Spicy weekend at East End Foods

The event last weekend saw East End Foods in Kenrick Way offer factory tours, live music, visits by celebrity chefs and cookery demonstrations.

Ethnic food maker East End Foods, which employs more than 320, was originally started in Wolverhampton in 1972 by the five Wouhra brothers who emigrated to the UK from India.

Local families and customers joined in the free fun at the company’s headquarters, which has one of the biggest rice mills in Europe, on Saturday and Sunday and were able to sample spicy chickpeas and rice and a range of goods.

Celebrity chefs demonstrated their skills live on stage and there were performances from Indian drummers. Street food from restaurants across the region was also featured at East End House.

East End Foods has grown from a small shop delivering door to door to become the largest importer of ethnic foods in the UK with an annual turnover of more than £195 million.

More than 80 per cent of independent Asian grocery stores in the country stock East End’s range, as well as major retailers Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Aldi and the Co-Operative.

It opened the £9m West Bromwich manufacturing and distribution plant, housing state-of-the-art food processing technology, in 2010.

The company now manufactures and distributes more thand 1,250 Asian food ingredients, including a wide range of spices, pulses, rice, oils, sauces and pastes.

Guests over the weekend included TV presenter Adrian Chiles. The West Bromwich Albion with the Albion Foundation.

Celebrity chefs included Nitisha Patel, an, independent food consultant and author of author of My Modern Indian Kitchen. She cooked five lentil dhal with chaat masala kale and murgh makhanwala.

Birmingham cook Lap-fai Lee, The Curry Guy Dan Toombs, Maunika Gowardhan Richard Turner and Dhruv Baker also gave demonstrations.