Culinary maestro to champion local produce at Hamper Llangollen

* Robert Didier will champion local produce at Hamper Llangollen this weekend.

A culinary expert who trained under chef to the stars Raymond Blanc will be championing local produce at one of the UK's best-loved food festivals.

Robert Didier, whose unique brand of pies, pastries and bread has tantalised the taste buds of the food industry’s toughest critics, will be the first to feature in a host of cooking demonstrations at Hamper Llangollen this weekend, October 15 and 16.

The popular event in the picturesque Denbighshire town has been hailed as one of the UK's top 10 food festivals by both The Independent and the Daily Telegraph.

The restaurateur turned businessman, whose gastronomic finesse has been enjoyed by some of Hollywood’s biggest names including Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones, is excited to be getting back behind a frying pan, where it all began, to show off the region’s finest, home-grown ingredients.

Robert's handmade bakery business, Wrexham-based Orchard Pigs, continues to go from strength to strength and scooped its first two Great Taste Awards this year for its fruit cake with cheese and gingerbread. The prestigious awards, organised by the Guild of Fine Food, are the acknowledged benchmark for fine food and drink.

“I’ve always loved demonstrating, it goes back to my restaurant days. I don’t find it very stressful at all now,” he said.

“It’s like the first time you do a public speech – you spend the first minute judging what the crowd are like and then get into your stride. Most audiences at food festivals have come along to be inspired by food and cooking and that’s what I intend to do.”

Robert will open the festival’s cooking programme on October 15 and among the culinary delights he plans to demonstrate is a feast of Welsh rack of lamb, supplied by D & J Thomas & Sons family butchers in Wrexham, locally-picked wild mushrooms and farm-to-doorstep vegetables as well as a mouth-watering desert of Tarte Tatin with hedgerow fruits and apples.

The top chef, who employs five people, is passionate about supporting local food businesses and growers and protecting the livelihoods of independent suppliers.

“It’s always important to back local producers, if we don’t support local farmers and businesses then our food will be imported from overseas. They might be able to produce it cheaper but the quality and taste isn’t the same,” said the 50-year-old, who runs Orchard Pigs alongside his wife, Nicky.

“If something has been on a lorry for two to three days, it’s not going to offer the same quality. If you buy local, the produce is picked locally and is fresher, there’s more flavour and there’s a better quality overall.

“You can talk to local suppliers and engage with them. If you ask your local butcher for something specific, like pig cheek for instance, they will say ‘no problem’ because they have the whole beast there in the shop.

“But it’s not all about taste. You’re also supporting the infrastructure, providing jobs for youngsters and apprentices. As small businesses grow, they employ people and train them up so that hopefully one day they will go on and start their own business.”

Robert, whose French father was a chef, spent his early career working at Raymond Blanc’s bakery and patisserie, Maison Blanc, in Oxford, which supplied Harrods and a host of top London restaurants with traditional French bread and patisseries.

A stint in the kitchen at Blanc's double Michelin starred restaurant, Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, in the Oxfordshire village of Great Milton, followed before he travelled to the Valence region of the south of France with his grandmother for a year while he worked as a second chef in a bakery and patisserie.

Robert later opened his own restaurant, Petit Robert, in the Borough Market area of London, before it was compulsory purchased to make way for a new railway line.

He moved to Bwlchgwyn in 2003 where he bought Nant y Ffrith forest, a 250-acre mixed woodland, and populated it with a herd of Oxford sandy and black pigs. What originally started out as a means of managing the undergrowth soon became a thriving business with Robert selling pork, bacon, hams and sausages at farmers’ markets. 

The handmade pies followed and went on to become the focus for the business, with 1,000 to 1,500 now made every week – including Robert’s trademark Tractor wheel pie, using local free range produce.

The business, which is now in its 13^th year, now boasts no fewer than 130 products from artisan breads and cakes through to luxury pastries and deserts – success Robert credits to wife, Nicky, 43, who has led the path to expansion.

“Nicky is a much better salesperson than me and she organises me – I can bake but she is behind the new product development and building sales at the markets and festivals,” he admitted.

Previously, the chef unveiled the UK’s most expensive loaf at Hamper Llangollen, made with champagne and 24 carat gold at a cost of £25. 

To this day, Robert remains at the centre of the business operation – in the kitchens.

