Born to be Wild: Part I

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Should I wear flip-flops today?  This was my 1st thought at 4.30am, early on a Saturday in September. I’m not really sure if Ray Mears has ever asked himself that question when he sets off on a day’s foraging for wild herbs in the forest. Somehow I doubt it, but you never really know I guess.

Sometimes in life I think it’s nice not to have any idea what you’re about to do, or where exactly you’re going.  I spent the majority of my twenties in that general state of mind, but have been doing it a little differently for the last few years, and feel that I have some idea about who I am, and where I’m going.

Today was going to be one of those moments when I could certainly claim to have not a clue about what was to come, that’s for sure.  So, with those thoughts very much in mind, I left my house at the ridiculous time of 5 am with a slightly bleary eyed anticipation, to embark on a 700 mile round trip to Pembrokeshire, in far west Wales.  I was to spend the day picking wild herbs and vegetables with Mr Mountain Food, aka Yun Hider.

The hot tip came from Jay and Liam at ‘the Pheasant’, the scene of my 1st blog post.  Liam said that they had been out with Yun in Cambridgeshire, and he was a really interesting and top bloke with loads of passion for all things wild and green.  He supplies them with some fantastic herbs and sea vegetables, and suggested I give him a call and go to spend the day with him.

Without these small producers such as Yun doing what they do, we really wouldn’t be where we are today, with a healthy and vibrant British food culture gathering momentum all the time. I was really hoping to learn a little about all the free food that we have on our doorstep, and also how Yun has managed to keep from starving for the last fifteen years.

We had arranged to meet at 9am in a lovely town called Narberth a few miles from the coast, very near to his house.  When I arrived, my first impression of Yun was that he has the look of someone who has spent much of his life outdoors.  He had a really healthy colour and distinctive salt and pepper short-cropped hair with a few days beard growth. He was pretty tall and well-built with a nice relaxed manner from the off.  He wasn’t wearing flip-flops though.

As soon as he started to tell me a little about what we would be doing,  I knew it was going to be a great day.  Yun is one of those special people who manage to generate such positivity just from the enthusiasm that they have when they’re speaking.

“Even here in the middle of a town, we are so close to so many different wild herbs and vegetables, and they’re right under people’s noses. I love showing people where they can find things, and what they should be looking out for”

It’s time to jump in the car and follow Yun to Amroth Beach, a few miles away for the first part of the day.  Yun’s driving is very much in keeping with the overall wild theme; I am doing all that I can to keep up with him on narrow country roads.  If I didn’t think that he was a genuinely nice guy who loves nature, I’d swear he was trying to lose me.

We arrived at a windswept and drizzly beach, with a rugged backdrop of ancient rocks. It was deserted except for one man and his dog.  Yun opened the boot and I was immediately introduced to his two trusty ‘long-legged Jack Russell’s’.  George is 7 and his mum Bo is 9.  They jumped out and bolted off down the beach as soon as they could.

“They go everywhere with me and absolutely love the outdoors, including my new sailing boat which I have just spent 3 months doing up. She’s an absolutely beauty”

As we head off down the beach, there’s still not a flip-flop in sight, and we suddenly find ourselves all on our own and in amongst the rock pools and thousands of tiny wild mussels, all attached to the sea wall.  This is a first for me, and it really brings home the importance of opening your eyes to the bounty of free food, right on our doorstep.

Yun tells me that it’s no shame to look past all the great stuff that you can find in every part of the UK.

“I have only started to pick the mussels in the last couple of years myself.  I was doing a programme, ‘Eating Welsh for a Week’ for BBC Wales and saw all of them here and figured I would include them.  I met some old boy who told me that all of the shellfish and seaweeds are edible, so I just started from there, though purely for personal use.  I surprised myself as I’d been foraging for 15 years and had never even thought about wild mussels, which are natures real food.  The vegetables are all very well, but there really isn’t a great living to be had by picking them as the chef is only using them as a garnish.  The fish or meat is the main event the majority of the time.  You are only going to spend as much on vegetables”.

These tiny mussels are part of the plan and we spend ten minutes picking them into plastic bags for a nice ‘moules mariniere’ a little later. I have never seen or cooked a mussel this small, as we have all become so accustomed to rope grown mussels that are much bigger.

As we sit down on the beach to begin the boring process of cleaning the barnacles and the beards from the mussels, I ask Yun how he started doing this for a living.

“I started foraging as a profession back in 1995 by picking wild garlic leaves on Golders Green, because a friend of mine asked me to.  My mum was always really in touch with nature and natural health, long before it became popular and was really into wild foods, so I had a pretty good basic knowledge from childhood. It was after picking the garlic that I figured that there must be other stuff out there that people would be interested in, so I started to look into it.  I just added a plant at a time and did a quick assessment of the number of edible wild products that I could find in Wales.  I found that there was 110 different edible wild foods, including wild mushrooms, so I just took the list around to a few chefs and it all grew from there”.

I ask Yun if he still gets excited by what he does after all this time though I think that I already know the answer.

“The great thing about what I do, is that over the last 15 years or so, I have been supplying some of the top restaurants in the UK from Marcus Wareing to Richard Corrigan, even supplying the wood sorrel and sea beets for the Queen’s lunch on ‘Great British Menu’ a couple of years back.  This has earned me the right to walk into any kitchen, and chefs will at least listen to what I have to say and ask for a few samples. If you can get a face to face meeting with a chef, then you can have a fantastic relationship that can go on for years.  You have a bond then that is very strong.  You may never meet that chef in person again, but he knows that you are reliable and won’t let him down.  The greatest endorsement for me is to maintain customers year after year.  If your product is good and you do a good job, the chef will stick with you”.

