Eight of our brightest chefs, appearing at this summer’s Taste
Festivals, reveal how fresh, seasonal produce from good local suppliers
is all you need – from the abundance of late spring to the autumn harvests.
Plus, fruit and vegetables grown close to home haven’t clocked up nasty food
miles and spent weeks, even months, in storage, so are not only tastier but
can be more nutritious than imported food.
LONDON
ANGELA HARTNETT, 38
The Connaught, London W1 (020-7592 1222; gordonramsay.com/theconnaught)
The first Michelin-star female superchef to emerge from Gordon Ramsay’s
stable. In January Hartnett was awarded an MBE for her services to the
industry and later this year she follows Ramsay into the US market with a
restaurant in La Boca Raton, Florida.
Sound bite: “We are a farming nation with beautiful supplies. We need
to be more like Italy and France where each town has a butcher, baker and
market that supports the local economy. I get a lot of my fruit and veg from
Eostre Organics (01953 456294; eostre
organics.co.uk), a Norfolk supplier who comes to Spitalfields Market.
This month we’ll be using asparagus with goat’s cheese from Neal’s Yard
cheese shop (nealsyarddairy.co.uk)
and bread from flourpowercity.com.
Fish comes from Whitstable and Cornwall.”
Angela Hartnett’s Cucina, Three Generations of Italian Family
Cooking, is published by Ebury this month. The Connaught is closed for
refurbishment.
CASS TITCOMBE, 37
Canteen, Spitalfields, London E1 (0845 6861122; canteen.co.uk)
Head chef and co-owner Titcombe grew up on his parents’ smallholding in Wales
and was formerly chef at the Real Eating Company in Hove. His award-winning
restaurant serves top-notch British food in an informal setting at fair
prices. A second outlet opens on the South Bank this summer.
Sound bite: “Asparagus has come early this year. We serve it simply
boiled with a Hollandaise sauce; another seasonal dish is young beetroot
with its wilted leaves that taste a bit like chard, served with horseradish
and sour cream. English strawberries, broad beans, peas, new potatoes are
all imminent. These ingredients are more nutritionally complete when they
are in their natural season. All the above are from Secrett’s Farm in
Milford, Surrey (01483 520500; secretts.
co.uk). My cured meats come from Richard Woodall in Waberthwaite,
Cumbria (01229 717237; richardwoodall.co.uk)
in the Lake District. Our fish (gurnard, haddock, pollock, sea bass) is
delivered fresh from boats on the South Coast at Brighton and Newhaven.”
BATH
REBECCA BLACKSTONE, 29
Blackstones Restaurant, 2-3 Queen St, Bath (01225 444403; blackstonefood.co.uk)
Blackstone’s first venture was a café, serving healthy fast food to Bath’s
lunchtime workers. Last September she opened a restaurant opposite, which
comprises five rooms in a Georgian house and draws heavily on seasonal West
Country fare. Sound bite: “By supporting local suppliers and
producers we know the food has been grown or reared with as much love as we
give our cooking. We source the vast majority of the ingredients we use
locally, using Eades family grocers (01225 317319) of Bath, and Eugene
Aylette’s Butchers, in Larkhall (01225 313987), which sources locally reared
organic meats and dairy produce. Our beef comes from Brown Cow Organics
(01749 890298; browncoworganics.co.uk),
in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
“It’s a great time of year for first-season baby carrots, turnips, broad
beans, peas, Cornish and Jersey potatoes, Cornish mackerel and turbot,
smoked trout from Devon, spinach, asparagus, peas, Perroche goat’s cheese, a
Herefordshire cheese from the Fine Cheese Company in Bath (01225 448748; finecheese.co.uk),
and unforced rhubarb.”
NEIL HAYDOCK, 38
Fifteen Cornwall, near Newquay (01637 861000; fifteencornwall.co.uk)
Jamie Oliver’s Cornish outpost is celebrating its first anniversary this
month. The restaurant has a policy to source no less than 80 per cent of its
ingredients from Cornwall. Neil Haydock brings his international background
– former chef de cuisine at L'Acajou, the signature restaurant of the Sandy
Lane resort, Barbados, and two years as head chef at Conran’s Bluebird on
the King’s Road – to a very local project.
Sound bite: “Local tastes best. With a couple of our suppliers the
field-to-fork time can be as little as two hours. One of our fish suppliers
calls us from the boat in the afternoon to tell us what he is bringing in
for that night’s menu.
“I use wild garlic, wild watercress, sea beets, Cornish mids (a local rival to
Jersey Royal new potatoes) gut weed (a local seaweed) and rock samphire.
