Joanna Busk: Portfolio

Journalist, Editor and Copywriter

To contact Joanna please call 07808 241533 or email [email protected]

Joanna Busk

Portfolio

MAGNUS NILSSON

ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL 2013 17

Northern Light

� WORDS: JOANNA BUSK

Fäviken couldn’t be anywhere except Jämtland. The restaurant lies on a 8,400-hectare hunting estate, a remote outpost that relies on its surroundings to create what has been hailed as a

completely new type of cuisine. In fact, many of the techniques its chef Magnus Nilsson uses are inherited from local customs of preserving, curing and fermenting; a necessity in a place that is blanketed in snow for six months of the year.

Born and raised in Jämtland, Nilsson, like most locals knows where to find edible mushrooms, berries and herbs. On his grandparents’ farm he learned techniques for conserving food: pasteurising, preserving, pickling, smoking and drying meat and fish, herbs and mushrooms.

“Food was very important and my grandmother prepared a lot of the harvest every summer and autumn to keep for the winter, a bit like we do at Fäviken today,” says Magnus. Ph

otog

raph

y: E

rik O

lsso

n

Aber04_MagnusNilsson_FINAL.indd 17 31/7/13 14:56:17

MAGNUS NILSSON

18 ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL 2013

“We do things as they have always been done here,” Magnus continues. “We harvest what grows on our land and refine it. We build up our provisions ahead of the winter; we dry, salt, jelly, pickle and bottle.” It would follow, then, that his cooking is a reflection of his background. “Of course! Any craft or creative process is the sum of the person creating it, your history and your experience, your cultural context all goes into creating the end result.”

In fact, nothing in Magnus Nilsson’s kitchen comes from very far away. Meat, game and vegetables are from the estate, seafood is from Norway; only sugar, salt, wheat, wine and co!ee are sourced from further afield. He hunts for moose, grouse and hare, fishes in the lakes and forages for wild mushrooms and berries. “By using our own produce and preparing it in the way that used to be necessary

FOOD� TALK� Saturday� 21� September2.00-3.00pm� � The� Borough� TheatreThe� Restaurant� at� the� End� of� the� Universe:� Magnus� Nilsson� talks� to� Valentine� Warner.

Signed� copies� are� available� from� the� festival� book� shop� in� the� Market� Hall,� stall� 24.

Magnus� Nilsson’s� book,� Fäviken� (Phaidon� £35)

to survive, we force ourselves to think di!erently and that forces creativity,” Magnus considers.

Experimentation includes introducing new ingredients and Magnus has recently planted tobacco in the kitchen garden. “It used to be one of our main exports until the 1600s,” he says, “but no-one is growing tobacco in Sweden anymore.” Once ready, he’s planning to add it to the menu. “Nothing is really new, it’s always been here – you just might not have worked with it before.”

A unique perspectiveNilsson trained in Michelin-star restaurants in Paris and brings his classical training to this extraordinary setting: “While I believe cooking to be very intuitive, first of all you have to master your techniques really well. That’s the first thing. So the only thing we plan at Fäviken is the technical

“We respect our raw ingredients for what they are, what they look like and where they come from”

process, but when we’re developing recipes, it’s more intuitive”.

He nearly gave up cooking after becoming disillusioned with the kitchen and studied to be a wine writer. Destiny, however, had other

ideas when the owners of the Fäviken estate persuaded him to set up a restaurant for them. Guests at the restaurant come to sit down to a dinner-only set menu that reads like a magical fairy tale. Dishes like marrow and heart with grated turnip and turnip leaves that have never seen the light of day, grilled bread and lovage salt, or raw trout marinated in mushroom vinegar, grated carrot and sauce of darkly-toasted oatmeal. It’s not food for the fainthearted.

He sums up his philosophy of real food. “We respect our raw ingredients for what they are, what they look like and where they come from. We concentrate on harvesting, preparing, cooking and then serving it in the most exact way possible. We don’t follow trends. It’s respect, control, selection, concentration, presentation.“ This philosophy is extended to the diners at Fäviken.

“I like to believe that what we do not only gives people pleasure in the moment, but also helps them to rediscover their connection with nature and their place in the world, a connection which is becoming more and more distant for many of us. I believe we need it to be truly happy.”

While Nilsson will be sharing his experiences at Abergavenny, he won’t be cooking, “I don’t like to cook outside of the restaurant. I prefer to just talk to people about what we do.”

For a man who almost threw his apron away, the world should celebrate he has found a place where cooking does make him happy. Or perhaps it found him. ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL

GW

YL

FWY

D Y

FEN

NI

ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVALGWYL FWYD Y FENNI

ABE

RGAV

ENN

Y FO

OD

FES

TIV

AL

GWYL FWYD Y FENNI

Usage guidelines (May 2010)The preferred format is for Abergavenny Food Festival in English to appearhorizontally with the Welsh translation dropping vertically below the ‘a’ symbol.It is however acceptable in narrow portrait applications (e.g. 1/3 A4) for theWelsh to appear horizontally (see left).

The option in which both English and Welsh appear horizontally should only beused where there is insufficient space to display the ‘right-angle’ design

The Welsh translation MUST NOT appear without a circumflex accent over the‘W’ of GWYL.

Fonts: Gill Sans MT Regular and Bold

david siddall multimedia +44 (0)1600 740683 [email protected]

� www.favikenmagasinet.se

Food� wonders� in� winterland,� Fäviken� estate,� Jämtland

Aber04_MagnusNilsson_FINAL.indd 18 31/7/13 11:46:27

FLORENCE KNIGHT


Meet� Florence� Knight,� a� rising� culinary� star� with� a� penchant� for�

WORDS: JOANNA BUSK

here are few women who make it through the notoriously masculine kitchen ranks to become head chefs, let alone when they’re still in their twenties. But for

Florence Knight, Head Chef at Polpetto in Soho, growing up in a family of five siblings means being domineering in the kitchen comes quite naturally to her. “I’m from a full-on family,” she tells me. “You have to be quite strong and bossy to be heard in a big family; that helped because you need to be able to hold your own in a kitchen.”

Knight started cooking professionally at the age of 16, knocking on kitchen doors with her knives and o!ering to work for free. Following years of hard graft, she has been on a sabbatical this past year to write her first cookbook, One: A Cook and Her Cupboard, a tome born of her belief in the value of a well-stocked cupboard.

“I’m trying to encourage people to look in their cupboards, there are things in there like eggs and honey that we need to learn to use more creatively. It’s all about starting with one thing and then building on that. For example, when I’m in the kitchen in Polpetto, if the fish man brings in mackerel, then I’ll start with that and see how I can build on it. A lot of the things in our cupboards are really overlooked and I think we should do more with them.”

For those familiar with her cooking at Polpetto, you’re in for a surprise because it isn’t an Italian book, although she explains it has an influence on her cooking style: “I’m a very relaxed natural cook and I go along with the ethics of cooking Italian, but my training is French and I believe in following the seasons religiously. Ingredients will always taste better when they are in season, whether it’s white currants, sloe berries, quinces, acorns or nettles.”

While the book does contain dreamy Mediterranean recipes – think burrata with picked beetroot and rhubarb or braised prawns, fennel and pangrattato – it also contains some surprises like a chapter on ketchup, including a ketchup cake.

“The way I see food is this: we like ketchup with bacon sandwiches and chips, so it obviously needs a fatty, strong and smoky partner, so I immediately think, chocolate! It works by adding sourness and you wouldn’t necessarily know it was there.”

The tone of her book is informal and chatty, did she find writing came as easily as cooking? “It was a big challenge for me. I was quite convinced I was actually Carrie Bradshaw and it would be a lot easier, but it took me a while to find my voice.” In the book she admits she sometimes talks about cooking in her sleep. “Yes! I know, it’s ridiculous but I sometimes yell out, ‘Service’ in my sleep. I guess it’s hard to wind down after a long night in a kitchen, but I suppose it is pretty funny.”

Sleepwalking aside, this young woman has definitely found her voice. Carrie would no doubt be proud. ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL

GW

YL

FWY

D Y

FEN

NI

ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVALGWYL FWYD Y FENNI

ABE

RGAV

ENN

Y FO

OD

FES

TIV

AL

GWYL FWYD Y FENNI

Usage guidelines (May 2010)The preferred format is for Abergavenny Food Festival in English to appearhorizontally with the Welsh translation dropping vertically below the ‘a’ symbol.It is however acceptable in narrow portrait applications (e.g. 1/3 A4) for theWelsh to appear horizontally (see left).

The option in which both English and Welsh appear horizontally should only beused where there is insufficient space to display the ‘right-angle’ design

The Welsh translation MUST NOT appear without a circumflex accent over the‘W’ of GWYL.

Fonts: Gill Sans MT Regular and Bold

david siddall multimedia +44 (0)1600 740683 [email protected]

Florence� Knight:� Head� Chef� at� London’s� Polpetto

Aber04_FlorenceKnight_FINAL.indd 26 31/7/13 11:41:42

FLORENCE KNIGHT


PEAR� &� CHOCOLATE� UPServes� eight

I 5� under-‐ripe� pears� (ripe� pears� won’t� do!) 180g� dark� chocolate� (best-‐quality) 250g� butter 6� eggs 175g� sugar 100g� ground� almonds 2� tbsp� Poire� William� liqueur

METHOD� Chocolate� and� pears� go� so� well� together� I’m� surprised� they� aren’t� combined� more� often� –� they� come� together� beautifully� in� this� cake.� Preheat� the� oven� to� 170°C/Gas� Mark� 5� and� grease� and� line� a� 23cm� round� deep� cake� tin.Peel,� core� and� cut� the� pears� into� eighths.� Arrange� them�

core-‐side� down� in� a� fanned� circle� at� the� bottom� of� the� tin.Put� a� pan� on� the� heat� with� a� little� water� in� it� and� set� a� heat-‐proof� bowl� over� it.� Break� up� the� chocolate� and� melt� together� with� the� butter� in� the� bowl.While� they’re� melting,� beat� the� eggs� and� sugar� together�

carefully� fold� in� the� ground� almonds.Tip� the� batter� into� the� tin� and� bake� for� 45� to� 50� minutes.� Use� a� skewer� to� test� the� centre� to� check� that� it� is� baked� through.As� soon� as� it� comes� out� of� the� oven,� pour� the� Poire� William� all� over� the� top� and� leave� to� cool� in� the� tin.

� Recipe� extracted� from� One:� A� Cook� and� Her� Cupboard� by� Florence� night,� published� by� Saltyard� Books,� £25� ©� Florence� night� 2013.� � Photography� ©� Jason� Lowe

MASTERCLASSSaturday� 21st� September� 2.00-2.45� pm� The� Priory� CentreFlorence� Knight� cooks� some� favourite� seasonal� small� plates.�

cookbook.

the� festival� book� shop� in� the� Market� Hall,� stall� 24.

Florence� Knight� One� –� A� Cook� and� Her� Cupboard�

� Books� £25)

Aber04_FlorenceKnight_FINAL.indd 27 31/7/13 11:42:33

24 www.forkmagazine.com

D airy farmers Adam and Caroline Fleming were already farming sheep and Red Devon cattle when they went on holiday to Italy and stumbled upon a milk vending machine. By the time they got home, they had hatched a

plan to buy some cows. A few trips to Switzerland later, and their new milk vending machine sits in the car park of The Kingham Plough. 24 hours a day, locals come and fill up with fresh milk from their Guernsey herd down the road. Pop the money in and a hatch opens, all ready to pour out fresh creamy Guernsey milk.

As a way to cut out the supermarkets and supply the market direct, it is a clever one, and a thoroughly modern spin on the idea of a milkman. At £2 a litre, it isn’t a cheap option, but good food rarely is, and take a sip and you will understand the difference. It’s funny how people don’t balk at paying far more for a pint of bad quality lager. Adam pours me a glass and it tastes just like milk used to taste, I am whirled in an instant back to my childhood. It is unsurprisingly, very popular with children. One of the selling points is the freshness. Adam explains, “When you

go to a supermarket, you see a sell by date and you don’t really know when the milk came out of the cow. With us, it comes out of the cow and it’s in the machine either that day or the next”. Rather sweetly, as your milk is dispensed, a receipt pops out that says when the cow was milked, and when the milk was pasteurised.

The milk is pure Guernsey, which Adam says you won’t find in the supermarket, “It’s such a small breed population you see. Guernsey milk is really different to any other. It takes the beta carotene from the clover and that gives it a more golden colour, plus it has three times the Omega 3 than other milk too, so it is good for you”. The milk is not homogenised but it is pasteurised. “We would love to sell raw milk but we can’t because of the TB in the area. We sell something as close to raw milk as we can. We pasteurise it – most pasteurising is flash heated to destroy the pathogens but actually in the process destroy a lot of the goodies. So what we do is we pasteurise very gently at just a high enough temperature but it keeps the flavour as much as possible

www.forkmagazine.com 39

The latest machine has been put in Adam Henson’s Country Park where Caroline tells me they witnessed someone crawl out of their tent on the campsite and wander over to the machine with with a bowl of coco pops. Adam� and� Caroline� Fleming

The bottle is part of the appeal, with its cute retro styling it’s hard not to like the idea of popping off with your bottle for a refill. You could of course use anything, Caroline says “we have the bottles for sale in the machine which people do really like, but equally you could use old milk cartons or water bottles”. The lack of waste and absence of plastic packaging, added to the low food miles, suggest it is an incredibly sustainable business.

It is a difficult time for farmers and they have had a disastrous year. Adam laments “Milk sells for less than water and that’s a crime too because it is a fantastic food. Milk, eggs and bread are the keys for life and people take it for granted that there is always milk in the supermarket, but actually by driving the price down at some point the production is going to be affected and imagine what would happen when you don’t have milk in the supermarkets. You can tell I’m quite passionate about it. There’s a whole litany of things about this industry that I think is crazy

and I think is going to reverse. I think milk prices will go up because people will realise how important it is. Farmers have to make a living”.

Siting the machine in the car park of one of Gloucestershire’s top gastro pubs is a canny move. If the customers here won’t go for it, frankly, who would. Inside the pub, head chef Emily Watkins is waving their flag enthusiastically. “The reason we use it is because it tastes delicious and it’s creamy and it has a proper flavour to it. We can make a traditional milk desert, like a proper homemade blancmange because that’s what proper old fashioned desserts should be made with. The way they are making it keeps all those lovely flavours in there”. The trio of creamy ice creams she delivers to the table underline her point.

A new machine has been put in Adam Henson’s Country Park where Caroline tells me they witnessed someone crawl out of their tent on the campsite and wander over to the machine with with a bowl of coco pops. “It’s taking control yourself and it’s the closest you can get to milking a cow without actually milking a cow which I think people like”.

So who is Nell? It turns out it is their daughter, who has allowed them to use her name on condition she doesn’t have to have anything to do with it. I suspect if this takes off, she may change her mind. It is perhaps not a revolution, but an ingenious take on an old tradition, and I for one, hope that a milk vending machine on my city streets will not be far off. I would rather give my money to the Flemings than to a supermarket.

� www.nellsdairy.com� www.thekinghamplough.co.uk�


WORDS: JOANNA BUSK

otam, as many of his fans will know, likes a good salad. His past two books have led us on a salad-making journey towards a world where anything can be turned into a salad given the chance.