“I still love the baking side of things,” he said.

“I love making bread – it’s my first passion – and there’s always something new to learn. It really tests your skill as a chef, judging what’s going on with the temperature in the room and how it’s going to impact your bread.

“It really keeps you on your toes.”

Returning to Hamper Llangollen is always a treat for the chef, who has been a regular for the last 10 years at least.

“Llangollen is a focus for us every year,” said Robert.

“Although it attracts a lot of local people, you get visitors from across the UK who come along for the weekend. Many of the visitors have been coming along as long as we have and you get to know them.”   

Hamper Llangollen chair Colin Loughlin is delighted the food festival has played a part in the Orchard Pigs success story.

He said: "Robert is a multi-talented culinary expert and is a very welcome regular at Hamper Llangollen.

"We're all looking forward to his demonstration, particularly because he will be championing local produce which is what Hamper Llangollen is all about.

“Thanks to a whole host of indigenous companies, North East Wales is rapidly establishing a reputation as a centre of excellence for high quality products.

“The food festival is a perfect shop window for the companies who form the backbone of the local economy."

* For more information about Hamper Llangollen go to www.llangollenfoodfestival.com

MP calls for radical reforms to Universal Credit

Susan Elan Jones MP has written to Prime Minister Theresa May urging her to make "radical reforms" to Universal Credit.

The Clwyd South Labour Member (pictured) said: "If the Prime Minister really wants a country that works for everyone, she needs to reform the current mess that is the Universal Credit system as soon as possible. 

"I think most of us would support the intentions of Universal Credit to simplify benefits and improve incentives to work. However, the system as it operates at the moment is a serious threat to the incomes of low-paid working families, who are left much worse off when they get transferred onto Universal Credit.

“I am glad we forced the Government to change its mind on tax credit cuts, but I want to see Theresa May go much further to tackle the issue of in-work poverty".

"The shopworkers' union, USDAW, has just produced detailed research that shows that a parent couple, both working in retail, earning just above the so-called National Living Wage, one working full-time and one part-time, would be £1,866 worse off on Universal Credit. That can't be right. It isn't an incentive to work and it isn't supporting family life.

"I am calling on the Prime Minister to do a total overhaul of Universal Credit so that it supports ordinary working families."

Learn to play the ukelele course planned

Plas Madoc wins £500,000 boost

Assembly Member Ken Skates has welcomed a huge investment by the Welsh Labour Government in Plas Madoc Leisure Centre.

The Clwyd South AM said he was delighted that communities minister Carl Sargeant had awarded a £500,000 grant for the facility, which was saved from the bulldozers after Wrexham Council leaders voted to demolish it in 2014.

“This £0.5m grant is massive for Plas Madoc, and I’m delighted for the team that their application has been successful. They really deserve this,” said Mr Skates, who was a founder member of the charitable trust set up to save the centre.

Mr Skates added: “I’m proud that the Welsh Labour Government has shown its support for Plas Madoc Leisure Centre, and I would like to thank Carl Sargeant for awarding this grant.

“The volunteers who run the Trust and the centre’s hard-working staff have done such an amazing job, from rescuing and reopening it initially to making it the success story it is now.

“The fact that Plas Madoc is even still standing is testament to a people power, and the public need to continue to support it as they have done so brilliantly over the past two years.”

Decision time looms for controversial homes scheme

* The site of the proposed housing development at Vicarage Road.

A controversial scheme to build 99 homes on land at Vicarage Road in Llangollen is likely to be decided within the next couple of months, according to a senior county planner.

Earlier this year Castlemead Homes submitted an application to Denbighshire County Council for the development, which includes a mixture of two, three and four bedroom detached and semi-detached properties.

But the scheme has sparked fears amongst people in the area that local roads will not be able to cope with the extra traffic it will generate both during construction and when the new homes are occupied.

The scheme has attracted considerable opposition and members of the group campaigning against it have submitted evidence to the council which they say shows the kind of traffic problems it would create on roads leading to the site from the town centre.

One of the opponents has just received notification from a senior planning official which says: “We are in the process of receiving various amended details in relation to the application. Once these details are complete and finalised then a re-consultation with interested parties will take place.

“The deadline to report to October Planning Committee has passed and therefore I would anticipate that the application will be presented to either the November or December Planning meeting.”

