The real joy of festival markets

There is something I love about festival markets. You can go in with no particular plan, wander around for a while and come home with a bag full of things you didn’t know you needed.

That was certainly the case when we travelled to Belfast for the Fleadh. Last week. I wrote about St George’s Market but the markets around the Fleadh deserved a second look. This time I paid particular attention to the food and drink producers and there were some familiar favourites as well as a few discoveries that have already found their way into my kitchen.

One of the products I was delighted to come across again was Irish Black Butter. If you haven’t tried it, forget everything the name might suggest. There is no dairy involved. It is a rich, dark, spicy apple conserve made with Armagh Bramley apples, cider, brandy, treacle, sugar and spices. It is utterly delicious and difficult to get sometimes.

There is history behind it too. Black Butter belongs to the wider tradition of apple butter, a method of preserving apples that dates back centuries in Western Europe and Ireland. The modern Irish version was developed on the north coast of Northern Ireland and launched in 2017, inspired by the old tradition and made using apples from Armagh and we all know that Irish apples are the best.

It is one of those products that makes you wonder how you managed without it. Spread it on toast, pair it with cheese, stir it into sauces or use it in baking. It has that lovely sweet, savoury quality that makes you want to keep finding excuses to use it.

Then I discovered Symphonia Spirits and I might have just found a new favourite. The range includes Irish apple rum and raspberry gin liqueur, alongside its dry gin and apple gin. The apple rum caught my attention. The wonderful lady at the Symphonia stall gave me a booklet with cocktail recipes, so naturally I had to experiment.

I made their Breakfast Martini but swapped the gin for the apple rum. It worked beautifully. The rum brought a warmer, fruitier character to the drink and turned something I might have ordered as a cocktail into something I will keep enjoying at home.

And then there was Black Fire. I came across their jalapeño jam and it didn’t take much persuasion before we bought a jar. My first cheese toastie after returning home was layered with the jam. The combination of melted cheese and that jalapeño sweetness with a gentle chilli kick is dangerously good.

Black Fire started in a Belfast kitchen in 2014 and still produces its sauces in small batches in Northern Ireland. Always on the lookout to spice up our sauces and stews, Orange Bison wing sauce was an easy choice and also came home with me. It has that lovely sweet heat that makes you reach for another bite rather than run for a glass of water.

That, for me, is the real joy of festival markets. You go for the music, the atmosphere and the experience but you can come home with a few new favourites tucked into your shopping bag.

Sometimes the best souvenirs aren’t something you put on a shelf. They’re something you open in the kitchen, taste for the first time and immediately start wondering what you can make with them next.