His third book Jerusalem, he admits, also contains a fair few salad recipes. “The word salad encompasses so many things – it o! ers way more variety than anything else you could imagine. Pulses, vegetables, fruits – and you can put them together in so many interesting ways. Salads are the most varied and diverse way of eating.”

The new book is not a vegetarian book like his last one. There will be meat and fi sh recipes as well as sweets, desserts, and baking but he says “50% of the book is focused on vegetables and grains so there are still a lot of vegetarian recipes. It’s really such a big part of what we do”. He believes this is also a refl ection of how Middle Eastern people eat meat, as a side dish, rather than the main event. “We have not historically eaten as much meat, although more people are eating chicken and lamb as they become more a" uent. It used to be for special occasions.

Y

COOL

Phot

ogra

phy:

Jona

than

Lov

ekin

Aber03_Yotam_FINAL.indd 28 30/7/12 18:03:48


What is interesting is the next stage. After all this exposure people are going back to what is local. They have the knowledge of world food, but also a deep engagement with the land and its tradition – that is where we see cuisines start to evolve”.

I ask him whether he found anything completely new. “We didn’t fi nd ideas that were totally new to us, but it was interesting to see what people did with typical ingredients. The various communities in Jerusalem all stu! vegetables di! erently and it was fascinating to see how many variations on a dish there are; so many kinds of meatballs for instance; the varieties are endless. The sheer abundance of produce was eye-opening. Seeing what people did with tamarind, with broad beans, prunes and tomatoes was an education.”

With all the colour and fl amboyance of his kitchen, does he ever feel like eating something plain and comforting I wonder? “Actually yes” he laughs, “I love Yorkshire puddings. In my fi rst job as a pastry chef I had to make hundreds of them every Sunday and I developed a bit of a weakness. I ate quite a lot of them at the time”. No wonder then that he’s partial to a salad these days.

The meat component of a meal is very small – think of the meze way of eating”.

I ask him why he has written this book now. “Sami, my business partner and I both come from Jerusalem. For years our cooking has been deeply infl uenced by the fl avours and colours of our childhood. The food we cook now is so far removed from the starting point, the everyday foods we grew up with like hummus and falafel. So we wanted to go on a discovery, to go back to where it all began, to rediscover the food of our home city with our current eyes. To rediscover the fl avours and rediscover what made us the chefs we are”.

That they are working together at all would be remarkable if they had never left the city. Sami is Palestinian from the east side and Yotam grew up in the western, Jewish part of the city.They met while working at Baker & Spice in London, before joining forces to open the fi rst Ottolenghi restaurant in Notting Hill. He tells me it is this that makes the story more interesting. “Our collaboration would not have happened easily or probably not at all. At home, politically it is still tense but in England, it was easy to have a close friendship and work together. We have a very creative and very unique relationship”. I ask if he thinks food can bring people together, despite di! erences in race, religion and across confl ict. “Sure, when people are sat around a table enjoying food, perhaps the politics matters a bit less for a moment. Hopefully our food can bring people a bit closer together”. After all, he says “What else would do this but food – it has to! “

In writing the book, he found a food revolution going on in Jerusalem, which he thinks is typical for many places. “Over the last 20 years the world has opened up everywhere. With the growth of the media, we all have more knowledge. People have access to a greater range of products and a wider range of cooking styles.

MASTERCLASS

Saturday 15 September: 3.00-4.00pmThe Borough TheatreBuy tickets now �– see pages 10-11

Aber03_Yotam_FINAL.indd 29 30/7/12 18:03:52



www.forkmagazine.com 19 20 www.forkmagazine.com

T he chef is sporting a new moustache and earnestly reading Dickens in a deep leather chair by a roaring fire. The table behind him is being cleared with the remains of lunch; a hash of snails, veal chop with cabbage & onion and reform sauce, followed by

chocolate wine slush. It could be a scene from centuries ago, but look closer and all is not what it seems. Inside the copy of Great Expectations is a hip flask containing a brandy, rum and citrus punch. The moustache is for Movember 2012 and the chef is Kevin Love, head chef of The Hinds Head, Heston’s newly Michelin-starred pub in Bray.

The pub is a former a royal hunting lodge nestling in a picture perfect Berkshire village. The oak panelling and roaring fires alone could make an American tourist swoon. Add some royal connections (Prince Philip held his stag night here) and it’s enough to induce a fainting fit. It does, however, sit somewhat in the shadows of its more famous siblings. When Dinner by Heston launched, the publicity machine spouted stories about how they were recreating historic British dishes with the help of food historians at Hampton Court Palace. What is perhaps less known is that Kevin also has access to their research. “We had some food historianscoduct research for the whole group. They went through old recipe books and put everything together into a big document we call the ‘mega doc’. Whenever we have an idea or an ingredient come in and we want a new dish, we reference the megadoc”.

He is calm and immaculate in his whites; I imagine chefs in Heston’s empire like things to be quite concise. “I have been thinking about how to describe what we do, and I think I can best describe it as technical simplicity” he says as we settle down to discuss his food, which is now firmly in the spotlight; The Hinds Head has just gained a Michelin star, adding to the one already awarded to Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and the three The Fat Duck has held since 2004. He warms to his theme “The veal chop is a very simple dish when you look at it but the technicality of it is not simple at all. First of all we get the best veal we can get our hands on which goes to the butcher to be French trimmed. It is then brined with salt and herbs and spices for 3 hours before being vac packed with duck fat and put in a sous vide water bath at 60 degrees for 40 minutes before being finished on the plancha where the fat catches fire and melts

Head� Chef� Kevin� Love

Chocolate� Wine� Slush

Pho

togr

aphy

: © H

uw J

ones


looks like a simple steamed suet pudding on the plate, but every little detail is minutely thought of, and is perfect as can be and if it’s not I don’t serve it.”

Dishes are taken to the test kitchens and put through their paces by Heston and the other chefs, a process he seems very happy with “Working here I have unique access to world-class facilities for developing dishes. The team here in Bray is like being in a family where we share an ethos and work together on the development of ideas and concepts. I’ve never known anywhere like it. I love the fact I can research a dish, have the guys in the development kitchen run it through its paces to make sure every dish is the best it can be.”

What this also means dear punter is that all three restaurants in the group use many of the same suppliers and techniques. If you can’t make it to The Fat Duck to try the famous snail porridge, Kevin’s snail dish is equally memorable. Love found the 16th

“I’ve� been� thinking� about� how� to� describe� what� we� do,� and� I� think� I� can� best� describe� it� as�

technical� simplicity”

into the meat”. He goes on to explain that the reform sauce is made from 21 ingredients and based on an Alexis Sawyer (Head Chef of the Reform Club) recipe from the 1830’s. “We made one as per their recipe but it came out kind of sludgy so we took the recipe and the ingredients as a shopping list and came up with our own version. It contains egg, capers, shallots, garlic, redcurrant jelly, blanched lemon zest, ox tongue cubes (cooked in a 48 hour process) fresh herbs, smoked salt, sherry vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. And that’s why our food is different to everywhere else, it looks very simple on the plate, but the whole process from conception to delivery on the plate is a three-day process”. Damn, I wish I’d known this before I ate the veal chop for lunch, I might have paid more attention. He goes on to explain how making the oxtail and kidney pudding is also a 2-day process. It is cooked sous vide and held in a water bath so it relaxes and comes to the table at the correct temperature. “It

Veal� Chop� with� Cabbage� and� Onion� Sauce� Reform


looks like a simple steamed suet pudding on the plate, but every little detail is minutely thought of, and is perfect as can be and if it’s not I don’t serve it.”

Dishes are taken to the test kitchens and put through their paces by Heston and the other chefs, a process he seems very happy with “Working here I have unique access to world-class facilities for developing dishes. The team here in Bray is like being in a family where we share an ethos and work together on the development of ideas and concepts. I’ve never known anywhere like it. I love the fact I can research a dish, have the guys in the development kitchen run it through its paces to make sure every dish is the best it can be.”

What this also means dear punter is that all three restaurants in the group use many of the same suppliers and techniques. If you can’t make it to The Fat Duck to try the famous snail porridge, Kevin’s snail dish is equally memorable. Love found the 16th

“I’ve� been� thinking� about� how� to� describe� what� we� do,� and� I� think� I� can� best� describe� it� as�

technical� simplicity”

into the meat”. He goes on to explain that the reform sauce is made from 21 ingredients and based on an Alexis Sawyer (Head Chef of the Reform Club) recipe from the 1830’s. “We made one as per their recipe but it came out kind of sludgy so we took the recipe and the ingredients as a shopping list and came up with our own version. It contains egg, capers, shallots, garlic, redcurrant jelly, blanched lemon zest, ox tongue cubes (cooked in a 48 hour process) fresh herbs, smoked salt, sherry vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. And that’s why our food is different to everywhere else, it looks very simple on the plate, but the whole process from conception to delivery on the plate is a three-day process”. Damn, I wish I’d known this before I ate the veal chop for lunch, I might have paid more attention. He goes on to explain how making the oxtail and kidney pudding is also a 2-day process. It is cooked sous vide and held in a water bath so it relaxes and comes to the table at the correct temperature. “It

Veal� Chop� with� Cabbage� and� Onion� Sauce� Reform


century recipe for his Hash of Snails dish in the mega doc, but it was originally made in a pot over a fire lined in bread. “We always create shopping lists from the ingredients in the original, so for this dish we use sourdough baguette, pistachio paste, vanilla, pickled walnuts, deep fried capers, chives and microherbs. Every ingredient used in the original recipe we have used, but in a better way” he explains before adding hastily “in our opinion”.

He talks with pride about how happy he is to be here. “The interest for me came years ago when Heston’s first series came out. As a chef I was watching this guy doing seriously weird things on TV and thinking who is he? I went from wow this is interesting, to, I really want to go to Bray and check out what’s going on, to I really want to work there. It took me a good three years of knocking on the door”. He started as a sous chef and 3 months later he was head chef; which is a lesson to us all that perseverance pays off. He grins, “two and a half years later, here I am, I am loving it and we’ve just won a Michelin star. Every time I come into the car park I’m blown away; if you’re into food, there is nowhere like it on the planet” He adds with just a small sense of wonder, “There are 7 stars in less than a mile radius in this tiny village”.

Puddings are where some real fun takes place on the menu. The word pudding historically refers to a food that is contained in animal gut to hold it when cooking, like black pudding or sausages. In the 17th century, cooks realized that they could make puddings by containing food in cloth bags or bowls: hence more sweet puddings. They invented the ‘Quaking Pudding’ which gained its name due to the fact it quakes and shakes like a jelly. A staple in recipe books throughout the 17th century, it slowly began to disappear from recipe collections. Where it might well have stayed were it not for historical rummaging by Heston’s gaggle of chefs in Bray. Heston’s team has refined the original recipe, tested it and retested it until they are satisfied it is perfect. Throughout the year the pudding evolves with the seasons incorporating different flavours including apple rhubarb and banana which work well with the pudding.

Chocolate wine slush is equally fascinating. Chocolate wine first appeared on the English culinary scene in the 1660s, soon

The� Hinds� Head,� High� Street,� Bray,� Berkshire,� SL6� 2ABTel:� 01628� 626151

www.hindsheadbray.com

after the arrival of chocolate itself, which was known during the reign of Charles II as “the Indian nectar.” Made by blending a fortified wine like Port with sugar and chocolate, doctors of the day thought that this luxurious combination was a powerful aphrodisiac, “provoking lust, increasing seed and adding to the vigour of procreation”. Roll on a few hundred years and Love serves it cold in an espresso cup with a gold dusted piece of millionaire’s shortbread on the side. The effect is a bit like a cold red wine slush puppy; which is nicer than it perhaps sounds.

Throughout the year, Love puts special dishes on the menu, many of which are inspired by the past. In January, it is his special wassilaing dish inspired by the ancient tradition of blessing the apple trees “I’ve been trying to get a dish out of that for years; I knew there was a dish in there somewhere” he laughs before describing his dish of apples, cider and buttered toast. Which turns out to be brioche caramelised in a pan to make pan perdu, soaked in apple brandy with a vac pac, toasted in the pan with caramelised apples cooked in a water bath for 9 hours, fresh apple matchsticks, bramley apple ice-cream and apple syrup poured at the table.

I finish by asking him the million-dollar question, is The Hind’s Head a pub or a restaurant? He answers carefully “We are open in the afternoon and you can come in for a drink. We have a drinking area and a regular stable of drinkers who I think have never eaten in here, so we are most definitely a pub. Albeit one that does Michelin quality food” before adding with a smile “with technical simplicity, of course!”.

With that, Love and his new moustache disappear off to the kitchen to get on with the everyday business of conjuring up the past.

The� word� pudding� historically� refers� to� a� food� that� is� contained� in� animal� gut� to� hold� it� when� cooking,� like� black� pudding� or� sausages.

E nter the bathroom at Dishoom, and you’ll find a water tap in every cubicle, as is the Indian custom. Don’t be alarmed; authentic as they look, they are purely decorative. This detail alone suggests this is not your

average curry joint, but then so does the in-house Indian bakery sending out bacon naan rolls, the Permit Room bar serving Bombay Coladas and Chilli Martinis and a newly kitted out restaurant that looks like a Indian café landed in Shoreditch by way of The Wolseley.

Dishoom is the sound effect made by punches thrown in old Bollywood films (an Indian kapow! if you like) and it is also a

Shamil� Thakrar


BOMBAY SURPRISE

couple of Indian restaurants in London, the second of which has recently opened in an old Securicor office building in the beating heart of Shoreditch. Owner Shamil Thakrar is sitting in a corner when I arrive and orders us chai and an Indian breakfast. A parade of plates arrives; the famed bacon naan (with chilli jam and cream cheese), Akuri (spicy scrambled eggs) and Bun Maska, a buttery toasted roll for dipping into chai. All this time we’ve been going out for a curry in the evening when actually, breakfast turns out to be an excellent time for an Indian.

Shamil agrees, “Indian food is so underserved in this country. Britain has such a long relationship with India, going back to the 17th century. When you say to someone you are doing Indian, before you have even finished your sentence, you are one of four things; Bollywood, cricket, the Raj or curry and you can’t be anything else. That long relationship is so familiar and complacent, so I set out to challenge that.” The newest incarnation of Dishoom is modelled on the traditional Persian cafes of Bombay. Opened early last century by Iranian immigrants, they have all but disappeared as todays’ generation


Paneer� Tikka

couple of Indian restaurants in London, the second of which has recently opened in an old Securicor office building in the beating heart of Shoreditch. Owner Shamil Thakrar is sitting in a corner when I arrive and orders us chai and an Indian breakfast. A parade of plates arrives; the famed bacon naan (with chilli jam and cream cheese), Akuri (spicy scrambled eggs) and Bun Maska, a buttery toasted roll for dipping into chai. All this time we’ve been going out for a curry in the evening when actually, breakfast turns out to be an excellent time for an Indian.

