Charlotte Pike

Award-winning cookery writer, teacher and chef

Quick Updates

Summer 2018 Events

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Every year, I travel around the UK and Europe to speak at a number of different food and music festivals, and to demonstrate recipes from my books.

I’m very pleased to let you know my schedule for 2018, which includes a lovely selection of new events this year. You will notice there are fewer events than last year, as I found it really gruelling being on the road so much. Watch this space for more dates being added to the calendar, as there are still a few events in the UK and Ireland in the planning pipeline. Here are the latest dates for your diary:

Thursday 12th July – Latitude Festival, Suffolk

Thursday 23rd and Friday 24th August – MAKEMORE Festival, Victoria Park, London

Friday 31st August – Ireland (TBC)

Saturday 20th October – Dartmouth Food Festival (Main Stage Demo, 4-5pm)

And for those of you who would like to come to my cookery classes, I teach a number of classes each month at Harborne Food School in Birmingham, my school, Field & Fork School (although we are mainly running private classes at the moment as we are setting up our new site). I also undertake guest demos at a number of locations around the UK. My Facebook page is updated with dates. I hope to see some of you this summer.

Charlotte X

Elderflower Cordial

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The elderflowers were out early in Dorset this year, but much later in Oxfordshire. And now, in early July, they are still out in Northern Ireland, where I’ve just returned from this week.

Elderflower has a unique fragrance and is a truly wild ingredient. You can only get it when it’s in season. It’s very easy to find and pick when in flower, and not to be confused for cow parsley growing in the verges.

I like to make it into cordial, using citric acid to stop it fermenting and to allow it to keep for longer. Citric acid is easily obtained from brewing shops and chemists, if you have never bought it before.

This cordial can be diluted with sparking water to make an elderflower pressé, mixed into a gin and tonic or drizzled onto summer fruits, such as strawberries or poached gooseberries. It also goes straight into my elderflower sorbet recipe.

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SMOKED, my new cookbook

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Smoked front cover

It’s finally here. My new book SMOKED is published on 4th May. I’m so excited to share it with you and I am incredibly proud of my fifth cookbook.

SMOKED is a sister book to my last book, FERMENTED. It’s a beginners guide to hot and cold smoking at home. It walks you through just how to smoke a wide range of delicious ingredients at home, what equipment to use, and lovely recipes to accompany each ingredient, to show you a useful and interesting way to enjoy your smoked creations.

SMOKED took me around a year to write – I only finished it at the start of the year, and I cannot wait for you to see it. I’m incredibly proud of this book, which has taken months of hard work to create. It looks totally gorgeous, too, and I can say that as I had no hand in that part. I worked with the wonderful team behind FERMENTED again, who have made this book look as sumptuous and elegant as I wanted it to. Photos are taken by Tara Fisher, Annie Rigg and Lola Milne worked hard on the styling and Tabitha Hawkins sourced the lovely props. It is published by Kyle Books. You can buy signed and personalised copies here, through my website.

Recipes cover a wide range of fish, meat, cheeses and vegetables, and are as diverse as smoked butter fudge to sticky oriental smoked beef ribs, homemade bacon and kippers. What you need to know is that one can start to smoke food in a small domestic kitchen – no expensive specialist kit is required unless you want it, and you don’t have to be a DIY expert either. The book runs through all this and has plenty of inspiration too for more experienced cooks and novices alike.

I have a busy few weeks promoting the book at events and on TV and Radio, so do watch this space for more information. Those of you in the US will have to wait until 1st August to get your hands on the US edition, I’m afraid.

Thank you all for your support. Please do find me on social media @charlotte_pike_ on Twitter and @charlottepikefood in Instagram to share your creations from the book and tag #SMOKED, too. 

Charlotte X