Merrett - The allotment chef : home-grown recipes and seasonal stories

Photograph by Mary-Jane Curtis

For MJ, Ellie and Richie

Contents

Photograph by Jonathan Gregson

Photograph by Jenny Heller

If the manuscript for this book ever falls into the wrong hands then it may well end up as one of those dreadful reality TV shows: Tonight, on the Obscurity Channel, a new, totally original show which features celebrities living off the land for a year with no supermarket back-up. Who will you vote onto the compost heap of life?

The frustrating thing is that my children Ellie (10) and Richie (8) would probably have loved watching this show. Unfortunately for them, though, it wont become a TV programme, which they are just required to watch. It is a family challenge and they are required to live it!

As you might expect, because Im a professional chef, food is very high up our list of priorities at home. We spend far more money in restaurants than we do on any other form of entertainment and, at home, both my wife Mary Jane (MJ) and I devote a significant amount of time to cooking. Our weekly menus are always home-made with fresh ingredients. Despite all our good intentions, however, there is lots of room for improvement. We, like most people, buy most of our produce from the supermarket. Our childrens culinary quirks have forced seasonality off the agenda; and we have certainly made no contribution to the world of home-grown vegetables. In fact, my kids think soil is just dirt and, therefore, something to avoid. I have begun to realise that it is my job as a father (and a chef) to give my children a sound culinary education.

The children of chefs are no different to any others. When I had children, I naively assumed that the battles over food that my friends had experienced with their children would simply not happen in my home. I thought my kids would somehow be genetically programmed to yearn for stuffed breast of guinea fowl or rare grilled calves livers, while utterly rejecting anything in breadcrumbs that requires deep-frying. I was horribly mistaken. Ellie and Richie have both challenged my patience to the limit with their whimsical likes and, more often, dislikes, which are aired regularly at mealtimes. If one of my social duties is to give my children a love of good food, then who masterminded my own education? (Or was I just a natural?!)

The truth is that I was probably not much better. My mum is a great cook and, certainly, my more adventurous cooking is a result of her repertoire, actually the fact that her wacky cookery used to embarrass me as a child. She would never buy anything pre-prepared that required 20 minutes at 180 degrees. Rather, she made everything from scratch. Worse still was the fact that she wouldnt cook what I considered normal food the kind of stuff my friends were eating, like sausage and mash and burgers. Oh, no, she was busy fluffing up basmati rice or stuffing an aubergine. This simply was not very Surrey circa 1975. Nowadays, of course, this type of food is de rigeur, so I am immensely proud of her efforts and give her full credit for leading the culinary fusion revolution. I dont often mention the humiliation my sister Ali and I felt when our friends were served up a pork belly curry

Two other people who had a profound effect on my culinary development were my grandparents, Dick and Marjorie (two solid grandparent names, I feel). They had a lovely cottage surrounded by a large garden, in which my sister and I would spend many happy hours. Grandpa was retired and spent nearly all his time pruning shrubs, nurturing flowers or tending to the wide variety of produce he grew each year. They were entirely self-sufficient when it came to fruit and vegetables and lived strictly by the seasons. I never once knew my granny to buy anything other than the odd bit of exotica from the greengrocer (oranges, bananas or sometimes grapefruit). Otherwise every herb, salad item, soft fruit, apple, walnut, fig and a vast array of vegetables went from Grandpas garden down to Grandmas kitchen. It was here that Granny, a 1930s domestic science teacher, came into her own.

I reckon Marje spent most of her life in her kitchen. She was always pickling or baking or preserving. She knew every trick in the book about utilising a harvest, and I can still taste her simple and very English cooking now when I close my eyes. Looking back as an adult with children of my own, I can appreciate how lucky I was to have known this way of life and, above all, how living by the seasons, with all that one can grow, is the ideal way to live.

I realise that their efforts were not unique. Growing vegetables was an essential part of life in those days. The post-war years were full of memories of food shortages and rationing. People were careful about waste and made the most of the seasons. Ironically, when considering this, rather than looking back and feeling sorry for a generation for whom a pineapple was a major treat, I start to feel envious of a generation who went blackberry picking when they fancied a pudding!

Seasonal eating was not a lifestyle aspiration for my grandparents; it was a natural law that governed what ended up on the dinner table. As I cruise the aisles of our local supermarket happily buying green beans from Kenya and asparagus from Peru, it dawns on me that, despite cooking professionally for 20 years, I have rather missed or forgotten the wider issues concerning food. My obsession with winning a Michelin star had all but cancelled out any thought of food miles, animal welfare, seasonal cookery or the real joy of picking something and then very simply cooking it. I realise that I should worry far more than I ever have done about where my familys food is coming from and how it is grown.

Photograph by Paul Merrett

While acknowledging all this as the right way forwards for our family, I would not dare to suggest that I am at the forefront of change. I have sat at many a dinner party listening to people from all walks of life bang on about food miles and globalisation, and my standard response has been to consider them the brown rice and sandals types, and to turn the conversation to what I considered more foody matters, such as current restaurant trends and the latest cookbooks. There is no doubt, however, that food issues are a hot topic and I have to accept that I have some ground to make up; probably the very reason for my belated conversion is that I have spent so much time in the pampered world of fine dining.