Shamil agrees, “Indian food is so underserved in this country. Britain has such a long relationship with India, going back to the 17th century. When you say to someone you are doing Indian, before you have even finished your sentence, you are one of four things; Bollywood, cricket, the Raj or curry and you can’t be anything else. That long relationship is so familiar and complacent, so I set out to challenge that.” The newest incarnation of Dishoom is modelled on the traditional Persian cafes of Bombay. Opened early last century by Iranian immigrants, they have all but disappeared as todays’ generation


Paneer� Tikka

turn their backs on the family business to become doctors and lawyers instead. Where there were 400, only 20 survive; their faded glamour hinting at a history of colourful characters, while they resolutely fight the oncoming tide of KFC’s and Starbucks. Step in Shamil who explains, “In India there is a huge appetite for modernity. The cool new restaurants are all doing international cuisine. These beautiful cafes are rapidly being replaced by plastic chains. They are dying and it is tragic. We went with our architects and took 2,500 photographs, and went round every single café eating and documenting everything.”

Thakrar is not from Bombay; but he is of Indian descent and has family in the city. A management consultant with an MBA who was hanging around in Bombay deciding what to do next, he decided that he wanted to challenge the stereotype of Indian food in England. “Bombay is different from the India people imagine. It’s very monochromatic with Gothic and Art Deco influences and extremely urban; it was all built by the British. The food is very different too. The idea of the curry house is a British tradition, there is no such recognizable stereotype in India.”

Dishoom has a big menu that runs from breakfast, through salads, rolls, to small plates, grills and curries. It is effectively, a greatest hits of Bombay cuisine. He is particularly proud of the lamb raan; soft flaky meat from an overnight braised whole leg of lamb in chilli and ginger, garlic and lime stuffed in a bun. “In the morning we grill to finish it and then stick it in a bun. It is a dish descended from Alexander the Great, and was served at his daughters wedding feast. It is a very refined dish in India and only served at huge banquets, but we’ve taken it and put it in a bun. It’s great fun having the freedom to play around with dishes.”

Shamil describes the cafes they have copied so enthusiastically. His favourite, Bademiya, is a street stall behind the Taj Hotel, opened by Mohammed Yaseen in 1940. It opens at 8pm and is full by 8.02 serving up fast food Bombay-style; one roti is made every 30 seconds. The streets are full of people eating seekh kebab and roti off bonnets, a place where the chattering classes of Bombay mix with rickshaw drivers. Down the road Mr Boman Kohinoor runs the Brittania café in an old British building and potters around like a wise turtle, serving everyone from a menu that hasn’t changed for years.

Dishoom’s Head Chef Naved Nasir was the Executive chef of Bukhara, one of India’s great fine dining restaurants. Shamil admits “He thought Dishoom was a stupid thing to call a

restaurant but he loved the idea of taking classic Bombay street food and being proud of it, because no one does that in India, it’s kind of uncool.” What does he think the people of Bombay would make if this place I wonder? “Funnily enough we have been asked to open one in Bombay, and assured it would be very popular, but I’m kind of wary of that because the layers of irony just kill me. These places were originally a homage to European cafes. The Iranis left from persecution, and came to India in 1890’s. Their masters were European and they were an educated bunch so they were taking European cafes to Bombay, and now we’re taking them back”. At this point we become so lost in a post-modern fog that we turn instead back to England.

It turns out Indian people really get Dishoom, so he thinks Birmingham or Bradford would work pretty well as locations for more Dishooms, although any future restaurants would have a different reference point. He laughs and says he likes the idea of doing Mad Men goes to Bombay. He seems genuinely thrilled that his restaurants are full of Indians. “We celebrate Diwali in the restaurant. As a culture we love stories of monkey gods, demons and goddesses. Our storyteller comes and tells stories for children and we have face painting and give out baby chais.” They celebrate Eid and Christmas too, “I loved it that at Eid, we had Muslims, Christians and Hindus all having their hands painted and eating Islamic food and celebrating together, that felt so right for me”. He sees it that he is continuing the democratic tradition of the Bombay cafes. “They used to be a place where you could go regardless of caste or creed and a hooker could go and have a cup of tea and sit next to a businessman and no one would mind. It was pretty unusual in 1950’s India.”

He shows me around the building and the level of detail is astonishing. He whips out his i-pad and shows me pictures of the cafes they visited in Bombay and the details they have painstakingly replicated, even down to the peeling wallpaper and the whirring fans. The black and white photos on the wall really are of Shamil’s ancestors and the poem inscribed on the window is copied from a Bombay cafe.

The lunch crowd is arriving and Shamil finishes by saying, “People love coming here for lunch and I’m really proud that we are challenging the tradition of the evening curry house. When I think of Dishoom, I think of beautiful ladies with a Bellini and small plates of Indian food. It works so well on a marble table in nice surroundings”. It does indeed, and it helps that there’s indoor plumbing too. Mr Kohinoor would be impressed.

� � dishoom.com� � 7� Boundary� Street,� London� E2� 7JE

DISHOOM HAS A BIG MENU THAT ROLLS FROM BREAKFAST, THROUGH SALADS, ROLLS, TO SMALL PLATES, GRILLS AND CURRIES.


Masala� Prawns

turn their backs on the family business to become doctors and lawyers instead. Where there were 400, only 20 survive; their faded glamour hinting at a history of colourful characters, while they resolutely fight the oncoming tide of KFC’s and Starbucks. Step in Shamil who explains, “In India there is a huge appetite for modernity. The cool new restaurants are all doing international cuisine. These beautiful cafes are rapidly being replaced by plastic chains. They are dying and it is tragic. We went with our architects and took 2,500 photographs, and went round every single café eating and documenting everything.”

Thakrar is not from Bombay; but he is of Indian descent and has family in the city. A management consultant with an MBA who was hanging around in Bombay deciding what to do next, he decided that he wanted to challenge the stereotype of Indian food in England. “Bombay is different from the India people imagine. It’s very monochromatic with Gothic and Art Deco influences and extremely urban; it was all built by the British. The food is very different too. The idea of the curry house is a British tradition, there is no such recognizable stereotype in India.”

Dishoom has a big menu that runs from breakfast, through salads, rolls, to small plates, grills and curries. It is effectively, a greatest hits of Bombay cuisine. He is particularly proud of the lamb raan; soft flaky meat from an overnight braised whole leg of lamb in chilli and ginger, garlic and lime stuffed in a bun. “In the morning we grill to finish it and then stick it in a bun. It is a dish descended from Alexander the Great, and was served at his daughters wedding feast. It is a very refined dish in India and only served at huge banquets, but we’ve taken it and put it in a bun. It’s great fun having the freedom to play around with dishes.”

Shamil describes the cafes they have copied so enthusiastically. His favourite, Bademiya, is a street stall behind the Taj Hotel, opened by Mohammed Yaseen in 1940. It opens at 8pm and is full by 8.02 serving up fast food Bombay-style; one roti is made every 30 seconds. The streets are full of people eating seekh kebab and roti off bonnets, a place where the chattering classes of Bombay mix with rickshaw drivers. Down the road Mr Boman Kohinoor runs the Brittania café in an old British building and potters around like a wise turtle, serving everyone from a menu that hasn’t changed for years.

Dishoom’s Head Chef Naved Nasir was the Executive chef of Bukhara, one of India’s great fine dining restaurants. Shamil admits “He thought Dishoom was a stupid thing to call a

restaurant but he loved the idea of taking classic Bombay street food and being proud of it, because no one does that in India, it’s kind of uncool.” What does he think the people of Bombay would make if this place I wonder? “Funnily enough we have been asked to open one in Bombay, and assured it would be very popular, but I’m kind of wary of that because the layers of irony just kill me. These places were originally a homage to European cafes. The Iranis left from persecution, and came to India in 1890’s. Their masters were European and they were an educated bunch so they were taking European cafes to Bombay, and now we’re taking them back”. At this point we become so lost in a post-modern fog that we turn instead back to England.

It turns out Indian people really get Dishoom, so he thinks Birmingham or Bradford would work pretty well as locations for more Dishooms, although any future restaurants would have a different reference point. He laughs and says he likes the idea of doing Mad Men goes to Bombay. He seems genuinely thrilled that his restaurants are full of Indians. “We celebrate Diwali in the restaurant. As a culture we love stories of monkey gods, demons and goddesses. Our storyteller comes and tells stories for children and we have face painting and give out baby chais.” They celebrate Eid and Christmas too, “I loved it that at Eid, we had Muslims, Christians and Hindus all having their hands painted and eating Islamic food and celebrating together, that felt so right for me”. He sees it that he is continuing the democratic tradition of the Bombay cafes. “They used to be a place where you could go regardless of caste or creed and a hooker could go and have a cup of tea and sit next to a businessman and no one would mind. It was pretty unusual in 1950’s India.”

He shows me around the building and the level of detail is astonishing. He whips out his i-pad and shows me pictures of the cafes they visited in Bombay and the details they have painstakingly replicated, even down to the peeling wallpaper and the whirring fans. The black and white photos on the wall really are of Shamil’s ancestors and the poem inscribed on the window is copied from a Bombay cafe.

The lunch crowd is arriving and Shamil finishes by saying, “People love coming here for lunch and I’m really proud that we are challenging the tradition of the evening curry house. When I think of Dishoom, I think of beautiful ladies with a Bellini and small plates of Indian food. It works so well on a marble table in nice surroundings”. It does indeed, and it helps that there’s indoor plumbing too. Mr Kohinoor would be impressed.

� � dishoom.com� � 7� Boundary� Street,� London� E2� 7JE

DISHOOM HAS A BIG MENU THAT ROLLS FROM BREAKFAST, THROUGH SALADS, ROLLS, TO SMALL PLATES, GRILLS AND CURRIES.


Masala� Prawns


CLAUDIA� RODEN

For� Claudia� Roden,� discovering� the� food� of� Spain� for� her� new� book� was� a� journey� into� the�

the� ghosts� she� encountered� along� the� way.� ! WORDS: JOANNA BUSK

Who� was� the� most� interesting� person� you� met� on� your� journey� through� the� regions� of� Spain?Pepa Aymami is the director of the Culinary Institute of Gastronomy, and was responsible for the archive of traditional Catalan recipes they were collecting when I was staying with her in Barcelona.

Do� you� have� a� favourite� recipe� from� the� book?The Tarta de Santiago almond cake from Galicia is one of my favourite recipes. My family has adopted it.

What� is� your� fondest� memory� from� your� time� researching� the� book?A very happy memory was of a banquet in the Alicante hinterland with friends where we ate, danced and laughed.

Did� you� discover� any� particularly� exciting� produce� or� wine� on� your� journey?Jamon Iberico is the best cured ham I have ever eaten. I went to a tasting where I could eat as much as I liked and I literally could not stop. But it is very expensive. I love the creamy Torta del Casar cheese of Extremadura. These days every region except Asturias produces some very good wines. I love the dry fruity Albarino of Galicia.

I felt relieved, but also wished I could have gone on and on!

10

FOOD� TALKThe� Food� of� Spain:� Claudia� Roden� with� Michael� JacobsSunday� 16� September:� 1.00-2.00pm� The� Borough� TheatreBuy� tickets� now� –� see� pages� 10-11Claudia� will� be� talking� to� travel� writer� Michael� Jacobs� about� her� immersion� in� the� regional� cuisines� of� Spain� for� her� new� book.

Why� did� you� decide� to� write� a� book� about� Spanish� food?I had been researching and writing about the foods of the Mediterranean for decades, and for many years had concentrated on the Middle East and North Africa, but Spain had always been a fascination. My grandmother

was descended from Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. Her dishes had Spanish names and were brought here by our ancestors. When asked to write a book on the regional foods of Spain it was a challenge and an extraordinary experience.

What� did� you� feel� you� could� do� differently?As a Jew from the Muslim world (I was born in Egypt) who also spent a few years at school in Paris, I was intensely aware of the history of dishes. I could see the ghosts of the past in saucepans and on plates, and was moved to research the history of Spain through its food.

What� was� exciting� for� you� about� the� food� of� Spain?It was thrilling to eat dishes in the places they were born and to find they were mysteriously familiar yet di!erent. I enjoyed meeting people and hearing what they ate at home, and how their parents and grandparents lived.

Do� you� have� a� favourite� place� in� Spain?� Everywhere in Spain was beautiful and exciting. Seville was enthralling because of the architecture, the friends I made, the tapas bars and flamenco music, and the way the past seemed to be part of the present. I stayed in a convent where the nuns made pastries.

Have� any� Spanish� recipes� joined� your� repertoire� of� everyday� cooking?Several! One of them is sopeao, a speciality of Seville, a kind of salad main-dish with tuna and hard-boiled eggs on a bed of creamy tomatoes with fresh breadcrumbs.

� Claudia� Roden’s� book� The� Food� of� Spain� –� A� Celebration� (Michael� Joseph,� £25)Signed� copies� are� available� from� the� festival� book� shop� in� the� market� hall� stall� number� 22.


Secret Southwark

ooking through a menu littered with cardoons, n’duja toast, salsa verde and octopus, you’d be surprised to learn that The Table Café in Southwark is a local restaurant with an exceptional local sourcing policy. The kitchen serves up simple, ingredient-led cuisine and many of

the fruit and vegetables have been grown just around the corner, in allotments hiding in the shadow of The Shard, London’s newest, tallest skyscraper. Looking around the modern, clean café attached to an architect’s office, it is even more surprising to discover that the kitchen is supplied by some of London’s homeless. All is not what it seems here, that much is clear.

Shaun Alpine-Crabtree is sitting at a table in front of a plate of marinated beetroots with robilola delle langhe and salmoriglio. I’m here to talk about his collaboration with homeless charity St Mungo’s. The cafe sources herbs and vegetables from the charity on a daily basis, providing both revenue for the charity and an

ongoing confidence boost for the workers in the allotments. A two-star rating from the Sustainable Restaurant Association is proof of Shaun’s commitment to sustainable and ethical sourcing. The clean lines and design ethos belie the fact we are essentially sitting in what one could call an ‘ethical café’. Next door through the large glass windows, bespectacled architects are tapping away, the tables are bare, calm chefs are cooking from open kitchen, there are concrete floors and Italian wine bottles lining the walls.

Alpine-Crabtree has had a long cooking career, from starting out under Bruno Loubet in London to working under David Thompson at the Darley Street Thai in Sydney, returning to become head chef at Villandry. He joined the Table Café as Head Chef in 2005; it was originally devised as a canteen for the architect’s practice in the building. He is now a partner in the business and the driving force behind the restaurant.

Much has changed since the early days and changes inside have echoed the pace of change on the streets outside. “When we opened 2005 there was nothing here. Bankside didn’t exist; the buildings over the road weren’t there. The new neighbours have moved in so fast and the area has not stopped developing, it’s extraordinary the level of change, and we’ve rolled with those changes.” That includes hiring a new head chef, Cinzia Ghighoni. With a career that spans Duck Soup, Angela Hartnett and Zucca, she has an impressive pedigree and her cooking is a fresh take on modern Italian cuisine which manages to also honour the restaurant’s commitment to impeccable sourcing and quality British ingredients. Shaun adds, “We were a canteen/café concept but we couldn’t sustain it as it got so busy so we installed new tables, introduced table service and started to open


L

ooking through a menu littered with cardoons, n’duja toast, salsa verde and octopus, you’d be surprised to learn that The Table Café in Southwark is a local restaurant with an exceptional local sourcing policy. The kitchen serves up simple, ingredient-led cuisine and many of

the fruit and vegetables have been grown just around the corner, in allotments hiding in the shadow of The Shard, London’s newest, tallest skyscraper. Looking around the modern, clean café attached to an architect’s office, it is even more surprising to discover that the kitchen is supplied by some of London’s homeless. All is not what it seems here, that much is clear.

