Eclectic Electric edibles

FOR YEARS the “inner hippy” in me has longed to go to a rock festival but I’ve always chickened out at the last minute for a variety of reasons — those huge crowds seemed scary and would I not look and feel completely ridiculous in the midst of all those be-bopping young people.

JC Collery, the mover and shaker behind the Slow Food Youth Movement, is a Ballymaloe Cookery School graduate who also holds a Masters degree in Development Studies from Manchester University. He has a passion for food and last year after Terra Madre in Italy he hatched a plan to build a wood burning oven to cook great pizzas using local ingredients at the Electric Picnic in Stradbally. He was so fired up with enthusiasm about this amazing music festival where the organisers also have a real green mission to look after environmental issues and to provide a variety of good food for the 33,000 punters who flock to the 400 acre estate in Co Laois.

When he mooted the idea to the organisers they were totally up for it so Philip Denhardt, Glenny Cameron and Johan Van der Merwe headed for Stradbally, in Co Laois. They borrowed an old tractor trailer from a local farmer, Joe Lawlor and built three wood burning ovens on top. Philip made dough for 1,500 pizzas, buckets of tomato sauce from organic tomatoes and lots of basil from the green houses. They bought 12.5 kgs of Gubeen chorizo from artisan producer Fingal Ferguson. Lots of their friends, including Ted Burner and Ivan Whelan of Wildside Catering set up their spit and roasted a couple of Saddleback pigs from Noreen Conroy’s Woodside Farm. Paddy O’Connell was slicing strawberries and putting dollops of delicious natural yoghurt on his “ogranola” to keep up with the growing queues. I simply had to go, my daughter stole my wellies, but I found a pair of distressed Uggs and some colourful gear and headed off. The Electric Picnic blew my mind; forget the variety of music from opera and chamber music to soul and jazz, which was amazing.