Planning permission to build 54 houses on land adjacent to Vicarage Road was granted to Castlemead on appeal by Denbighshire back in 2001.

Attached to the original application was a Section 106 agreement under which the developer was legally bound to build a new access road to the site before the scheme was started.

The field above the main site has since been included in the Local Development Plan at the request of the Planning Inspectorate to encourage the building of more houses to meet local demand.

Castlemead’s latest application has been to build a further 45 homes, making a total of 99 houses on four parcels of land.

A statement issued on behalf of the company by planning consultants in support of the application said it would not be economic to build the access road before construction work starts on the houses and suggests it should be put in place by the time the 31^st dwelling has been occupied.

As part of the formal consultation process, the town council has been able to give its official response to the application although a decision on it rests with the county council.   

At their May meeting all seven members of the town’s planning committee voted to object to the proposal.

In a subsequent development, the Welsh Government told the county council not to decide on the application until major road issues had been clarified.

Wales Rally heading for county

Denbighshire County Council is gearing up to welcome the sights and sounds of rally cars as the Dayinsure Wales Rally GB returns to the county for the third year running.

Two of the stages of this year’s Rally of Legends – the penultimate round of the FIA World Rally Championship - will be staged in the Clocaenog Forest on Sunday morning, October 30^th.

Rally cars will be visiting Ruthin on Thursday 27th and Sunday 30th of October 2016 for servicing and refuelling purposes.

As a result, the car park on Park Road, Ruthin will be closed to the public, except permit holders from Wednesday October 26^th 2016 to Sunday October 30^th 2016  at 5pm.  

Permit holders will be permitted to use the car park outside the following hours; Wednesday October 26^th 6pm to 3pm Thursday October 27^th  2016 and Saturday October 29^th 3pm to 3pm Sunday October 30^th 2016.  On Sunday, 30^th October , rally cars will refuel between 8.30am and 2pm.

Leader of Denbighshire, Councillor Hugh Evans OBE said: “We are delighted to see the return of Wales Rally GB to the county.

“The commitment of Wales Rally GB organisers to return shows that Denbighshire and North Wales as a region is a great place to host major events of this kind. It is one of the key highlights of  rallying calendar with thousands of spectators visiting the stages to see the action and others taking to the streets to show their support to passing vehicles.

“We have a wealth of fantastic scenery and forest locations that are ideal for the sport and we are delighted to be working with organisers to help facilitate another successful event in Denbighshire."

Dayinsure Wales Rally GB comes to the historic town of Ruthin on Sunday, 30^th October.  Live coverage of the Brenig Stage will also be screened at Park Road car park on Sunday, 30 October.  The live broadcast begins at 9am , cars are expected to arrive in Ruthin at 9.50am, the refuelling will be completed  by 12.15pm and the live broadcast comes to an end at 1pm.

For further information about the rally, please visit: www.walesrallygb.com

Special landlord event to be staged at Pavilion

Denbighshire County Council is hosting its latest Landlord Roadshow at Llangollen Pavilion on Tuesday November 1.

The event, which runs between 12 noon and 7pm, is held twice a year by the council's Housing Enforcement Team and provides help, advice, training sessions and presentations for landlords in the county.

There will be help and advice with a range of topics, including Rent Smart Wales, Housing Disrepair, Housing Options and Homelessness, Letting Agents, Energy Efficiency, North Wales Police & Fire Service, Landlord Insurance, My Deposits and Direct Collection Bailiffs.

Training sessions and presentations include:

* 1pm – Rent Smart Wales – Short presentation on new legislation for landlords registering and licensing followed by Q & A

* 2pm – SJL Insurance Services – Presentation Landlord Insurance and how to avoid having your insurance claim refused followed by Q & A

* 3pm – North Wales Police – Training. What all landlords need to know about modern slavery followed by Q & A

* 4pm – Energy Grants – Presentation on free grants available to landlords followed by Q & A

* 5pm – DCC housing Services – Presentation about Landlord incentives, preventing homelessness followed by Q & A

* 6pm – High Court Enforcement Services as seen on TV’s ‘The Sheriffs are coming’ -  Presentation on Enforcement services followed by Q & A.

Organisers say there's no need to book a place at this event, and people can come and go throughout the day. 

* For more information, call  01824 706389.