Rosemary Shrager is a force of nature, a gale force. She swept into Fodder last week, to demonstrate some breakfast dishes from her new book ‘Rosemary Shrager’s Yorkshire Breakfasts’.
And it was a demo like no other: crazy, funny, chaotic. She couldn’t work the induction hob so Fodder’s director, Heather Parry, hovered behind her turning the plates on and off, up and down on demand and sometimes failing altogether. There was only one frying pan when she needed two; potato cakes had been cut into rounds instead of rectangles. Fodder’s head chef put up with relentless scolding mostly for being French, poor lad. Even a chap from the audience, whom she’d met years ago was dragged up to help make the scrambled eggs. His mistake was once beating her at table tennis.
But her ferocious bark is far worse than her bite. She may come over as a posh and bossy lady, but she’s a pussy cat really, utterly charming, entertaining, delightful.
And she seems to genuinely love Yorkshire. She raves about everything: the place, the people, the ingredients, the food. She was thrilled to find Chris Wildman, the Yorkshire Chorizo man, in the audience, went off at a tangent to praise local ‘Serrano’ ham and loved Fodder’s bacon. She raves about breakfast. too, which of course was the point.
Rosemary Shrager and Heather Parry
She told us why she loved breakfast, gave us tips to make things easier when entertaining. She made kedgereee – her tip: add a spot of curry powder. She made creamy scrambled eggs, poached eggs, quails eggs. She fried up some bacon and made a proper hollandaise sauce. She took questions, signed books, teased the chef some more. I don’t know about her but the rest of us sat down to our meal exhausted and we really did enjoy all the above. Breakfast for supper, you can’t beat it.
Fodder is a charitable food hall and cafe run by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society to provide a market for local farmers and food producers.
Open every day until 5.30pm, 7pm Thursday.
Fodder, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate HG2 8NZ T: 01423 546111 www.fodderweb.co.uk