“I love working with passionate chefs and how into things they get.  I recently dropped some stuff off to Brett Graham, head chef at ‘The Ledbury’ (newly promoted 2 Star Michelin) and when I arrived it was 7pm.  Service was just starting and he was at the pass directing things, only to then turn around at me and smile and say “you gotta try this”.  He then produced a 5 course meal for me, show-casing all the foraged herbs that I bring to him.   I was standing at the pass eating this food while all of this controlled mayhem was going on around me. It is just so satisfying to see my efforts being put to such good use.  It is important to have positive feed-back, that what you are doing is appreciated by these top guys.  It really helps on those days when things are not going so well.  Without that feed-back, you will eventually start to question why you are actually doing it”.

We put the scraped mussels into a cool-bag for later and head off back up the beach for a look along the edge of the beach for some wild vegetables, in particular some Alexanders, a form of wild celery to go with the mussels.  To my untrained eyes, there are just weeds all over the place.  I am sure that hardly anyone that walks past these areas would have any idea of the amount of free and tasty vegetables available right under their noses.  Yun waste’s no time and dives straight in and starts to talk me through what everything is.  He shows me sea beets, a variety of sea spinach which are very popular amongst chefs nowadays.  There is also a plant called Valerian, although he won’t pick this at the moment as he can’t see the pink flowers.  These tell-tale signs are key to a correct identification as many leaves look very similar, and it is Yun’s responsibility to ensure that everything is absolutely safe to eat.

We continue to scour the hedges for some sorrel for the mussels, though when I say we, I really mean Yun.  I am still very much out of tune that much of this is both edible and tasty. Yun is in his element now and has such knowledge of this particular area that I am happy to just step back and watch and taste.  We find the sorrel and it is an ingredient that is under-used in cooking in my opinion.  It has a lovely kick of lemony citrus and will enhance any dish whether some steamed spinach, to finish a risotto or at the last-minute into a fish sauce.

Many of the wild herbs and vegetables depend on being picked in order to flourish, and Yun will pick away any of the yellow or dead leaves to help clear the way for the young and small leaves to make their entrance.

The rain is really coming down now, so with the mussels, alexanders, sorrel and sea beets organised, we jump back into our very 21st century cars to head off to a different spot.  All that I need to do is to keep up with Yun and I won’t go hungry.

Piggy in the Middle: Part II

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Both Ian and Fiona Moulson retired from the Police forensics team a few years ago, tried several things including grass cutting and making pumps for water features. They had a bit of land, and just decided to get involved in small holding, and have been going from strength to strength ever since.  Ian is as big as an ox and a really nice guy, and has such affection for his animals, which include two huge german shepherd dogs. Their loud and scary barking from the door was not what I was looking for, but they were just like Ian once I ‘d been introduced.  Huge, but incredibly friendly and good-natured. Ian told me “sometimes, if you have no formal training, you’re more likely to try a method that somebody with experience maybe wouldn’t as it’s ‘wrong’. Out of stupidity, I managed to get stuff to work and continue to experiment all the time”They try their hand at making cheese, and the most amazing salami you will ever taste.  The salami is made using ‘Gloucester Old Spot’, which has had every single piece of sinew trimmed out.  Instead of taking an hour to prepare, it takes three hours.  You can really taste that extra care of attention, and though it’s a cliché, it really does melt in your mouth.  There isn’t a single piece of gristle in there. There is also a dryer style cured sausage with fennel and black pepper, though he hasn’t had time to get a licence to sell them as yet. Ian tells me “they’ve all been toxicology tested and are fine to eat, but we can’t sell them to anyone just yet”. I’m happy to take a risk on these little beauties. They would stand out in any top kitchen, anywhere in the world. Any kitchen. I’m not sure that Ian realises quite how good they really are. Matt tells me “I’ve got chefs that love the real stuff so much, and they wouldn’t mind about all the tests – they’d happily risk it to try it themselves” . “What is life without a little danger? But we can’t go down that road unfortunately, as much as we’d love to”. “All the small holders that I deal with have other interests and jobs.  I buy pigs from a fruit grower, a biologist, a housewife and more besides. It’s a real cottage industry. We’ve got all these amazing people who are providing some of the best pork that you’ll ever taste anywhere, and they’re completely under the radar.” “I have another guy who provides me with pigs, and it’s such a shame that he’s really under-confident about what he’s producing.  I phoned him last week to tell him where I’d sent one of his pigs to.  He seemed a little worried, until I told him that they were at Morston Hall.  He thought I was joking and was blown away that somewhere of that quality was using his pork.” “Some of these small-holders sell themselves short, and are just grateful to sell their pigs.  I had one guy the other week tell me that he sold all of his wieners for £30 each.  He’s going to have spent more than that on raising the pigs.  The average price should be at least £50 each.  There are feeding costs and worming costs that need to be covered.” “We have to make sure that what is produced is the best that can be bought anywhere.” It’s time to head out to the paddock, though as we get outside I suddenly realise that my white converse all-stars are not the ideal choice of footwear, as it’s been raining all day. It’s well worth a £30 pair of trainers though. Ian is calling out “come on piggies, come on, say hello” and I have truly never seen anything like it.  As soon as the gate is opened, the tiniest and cutest little Kune Kunes, born only a couple of weeks ago start to make their way over to us. They are so inquisitive and friendly, and it’s quite a confronting moment for me, and still remains so, as it somehow seems unfair to think that they will be eaten one day. Ian’s two year ‘Old Spot’ sow, who is absolutely massive pops her snout of her little wooden house.  She gave birth to a litter of nine, just over a week ago.  I had always thought that pigs were filthy animals, but these were just living in good old mud and always leave their sleeping area to go and do their business. “She built a nest for giving birth just outside of her little house” Ian tells me, “she pushed all the straw from the house into a hole and just popped them out”. I got to see to the litter of nine feeding on their mother’s milk.  I find it all fascinating, and feel privileged to be a part of it. They are so tiny. Matt tells me “pigs from huge commercial farms are injected with iron supplements, but these free range and pedigrees get all the iron that they need from the ground”. Matt is so knowledgeable about it all, and loves talking pork. “After about eight weeks of feeding her litter, Mum will be well and truly pig sick and push them off.  Four days after, she’ll be back on heat and should be served straightaway.  A whole eight weeks of mothers milk.  She is now on about 10-12 pounds of feed everyday, so that she can produce enough milk to keep the piglets full of milk, and healthy”. Commercial pigs will be weaned off after 3 days, so the mother is ready to have more piglets immediately.  This means that they will produce more than double the amount of pigs every year.  This is just un-natural and wrong on every level. “It’s all just natural and easy here, whereas commercial pigs are kept in artificial environments with heated floors and no straw.  They are injected and probably worst of all, some have their teeth clipped out.  This is said to be to protect the mother from over-excited piglets when feeding, or from biting other pigs.” Matt tells me. “This, however, usually only occurs if there isn’t enough milk for them all.  The reasons for milk shortages?  There are too many pigs for not enough milk.  The mother has too many litters in a year and can’t produce enough in time”. “Pigs get frustrated by not being able to engage in natural piggy behaviour.  Rooting and foraging are natural pig behaviours, and you certainly don’t do much of that in a barn with hundreds of other pigs” Ian says. “Normal behaviours help to keep the pigs happy, and that in turn helps to produce a much tastier and more tender meat”. At the end of the trip, Matt and Ian discuss when the next pigs will be ready to be sent to the abattoir.  It’s another sobering moment for me, to actually think that those cute little kune kunes will one day be killed and eaten.  I have a moral conundrum, as I’m sure others do sometimes.  I like meat, I choose to eat it and believe that you have a responsibility to be true to traditional farming methods, and to provide any animal the best possible life whilst they’re here. Matt tells me “It isn’t just a business relationship for us.  We’re all friends and help each other out wherever we can with information, products or anything we can.  The difficulty sometimes is that the costs involved with breeding rare breeds is that people are so used to buying pork from the supermarket at a fraction of the cost, and are not always willing to pay for the quality.  Many farmers that Ian knows have tried to sell their products at farmers markets, but have had to stop as it simply didn’t cover their costs”. There is no doubt that as consumers, we have improved our food knowledge, and are demanding more information on provenance and the welfare of the animals when we dine out.  Chefs are rightly buying more and more local British produce.  But this is still only a small percentage of the population, and I believe it’s mostly due to a lack of information to the plight of these mass-produced and under-valued animals.  Hugh Fearnley Whittingsalls ‘Chicken Out’  and Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fowl Dinners’ campaigns have done much to inform people and to show people there is a better, and a fairer way. I believe we have a responsibility to pay a little more.  I get pretty annoyed and disillusioned that people in this country seem happy to spend hundreds or thousands of pounds every year on boozy nights out, yet will balk at paying a fair price for a naturally reared pig or chickens. So, on that note, I left Matt to continue his quest to take over East Anglia, with his bucketloads of passion, and zest for pork.  Luckily I had a spare pair of converse in the boot.

