A Newcastle-under-Lyme fermented pickles champion who is set to be featured on TV is launching a food festival.
Emma Cronin runs Wild Pickle, a unique company which hosts fermentation workshops and lays on foraging expeditions.
At her commercial base at New House Farm near Acton, she recently taught high-profile TV chef Andi Oliver how to make fermented sauerkraut.
She is well known as an educationist in the food arena but now she is branching out to launch a festival.
The Wild Pickle Ferment Festival Stoke will take place at Fenton Town Hall on 28 October.
Workshops at the event will showcase plant-based yoghurt, sauerkraut, kombucha and miso while stalls will be run by fermenters from around the UK.
Staffordshire-born Emma, pictured above, a member of the Fermenters Guild and Association of Foragers, launched Wild Pickle in 2015 after fermented food helped her daughter recover from food intolerances.
The company was founded out of her passion for ethically-sourced foods, seasonal and foraged ingredients for the best nutrition and flavour.
“Fermented foods help us as part of an improvement to our diet and overall health,” she said.
“They also open up possibilities to create amazing flavours within foods, and preserve them longer.
“Championing fermentation is my small act of revolution against the crazy food system that we are in.”
During the foraging workshops participants go out into the 87-acre organic woodland at the New House Farm to collect fungi and edible plants.
In the kitchen Emma, who previously worked in the hospitality industry, shows how fermentation can transform numerous foodstuffs and also tea.
To develop her business further she is studying for the Peter Coates MSc in Entrepreneurship at Staffordshire University.
Her latest project is to take a part-share in a commercial polytunnel where she can grow produce for her kitchen.
Emma’s workshop with Andi Oliver will be shown on the BBC later in the year.
For information about the Wild Pickle Ferment Festival click here.