Shaun Alpine-Crabtree is sitting at a table in front of a plate of marinated beetroots with robilola delle langhe and salmoriglio. I’m here to talk about his collaboration with homeless charity St Mungo’s. The cafe sources herbs and vegetables from the charity on a daily basis, providing both revenue for the charity and an

ongoing confidence boost for the workers in the allotments. A two-star rating from the Sustainable Restaurant Association is proof of Shaun’s commitment to sustainable and ethical sourcing. The clean lines and design ethos belie the fact we are essentially sitting in what one could call an ‘ethical café’. Next door through the large glass windows, bespectacled architects are tapping away, the tables are bare, calm chefs are cooking from open kitchen, there are concrete floors and Italian wine bottles lining the walls.

Alpine-Crabtree has had a long cooking career, from starting out under Bruno Loubet in London to working under David Thompson at the Darley Street Thai in Sydney, returning to become head chef at Villandry. He joined the Table Café as Head Chef in 2005; it was originally devised as a canteen for the architect’s practice in the building. He is now a partner in the business and the driving force behind the restaurant.

Much has changed since the early days and changes inside have echoed the pace of change on the streets outside. “When we opened 2005 there was nothing here. Bankside didn’t exist; the buildings over the road weren’t there. The new neighbours have moved in so fast and the area has not stopped developing, it’s extraordinary the level of change, and we’ve rolled with those changes.” That includes hiring a new head chef, Cinzia Ghighoni. With a career that spans Duck Soup, Angela Hartnett and Zucca, she has an impressive pedigree and her cooking is a fresh take on modern Italian cuisine which manages to also honour the restaurant’s commitment to impeccable sourcing and quality British ingredients. Shaun adds, “We were a canteen/café concept but we couldn’t sustain it as it got so busy so we installed new tables, introduced table service and started to open


L

in the evenings. By the beginning of this year in January it had got to a point when I had to make a call between staying in the kitchen and running the restaurant. I surprised myself because I suddenly realise I’d reached the end of my cooking career and that for the restaurant to evolve I needed to step onto the floor.”

The move from behind the stoves to front of house must have been a difficult one I suggest while tucking into a cardoon, Parmesan and cream gratin. He agrees, “Absolutely, what was hard was the shocking realisation that running front of house is easily as difficult as running a kitchen. I had the same attitude that every Head Chef does and so it was a major shock. There’s not a Head Chef on the planet who doesn’t think that front of house is an add-on with no major skills. That relationship can be very tense and not always as positive as it can be.” The move has given him with more time to concentrate on other things, particularly the sourcing. He is clearly excited about working with St Mungo’s; “I am passionate about sourcing and ingredient led cuisine” he tells me before adding, “The relationship with St Mungo’s was a complete accident and a wonderful surprise. We were sourcing our honey from Regents Park and some people from the London Honey Festival asked me if I wanted to do work with them. I said yes, got talking to some people at Sustain, went to see a sustainable oyster farm in Mersea.” As a result of these meetings, people heard that Shaun was interested in sustainability and the folk from Capital Growth, London’s Food growing network that helps communities to grow their own food, came knocking.

Out of that meeting came their first joint event: The Pop Up Pickle. Growers came over to the restaurant with produce from their allotments and the kitchen made chutneys from the 30 kilos of plums and 20 kilos of green tomatoes that turned up. Among the visitors that day was man called Ian who told Shaun about the ‘Putting Down Roots’ programme. Ian runs the programme at St Mungo’s which has some allotments under

the Shard of all places, where homeless volunteers are growing vegetables.

Shaun readily admits he was pretty sceptical about Ian and his claims, but the next morning Ian turned up with a huge pallet of mixed vegetables all grown under The Shard just up the road. He laughs, “I was gobsmacked, there were armfuls of spinach, Swiss chard and beetroot. I immediately said we must work together! It was just incredible. I mean, he turned up with 45 kilos of rhubarb!” What Shaun didn’t know is that Ian had two other allotments, in Battersea and Clapham with an acre of space at least. He is full of praise for Ian, saying “He’s an unbelievably talented gardener, with a huge workforce. By June he was completely overwhelming us with fresh produce, so much so we got an extra seven restaurants on board.”

Shaun and Ian are thinking about how they can scale up the operation and have allotments serving restaurants across the capital. He admits that working with levels of supply is an issue, but believes this can be overcome with proper growing plans, musing, “Can we turn this into something bigger? Definitely, this is nothing, but it could be scaled up. If we were able to set something up and work together as middle point between allotments and chef, helping to create the right quality and the right price, the idea has enormous potential.”

By now, we have moved onto a pannacotta with roast white peach and cantucci, it’s creamy and wobbly and the peach is sweet and juicy and I’m so engrossed in it I don’t notice John Torode sitting down next to me, who settles himself down for lunch. As endorsements go, it’s not a bad one, if this is where Mr Masterchef eats his lunch. Alpine-Crabtree is firm, confident and is clearly a man with a bit of vision. He finishes our lunch by saying “My dream came true. I’m doing the thing that I love. It’s an unforgiving business, but it is the thing who you are, what you are all about. I get to the end of the day and I think I love this. Fundamentally this is my thing” As I bid good-bye it strikes me that if John Torode ever steps down from Masterchef, I’ve just met a prime candidate for the job.

� www.thetablecafe.com� � � 83� Southwark� St� � London� Borough� of� � Southwark,� SE1� 0HX� � � 020� 7401� 2760

Shaun and Ian are thinking about how they can scale up the operation and have allotments

serving restaurants across the capital.


in the evenings. By the beginning of this year in January it had got to a point when I had to make a call between staying in the kitchen and running the restaurant. I surprised myself because I suddenly realise I’d reached the end of my cooking career and that for the restaurant to evolve I needed to step onto the floor.”

The move from behind the stoves to front of house must have been a difficult one I suggest while tucking into a cardoon, Parmesan and cream gratin. He agrees, “Absolutely, what was hard was the shocking realisation that running front of house is easily as difficult as running a kitchen. I had the same attitude that every Head Chef does and so it was a major shock. There’s not a Head Chef on the planet who doesn’t think that front of house is an add-on with no major skills. That relationship can be very tense and not always as positive as it can be.” The move has given him with more time to concentrate on other things, particularly the sourcing. He is clearly excited about working with St Mungo’s; “I am passionate about sourcing and ingredient led cuisine” he tells me before adding, “The relationship with St Mungo’s was a complete accident and a wonderful surprise. We were sourcing our honey from Regents Park and some people from the London Honey Festival asked me if I wanted to do work with them. I said yes, got talking to some people at Sustain, went to see a sustainable oyster farm in Mersea.” As a result of these meetings, people heard that Shaun was interested in sustainability and the folk from Capital Growth, London’s Food growing network that helps communities to grow their own food, came knocking.

Out of that meeting came their first joint event: The Pop Up Pickle. Growers came over to the restaurant with produce from their allotments and the kitchen made chutneys from the 30 kilos of plums and 20 kilos of green tomatoes that turned up. Among the visitors that day was man called Ian who told Shaun about the ‘Putting Down Roots’ programme. Ian runs the programme at St Mungo’s which has some allotments under

the Shard of all places, where homeless volunteers are growing vegetables.

Shaun readily admits he was pretty sceptical about Ian and his claims, but the next morning Ian turned up with a huge pallet of mixed vegetables all grown under The Shard just up the road. He laughs, “I was gobsmacked, there were armfuls of spinach, Swiss chard and beetroot. I immediately said we must work together! It was just incredible. I mean, he turned up with 45 kilos of rhubarb!” What Shaun didn’t know is that Ian had two other allotments, in Battersea and Clapham with an acre of space at least. He is full of praise for Ian, saying “He’s an unbelievably talented gardener, with a huge workforce. By June he was completely overwhelming us with fresh produce, so much so we got an extra seven restaurants on board.”

Shaun and Ian are thinking about how they can scale up the operation and have allotments serving restaurants across the capital. He admits that working with levels of supply is an issue, but believes this can be overcome with proper growing plans, musing, “Can we turn this into something bigger? Definitely, this is nothing, but it could be scaled up. If we were able to set something up and work together as middle point between allotments and chef, helping to create the right quality and the right price, the idea has enormous potential.”

By now, we have moved onto a pannacotta with roast white peach and cantucci, it’s creamy and wobbly and the peach is sweet and juicy and I’m so engrossed in it I don’t notice John Torode sitting down next to me, who settles himself down for lunch. As endorsements go, it’s not a bad one, if this is where Mr Masterchef eats his lunch. Alpine-Crabtree is firm, confident and is clearly a man with a bit of vision. He finishes our lunch by saying “My dream came true. I’m doing the thing that I love. It’s an unforgiving business, but it is the thing who you are, what you are all about. I get to the end of the day and I think I love this. Fundamentally this is my thing” As I bid good-bye it strikes me that if John Torode ever steps down from Masterchef, I’ve just met a prime candidate for the job.

� www.thetablecafe.com� � � 83� Southwark� St� � London� Borough� of� � Southwark,� SE1� 0HX� � � 020� 7401� 2760

Shaun and Ian are thinking about how they can scale up the operation and have allotments

serving restaurants across the capital.

28 www.forkmagazine.com 42 www.forkmagazine.com

Until El Bulli closed earlier this year, staff at the so-called ‘world’s best restaurant’ would sit down every evening and eat together as a family before service. These easy to follow step-by-step recipes are a collection of their favourite meals. It claims to be simple meals for cooking at home on a low budget. Yet while this is certainly not haute cuisine, I suspect their budget is a little higher than the average family’s. It’s unusual in that it has step-by-step photos of all the recipes, so there are really no excuses for getting it wrong.

Veggiestan or ‘the land of vegetables’ is the creation of Sally Butcher, who calls herself an accident prone and accidental shopkeeper. Her first book Persia in Peckham was short listed for the Andre Simon Award. She is charming and funny, knowledgeable and engaging. Also an accidental chef, she married into a Persian family, hence her knowledge of all things Persian. She runs Persepolis, a Persian food shop in Peckham, and when she’s not running her shop, she can be found blogging on www.veggiestan.com, which is well worth a read too.

There is, of course, no such place as Veggiestan, but this guide was inspired by the many vegetarian traditions of the Middle East. It is full of vibrant aromatic recipes and her insights into Afghani and Yemeni cooking are particularly interesting. There are big herby summery salads and winter warmers like afghan carrot hotpot and pumpkin and rice soup with za’atar croutons. Fun snacks include fried egg pitta pockets and inspiring things to do with halloumi. There are lots of pickles like pumpkin jam with garam masala, afghan coriander chutney and posh marinated aubergines. A chapter on cooking with fruit has unusual recipes like barberry and almond casserole and chillied peach stew.

And it’s not just a recipe book. There’s an amusing chapter on how to barter like a proper Afghani lady, ruminations on why no pantry should be without date syrup or pomegranate molasses, and an interesting essay on how the aubergine got its hat.

Christine is one of Australia’s most celebrated chefs, and has travelled and worked in kitchens across the globe. This is possibly the heaviest cookbook you will ever pick up, but also one of the most impressive. Everything from the fabric embossed yellow and pink cover to the sheer epic size of it screams that it is a very special book. It’s a travelogue of food spices and culture. Home style cooking from the people she meets on her travels through India, interspersed with stories and recipes from all over the country, from the coconut curries of Kerala, through the bazaars of Mumbai to the temples and tea of the Himalayas.

It’s a brilliantly simple concept. Plenty of research has shown that eating less meat is better for you and better for the planet. Step in the McCartney’s with Meat Free Monday – just one day a week where you cut it out. Doesn’t seem too hard does it? This clever book has menus for the 52 weeks of the year, each containing six recipes. They’ve enlisted the help of some pretty cool chefs like Skye Gyngell, Yottam Ottolenghi, Bruno Loubet and some slightly more unexpected guest cooks including Pamela Anderson and Woody Harrelson. The recipes are fresh, modern and easy to make. Make 2012 the year of less meat.

The French colonisation of Vietnam lasted nearly 100 years and its impact has left a fascinating and complex cuisine. The author travels through Vietnam and talks to chefs and producers about contemporary Vietnamese food and the legacy of the French Empire. It contains over 100 unique fusion dishes showcasing Vietnam’s French culinary roots like lemongrass and kaffir lime crème brulee or mussels tossed with butter, crisp garlic and Asian basil. Filled with heart-warming stories, this is a great book to keep by your bedside or give as a present.

Our pick of the newest cookbook releases

FORK21_ShelfLife_FINAL.indd 1 7/12/11 14:42:32

Under a cobalt blue sky, a long table is laid in an olive grove basking in some unseasonably warm spring sunshine. It sits between lines of knarled olive trees stretching in dusty rows towards the Tramuntana

mountains in the distance. On the table is a spread of several bottles of red wine, even more bottles of olive oil, baskets of home baked bread, mis-shaped tomatoes and local cheese. Nearby, an oil drum cut in half serves as a barbecue; on it sits several

tiny lamb cutlets sizzling and smoking above the hot coals and releasing their delicious meaty aroma into the clear air.

I’m in the Balearic Islands, but I’m a long way from the high rises of Magaluf or the disco beats of Ibiza. This is Mallorca, and at the head of the table sits Pep Solivellas, a retired bank manager who decided life was not yet over and set about creating an olive grove on his ancestral land. Next to him, deep in conversation is Marc Fosh, a British chef resident on the island, his adopted home of 17 years.


Our man in Palma

FORK23_Majorca_FINAL.indd 48 4/4/12 16:52:45

Marc runs three restaurants in Palma, the capital of the Island. A few years ago Pep walked into one and offered Marc a sample bottle of his olive oil. It had no label and he had just pressed it himself. The bottle sat on the shelf for a few weeks before Marc picked it up and tried it. Jumping into his car immediately, he tracked down Pep to this olive grove, and there began a great friendship. Pep and his son now make olive oil for Marc’s restaurants as well as their own brand – Sollivella. As the sun dips below the horizon, he lays five wine glasses on the table and pours out some of his different oils – all combinations of olives he has been experimenting with, Arbequina. Picual, Hojiblanca and Picuda. Warming a glass in my hand, I lift it and inhale the fresh grassy aromas of extra virgin oil.

Oil and wine Marc rubs some tomato into some toasted country bread with olive oil (pa amb oli) and passes it to me. I ask him if their olive oil is a kitchen staple and he laughs: “they use it so much they probably brush their teeth with it.” The son concurs, “we love it. We eat with it all day long.” Their hospitality is endless and several glasses of Mallorcan red later, the sun is dipping behind the hills, a sea breeze gently blows through the trees and a star starts to sparkle far above us. Mallorcan wine isn’t very well known outside the island, but if

what I drank that afternoon is anything to go by, it will be soon.