Piggy in the Middle: Part I

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“I was a fighter control officer, and was responsible for controlling the airpsace for all types of operations from fighters to spy aircrafts. It was good fun - the ultimate boys with toys.  I went to the Gulf, and to the Falklands.  It was quite some adventure. I was in the airforce for 20 years altogether, but I had been mentally planning to do something else for about 10 of those”.

So, why exactly did a thirty-nine year old RAF officer, with a safe and well paid desk job in Whitehall, decide to give this all up to enter into an industry he knew next to nothing about?

Passion is a word that is often overused where food is concerned, and celebrity chefs are always throwing it in to add a bit of excitement .  It’s not often that you meet someone that is almost certifiably crazy about pigs, but I travelled to Norfolk to meet with Matt Cockin, of ‘The Fruitpig Company’; a former RAF officer who had a bit of an idea, no previous experience, and an infectious enthusiasm for all things piggy.  Matt is one of the standard bearers for pigs in the UK, and one of the unsung heroes that are helping to raise the standards of cuisine on this great island.

“I trained in butchery, one day per week, as part of the army’s re-settlement course and was really into it from the start, though I was 39 and the rest of the students were 17 year olds who didn’t really have the same life experience or drive.  I won Smithfield student of the year in 2005 and couldn’t wait to get out there and do it. I was just soaking it all up”.

Matt finally left the day job in 2006, moved the whole family to Ryken Farm near to Kings Lynn, and worked at a lovely butchers in nearby Upwell. He learned his trade there for three years until he left in 2009 to get Fruitpig off the ground.

“I didn’t really have any vision for Fruitpig; it sort of happened by accident really”.

And for me to fully appreciate this monumental accident, Matt had prepared a huge feast of porky delights for me to try on arrival, all cooked in his trusty Aga oven.  A welcome sight after three hours of driving in the rain, though I’m not sure if he thought I was bringing company as there was enough food for a rugby team.  I got to sample his take on some old favourites; there was a lightly spiced Toulouse sausage, an apricot and ginger sausage, some traditional pork sausage, a few crispy slices of pancetta and top side bacon. It was all delicious and bore no resemblance to the fatty sausages and bacon of the supermarket which are pumped full of water.  Matt’s sausages are a minimum of 80-90% meat and all made using natural casings.

Matt lives and breathes Fruitpig.  He wanted to do things his way from the start, and the only thing that he knew for sure was that he was going to breed, butcher and promote the finest rare breed pedigree pigs to restaurants and hotels in the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire areas.   Just a year or so in, he can count a couple of heavy hitting Michelin boys, Morston Hall and Hambleton Hall as two of his customers, not to mention Jay and Liam at ‘The Pheasant at Keyston’ from my first blog, who gave me the tip on Matt and told me how much of a character he was.

