Bloggerview with Deborah Watson. PR for the Norfolk Food Festival

Name and occupation

Deborah Watson, MD of PR and Event agency, Lexia Media

What would you like to plug?

Norfolk Food Festival. We’re thrilled to be PR-ing this great event. It’s a fantastic month-long celebration of food and puts the spotlight on one of East Anglia’s great counties. Oh, and you’d naturally expect me to plug Lexia too. Goes without saying. We’re a great agency and I am so proud to have a fantastic team.

Name your three desert island ingredients

Tiger prawns, fresh as you like strawberries and East Anglian asparagus. Might not eat them together mind...

What would you have for your last supper?

Mum’s family-favourite stew and dumplings if i were bowing out in the middle of winter, or a prawn and pea risotto in the summer

What foodstuff would you bannish?

Bananas. Sorry – can’t explain it. Just plain horrid.

What's your favourite table?

Any table surrounded by friends and loved ones, tucking in to delicious food and enjoying great conversation

Which book gets you cooking ?

Any baking book (currently liking Lorraine Pascale’s) or a binder of well thumbed-through ingredient-spattered recipes created by my late gran

What's your dream dinner party line-up? And what would you cook for them?

I’m going to cop out here and say my closest girl friends and their families. We’d be enjoying a huge paella and several glasses of champagne.

What was your childhood teatime treat?

Gran’s Victoria sponge or mum’s buttery flapjack.

What would you make to impress your partner?

As I’m far more a baker than a cook, he’s easily satisfied with melt-in-the-mouth straight out the oven chocolate-chip Debbie-cookies (as they’re known)

What was your most memorable meal?

A gorgeous risotto, sat in a restaurant in Venice. It was a week after my boyfriend had returned from serving in the Gulf for many months, so a very special holiday and an amazing thoroughly Italian meal.

What was your biggest culinary disaster?

I’ve made so many... The ones that stick in my mind are the baking ones, where I then remember that trying to multi-task with a phone call while baking a cake means you forget to put in vital ingredients like eggs, or sugar!

Who's your food hero/food villain?

Hero – Upmost respect to Mary Berry

Nigella or Delia?

Has to be Delia – she’s a patron of Norfolk Food Festival

Muesli or fry-up?
Muesli

Wine or beer?

Wine

Fast food or fresh food?

Fresh...don’t you think my client would have something to say about it if i picked the other...

What's the best/worst thing about the British food scene?

Best is that there’s so much opportunity out there for regional producers and homespun businesses to get their food under the noses of bigger retailers and to get their goods into our hands. Worst is the red tape and what often seems like excessive health and safety implications making it hard for the smaller guys. Also the tough time farmers have in achieving deserved rates from supermarkets.

What would you do if you could choose any other career?

How do you beat being PR to a great Festival like the Norfolk one....?Oh, ok, well maybe i’d answer that secret desire to serve my own cookies and hot chocolate in a cute cafe somewhere in East Anglia. I’d probably love spending every day baking....for about a week until I realised i’d just turned a hobby into work!