I can't wait to cook for audience at Shrewsbury Food Festival
Three weeks from today I'll be cooking for thousands. There won't be any miracles with bread and fish – it's nothing like that. I will, however, be cooking for a vast audience.
The Shrewsbury Food Festival rolls into town on June 29 and 30 and is expected to attract people from across the region. It's an exciting new event that's been put together by a group of enthusiasts in the town.
They come with a good pedigree and have organised a number of successful events elsewhere – it's going to be great fun to be part of an event in my new home town.
I'll be demonstrating on behalf of my cookery school, Brompton, which is on the National Trust's Attingham Estate, at Atcham. I'll be showing people how to create incredible dishes and I'm really looking forward to it.
Shrewsbury is a great place for a food festival. It's Shropshire's County town and has the biggest population for any location in the county. It's also easy to reach for people from the West Midlands. I've spoken to the organisers of the event and it's certainly captured the imagination of people from both Shropshire and the West Midlands.
One lady from Wolverhampton telephoned the organisers a few days ago, asking if they'd let her volunteer.
It promises to be a fun-packed weekend. When it was launched, at the end of last year, the organisers had hoped to get 70 exhibitors to the site. They were inundated with requests and ended up with around 130.
There are also plenty of chef demonstrations, from people like myself, my fellow Express & Star and Shropshire Star columnist Will Holland, who is the head chef of La Becasse, in Ludlow, and starred on BBC TV's Great British Menu.
There will also be plenty of activities for kids and live music throughout the weekend. It promises to be great fun. Best of all, it doesn't cost the earth. The tickets are only a fiver and the cost for families is just a tenner. As far as I know, it's the lowest-priced event of its kind in the UK.
I've still got time to work out what I want to cook. You can bet on it being something that's fresh and seasonal.
One of the joys of food festivals is finding out about new producers and suppliers and the organisers have come up trumps with one particular exhibitor.
When Will Holland and I demonstrate, we'll be using cast iron pots and pans from Netherton Foundry. They are the sort of things that would have been made in the Black Country more than a century ago – but they've been updated and are very, very cool.
Netherton Foundry is run by an interesting team who are based at Highley, near Bridgnorth. The company has been a roaring success. It builds products made from materials sourced in Shropshire and its neighbouring counties. In its own small way, it's committed to reducing its impact on our fragile planet by building products that will last from materials that they trust.
We have a similar philosophy here at Brompton, where we try to use the best ingredients without damaging our environment. Our courses are all about putting the best seasonal flavours on the plate – and cooking them with style and panache.
We have great contacts with local producers and often go foraging, so that we can harvest ingredients from nature's larder and then bring them into our kitchen. It's the perfect recipe for great-tasting food – and it means we can feast to our heart's content without damaging the environment. Those of you who come along to the fest will be able to see local chefs in action doing just that.
Marcus Bean is a regular on ITV This Morning. He owns the Brompton Cookery School, at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, on a National Trust Estate.