“I didn’t have a farming background at all, but I grew up in a village where there were no shops, nowhere to spend any money and about 48 dogs, 30 houses and loads of cattle. So I grew up naturally around animals”.

“All I knew were some real basics, I read a few books and used lots of common sense.  Pigs like to be kept dry, they like fresh food, loads of fresh water, to feel safe, and live in groups out in the open. If you stick to those basic principles, they just look after themselves.  That is 99% of how to breed pigs”.

“You give them a certain weight of food, morning and night depending on how many months old they are. A pound a day for every month. I didn’t over-complicate things. I learnt from some other farmers, met some pig guys, bored my friends rigid and we’ve only lost one animal in 5 years - and that was a natural thing anyway”.

“It’s funny, but pigs have as many likes and dislikes as we do.  I’ve got a friend up the road who used to get loads of organic fruit and vegetable trimmings, and one of her pigs used to love limes.  Couldn’t get enough of them, and she’d ignore all the usual apples and turnips and just grab the limes and run off to eat them on her own.  All the other pigs must’ve thought she was mad”.

Matt has done pretty much everything himself since the beginning.  He initially approached ‘The British Pig Association’ and ‘The Rare Breeds Survival Trust’ to work out exactly how to go about getting things set up.  Everything is so well documented, and the lineage and geneology of each pig that Matt has bred or passed through his doors is fully traceable all the way back.  Each pork product that Matt sells arrives complete with a certificate detailing all the key information needed from date of birth to the exact breed.

“When I first started out I made a few sausages. Someone really liked them and asked for the recipe, and then I started to make a few more whilst continuing to breed the pigs.  I remember when I thought about approaching Morston Hall, I said to myself that there is no way that they’d want my stuff.  I checked on the internet and saw that Galton Blackiston is the executive chef, who I’d seen on a few TV shows and his head chef Richard has recently been on the Great British menu too. I just thought to myself, I can’t go there, don’t be so ridiculous.  I decided to drive over and set an appointment for the following week.  When I arrived, I was shaking, and so nervous.  I walked into the kitchen and Galton was there, relaxed, and doing some prep.  He looked up and just said, “alright mate, what have you got?”  I left him a few cuts of pork, and called back the following week. He was really keen to use the belly and the loin and they now take about five loins per week”.

Matt has far exceeded even his own expectations in such a short space of time, and he is no longer able to breed anymore.  There simply isn’t enough time to do it all - even though his energy levels would embarrass an 18 year old – with butchery, sausage making, deliveries and trying to expand and gain new customers.  Luckily he has some great friends that share the same ideals.

“Getting another person with the same love is the key for me.  I have had a guy who has offered his services to me, and while what I do is not rocket science, I can’t have someone who says “oh that’ll do”.  This is my business and passion.  Nobody is going to look after it like me.  When I walk into Eric at ‘Titchwell Manor’ or Richard at ‘Morston Hall’, they don’t even look at my stuff when it arrives.  None of the guys that I deliver to ever look.  I can’t put into words the feeling of responsibility that creates.  These guys are paying top dollar for my stuff, for the best. My motto is generally, the answer is yes - what is the question?”

“I didn’t know that there would be such a market for this when I began, but the chefs are driving this so much. I’m not trying to get romantic, but it’s so nice for my stuff to be appreciated by chefs that really know what they’re talking about, and have so many choices as to where and what they can buy.  I love the banter with chefs and try to blow them away with my products.  Richard at Morston Hall makes his own pancetta, and won’t buy mine, so we keep on having competitions when I turn up, and he reneged on it the last time as he said that he was too busy, so I’m taking the piss that he’s finally admitting defeat”.

My belief has grown because of the feedback and the customers that I now have.  I still pinch myself sometimes, and a little part of me feels that bubble will burst one day.  I could cut corners tomorrow, increase my profits by 40-50%, and nobody would probably notice the difference.  But, I couldn’t sit here and look at chefs in the eye.  I could buy standard pink pigs and lie my arse off, but i’m not going to give a certificate with my BPA logo on, because even though they wouldn’t find out in a month of Sundays, I could never do it.  I couldn’t face the chef knowing I was cheating them”.

And with that, Matt and I jump into his lumpy Land Rover to head over to Upwell and Outwell to meet with Ian and Fiona, who provide some of the beautiful pigs for Matt, including the little known, but increasingly popular breed of Kune Kune. They are short, fat and hairy with two little fatty tassels, called piri piri under their chin.  They are incredibly friendly too and love licking shoes.

It’s the Nuts

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There have been people passing through the pub doors of The Nut Tree’ in Murcott, Oxfordshire, in one form or another since the 16th century, in the times of legendary foodie heavyweight Henry VIII. I’m pretty sure he would have approved of local boy Mike North’s simple, but elegant cooking if he were around today.  This little English country pub is at the forefront of everything that is good about our food culture in 2010

Mike has been at the stove as chef/owner, since 2007, and offers his own take on modern British seasonal cuisine, even keeping some of his own animals outside.  Mike’s wife Imogen takes care of the front of house to offer really friendly, and relaxed service.  Mike isn’t shy of the customers either, and will occasionally work out front.  It helps to stay in touch with his customers.

The style of cooking here doesn’t try too hard, or use loads of high-tech gadgets or foams. There isn’t even a sign of a water-bath here, the most ‘cheffy’ tool of the millennium.

“All of the produce used here is wild, organic or free range, and the magic is in the ingredients and the preparation.  We buy only the best products that we can, and believe strongly in the welfare of the animals.”

“I get my inspiration for dishes from ingredients that I have on hand;  think about what works, and don’t over-analyse things too much. We don’t do anything really wacky here. Everything that we do is pretty safe and simple. This is a pub first and foremost”.