Driving back to Palma, we pass hundreds of almond trees in flower and fields of orange trees. Apricots, figs and lemons prosper here too. But until now, Mallorca has been better known for its high-rise resorts. The first ever package holidays came to Mallorca in the 1950s when custom built resorts started to welcome hordes of British tourists every summer in search of sun and sangria, which indecently isn’t from here at all – it’s an Andalusian drink. The Mallorcans observed what the British visitors liked to eat and continued to serve them exactly that for the next 50 years. You certainly didn’t come to Mallorca for the food.

But then an interesting thing happened. Historically under local law, women

used to inherit coastal land and property because it was deemed worthless. The tourist boom had an unexpected side effect of making quite a lot of women extremely wealthy – rich old ladies are a common sight in Mallorca these days. This rise of prosperity on the coast led

to a fall in the fortunes inland as the population turned away from agriculture towards tourism. It also left a lot of families looking at their properties and wondering how to make money out of them. This has led to the recent growth of agriturismos offering a quieter, more authentic way to stay in Mallorca, alongside fledgling olive groves and vineyards – the temperature is perfect for growing olives and grapes and there has been a recent explosion of wineries opening up across the island.

Of Marc’s three restaurants, his

high-end place is exceptional and I’m quite sure the Michelin men will sit up and take notice fairly soon (Marc was the first Englishman to gain a Michelin star in Spain at Read’s Hotel on the island). The restaurant is situated in the stylish and discreet hotel Convent De La Missio, a converted convent hidden away in the back streets of Palma. A tasting menu consisted of celeriac, almond and truffle soup with crispy pork belly, roasted sea bass with caviar, pink grapefruit and leeks, slow cooked chicken, beetroot puree, smoked rice and orange oil emulsion followed by roasted apple and saffron terrine with hazelnut crumble and fresh cheese ice cream. Great produce, perfectly cooked and, while inventive, never crossing the line into being gimmicky. I also eat at his laid back bistro – Misa, a rustic affair with whole farmhouse chickens to share and beef cooked in hay arriving on the tables around us. An off-menu sea bass tartare with pepper and argan oil, and an on-menu cuttlefish rice with chorizo, saffron oil and botifarre, a local sausage was delicious, all washed down with


Great produce, perfectly cooked and while inventive, never crossing the line into being gimmicky


where old ladies clutch small dogs and eat almond cake. I visited the oldest bakery in town where I watched an ensaïmada being made in an oven that has been baking bread since the 13th century. It’s a popular local pastry, that contains a shocking amount of lard and tastes light, fluffy and very sweet.

Palma market Marc and I visit the Mercado del Olivar, the main market in Palma. It’s a Saturday morning and it’s crowded and bustling and the first thing I see is a sushi stall. Not exactly what you would expect, but it turns out to be quite inspired. It’s called Yo Sushi and it’s somewhat surprisingly run by a German ex-two star Michelin chef. You stand at the counter, and he’ll serve you fresh off the boat sushi all served up with a cold Kirin. It’s not Mallorcan, but it’s very good. You can also sit at an oyster bar and sip cava if you fancy, but all the oysters are from France so it’s not a

particularly authentic experience. The fish stalls contain a stunning array of colourful, still flapping fish. Marc shows me little red prawns which are popular here and the little white prawns that no-one eats on the island yet are shipped straight to the boqueria in Barcelona where they are gobbled up. He picks up a few telling me they are for tomorrow. He closes his restaurants on Sunday, despite pressure not to, because it’s a day for family and he usually fires up his barbecue for some simply grilled fish. Shiny sea bass, dourada and red mullet sit alongside slippery line-caught squid and giant langoustines. We walk past some tuna and Marc tells me that he won’t serve it in his restaurants, they made the decision several years ago and are sticking to it, despite its popularity here. He’s a lone voice among the Spanish, who consume vast quantities of the fish and show no sign of letting up.

We wander through the fresh produce section and taste some Iberico ham and local cheese. I watch Mark eyeing up some young wild asparagus and I think he is an extraordinarily lucky man – three busy restaurants, a life in the sun and the chance to cook with all this incredible produce. The sun sets on my visit and I bid Marc goodbye. As we take off from Palma airport and the plane banks, I look down and fancy that I can see Pep’s olive grove glinting in the sun. Olives and wine are rapidly taking over from egg and chips at the dinner table in Mallorca. There’s a small irony that one of the hottest tables in town is that of an Englishman.

exceptional Mallorcan wine.Palma is a classy little city that

apparently goes by the name ‘mini-Barcelona’ by those in the know. The architecture is stunning and if you walk around looking up, you’ll see Moorish courtyards, ancient churches with ancient gargoyles peering down on you and elegant townhouses designed by students of Gaudi. There are art galleries down tiny cobbled side streets, the Museum of Contemporary Art contains work by Picasso, Cézanne and Miró among others. In little courtyards sit tapas bars with hanging hams and sherry by the glass, and you can eat on the harbour front and gaze in awe at the mega yachts. In September, the city hosts Tapalma – a festival of Tapas, and every week on a Tuesday and Wednesday night you can follow a tapas trail through the city where every establishment on the trail offers tapas and a drink for two euros. Old Palma is still there too, little coffee shops


Shiny sea bass, dourada and red mullet sit alongside

slippery line-caught squid and giant langoustines



When did you discover the possibilities of foraged food?During my time working at Hibiscus restaurant in Ludlow numerous locals came by with various wild food for sale: wild garlic, ceps, venison and pheasant. There was an abundance in the local area as well as a growing appetite for it culturally.

Any personal favourites that you use in your recipes?Coastal herbs sea aster and pink purslane bring an ‘ozone’ freshness to fish; the humble acorn creates an adult bitterness through its tannins. In the spring and summer: meadowsweet, elderflower and clover all feature on the restaurant’s menu. For example, one of our starters is English asparagus, virgin rapeseed oil mayonnaise, meadowsweet and hazelnuts.

Who has inspired you with their use of wild food?It’s evolved through a growing trend rather than an epiphany. There hasn’t been one single dish from any chef that led to a eureka moment, though Michel Bras was probably one of the first flag-bearers. Using wild foods goes hand in hand with producing seasonal dishes that are product-driven and of organic design and context. The concept shouldn’t become a statement in its own right – taste is more important than ideology.

Foraging seems to be terribly popular all of a sudden. Any advice for people wanting to cook with wild ingredients?Only do it if you know what you are looking for and only use foraged foods that will be of benefit to the dish. Keep it simple.

What sort of game do you like to put on your menu – and what’s your preferred way of cooking it?Game can be quite overpowering so I don’t cook with it a huge amount but when I do, venison and pigeon are two of my favourites. Depending on the dish I’m serving, I like to cook most red meat over burning coals – it gives a more primal, carnal edge than any other method.

Surely you’re too busy to wander the coast looking for wild herbs? Do you have any secret foraging spots in London?We have a forager based in Kent, and we’re connected to a couple of growers who are happy to cultivate various obscure herbs and flowers for us. Myself and some of my staff also grow produce at our homes to bring to the kitchen.

How would you use wild ingredients in a pudding?From the forest floor we use young wood sorrel and marigold

shoots, which have a fresh citrus taste, in some of our fruit desserts, as well as sea arrowgrass buds (found in marshes), which have a taste very similar to coriander. Summer blossoms can easily be made into chilled infusions, jellies or ice creams.

Do flowers have a place in food?Absolutely, so long as they are relevant to the dish. They can easily overpower though, so they should be used sparingly. And remember that when it comes to tasting always consider that you are experiencing just one spoonful as opposed to eating an entire plateful, so think twice before adding more.

If I went out to forage and came back with a basket of wild mushrooms what dish would you create?An omelette! Wild mushrooms also go very well with lesser calamint (from the mint family), which has a musky flavour in between mint and oregano. This is common in Tuscany, where it is called nepitella, and is often thrown in when you buy mushrooms.

You make cigar oil and tobacco butter. Pretty wild, in a different sense. How do you make them?Both are simple infusions over low temperatures for a prolonged period of time. Most of my techniques are stripped-down processes with minimal ingredients. Both preparations are used to give the diner a slower-building progressive warmth rather than the instant heat that black pepper or horseradish, for example, would provide. The tobacco butter is used in a steak sandwich served with onions pickled in wheat beer while cigar oil is used with a beef tartare dish, along with whisky and rye.

.

ForkTalk

Ollie Dabbous, head chef of Dabbous restaurant – current star of the capital – on how to eat wild food in London

Ollie Dabbous on hunter gathering and the growing appetite for foraged food

32 www.forkmagazine.com www.forkmagazine.com 33

Producer Profile

FIELDS OF GOLD

E arly this summer, a Chase Country Tails cocktail bar popped up on the terrace at Harvey Nichols; the bar lined with row upon row of those sexy bottles of potato vodka made on the Chase family farm in Herefordshire. For four weeks,

Knightsbridge twinkled with the sound of the fashion crowd sipping marmalade martinis high above the traffic below. A few weeks later, a Chase Bar was being propped up by the Young British Foodies taking over a tent at Camp Bestival. By the end of the summer at the Abergavenny Food Festival, a queue formed at the Chase cocktail bar for cups of Kiss Chase – a cocktail made entirely with ingredients from the farm. To make potatoes so hellishly sexy is an achievement in itself. Never mind it’s been done by a potato farmer; albeit one with a pretty good track record.

I’m deep in Herefordshire farmland visiting the distillery to get a look behind the scenes (you can too if you like, they run distillery tours, but try not to be the driver). I was originally to meet James, youngest son of the Chase family, but he’s stuck at the Russian Embassy acquiring visas for a Moscow trade show, (in a coals-to-Newcastle move, they are exporting vodka to Russia) so I’m upgraded to William, the brains behind the business, and one of Britain’s producer success stories. He’s best known as the founder of Tyrrells Crisps, the posh crisp brand sold to private equity for a vast amount in 2008.

Turning up at the distillery, it’s not hard to see where some of the cash went. We’re in proper farming country but this is a slick operation. Wooden crates stamped with the Chase logo, in black, surround a large black barn. It overlooks a field of black cows that look a bit like they’ve been styled to match the company colour scheme. Through the door there’s a shiny black tractor and a slick-looking bar lined with gleaming bottles and some groovy bar stools topped with (yes, black) tractor seats.Tyrrells stroke of marketing genius was the story of home-grown potatoes hand-fried on a family farm and so too with the drinks. Chase claims that each bottle of vodka can be traced back to the field where the potatoes were grown. Instead of farm-to-table, this is farm-to-bar; locally sourced cocktails if you will. The connection to the British countryside is a canny one. Chase admits that when they first started

Chase� on� the� family� farm� in� Herefordshire

bubbling potatoes gradually distil before being purified through a 70-foot copper rectification column stretching up above the barn roof. It contains 73 plates through which the vodka passes 121 times. Many well-known brands boast that they are triple-distilled. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Smirnoff.

Quality controlWilliam looks a little like Bill Murray and appears to talk and think at 100 miles an hour. Indeed his staff admit he often sends them emails with ideas at 4am. But they are fiercely loyal and I get the feeling they wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. Jamie, the master distiller, has worked for him since the days of Tyrrells. With an unconventional background in retail, incredibly he is self-taught. He gets to have all the fun experimenting with limited edition batches using anything and everything that can be grown on the farm. They produce apple vodka, apple gin and a rainbow of fruit liqueurs. Everything is local; the potatoes all come from his two farms, as does all fruit for the liqueurs. Chase walks me around to the bottling area, which is sweetly low-tech, every bottle is hand-filled by a small team around a big table. Pink Rhubarb vodka is being gently poured into the bottles today. So if he can make magic with potatoes, whatever next? With a twinkle in his eye, he tells me that the cider press is moving in next week so there’ll be Chase cider before too long and he’s been thinking about drinks mixers too. It seems to really bother him that there are so many products sold on quality that aren’t very good at all. He stresses the quality in everything they do. He doesn’t need to actually; it’s quite obvious.

As we pass through the distillery Jamie says that when people told him you couldn’t age vodka, he decided to prove

out the British flag on the packaging was tiny. He jokes that since they received feedback about the importance of being a British brand, the flag has got progressively larger.

We walk through different rooms full of gleaming stills. Did you know that gin is made with vodka? No, nor me. William and his master distiller Jamie Baggott explain how they make their world’s best vodka (awarded at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2010) and then turn it into, presumably the world’s best gin.

We peer up at a gleaming shiny still where the gin is distilled over a 100 times with botanicals including juniper, coriander, angelica, liquorice, orris, orange and lemon peel, hops, elderflower and fresh Bramley apples. These are placed in what is essentially a giant teabag and the vodka is steamed through it over and over again. Next to it stands the ‘marmaliser’, designed to make their famous marmalade vodka. They pour in the vodka, a load of marmalade and Seville orange peel and leave it for 24 hours to infuse. It’s actually an old cosmetics grinder that acts as a giant pressure cooker and it all seems quite wonderfully Willy Wonka.“Mass-produced brands are generally made from neutral grain spirit distilled and processed,” Chase explains. “But we are producing something from our own potatoes; the water comes up from a borehole on the farm. We manage the process from start to finish”. William explains “If your starting point is a poor quality spirit, how can you hope to make a quality product?” Chase spirits are all made in big shiny stills where the

MethodShake� all� ingredients� together� (apart� from� the� fizz� )� with� ice,� double-‐strain� into� a� chilled� coupette� glass� and� top� with� English� Sparkling� Wine.�

them wrong. He brought bourbon casks down from Scotland to age Chase vodka. It takes on the sweet smoky flavour of the long-gone whisky, but doesn’t have the harsh burn of whisky and it’s very good. He whispers that Cider brandy is his next experiment; so it seems the current family of 12 spirits will soon be growing rapidly.

For all its slick branding and fashionable outposts it is still a small family business where everyone is clearly working their socks off. With 20 employees, an annual turnover of £3.6million, production at 6,000 bottles a week and exports to 12 counties, the hard work is paying off.

Back at the bar, I sit on one of the groovy tractor seat bar stools and slowly sip a smoked vodka. It has the ethereal taste of bonfires and autumn countryside swirling through the glass. The English countryside in a bottle; now that’s priceless.

Ingredients

-‐� 45ml� Chase� marmalade� vodka-‐� � 20ml� Chartreuse-‐� � 15ml� lemon-‐� 10ml� sugar-‐� � English� Sparkling� Wine�

FORK26_ProducerProfile_FINALJB.indd 32-33 5/10/13 14:05:47


Producer Profile

FIELDS OF GOLD

E arly this summer, a Chase Country Tails cocktail bar popped up on the terrace at Harvey Nichols; the bar lined with row upon row of those sexy bottles of potato vodka made on the Chase family farm in Herefordshire. For four weeks,

Knightsbridge twinkled with the sound of the fashion crowd sipping marmalade martinis high above the traffic below. A few weeks later, a Chase Bar was being propped up by the Young British Foodies taking over a tent at Camp Bestival. By the end of the summer at the Abergavenny Food Festival, a queue formed at the Chase cocktail bar for cups of Kiss Chase – a cocktail made entirely with ingredients from the farm. To make potatoes so hellishly sexy is an achievement in itself. Never mind it’s been done by a potato farmer; albeit one with a pretty good track record.

