Category: Blog

Longleat Food and Drink Festival – 24th June

I’m at Longleat Food and Drink Festival on 24th June where I will be selling my arancini and other delicious Sicilian street food.

Join us for a great day out at the second Longleat Food and Drink Festival.  We will be selling our street food on Sunday 24th June.  So if you fancy a great day out with all the trimmings of a foodie festival, buy your tickets now!

Don’t miss two of my favourite chefs, Si King and Dave Myers, doing live cooking demonstrations.  After all that cooking, they’ll need some good, Sicilian risotto balls to help keep them energised.

We’ll also be selling some great pasta dishes with fresh, home made pasta and gnocchi. The event will be a good opportunity to introduce the British public to some great Southern Italian food. I’m putting together the menu now.

This is a very exciting time for Sicilian Donkey. My private chef work is really taking off.  I’m booked every Saturday in June and July and starting to take bookings for August. Now, we can also attend your party and serve arancini, cannoli and salads to guests for a great price per head.

I’m also working on a great bowl-food menu. Canapes are as popular as ever but bowl food is very on trend right now. I’m playing with Middle Eastern dishes and exploring Thai cuisine with some great results.  This weekend I’ve done a fantastic Middle Eastern feast with mezze for 15 hens on a coastal Hen Night.  Tonight I’m doing another hen party with a Thai theme. The fresh and zesty flavours of the Thai food are so delicious, I can’t wait to see how my pad thai goes down this evening.

Forgot Arancini Bros – I’m the Arancini Boss!

On Saturday 26 May, Sicilian Donkey Street Food made its debut Festival appearance.  I was lucky enough to win a bursary from Thatcher’s Cider.  I set up stall to sell my artisan arancini and cannoli. The event was the Burnham-On-Sea Eat Festival and the feedback from all my customers was amazing.

Cannoli King

I have been perfecting my gourmet cannoli over the past months.  I was amazed with how well they went down.  Many attendees knew them from watching Cake Boss make them.

In Sicily, we fill the fried pastry sheels with a sweetened sheep ricotta with choc chips and candied peel.  I managed to find a local producer, Homewood Cheeses, to supply with the fantastically fresh ewes’ cheese.  This gave them a real, authentic taste of my homeland.

Many were less familiar with my award-winning Arancini but, as soon as they sampled them, they were hooked. One customer, who originally came to me for cannoli was such a fan of the ham hock Arancini, she came back for a second and brought her whole family for a round too.

“You are the Arancini Boss” she told me. It’s a great compliment that I’m proud to accept.

I was so happy to receive such great feedback and I’m really looking forwards to my next confirmed event at the Longleat Food and Drink Festival on 24 June.

So get a date in your diary if you want to meet the Arancini Boss at Longleat where I’ll be selling my risotto balls and lots of other delicious Sicilian Street Food.  The Festival is expecting thousands of people to come and James Martin and the Hairy Bikers will be the big name chefs in attendance.

I ‘cannoli’ hope I’ll see you there.  If you can’t make it, why not call Claire to make a booking and treat your guests to a taste of Sicily, Somerset-style.