None more so than a little dessert, which shows remarkable imagination, and a sense of fun.  An egg-shell, served in an egg cup that has been filled with chocolate and nut praline, caramel and Cornish sea salt.  As you plunge your spoon into it, and mix the flavours together, it is simply delicious.

Mike’s family are as local champions of food as you could wish to meet; his gran, who used to have a farm two doors away, lives across the road, and his dad was a butcher in a nearby village,  so knew that the meat in these parts was good stuff.  His Uncle Pete lives about 5 minutes from the pub too, and keeps rare breed pigs, which is where the original pigs, from 2007, Rebecca and Chloe came from.

These two gargantuan pigs, still kept as pets in the paddock outside, are truly frightening to me, a soft lad from London, not used to farms.  Their sheer size, and slightly aggressive enthusiasm when we came to feed them in the morning, brought to mind a famous ‘Brick-Top’ quote from Guy Ritchie’s epic gangster flick ‘Snatch, “be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm”

“We’ve got 2 rare breed pigs outside now, the aptly named Sausages and Bacon, they’ll be ready to be killed and eaten in about 4 or 5 weeks, and we have 9 back up the road ready to arrive once we have the paddock fenced in”.

They are currently working through 3 pigs killed last week; hanging in various cuts in the fridge, and whenever there is pork on the menu, it is from the pigs outside.

Mike also keeps Dexter cattle here, a much smaller breed of cow,  that their customers seem to enjoy, though unfortunately they don’t have any at the moment.

“We are using Hereford-Angus cross beef at the moment from a local farmer called Mr Priddle, in Upper Boarstall.  They are housed in barns over the winter, fed on hay and barley.  The rest of the year, they are then free to roam around eating as much grass as they like”.

It is a farming method that hasn’t changed for generations and creates such flavour, and a natural marbling of fat that you wont see too often.

When Mike and Imogen decided that they wanted to run their own little bit of Britain, it certainly wasn’t all plain sailing.

“We were really keen to buy another pub a couple of villages away, but it just wasn’t happening very quickly.  Eventually we called it a day as it just didn’t feel right; one of our investors pulled out, and everything told us to get out”.

“I was gutted, but the next day ‘The Nut Tree’ was put up for sale.  A lot more money, and in a real state.  Everyone that came to see it said “ it could be lovely, but who’s ever heard of Murcott. It’s in the middle of nowhere, so good luck with that”.

The pub, in a little village in rural Oxfordshire, near to Bicester, looks on paper anyway, to be just off the M40, but you really have to go round the houses to get here.

“We decided to just go for it. Now, we have a very busy and fantastic country pub, and it’s ours.  We own everything, right up to the beautifully thatched roof. We have no debts other than our mortgage; it’s a really sound business”.

“There are some very talented and very capable chefs out there who have no idea how to properly run a kitchen.  They only focus on cooking for accolades, and for themselves.  Running a kitchen is not about your ego, it’s about sending your customers away happy, and making money.  You can be as proud, and have as much integrity as you like, but it won’t help you much if you’ve gone bust”.

“We’ve been here for nearly 4 years, and have worked very hard to create this stability.When we first arrived, we had 1 stove that didn’t work, and the wash up was outside in a shed. The kitchen was just horrible.  Nobody would’ve wanted to work here”.

It’s such a small kitchen, the pass is tiny and there is barely enough room for more than 3 chefs, which must be challenging when everyone wants to sit down and order at the same time. In fact, the kitchen is actually double the size that it used to be; they’re on reduced covers at the moment due to the refurb, but 3 months ago, were doing 60 covers, all out of this one area.

“I have so much that I want to do here,  i’ve got no interest in going anywhere else.  I’m 31 now, and I want to see the back paddock full of livestock, and the front paddock as a whole garden producing loads of stuff. We’ll hopefully build some rooms at some stage too”.

“In a week we will have a 70 cover dining space, we’ve got enough plans to keep us going for the next 2 or 3 years, then after that it will just be about maintaining it. It’ll be great once we’re there”.

If it wasn’t hectic enough already, Mike and Imogen are getting ready for their 1st child, in about 4 weeks time,  I ask Mike if he will take a couple of weeks off, but his answer, is the reality of owning business that relies so heavily on his daily input.

“I would love to spend a bit of time with Imogen and the baby, but I wont be able to take much time off properly”.  Once the baby is here, and we’re all used to it, i’ll have it on my back and work in the pastry, and everything will be fine” he is probably only half-joking.

People see ‘Michelin starred’ chefs on TV and think it’s all glamour, but the realities are usually somewhat different;  Mike and Imogen have had only one Holiday in 4 years; when they went to New York. They are closed only between Christmas and New Year and that time is reserved for catching up with family.

“I was 25 when I got my 1st star at The Goose, and it came as a complete surprise.  I wanted to be in guides for what we were doing, and thought that one day it would be nice to work towards the star. There were only 2 of us in the kitchen, and 2 in the front of house, and it was absolutely fantastic to achieve it, but it really didn’t make any difference to my job, or how I approached things.  I didn’t even get a pay rise, but it was very nice to be recognised in that way”.

There are some chefs who have held stars before that go out of their way to not get another.  They’ve got a nice little business, they enjoy what they do, and have a regular clientele who are perfectly happy.

“When we first got the star here, we attracted certain customers who didn’t actually understand that this is a country pub, where they can have great food.  Some customers will turn up in a Bentley all dressed up, and have the tasting menu, some will have a lovely ploughman’s lunch or a fish cake, and some locals in their muddy boots, from the farm, will just come in for a beer and a bit of homemade pork pie.  Anyone is welcome here, wearing whatever you like, as long as you’re wearing something.