I’m deep in Herefordshire farmland visiting the distillery to get a look behind the scenes (you can too if you like, they run distillery tours, but try not to be the driver). I was originally to meet James, youngest son of the Chase family, but he’s stuck at the Russian Embassy acquiring visas for a Moscow trade show, (in a coals-to-Newcastle move, they are exporting vodka to Russia) so I’m upgraded to William, the brains behind the business, and one of Britain’s producer success stories. He’s best known as the founder of Tyrrells Crisps, the posh crisp brand sold to private equity for a vast amount in 2008.

Turning up at the distillery, it’s not hard to see where some of the cash went. We’re in proper farming country but this is a slick operation. Wooden crates stamped with the Chase logo, in black, surround a large black barn. It overlooks a field of black cows that look a bit like they’ve been styled to match the company colour scheme. Through the door there’s a shiny black tractor and a slick-looking bar lined with gleaming bottles and some groovy bar stools topped with (yes, black) tractor seats.Tyrrells stroke of marketing genius was the story of home-grown potatoes hand-fried on a family farm and so too with the drinks. Chase claims that each bottle of vodka can be traced back to the field where the potatoes were grown. Instead of farm-to-table, this is farm-to-bar; locally sourced cocktails if you will. The connection to the British countryside is a canny one. Chase admits that when they first started

Chase� on� the� family� farm� in� Herefordshire

bubbling potatoes gradually distil before being purified through a 70-foot copper rectification column stretching up above the barn roof. It contains 73 plates through which the vodka passes 121 times. Many well-known brands boast that they are triple-distilled. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Smirnoff.

Quality controlWilliam looks a little like Bill Murray and appears to talk and think at 100 miles an hour. Indeed his staff admit he often sends them emails with ideas at 4am. But they are fiercely loyal and I get the feeling they wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. Jamie, the master distiller, has worked for him since the days of Tyrrells. With an unconventional background in retail, incredibly he is self-taught. He gets to have all the fun experimenting with limited edition batches using anything and everything that can be grown on the farm. They produce apple vodka, apple gin and a rainbow of fruit liqueurs. Everything is local; the potatoes all come from his two farms, as does all fruit for the liqueurs. Chase walks me around to the bottling area, which is sweetly low-tech, every bottle is hand-filled by a small team around a big table. Pink Rhubarb vodka is being gently poured into the bottles today. So if he can make magic with potatoes, whatever next? With a twinkle in his eye, he tells me that the cider press is moving in next week so there’ll be Chase cider before too long and he’s been thinking about drinks mixers too. It seems to really bother him that there are so many products sold on quality that aren’t very good at all. He stresses the quality in everything they do. He doesn’t need to actually; it’s quite obvious.

As we pass through the distillery Jamie says that when people told him you couldn’t age vodka, he decided to prove

out the British flag on the packaging was tiny. He jokes that since they received feedback about the importance of being a British brand, the flag has got progressively larger.

We walk through different rooms full of gleaming stills. Did you know that gin is made with vodka? No, nor me. William and his master distiller Jamie Baggott explain how they make their world’s best vodka (awarded at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2010) and then turn it into, presumably the world’s best gin.

We peer up at a gleaming shiny still where the gin is distilled over a 100 times with botanicals including juniper, coriander, angelica, liquorice, orris, orange and lemon peel, hops, elderflower and fresh Bramley apples. These are placed in what is essentially a giant teabag and the vodka is steamed through it over and over again. Next to it stands the ‘marmaliser’, designed to make their famous marmalade vodka. They pour in the vodka, a load of marmalade and Seville orange peel and leave it for 24 hours to infuse. It’s actually an old cosmetics grinder that acts as a giant pressure cooker and it all seems quite wonderfully Willy Wonka.“Mass-produced brands are generally made from neutral grain spirit distilled and processed,” Chase explains. “But we are producing something from our own potatoes; the water comes up from a borehole on the farm. We manage the process from start to finish”. William explains “If your starting point is a poor quality spirit, how can you hope to make a quality product?” Chase spirits are all made in big shiny stills where the

MethodShake� all� ingredients� together� (apart� from� the� fizz� )� with� ice,� double-‐strain� into� a� chilled� coupette� glass� and� top� with� English� Sparkling� Wine.�

them wrong. He brought bourbon casks down from Scotland to age Chase vodka. It takes on the sweet smoky flavour of the long-gone whisky, but doesn’t have the harsh burn of whisky and it’s very good. He whispers that Cider brandy is his next experiment; so it seems the current family of 12 spirits will soon be growing rapidly.

For all its slick branding and fashionable outposts it is still a small family business where everyone is clearly working their socks off. With 20 employees, an annual turnover of £3.6million, production at 6,000 bottles a week and exports to 12 counties, the hard work is paying off.

Back at the bar, I sit on one of the groovy tractor seat bar stools and slowly sip a smoked vodka. It has the ethereal taste of bonfires and autumn countryside swirling through the glass. The English countryside in a bottle; now that’s priceless.

Ingredients

-‐� 45ml� Chase� marmalade� vodka-‐� � 20ml� Chartreuse-‐� � 15ml� lemon-‐� 10ml� sugar-‐� � English� Sparkling� Wine�

FORK26_ProducerProfile_FINALJB.indd 32-33 5/10/13 14:05:47


Producer Profile

A ndy Waugh, founder of The Wild Game Co, is sitting opposite me in a little café in London telling me about

his family business. I can’t help wishing we were standing on a remote hill in the Scottish highlands, and that he was wearing a kilt. He’s handsome, friendly, and I can’t imagine a better advertisement for eating game. Still, the highlands are very far away, so this will have to do.

For over 30 years Andy’s family have been gathering game at their farm in the Scottish village of Ardgay, deep in the remote highlands a good 45 minutes north of Inverness. Andy worked for

the family as he grew up, but never considered it as a career. After university he moved to London for a desk-bound job and like so many modern entrepreneurs, found city life a bit lacking. Two years ago he wandered into Broadway market one Saturday, and excited by the potential he saw he whizzed off an email to the organisers. They came straight back and said ‘when can you start?’ Suddenly he had a month to set up a business. He started bringing game down from the family farm to fill his market stall with game sausages and ruby red slabs of venison. Pigeon, pheasant and partridge are just as popular with rabbit constantly

in demand – he can’t bring enough down. “It’s all wild from the highlands. We are surrounded by country estates and we go and pick it up from organised shoots.” Andy soon realised that selling hot food would be a good way to encourage people to try game and so started selling venison stew. He now does a swift line in steak sandwiches and burgers. “I try to keep the cooked side of things quite simple – everyone knows a steak sandwich or a burger so they aren’t scared to try it. I made rabbit hot wings last week – I braised the legs, rolled them in breadcrumbs and chilli and fried them with Tabasco.” It turns out the good news

is that they all do wear kilts behind the stand, which surely can’t harm trade. From the one market stand, he now operates three markets across London as well as an online shop; anyone in the UK can have Andy’s game sent straight from the highlands to their doorstep.

Start with pigeonSo, what would he cook to win me over? He ponders my question for a moment before answering “probably pigeon – it’s the one thing I give to people who say they don’t eat game and they are usually really surprised. It’s easy to cook and very tender. I cook the breasts for two minutes each side with caramelised apple and crisp chorizo, then pile it onto a salad drizzled with balsamic syrup. Or, I’ll cook venison steak and chips with béarnaise sauce. It’s such great meat, but people don’t really know what it tastes like. A lot of people shy away from it but I think

THE WILD GAME there’s a real game renaissance right now, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Did he eat a lot of game growing up? “All I ate as a kid was game and roast venison. My mum was an amazing cook, we ate game pies, roasts and soup pretty much every day.” I ask him why he thinks we should all be eating more game. “It’s delicious, high quality meat with a very low carbon footprint. Scottish venison is incredibly popular in Europe too, so it should be something we’re proud of. If you cook it well, it’s unbeatable.” I ask him what makes it different from eating farmed meat. “So much goes into putting the meat on your plate. You go out for three or four days and might only shoot one deer. You have to climb hills and walk miles. I’ve been out and crawled on my belly for a mile. You’ve got a gun on you, you’re in a bog, and after the shoot you have to drag the carcass another mile down the hill. It’s hard work but I love the ceremony and tradition involved.”

Back in London, his most recent move has been the creation of The Bothy (aka

CO

FOR OVER 30 YEARS ANDY’S FAMILY HAVE BEEN GATHERING GAME AT THEIR FARM IN THE SCOTTISH VILLAGE OF ARDGAY,

DEEP IN THE REMOTE HIGHLANDS A GOOD 45 MINUTES NORTH INVERNESS.

a shepherd’s hut), his roaming restaurant. An art deco spit and sawdust joint, he is taking it out on the festival circuit. With a rustic bar serving Vestel Vodka cocktails in old medicine bottles, it seems that Andy is determined to drag game into 21st century urban life. Chris Leach, one of the Pitt Cue chefs, is in charge of the cooking. His menu is enticing; mackerel and charred baby gems with confit and roasted shallots, venison chateaubriand with cherry ketchup, chunky chips and thyme béarnaise, followed by milk ice cream with seasonal berries and honey roasted oats.

Andy says he would like a permanent

restaurant, ideally with a butchery attached. Just serving game? “No, I would sell other meats too. I’m trying to bring a bit of the highlands down south. I’m lucky, I’m down here I’m young and have loads of energy. There are farmers I know who have the best lamb and mutton in the world – it’s unbelievable the quality of the produce up there and I think a lot of it goes unrecognised. I want to celebrate it, I grew up eating langoustines, scallops and venison; you can buy a sack of mussels for £10 where I come from, it’s cheap good food.”

We talk about the rise in young people starting food businesses and Andy comments, “It used to be the case that the farmer’s son would take on the farm and carry on business as usual. But now many farmer’s kids are going to university doing business degrees and returning to the family farm to turn things around by making ice cream or cheese. It has become way more exciting and such a cool thing to be around. Young people are beginning to stand up and say we are going to do it our way.” Farming certainly needs young, inspiring people like Andy. If more of them took over the family business in this way, it may yet be the saviour of our farming communities. Especially if they do it in a kilt.

Look out for Andy’s stall at festivals this year

LONDON MARKETSWhitecross Street – Monday-FridayBerwick Street – Wednesday-FridayBroadway Market – Saturdays

(

FORK25_ProducerProfile_v3jb.indd 20-21 5/10/13 14:08:10


Producer Profile

A ndy Waugh, founder of The Wild Game Co, is sitting opposite me in a little café in London telling me about

his family business. I can’t help wishing we were standing on a remote hill in the Scottish highlands, and that he was wearing a kilt. He’s handsome, friendly, and I can’t imagine a better advertisement for eating game. Still, the highlands are very far away, so this will have to do.

For over 30 years Andy’s family have been gathering game at their farm in the Scottish village of Ardgay, deep in the remote highlands a good 45 minutes north of Inverness. Andy worked for

the family as he grew up, but never considered it as a career. After university he moved to London for a desk-bound job and like so many modern entrepreneurs, found city life a bit lacking. Two years ago he wandered into Broadway market one Saturday, and excited by the potential he saw he whizzed off an email to the organisers. They came straight back and said ‘when can you start?’ Suddenly he had a month to set up a business. He started bringing game down from the family farm to fill his market stall with game sausages and ruby red slabs of venison. Pigeon, pheasant and partridge are just as popular with rabbit constantly

in demand – he can’t bring enough down. “It’s all wild from the highlands. We are surrounded by country estates and we go and pick it up from organised shoots.” Andy soon realised that selling hot food would be a good way to encourage people to try game and so started selling venison stew. He now does a swift line in steak sandwiches and burgers. “I try to keep the cooked side of things quite simple – everyone knows a steak sandwich or a burger so they aren’t scared to try it. I made rabbit hot wings last week – I braised the legs, rolled them in breadcrumbs and chilli and fried them with Tabasco.” It turns out the good news

is that they all do wear kilts behind the stand, which surely can’t harm trade. From the one market stand, he now operates three markets across London as well as an online shop; anyone in the UK can have Andy’s game sent straight from the highlands to their doorstep.

Start with pigeonSo, what would he cook to win me over? He ponders my question for a moment before answering “probably pigeon – it’s the one thing I give to people who say they don’t eat game and they are usually really surprised. It’s easy to cook and very tender. I cook the breasts for two minutes each side with caramelised apple and crisp chorizo, then pile it onto a salad drizzled with balsamic syrup. Or, I’ll cook venison steak and chips with béarnaise sauce. It’s such great meat, but people don’t really know what it tastes like. A lot of people shy away from it but I think

THE WILD GAME there’s a real game renaissance right now, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Did he eat a lot of game growing up? “All I ate as a kid was game and roast venison. My mum was an amazing cook, we ate game pies, roasts and soup pretty much every day.” I ask him why he thinks we should all be eating more game. “It’s delicious, high quality meat with a very low carbon footprint. Scottish venison is incredibly popular in Europe too, so it should be something we’re proud of. If you cook it well, it’s unbeatable.” I ask him what makes it different from eating farmed meat. “So much goes into putting the meat on your plate. You go out for three or four days and might only shoot one deer. You have to climb hills and walk miles. I’ve been out and crawled on my belly for a mile. You’ve got a gun on you, you’re in a bog, and after the shoot you have to drag the carcass another mile down the hill. It’s hard work but I love the ceremony and tradition involved.”

Back in London, his most recent move has been the creation of The Bothy (aka

CO

FOR OVER 30 YEARS ANDY’S FAMILY HAVE BEEN GATHERING GAME AT THEIR FARM IN THE SCOTTISH VILLAGE OF ARDGAY,

DEEP IN THE REMOTE HIGHLANDS A GOOD 45 MINUTES NORTH INVERNESS.

a shepherd’s hut), his roaming restaurant. An art deco spit and sawdust joint, he is taking it out on the festival circuit. With a rustic bar serving Vestel Vodka cocktails in old medicine bottles, it seems that Andy is determined to drag game into 21st century urban life. Chris Leach, one of the Pitt Cue chefs, is in charge of the cooking. His menu is enticing; mackerel and charred baby gems with confit and roasted shallots, venison chateaubriand with cherry ketchup, chunky chips and thyme béarnaise, followed by milk ice cream with seasonal berries and honey roasted oats.

Andy says he would like a permanent

restaurant, ideally with a butchery attached. Just serving game? “No, I would sell other meats too. I’m trying to bring a bit of the highlands down south. I’m lucky, I’m down here I’m young and have loads of energy. There are farmers I know who have the best lamb and mutton in the world – it’s unbelievable the quality of the produce up there and I think a lot of it goes unrecognised. I want to celebrate it, I grew up eating langoustines, scallops and venison; you can buy a sack of mussels for £10 where I come from, it’s cheap good food.”

We talk about the rise in young people starting food businesses and Andy comments, “It used to be the case that the farmer’s son would take on the farm and carry on business as usual. But now many farmer’s kids are going to university doing business degrees and returning to the family farm to turn things around by making ice cream or cheese. It has become way more exciting and such a cool thing to be around. Young people are beginning to stand up and say we are going to do it our way.” Farming certainly needs young, inspiring people like Andy. If more of them took over the family business in this way, it may yet be the saviour of our farming communities. Especially if they do it in a kilt.

