting you all and I hope you do another stall session. Catch up with you again soon!
aforkfulofspaghetti – you have lots to look forward to then! Enjoy every spoonful…
Julia – thanks! Let me know when you’re next down in London and at the stall. It would be great to meet you finally…
Debs – you know Kavey much better than I do then! I’m looking forward to going through Mamta’s site in detail now…
OysterCulture – you’re so right! I’ve been enjoying meeting fellow food bloggers at the stall, and of course sampling what they’ve been making!
Mamta – thank you. It wouldn’t have been a nice post if it hadn’t been for the subjects I was writing about though! How sweet and thoughtful of Winton to do that! It was lovely to have met you and I hope to see you again soon…
Niamh – sorry, of course I met you too, twice there in fact! I was referring specifically to the UKFBA stall. But to everyone reading this post, Niamh is turning into a regular at the Real Food Market too, so you must visit her stall too, as I have been doing!
Helen – amazing right? I could never have churned out so many different and delicious products for a day at the stall. I’m still impressed!
Helen Yuet Ling
I think the best aspect of doing this, for me, (aside from the thrill of having people pay money for products we’d made ourselves, and enjoy them) was meeting so many people I’d previously interacted with only online.
We had a number of Mamta’s Kitchen readers visit, a bunch of fellow food bloggers, folks from the twitter foodie community and people from the BBC Food Chat discussion board. It was so nice of people to visit.
Niamh was kind enough to also take some photos of our stall, which I so appreciated as we took only a handful right at the start of the day, and didn’t have time again after that!
What happened to this ketchup Helen? I never even saw it enter the home. You must have eaten it all. Sneaky!
GP
Wonderful post! I’m hoping to meet up with fellow food bloggers in my area soon although I wish there was an organized group in place already like the UKFBA (on a smaller scale, natch!) Perhaps I should start one . . .
Thank you for the intro to Kavey and Mamta; I popped over to their sites and loved them! I particularly like that Mamta’s blog is described as a ‘living’ cookbook – what a perfect descriptor of how important it is to record these wonderful recipes but also that food is constantly evolving.
What a fabulous insight into the day and lots of links for pics and recipes ! I couldn’t make the day as under normal circumstances its too far to travel (from Northwest UK) but this time I was in Cyprus so impossible! I Stumbled across Mamtaskitchen years ago and Mamta, Pete and Kavey have grown into a part of my food loving family. I’d love to have visited and got some of those pickles and the spicy nuts.. looks like I might have to have a go at making them myself at some point.
Steve
Kavey – loved your post on the event! I’m glad you finally got to meet so many people in person…
GP – it was rather sneaky but it had to be done!
Tangled Noodle – you should definitely start one, a great idea! I’m a member of the UK Food Bloggers Association as well as the London one.
AskCy – what a shame you missed it! It was an excellent day…
Helen Yuet Ling