We make mistakes here sometimes, of course we do, and we will go out of our way to fix them when we do,  we’ll take dishes off the bill, cook a fresh one, whatever it takes to make it right, but we’re not going to devalue what we’re doing here, and what we’re about just to please people who are determined not to enjoy something.

Today, for a 50 cover service, it’s just Mike, and Derek, his loyal number two, who has known and worked with Mike for several years.  They are friends at this stage, and the banter flies all morning. This really helps to create a friendly and happy environment for them all to work in.

Mike’s 19 year old sister works in the kitchen too, but is off today.  Mike tells me that she is already showing maturity way beyond her years. Even at her tender age, she is capable of covering all of the sections, including the hectic sauce section, and producing whatever is needed, day in day out. It must run in the family.  I’m not sure if there is a brother and sister anywhere who hold Michelin stars at different restaurants.  Watch this space, it could be a first.  Nicolas from Strasbourg adds a slightly Gallic flair to proceedings in pastry.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my insight into a country pub, that happens to cook highly skilled and imaginative locally sourced produce.  Sure, there are daily challenges, more than most industries, but Mike is so focused and enthusiastic about what he does, that he accepts these, and just gets on with it.

Slowly but surely, you will keep hearing more and more about The Nut Tree, and hopefully decide to pay a visit to see for yourself.  Just remember to bring a sat nav.

Starter: £7-£11

Main Course: £15-£25

Dessert: £6.50-£8.50

www.nuttreeinn.co.uk

Main St

Merton, Murcott,

Oxon OX5 2RE

01865 331 253

Down at the Lake

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As I present my second piece to you at ‘Auberge du Lac’ restaurant in Hertfordshire, you’ll be forgiven for thinking I’ve already lost all sense of direction and have sold my soul to the French. These are all legitimate reservations to have – I have to admit to not being 100% sure myself.

That is until I drove up the driveway of the breathtakingly old and beautiful Brocket Hall. Set in 543 acres of lush green parklands, the unmistakably British house will be celebrating a landmark 250th birthday later this year. It was built in 1760, at a time when relations between the British and French were not at their most cordial.

In fact, they were in the middle of a war for territory in North America – allowing a restaurant with such a French name to stand in it’s shadow back then would be unlikely to have proved a popular move.

Brocket Hall is now leased from Lord Brocket, an interesting and eccentric character.  In 1996 he was jailed for fraud after attempting an insurance job on four Ferrari’s that he owned.  He has also appeared on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ for good measure.

The restaurant, overlooking beautiful Broadwater Lake (hence the name) and in the shadows of the magnificent hall, was the estate’s hunting lodge until the mid 1990s before being transformed into a temple of French gastronomy.

Various chefs came and went, none more high-profile than ‘celebrity chef’ Jean-Christophe Novelli, who was in charge of the kitchen for a turbulent 3 years between 2003 and 2005. The liaison didn’t end amicably;  in a much publicised spat, Novelli issued a writ against his employers citing non payment of fees.  His contract remarkably wasn’t renewed.

At the tender age of 27, current executive chef Phil Thompson stepped up into the role after the split and has being going strong ever since, earning a coveted Michelin star in January of this year.

Even though Auberge still has a decidedly French name and retains many influences from our cross-channel neighbours, most top British chefs would acknowledge the Gallic influences present in their cooking. As a nation, we’ve embraced these tried and tested techniques, and modernised some of them and added our own twists to create what is now termed ‘Modern British’, and none more so than Phil,  a proper Dagenham boy, who is about as British as you can get.  So too are his brigade;  a true cross-section of the British isles.

Andy, his head chef at 24 years old, has been with Phil for 6 years and the bond is obvious to see. Then you have the regionally named Geordie and Taffy, Jazz and Sweeney work on the garnish, and Mark heads up the pastry team with Louise and Sam ably assisting.

Phil has learnt his craft under some of the most influential British chefs of the past 30 years and is keen to develop himself and his team. “I started off with Paul Gayler at the Lanesborough and did two and half years. It was a real family environment where there wasn’t a lot of shouting, though standards were very high.”

Next stop was the Michelin starred Orrery with Chris Galvin.  “I got my arse kicked and there was definitely some shouting here.  It was one of the hardest kitchens I’ve ever worked in, but Chris taught me all about produce, seasons, and how to move your arse day in day out.”

“I then went next to work for Chris’ brother, Jeff Galvin at L’Escargot for nearly three years, and learnt so much – Jeff is such a talented chef and my experiences there were a kind of finishing school for me.  We would sometimes do two covers for lunch, but it would be the hardest two covers ever as everything was done to order.”

It was time then to head out to the sticks.  “I took the job here before I even set foot in the kitchen, I was simply blown away.  This place could achieve three Michelin stars with the right investment. Even Le Manoir or The Waterside Inn don’t have this view or this space.”

“There is so much potential here, we have our own smokehouse outside that our customers love, and smoke a whole range of products: wild salmon, duck, eel and yellow fin tuna using liquorice woodchips.  We use pheasants from the estate, wild garlic, elderberries, plums, pears and other foraged herbs. I would love to have my own vegetables grown here, but practicalities haven’t allowed it as yet.”

It would be hard to argue with Phil as the view in every direction takes my breath away;  it’s only a shame that it’s so overcast and chilly today.

“I sometimes take 5 minutes after lunch service and just stand outside with a cup of tea on my own, and take in the view. It allows me to appreciate how lucky I am.”

“We’ve built a core of great suppliers that provide us with quality British ingredients, and we have the flexibility to use produce when it’s in season – at its best.  We use day boat fish from Matthew Stevens in St Ives in Cornwall. The fish is amazingly fresh; it’s a real privilege to use such beautiful produce and you never know what is going to be available. Before Christmas we were using beef from Maldon in Essex, now it’s coming from Dedham Vale which is approximately eighty miles from here.  We use Lincolnshire rabbits, English Rose Veal, and Ducks and Chickens from Devon, so we’re not doing too badly.”