Look out for Andy’s stall at festivals this year

LONDON MARKETSWhitecross Street – Monday-FridayBerwick Street – Wednesday-FridayBroadway Market – Saturdays

(

FORK25_ProducerProfile_v3jb.indd 20-21 5/10/13 14:08:10

YOUNG

GUNS

with stints before that at Tom Aikens and Marque in Sydney. He’s overseeing the menu here while Georgio runs the kitchen. The old Ten Bells had a set menu, but it’s now à la carte. He wants it to be casual and accessible; the kind of place where one can come in late at night when the place is clearing out and have a plate of cheese and a glass of wine or come early and have a few snacks and a cocktail. And it’s affordable. “We want to honestly price things rather than make money out of people. I’d like people to think they can come in more than once in a week.”

Creating an identity“Everybody says why do you prefer having a pop-up to having a real restaurant? And well, we never did. We just wanted to have our own restaurant and it was always just a half way house. As a chef you spend your life doing someone else’s food with no creative input wanted or required. The events allowed us a headstart in developing our own identity, and trying out if people liked our food and developing an audience before opening on our own. That was always the game plan.”

His plan has evidently worked. How would he describe his food? “It’s about interesting ingredients and more vegetable-focused dishes. I’m acutely aware that having a social conscience and being a chef is at odds when you are doing huge tasting menus with pigeon, lamb, pork, sea urchin, trout. It’s not sustainable in any way, there must be a half way house. I like chicken, but to eat seven different kinds of animal in one meal when there are people on the other side of the world dying is a hard thing to get your head around. I also love using interesting ingredients, pheasant eggs, razor lambs, wild fennel, malted rye.”

Fashion for Foraging Is that why he likes being a chef, the creativity? “Of course,” he answers “there’s constant learning, you get to play and experiment. There’s always something you don’t know about chocolate or bread, or growing vegetables, or venison, or fishing or different types of crabs. And getting to do a job where every day you make people smile; it’s very rewarding.

I ask him about his use of wild and foraged food. “There’s lots of great free stuff out there that is delicious like elderflower, elderberries, wild garlic. But

I think there’s been a fashion for putting any old leaf on top of any old dish without any thought as to its place or relevance. I use wild ingredients when they make sense. We make elderflower vinegar and we collect pine needles from Mile End park for our signature dish of chicken in pine salt.” He chuckles and asks if he’s allowed a ‘wild thing’ for the wild issue. When I nod that of course he can, he chooses bearmeal, a precursor to barley. It was the first grain to be cultivated in Britain, a Viking ingredient popular in Norway. Talking of foreign climes, he’s just returned from MAD – the chefs symposium in Denmark, and before that Shanghai and Milan. Next week he’s off to Mexico; he’s clearly a man in demand. As he talks excitedly about the next generation of chefs getting their chance, I think about how much work, how much dedication it takes for a chef to rise out of other people’s kitchens and do their own thing. He tells me that his goal is simply for people to leave his restaurants having had a good time, but I spy a fiercely ambitious streak in him.

Still, at dinner that night, I’m almost on my feet dancing by the end of the meal. James and Dan are musicians as well as consummate hosts and the room rocks to the sound of party tunes as staff glide around the room in butcher’s aprons, topping up glasses. It’s a buzzy atmosphere, the kind of place where a quick drink and a snack could turn into a raucous evening of laughter, friends, music and great food. His signature dish of buttermilk chicken and pine salt is delivered in a big bushy nest of pine needles and a courgette soup with razor clams and Indian spices is a knock out. It’s very clever cooking, creative without being silly, simple yet technically outstanding.

As I leave a Frenchman exits the restaurant, hugs Johnny and exclaims with feeling ‘I LOVE your restaurant man.’ I walk down the stairs and look up at a neon sign that reads ‘Live East And Die Young’. While this is very much a restaurant that is of the moment, and it may eventually die or segue into something else... its hosts will endure, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Isaac and friends in the future.

n March, some of the world’s best chefs sat at a table in an unassuming room above an East End pub for a secret dinner. After the 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, the Oscars of the food world, David Chang, Peter Gilmore, David Hamm and the chefs from Noma hot footed

it across town to eat at Upstairs at The Ten Bells, a temporary restaurant run by two young chefs, Isaac McHale and James Lowe, also known as The Young Turks. The next day, several of them faced the world’s media wearing ‘I heart Ten Bells’ badges; which is pretty big exposure for a little upstairs room above an East End pub.

Isaac McHale is sitting across the table from me pouring coffee, and in a soft lilting Scottish accent, attempts to explain the tangled web that brought around the second reincarnation of Ten Bells. It goes something like this. Two young chefs start a series of dinners under the name The Young Turks. They get together with Johnny and Dan who also run pop-up dinners under the name The Clove Club and take over this room above a pub opposite Spitalfields market that hasn’t been used in 250 years. For a while they serve a set menu to cries of praise across town, and then it closes in a blaze of glory on the night of the 50 Best. Roll on a few months later and Isaac, Johnny and Dan are back; they have reopened and are joined by ex-Ledbury chef Giorgio Ravelli running the kitchen and it’s quite the talk of the town. Got that? Next up, Isaac will be opening his own restaurant in the autumn at a secret location in Shoreditch. He’s busy negotiating the lease, for what will surely be one of the hot new openings of the year. Why two restaurants Isaac, wasn’t one enough? “People have had some great meals here, it was a chance to carry on running a great little dining room and I wanted Johnny and Dan to keep it on as they’d been doing such a great job. But I always had my sights set on my own restaurant.”

McHale spent five years at The Ledbury as development chef

I

*

( 8

www.forkmagazine.com 1918 www.forkmagazine.com

Chef Profile

FORK25_ChefProfile_v4jb.indd 20-21 5/10/13 14:11:43

YOUNG

GUNS

with stints before that at Tom Aikens and Marque in Sydney. He’s overseeing the menu here while Georgio runs the kitchen. The old Ten Bells had a set menu, but it’s now à la carte. He wants it to be casual and accessible; the kind of place where one can come in late at night when the place is clearing out and have a plate of cheese and a glass of wine or come early and have a few snacks and a cocktail. And it’s affordable. “We want to honestly price things rather than make money out of people. I’d like people to think they can come in more than once in a week.”

Creating an identity“Everybody says why do you prefer having a pop-up to having a real restaurant? And well, we never did. We just wanted to have our own restaurant and it was always just a half way house. As a chef you spend your life doing someone else’s food with no creative input wanted or required. The events allowed us a headstart in developing our own identity, and trying out if people liked our food and developing an audience before opening on our own. That was always the game plan.”

His plan has evidently worked. How would he describe his food? “It’s about interesting ingredients and more vegetable-focused dishes. I’m acutely aware that having a social conscience and being a chef is at odds when you are doing huge tasting menus with pigeon, lamb, pork, sea urchin, trout. It’s not sustainable in any way, there must be a half way house. I like chicken, but to eat seven different kinds of animal in one meal when there are people on the other side of the world dying is a hard thing to get your head around. I also love using interesting ingredients, pheasant eggs, razor lambs, wild fennel, malted rye.”

Fashion for Foraging Is that why he likes being a chef, the creativity? “Of course,” he answers “there’s constant learning, you get to play and experiment. There’s always something you don’t know about chocolate or bread, or growing vegetables, or venison, or fishing or different types of crabs. And getting to do a job where every day you make people smile; it’s very rewarding.

I ask him about his use of wild and foraged food. “There’s lots of great free stuff out there that is delicious like elderflower, elderberries, wild garlic. But

I think there’s been a fashion for putting any old leaf on top of any old dish without any thought as to its place or relevance. I use wild ingredients when they make sense. We make elderflower vinegar and we collect pine needles from Mile End park for our signature dish of chicken in pine salt.” He chuckles and asks if he’s allowed a ‘wild thing’ for the wild issue. When I nod that of course he can, he chooses bearmeal, a precursor to barley. It was the first grain to be cultivated in Britain, a Viking ingredient popular in Norway. Talking of foreign climes, he’s just returned from MAD – the chefs symposium in Denmark, and before that Shanghai and Milan. Next week he’s off to Mexico; he’s clearly a man in demand. As he talks excitedly about the next generation of chefs getting their chance, I think about how much work, how much dedication it takes for a chef to rise out of other people’s kitchens and do their own thing. He tells me that his goal is simply for people to leave his restaurants having had a good time, but I spy a fiercely ambitious streak in him.

Still, at dinner that night, I’m almost on my feet dancing by the end of the meal. James and Dan are musicians as well as consummate hosts and the room rocks to the sound of party tunes as staff glide around the room in butcher’s aprons, topping up glasses. It’s a buzzy atmosphere, the kind of place where a quick drink and a snack could turn into a raucous evening of laughter, friends, music and great food. His signature dish of buttermilk chicken and pine salt is delivered in a big bushy nest of pine needles and a courgette soup with razor clams and Indian spices is a knock out. It’s very clever cooking, creative without being silly, simple yet technically outstanding.

As I leave a Frenchman exits the restaurant, hugs Johnny and exclaims with feeling ‘I LOVE your restaurant man.’ I walk down the stairs and look up at a neon sign that reads ‘Live East And Die Young’. While this is very much a restaurant that is of the moment, and it may eventually die or segue into something else... its hosts will endure, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Isaac and friends in the future.

n March, some of the world’s best chefs sat at a table in an unassuming room above an East End pub for a secret dinner. After the 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, the Oscars of the food world, David Chang, Peter Gilmore, David Hamm and the chefs from Noma hot footed

it across town to eat at Upstairs at The Ten Bells, a temporary restaurant run by two young chefs, Isaac McHale and James Lowe, also known as The Young Turks. The next day, several of them faced the world’s media wearing ‘I heart Ten Bells’ badges; which is pretty big exposure for a little upstairs room above an East End pub.

Isaac McHale is sitting across the table from me pouring coffee, and in a soft lilting Scottish accent, attempts to explain the tangled web that brought around the second reincarnation of Ten Bells. It goes something like this. Two young chefs start a series of dinners under the name The Young Turks. They get together with Johnny and Dan who also run pop-up dinners under the name The Clove Club and take over this room above a pub opposite Spitalfields market that hasn’t been used in 250 years. For a while they serve a set menu to cries of praise across town, and then it closes in a blaze of glory on the night of the 50 Best. Roll on a few months later and Isaac, Johnny and Dan are back; they have reopened and are joined by ex-Ledbury chef Giorgio Ravelli running the kitchen and it’s quite the talk of the town. Got that? Next up, Isaac will be opening his own restaurant in the autumn at a secret location in Shoreditch. He’s busy negotiating the lease, for what will surely be one of the hot new openings of the year. Why two restaurants Isaac, wasn’t one enough? “People have had some great meals here, it was a chance to carry on running a great little dining room and I wanted Johnny and Dan to keep it on as they’d been doing such a great job. But I always had my sights set on my own restaurant.”

McHale spent five years at The Ledbury as development chef

I

*

( 8

www.forkmagazine.com 1918 www.forkmagazine.com

Chef Profile

FORK25_ChefProfile_v4jb.indd 20-21 5/10/13 14:11:43


H ands up who can sketch a pepper plant? Thought not. Isn’t it strange that while we all use pepper, and despite the recent vogue for ‘proper’ salt, no one has paid much attention to this oft-used spice. Step in

Tom Alcott and Pete Gibbons who found themselves wondering exactly this, when despite using pepper at least three times a day, realised they didn’t even know what it looked like. Tom tells me “I didn’t even know whether it was a tree, a berry or a nut.” What followed was a six-year odyssey around the world discovering pepper and the launch of a new company, Peppermongers.

No strangers to the world of food and drink, they already run Frank water, the charity that sells bottled water to raise money for clean water projects in India, with Tom’s wife Katie. It was on a trip to India for Frank that they discovered proper pepper. Returning to England, they tried to find it and when they couldn’t, decided to source it themselves and make a business out of it. Tom says: “the more I looked into it, the more I realised we don’t understand anything about pepper in this country. We eat so much bad pepper yet we use it 10 times more than any other spice.”

He tells me that “starting Peppermongers has been the most amazing journey because the history of pepper is fascinating.” The Age of Discovery was all about pepper. It originally came from the Malabar Coast of India, and when Columbus found the West Indies, he was actually looking for pepper in the East Indies. Vasco De Gama found America when he was looking for cheap pepper as it used to be worth more than gold. So, as Tom explains, “pepper was behind the birth of map-making and cartography.” He quotes William Blake ‘To see a world in a grain of sand... hold infinity in the palm of your hand,’ and tells me you can do that with a peppercorn, which is really rather romantic. Yet he’s right; stories of international trade, globalisation and world

cuisine are all contained in its deep spicy aroma.

Tom pulls an assortment of tins out of a battered leather bag and lays them before him. He carefully takes a peppercorn out and offers it up for inspection. “This is the world’s best pepper,” he proudly says holding up a “Tellicherry garbled special extra bold.” Grown in Kerala and referred to as TGSEB – this catchy title is from the Indian grading system; to garble pepper is to filter and clean it.

The tiny pod sits in my hand, and with one sniff I’m carried away to eastern plantations, Spice Islands, exotic souks and the mysterious unknown. It smells nothing like the pepper on my kitchen table at home. And that, Tom says “is exactly the problem with the pepper most of us eat every day.” We tend to eat ready ground pepper, but the black shell holds the aroma and the inner seed has the heat – the volatile oils. When you crack pepper the volatile oils are released, they disappear and are gone. “It’s like wine, you open it and then you wouldn’t drink it after a couple of days. If you want good pepper, crack it in a pestle and mortar just before you eat it.” And like wine, chocolate and coffee, you can determine complex tasting notes for pepper.

He then holds up a long pepper catkin from Java. It resembles a miniature slender and smooth pinecone; small enough to sit on my finger. It’s beautiful, smells sweet and pungent and looks nothing like any pepper I’ve ever seen. Tom adds: “We are only interested in the world’s best pepper,” – less than 10% of the crop. When you buy pepper from us, you’ll be getting the best and I guarantee you will notice the difference.” The Tellicherry comes from co-operative plantations in India. Most are organic, some certified and some not, but all are grown alongside cocoa, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and cardamom.

There are four variants in the range. Putting the longtail away, Tom pulls out a Tailed Cubeb Comet Pepper from Sumatra. It smells completely different and yet again I am instantly whisked away by its warm and evocative aroma. The fourth pepper is the Hua Jiao Pepper Pod from Sichuan Province in China. It’s a fiery red peppercorn that tingles on the tongue and contains a

tantalising citrus aroma.He leaves me with this thought: “Pepper is the most amazing thing, it’s not only used in cooking but it’s also an aphrodisiac and is used in medicines too.” The Peppermongers are hoping to change the way we look at pepper and I don’t think they have their work cut out. One sniff of this and you’ll never look at a pot of ground pepper in the same way again.

FORK21_ProducerProfile_FINAL.indd 1 7/12/11 14:38:23


FORK25_AZ_Wildfood_v6dp.indd 31 5/10/13 14:13:41

AB

ABUNDANCE LONDONA� growing� movement� aiming� to� make� better� use� of� neglected� local� fruit� trees� by� organising� volunteers� to� harvest� the� fruit.� There� are� groups� in� London� and� Manchester,� with� a� hybrid� version� called� Urban� Harvest� popping� up� in� Leeds.� Also,� check� out� the� fruit� city� map� –� a� growing� map� and� network� of� all� the� fruit� trees� in� public� spaces� in� London.� � 8 www.fruitcity.co.uk

BLACKBERRIES Everyone’s favourite wild fruit. Make a cordial by heating 2kg of blackberries in a saucepan until they start to ooze. Strain through muslin, then return to the pan and add 225g of sugar, 3 cloves, 1 cinnamon stick and the rind of half a lemon. Boil for 30 minutes and strain again. Brilliant as a mixer for gin and perfect with champagne.