Meat includes new-season lamb and veal. June and July will bring
strawberries from Boddington’s (01726 842346; boddingtons
berries.co.uk), a Cornish specialist grower, hand-dived scallops,
Cornish globe artichokes and organic tomatoes from Zucca (07926 364701), a
one-man operation in St Columb Major, and organic salad from Buttervilla
Funky Leaves in Torpoint (01503 230315; buttervilla.com).”
BIRMINGHAM
DAVID COLCOMBE, 41
Opus restaurant, 54 Cornwall Street (0121-200 2323; opusrestaurant.co.uk)
Colcombe trained at the Dorchester under Anton Mosimann and moved from
Birmingham’s outpost of Bank restaurant to Opus when it opened two years
ago. Opus was voted best new restaurant at the Taste of Birmingham awards
2006.
Sound bite: “Local produce is the most important thing. I visit the
city market at least once a week to see what’s fresh and seasonal.
Interfruit Catering (0121-666 7077) sources my fruit and vegetables. Green
asparagus and rhubarb grown in nearby Evesham are popular.
“By the end of the month we will be getting English peas and broad beans,
which are great for salads and risottos, and we will see local herbs such as
coriander and lemon thyme. My fish is from Channel Fisheries in Brixham,
Devon (channelfisheries.com).
Fresh, local ingredients need to be cooked simply to let the flavours speak
for themselves.”
PATRICIA PLUNKETT, 54
Liaison restaurant, Hall Green, Birmingham (0121-733 7336; liaisonrestaurant.co.uk)
Plunkett is originally from Dublin. She has been in the food industry for more
than 25 years, during which time she worked as a private chef, briefly, to
Muhammad Ali. Her cooking is a fusion of modern English and French.
Sound bite: “I use only the highest-quality ingredients. The Birmingham
fish market (0121-622 0200; marketsbirmingham.co.uk)
is one of the best in the country and the nearby Vale of Evesham is famous
for herbs such as rosemary, basil, chervil and summer mint. On the menu at
the moment is roast sea bass, with baby courgette flowers and a wild
mushroom mousse. Because of the sunshine we’re several weeks ahead of the
season this year. English white asparagus and Jersey new potatoes are
favourites. My meat supplier is Aubrey Allen (01926 311208; aubrey
allen.co.uk) and our spring lamb comes from Cornwall and Wales.”
EDINBURGH
TOM KITCHIN, 29
The Kitchin, Leith, Edinburgh (0131-555 1755; thekitchin.com)
Awarded a Michelin star in January, Kitchin is the youngest Scottish chef to
receive the accolade. He returned to his native Scotland after working with
some of the best chefs in the world in London, Paris and Monte Carlo. His
philosophy is “from nature to plate”.
Sound bite: “The reason I came home to Scotland was to use the fresh
produce that we have on our doorstep. Scotland has more or less everything
we need. Cooking with local ingredients is massively important if you want
to capture the essence of a place on a plate. This time of year our seafood
is fantastic. We get scallops from the local suppliers Willie Little of
Ocean Traders (01738 444468; 07736-161022), who hand-dive to catch them, and
I buy my langoustine (Scottish prawns) from David Lowrie fishmongers (0786
0686042), who are just 25 minutes outside Edinburgh. Right now we also have
local monkfish that I serve with a wild garlic that’s like a big thick chive
with a strong flavour.
“In the summer the berries are beautiful; strawberries, raspberries,
blackberries, sour gooseberries and blueberries. The Scottish soil has so
many minerals that it gives the fruit great body and character.
“People have been taking food for granted for so long. It’s important to know
about provenance. From growing children to pregnant women, freshly harvested
food supplies their bodies with the nutrients it needs. It’s also great for
the local economy if people tune their spending patterns to the rhythms of
seasonal food.”
MARY WALKER, 46
Skippers restaurant, Leith, Edinburgh (0131-554 1018; skippers.co.uk)
Based in Leith, Edinburgh’s seaport, Auld Reekie’s original seafood bistro
uses only local produce and updates its menu twice daily, according to the
catch of local fleets. It is the first restaurant in Edinburgh to have been
given recognition by the Slow Food organisation for its sustainable and
regional sourcing of ingredients.
Sound bite: “It’s really nice to reflect the seasons in your menu. Now
we have rhubarb, Scottish asparagus, wild garlic and wild leeks, all of
which I get from Wild Taste (01592 203883), and lemon sole, haddock, cod,
mackerel and halibut from an outstanding fishmonger, JK Thomson (0131-653
6999; jkthomson.com) at
Musselburgh. When you work with fish, freshness is the key to success. Our
beef comes from the grass-fed cattle on the Duke of Buccleuch’s estates (buccleuch.com)
and Braehead Foods (01563 550008) supplies our Scottish game and cheeses.”