“We try to source only the best though it’s not necessarily from the immediate area. Quality and consistency are key for us. It would be lovely to use only local produce but I run a busy restaurant; we cook for about six hundred people per week. Just because the produce is from Hertfordshire, it’s not necessarily going to be the best.  I have a duty to provide the best ingredients for what we charge, and to give the customer the best experience possible”.

Every chef that works here does so because they really are a united team. Phil works hard to keep things interesting for them. There are recipes for certain dishes, but they are still trusted to know how to cook.

“I understand why some top kitchens use recipes for dishes, but many have them for every component of every dish, which takes away the creativity to an extent. I expect Geordie, my sauce chef, to know how to make a good sauce, and I don’t feel the need to have a recipe for red wine sauce.  Taste the sauce and, as long as it tastes good, I’m happy.”

It is this trust and respect that creates such fierce loyalty and willingness to go the extra mile.

“Geordie had a holiday booked in the Philippines last week and turned up to work on the Tuesday. He’d cancelled his trip because we were short-staffed, though I really hadn’t asked him to. It’s because I’ve got boys like that we’ve achieved what we have.”

“The boys know that we’ll always have a bit of banter, but at 11am the radio is turned off and they get set up and focus on service. You’ll then see a totally different kitchen for two or three hours.  After lunch then it’s a cup of tea, a quick clean down, and crack on again for a couple of hours before dinner service.  It’s such a physically and mentally demanding job, with long hours you need to have that relaxed environment.”

“I’ve definitely changed over the eight years I’ve been here; I started as head chef at 24 years old and didn’t know how to handle the pressure, I would scream and shout a bit.  Over time I’ve realised that if I’m in a bad mood, the rest of the kitchen will be fearful, on edge and scared of making mistakes. When I do have a little rant or a rave it’s not personal.  I’ll give a bollocking and show them how to do it, then we move on.”

“When I worked in London, I used to sit on the tube some days feeling physically sick before work. We worked in absolute silence and were screamed and shouted at for 18 hours.  Since I’ve been here there hasn’t been one day that I woke up and felt like that.”

“I love being with the boys in the kitchen. I’m not interested in taking a back seat, or being an executive chef in an office.  I love the adrenaline rush, though now with technology, water baths, blenders, stoves and so many gadgets, service isn’t the same as it was when I started out here.  I used to get butterflies before service knowing that I would have 70 or 80 covers, and everything would be cooked to order in a pan.”

In many ways it is a romantic ideal, and it’s a definite trait of chefs to look back to those day with nostalgia and feel that they were more fulfilling and pure experiences, and that by doing things the hard way, it somehow means more.  The reality is that water-baths have allowed chefs to create a consistency that is simply impossible using conventional methods. The customer is the real winner, their experience is a result of careful consideration and a less stressed service that runs on timings, and allows more flexibility.

I had only planned to stay for about three hours, but was invited to stay on the pass during lunch service and it was a real insight for me – I managed to take hundreds of action shots. Fifty covers was a relative doddle, everything  nicely organised and controlled.  Phil prepared a mini plate of each dish for me to taste every time he called a table away. I loved the combination of flavours and the simplicity of the presentation.  Everything looked amazing, but wasn’t too fiddly to put on the plate.

As 3pm came around, I prepared to go my merry way. The chefs went back into the kitchen after no more than a twenty-minute break and I couldn’t help feel a little sad that I didn’t have their dedication to professional cooking anymore. I felt slightly envious of the working environment they had created and what they’ve all worked so hard to achieve here. Oh well, at least I had the night off to get over it.

If you are thinking of taking a loved one for a romantic meal, go and eat here. You wont regret it.

Three Course Tasting:  £55

Six Course Tasting: £75

www.aubergedulac.co.uk

Brocket Hall

Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire AL8 7XG

01707 368 888

A Pheasant Plucker

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Spring is finally here.  There may have been volcanic ash floating around the upper atmosphere, causing all sorts of mayhem to peoples travel plans, but with beautiful villages such as Keyston in Cambridgeshire, in full bloom and the sun shining, why would you need to go anywhere else.  I drove through the village slowly, marvelled at the flowers; not a regular occurrence for me, and felt a pang of nostalgia seeing an old red telephone box.  It felt a little like a time warp back to 1988. I bet the telephone was in working order too;  it all seemed a little too quaint here for hoodies.

I was here to meet with Jay Scrimshaw; Chef/Owner of The Pheasant, and his head chef Liam Goodwill.  Jay and Liam competed in the 2009/10 series of Channel 4’s ‘the F Word’. They finished 2nd overall, and did so, by championing local British ingredients and not taking the safe option, when they had a real chance to win.

When I walked into the kitchen to meet Jay,  the first thing I noticed was a picture of Jay and Liam on ‘The F Word’.  Sandwiched in between them was an arms folded, and unsmiling Gordon Ramsay.  The second thing to notice was a topless calendar; provided by one of their kind suppliers.  April was an ok month, Jay told me  “You should come and see it in May”.  Thankfully, the PC brigade haven’t managed much of an impact in kitchens, not yet anyway.