CORNISH MUSSEL SHACKSuppliers of Cornish mussels, shellfish and foraged produce. They will send sea beet,

rock and marsh samphire and hand dived mussels direct to your door and occasionally sea winkles, sea purslane, dandelions, nettles and Jack by hedge (garlic mustard), when they’re around. 8 www.thecornishmusselshack.co.uk

CFERGUS DRENNAN Professional� forager� and� bushcraft� expert� Fergus� Drennan� runs� courses� on� the� Kent� coast� and� in� the� wilds� of� Scotland.� His� website� www.wildmanwildfood.com� has� details� of� his� fungi� forays� and� coastal� walks,� and� some� pretty� wild� recipes,� including� sea� buckthorn� cheesecake� and� pan� braised� squirrel.

D

G

EAT WEEDS Robin Harford, a Devon-based forager believes people need to re-learn foraging, healing and celebrating with wild plants. Robin runs gourmet wild food foraging courses around Britain in memory of his plant mentor, Frank Cook, who travelled

the planet teaching people the wonder and beauty of plants. Robin follows Frank’s unusual business model, and teaches in exchange for a donation.E

FISH & FORAGEThis Cornish outfit runs courses in catching, preparing and cooking the diverse seafood that is available to all of us for free. Choose from ‘an introduction to fishing from the shore’ where you learn how to fish mackerel from the beach, or ‘fishing from a boat’ where you learn hand lining for mackerel as well as rod and reel fishing for pollock. 8 www.fishandforage.co.uk

F

GAME & WILD FOOD COOKERY SCHOOLMike� Robinson,� owner� of� The� Pot� Kiln� in� Berkshire�

and� Michelin� starred� London� pub� The� Harwood� Arms,� runs� a� cookery� school� in� the� Berkshire� countryside� that� specialises� in� game� and� wild� food.� Wild� mushroom� foraging� courses� are� run� in� October� and� November� and� the� advanced� game� course� teaches� you� how� to� slow-‐cook� meat� with� spices� for� potted� venison,� or� how� to� layer� up� terrines� with� pigeon,� venison,� pheasant,� black� pudding,� ham� hock� and� cabbage.8 www.gamecookeryschool.co.uk

THE HEDGEROW HANDBOOKSubtitled ‘Recipes, Remedies and Rituals’, this delightful little book by Adele Nozedar is an ode to the hedgerow, of which is estimated there are half a million miles of in England alone and home to many wild foods. Unusual recipes include Hawthorn fruit leather, steamy sloe gin, caramelised apple and sloe pudding, fallen hazelnut and cheddar crackers, and a himayalan balsam seed curry.Square Peg, £12.99.

H


H

INSECTS Insects are the future apparently, and the Wild

Food School offers courses on bug eating or, using its official name, entomophagy. Learn how people in other cultures harvest and prepare insects for food and tuck into some edible insects for lunch. If that makes you shudder you can try one of the tamer courses... join a ‘chomp yomp’ where you identify edible plants along the way and then cook them up as you go along.8 www.countrylovers.co.uk

JELLY Sloes� are� more� usually� turned� into� gin,� but� they� also� make� very� good� jelly.� Boil� sloes� in� a� saucepan� with� a� little� water� and� simmer� until� the� berries� are� pulpy.� Add� twice� the� weight� of� washed,� chopped� apples� and� the� juice� and� peel� of� half� a� lemon� for� every� kilo� of� apples.� Bring� to� the� boil,� simmer� until� pulpy� again,� and� leave� to� cool.� Strain� through� muslin� overnight.� Measure� the� juice� and� add� 400g� of� sugar� per� 500ml.� Stir� over� a� medium� heat� until� it� comes� to� the� boil,� and� skim� off� any� scum.� Boil� the� liquid� until� it� reaches� setting� point,� then� ladle� into� hot� jars� and� seal.� Great� on� rice� pud.

KELP Just one of the many edible seaweeds that wash up on our shores. Café Mor, winners of the 2011 British Streetfood Awards, have taken our native sea vegetables to the streets with innovative dishes like seashore wraps with bacon, laverbread and cockles. Join them on the wild beaches of Pembrokeshire for a lesson in seashore foraging from the experts, hunting for ingredients and combining them with fresh local seafood. Yum.8 www.cafemor.co.uk

LIZ KNIGHT Liz produces an exquisite range of wild products under the name Forage Fine Foods. Her pontack is pretty special and has a following of ‘pontackers’ who use it to uplift their food. Made with elderberries soaked in cider vinegar, onions and spices this magical sauce does wonderful things to stews and casseroles.8 www.foragefinefoods.co.uk

MRS TEE’S WILD MUSHROOMSBrigitte Tee has been supplying wild mushrooms to leading chefs for over 35 years. She picks her mushrooms in the New Forest and sells them online. Some of her more unusual pickings are Chicken of the Wood, Beefsteak and Cauliflower mushroom. Ring Bridget to find out what’s in season, and she also runs courses in mushroom picking in the New Forest.8 www.wildmushrooms.co.uk

NETTLES Growing� on� verges� all� over� the� UK,� these� prickly� leaves� can� be� used� just� like� spinach,� as� long� as� you� cook� them� to� remove� the� sting.� Use� in� soups,� curries� and� omelettes� or� try� chopping� up� with� feta� for� lasagna.

OFF-GRIDSurvival expert Nick Weston, recent YBF entrant and author of The Treehouse Diaries, spent six months living off-grid in a treehouse and wrote a book about it. There isn’t much Nick doesn’t know about the wild larder. Based in Hossegor in France he nips over here to run his Hunter:Gather:Cook school where he teaches people to live off the land.8 www.huntergathercook.typepad.com

PRIMROSEYellow primroses are edible and look lovely scattered across a salad. Perfect for

crystallising as a cake decoration too. Beat an egg white with orange blossom water, brush it onto the leaves and dip in sugar before drying overnight.

QUINTEN QUIDER We� just� had� to� put� this� man� in� because� of� his� name.� He� also� happens� to� run� a� winery� called� Wild� Earth� in� Central� Otago,� New� Zealand.� His� Reisling� is� an� intensely� smoky� mineral� wine,� full� of� grapefruit� wild� herbs� and� honey.� It� tastes� of� cut� glass� air� and� wild� thyme� and� is� like� breathing� in� the� Wild� New� Zealand� mountains.� 8 www.greenandbluewines.com

I O

JM

Q

N

L

K

P


SAMPHIREBritain’s favourite sea vegetable, it’s even available in Waitrose. The Fish Society www.

thefishsociety.co.uk is a reliable source. Samphire is also a little smallholding in Norfolk that sells fresh marsh samphire when it’s in season at www.samphireshop.co.uk. It’s also a restaurant in Whitstable, which makes a cracking fish and samphire pie. 8 www.samphirerestaurant.co.uk.

TASTE THE WILD Forager Chris Bax runs courses in the wilds of North Yorkshire. Over a weekend he teaches you how to identify edible plants, seeds, nuts, flowers and fungi that grow wild in the British countryside. Forage for your dinner and then return to cook up a storm around a campfire. 8 www.tastethewild.co.uk

URBAN FORAGINGOur cities are alive with the possibilities of edible streets. Turn to Dave and Andy Hamilton for advice, twin brothers who co-wrote The Selfsufficientish Bible www.selfsufficientish.com. We also like www.fungitobewith.org which runs mushroom forays in London and the Home Counties.

VENISON Our most common wild ingredient. Some of our favourite venison suppliers include The

Blackface meat company in Scotland www.blackface.co.uk, suppliers to Fergus Henderson’s St. John and Rowley Leigh’s Cafe des Anglais, and The Really Wild Venison Company (www.reallywildvenison.co.uk) who send out theirs with wild herbs and Kingairloch Whisky & pepper butter.

WILD ABOUT FOODYou can find Olga at Blackheath Farmers’ market selling her wild food products. Linden blossom cordial, wild apple & rowan berry jelly and sparkling sea buckthorn can all be found on her table at different times of year. She also runs cooking classes for kids that incorporate wild food. 8 www.wildaboutfood.co.uk

YARROWGreen and leafy, yarrow has a dill-like aroma. Stir into curries or use to flavour a soup. Its flowers can also be used as a flavouring for vodka and gin.

ZAATARWild zaatar, is a variety of thyme found in the Middle East – not to be confused with the zaatar as a dry spice mixture; this zaatar is eaten with chopped onions and olive oil mezze style. Perfect on tomatoes.

RRACHEL LAMBERTRuns� wild� walks� in� the� south� west.� Her� forage,� cook� and� dine� events� run� in� several� locations,� including� the� Lizard� in� Cornwall.� Walk� through� fields,� hedgerows� and� along� the� coast� learning� to� identify� and� pick� edible� wild� plants.� Cook� up� fresh� wild� dishes� along� the� way� and� sleep� it� all� off� in� a� cottage,� tipi,� caravan� or� treehouse.8 www.wildwalks-southwest.co.uk

S

TY

V W

U Z


ww

w.is

rael

ikitc

hen.

com

Sitting on a plane cruising at 30,000 feet above Portugal, we’re making our way through the air towards Lisbon. Far below, sits a mountain range which rises up from the hot plains and where the

way of life has changed little in hundreds of years. It’s a Portugal far removed from the beaches on the Algarve or the bright lights of Lisbon. I’m reading the inflight magazine, which informs me that Portugal’s Seven Gastronomic Wonders will be announced soon during a star-studded gala presentation. After months of public voting, the winners will be unveiled during a two-hour music and dance extravaganza live on national television. This got me to wondering what these dishes might be. While we are familiar with dishes from neighbouring countries like Spain and Morocco, we don’t know very much about Portuguese cuisine except perhaps those irresistible little custard tarts. It was a picture of a cheese that caught my attention. High on the list of possible winners was a cheese called ‘Queijo de Serra da Estrela’ – made in the mountainous regions of central Portugal; the Serra da Estrela means Starry Mountains. In the picture, someone was eating it with a spoon, which looked like my kind of cheese. And there began a pilgrimage to find it that

took in windy mountain roads, starry skies, confused tourist boards, hot runny cheese and lots of waiting in cafes.

A week later and I’m in the tourist office in Seia, a town in the heart of the mountains, asking about their famous cheese. It is made from the milk of the ‘bordaleira’ sheep that roam the granite ridges of the mountains, 2,000 metres above sea level. It is an area of breathtaking vistas, crystal clear mountain streams and ancient villages hugging the peaks. The cheese is a DOP product, which means that, like Parmesan or Stilton, it is afforded protection for being a product of exceptional quality. It has been made by shepherds by hand for hundreds of years. But the old ways are dying out, as young people don’t want to become shepherds anymore; it is a very hard life. There is a worry that small family cheese production will eventually die out, along with an age-old tradition. EU regulations have also forced a lot of small producers out of business when officers with clipboards turn up in town and close down small operations that don’t comply with modern bureaucracy. Thus, much of the local cheese making takes place in private homes and is sold through word of mouth. If you keep your eyes out, you might see a sign that reads ‘Vende-se Queijo” – ‘cheese for sale’ – and if you do


FORK21_PortugeseCheese_FINAL.indd 46 7/12/11 17:44:29

I suggest you stop and buy some. I kept looking in vain but never saw any. It was only later I discovered I was looking at the wrong time of year; October to March is cheese season apparently.

I ask the nice lady in the tourist office if I can meet a shepherd who still makes cheese. This is apparently an unusual request and after many stumbling conversations, I deduce that no one really wants to talk to me about covert cheese making. Just as I’m about to give up, the phone rings and at last, she has found a local cheese maker who will talk to me.

I while away the morning in a cafe until the rather smooth looking José Matias pulls up in his Audi. I’m a little surprised; this is not the wild shepherd of my imaginings. It turns out that José comes from a family that has been making the cheese in the traditional way for over 200 years, but in order to survive they have changed and adapted and invested in proper production facilities. He tells me that although his family has moved with the times, there are still only three ingredients and all his cheeses are still made by hand by ladies from the village. When I ask about the stories I have heard about small companies dying out and shepherds disappearing, he says that everyone has to adapt to the modern world in order to survive, but that doesn’t mean compromising quality.

He takes me to his family agriturismo, a beautiful ranch in the foothills of the mountains. It is uncharacteristically hot; so hot that when we finally sit down to eat some cheese, it is almost running away off the table. The cheese itself has similar qualities to a Vacherin Mont D’Or and has a price to match. It is made from just raw sheep’s milk, thistle flower and salt. Instead of using rennet as a coagulant, they use cardoon or thistle flower, one of the few ingredients in nature that can magically transform milk into cheese. The cheese is round, almost liquid and tastes of the mountains, of fresh herbs and grasses with a strong buttery flavour. It comes in three varieties: amanteigado (soft and buttery), meio-curado (firm), and curado (aged – hard in texture and intense in flavour), but really it’s the amanteigado that you want, as this is the one that requires the spoon. You cut a circle in the top and just dig in with a spoon. It is this ritual, José says, that makes it so special. It’s unctuous, creamy

and out-of-this-world good. Restaurants in Portugal will often serve a mini version as a desert, with two spoons for sharing. “You can put it on bread, but many people like to eat it just as it is. I love it! I eat it every day!” he says with obvious pride and satisfaction. He pulls out a jar of homemade pumpkin jam, which we scoop up and eat with the pungent gooey cheese.

“I would like to protect and promote the Serra da Estrela cheese,” he tells me as we sit spooning cheese into our mouths. He wants to preserve the traditions but also tell the world about the cheese up here in the mountains. I’m just wondering how he’s going to do that when he asks me to jump in his car and go for a ride to his new cheese museum. And lo and behold, 10 minutes later, we are standing on a building site. In January 2012, in the culmination of his dreams and many years of planning, his new production rooms

and cheese museum will open. “All my production will move here,” he explains, as we walk through the area where his state of the art maturing rooms will be. He indicates a long room where the village ladies will continue to make the cheeses by hand. Along the wall will be a window where visitors to the museum will be able to see the cheese actually being made. He has plans for a small cafe area where you can taste the cheese with local wines and a small children’s farm where kids can enjoy petting a sheep and learn all about making cheese.

That night we sit out under a dark sky with a blanket of stars, twirling a spoon into the cheese that José pressed into my hand as I left, and agreed it was worthy of a ‘gastronomic wonder’ title. Queijo de Serra cheese is still almost unknown outside of Portugal. But I suspect that if José has his way, then it won’t be too long until the secret is out.

I while away the morning in a cafe until the rather smooth looking José Matias pulls up in his Audi. I’m a little surprised; this is not the wild shepherd of my imaginings.


FORK21_PortugeseCheese_FINAL.indd 47 7/12/11 17:44:37

Date post:	10-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	joanna-busk
View:	230 times
Download:	3 times

Joanna Busk: Portfolio

Documents