Saturday lunch was 3 hours away; another full house.  This has been the case ever since the final of the ‘F Word’ back in January; a phenomenon that took everyone by surprise.  The day after the final, they received a staggering 2000 emails and had 2 people constantly manning the phones.  “It was simply overwhelming”; only now are they beginning to get their staffing levels to a comfortable level.  “We simply couldn’t buy the kind of publicity ‘The F Word’ gave us”.  Over 3 million people tuned in to watch the final.  “We took a few too many bookings and were under too much pressure.  It simply wasn’t enjoyable and we needed to catch up”.  Many lessons have been learnt, and the momentum shows no sign of letting up.  It is testament to the principles and skills of Jay, Liam and their team that people make the journey to try their brand of British seasonal cooking that was showcased over the few weeks that they appeared on TV.  They are fully booked on weekends through to July.  It is most definitely a destination restaurant, and people have really bought into what they are doing here with their local suppliers; cooking good, tasty and down to earth food, using each and every cut of the meat;  you definitely wont find any foams or liquid nitrogen on show here.

Has Gordon been back since the F Word?  He called immediately after the final to say what a success it all had been, and has phoned a couple of times since to ask how things were going.

I asked Jay if he would’ve done anything different in the final;  their menu of Carpaccio of Brawn, Trio of Dexter beef and Tarte Tatin was high level cooking Marmite;  you were either going to love it or hate it.  If you use Pigs head and Beef heart, you have to accept that it is likely to polarise opinions.  Did he ever consider a safer option?  “We said from the very beginning that we would stick to doing what we do at the pub, rather than glamming it up for telly.  Every dish that you saw there would’ve been there on our menu in some format, and when everything took off afterwards, people came in asking for the dish specifically”

So how did Jay end up in cooking here in rural Cambridgeshire?  “ I was fed up of London, and wanted to do something different, my own thing”.  John Hoskins, who owns ‘The Old Bridge’ in Huntingdon approached Jay in 2005, and offered to sell him the pub; they initially ran the business for a couple of years, then bought it outright in 2007.  It had been with John’s family since the 1960s, and would be considered one of the original ‘ gastropubs’.  “It was a very helpful experience to have a couple of years without the financial pressures of ownership, and also to develop the relationships with the local farmers and suppliers”.

“When I arrived here, the kitchen was using many London-based suppliers, and local produce wasn’t highly featured.   There are loads of suppliers out there, and we’re still finding more, and more importantly, they are finding us. We have worked very hard to develop relationships with local farmers and breeders and found that if you pay the farmer some money to bring produce to your pub, you’re creating a local economy and also helping to keep the locals onside”.

It’s fashionable at the moment to buy local produce, but also, people are coming round to the fact that they spend a lot of time eating, they may as well enjoy it, they may as well know where it’s from, may as well eat the best”.

Jay dashes off outside through his newly laid vegetable beds and I follow him out back; there were twenty or so Limousin cows grazing on Manor Farm.  The relationship with his neighbour and beef farmer runs very closely;  so much so that they’re had a bit of a disagreement over what to feed the cows.  Jay had suggested local Rapeseed would add some fat and marbling to the meat; it didn’t.  They have since moved back to extra grain to add that rich creamy fat.  It was worth a try though.

“We buy eggs from a lady down the road and have to wait sometimes for the hens to lay.  It feels better than ordering from a random supplier. There is a lady from Kimbolton, which is about 10 miles away who breeds Dexter cattle from September until spring; a much smaller animal and amazingly tender ”

We buy whole animals and sausages from Fruitpig, who supply only free-range and rare breed pedigree pigs”.

To help to illustrate the quality of meat, and it’s provenance, I follow Jay to their walk-in fridge and see several different animals hanging on hooks from the ceiling; a large leg of locally shot Venison; belly pork that has been cured for pancetta; a couple of rare breed ‘Berkshire’ pigs that have been sawn in half.  All the pigs arrive with their own certificate of origin from the farmer.

Everything is butchered in the building, and the butcher makes the pub sausages for them; to their own recipe from rare breed ‘Tamworth’ pigs.

Jay calls me into the fridge to help carry half a pig back to the kitchen to be broken down; everything will be used; shoulders and neck for ravioli, legs for sunday roast, loins for chops, belly for pancetta, pigs head for terrine.  Nothing is wasted.

I ask if he was comfortable with butchery when he first arrived at The Pheasant; “I had probably butchered whole animals a couple of times, but through some trial and error, and a few tips through the local butchers we have perfected our techniques”

Trial and error is a vital part of any kitchen; it helps to improve the skill levels of everyone and push things forward, but invariably, there will be some costly mistakes along the way. “We’re going to do some cured hams again soon; we tried before, but it was too warm and when we checked the hams, they’d gone off; it’s a learning curve for us and keeps things interesting.”

Jay acknowledges the occasional downsides of buying local British produce are high prices and consistency; “if you buy an English product it’s a double zero on the end; you’re generally buying from farmers, and they like money. They have cottoned on quickly that chefs are willing to pay for good produce. It’s not always the best option from a pure business sense, but you need to make that decision that you want to use local produce, and it’s going to cost a little more”

I also spoke with head chef Liam; I already knew about his passion for local produce, who highlighted some of the minor pitfalls of buying British also. “We recently received some Manx Lambs from a farmer;  the first was absolutely beautiful.  Then we received the second, and it just wasn’t anywhere near as good.  We’d already experienced this problem before;  a guy in the village starting breeding lambs and thought he could just bundle the lambs into the back of his 4 x 4 and run them down to the abattoir. You can taste in the meat when an animal has been stressed out before it is killed.  This particular lamb must have been hard to get into the trailer, so the farmer grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and pushed it into the trailer.  We had it, cooked it and it was shit.  That has been one of the challenges to overcome; to find really caring and trusted farmers who understand and respect the animals, and the link between their welfare and the taste”.

12pm rolls around and it’s time for me to let Jay and team get on with doing what they do best;  cooking amazing local produce with respect, care and attention. And as Gordon himself would say, “ F**k off out of my kitchen ”

Starter: £5.50-£8.00

Main Course: £15-£25

Dessert: £3.50-£8.00

www.thepheasant-keyston.co.uk

The Pheasant
Keyston
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire
PE28 0RE

01832 710 241