Howell - Root Small Vegetable Plates, a Little Meat on the Side

For

Mum and Dad who together showed me
what is important in life.

Megan Oakley Howell
my best friend and wife.

My beautiful daughter Amelie.

contents

Foreword by
Josh Eggleton

A foreword of sorts, a small story and a love letter...

Before we start the story, I first want to say that Root the restaurant belongs to Rob and Meg and would not exist, or be what it is, without them. They are its soul and beating heart and it gives me great pleasure to be asked to write this foreword.

Can I call them my protgs? It feels weird to me, but I guess they are. They are one of the most important parts of our restaurant and hospitality family. We have been working together for ten years. They both started at the Pony & Trap and showed great promise from day dot. We slogged it out there together for years and also went on to cook as guests in restaurants all over the UK and further afield. We found ourselves in huge pop up restaurants and food festivals. Most importantly we ate and drank together in pursuit of the perfect meal.

The eventual culmination of all of these food experiences was Root the restaurant a simple concept, an idea I dreamt up driving to work one day. But more on that later.

Life in this restaurant is created from Rob and Megs experiences. They have the given knack to create perfect hospitality from within our quirky little sea container restaurant on the Bristol dockside. And all of us have learnt a great deal from their example. It is a great feeling to know that we are learning together and from each other in our kitchen classroom.

I guess in reality Root was borne out of a failure on my part. We had opened Chicken Shed with everything we do we try to project a subtle message! The thinking behind Chicken Shed was cooking sustainable organic, high welfare chicken, using the whole bird with no waste. I love fried chicken but wanted to do it properly. It turned out that our supply of good fried chicken generally did not come from a high welfare bird the legs had done far too much work. So, being unable to maintain a constant supply of the right standard of chicken combined with a struggle to maintain enthusiasm amongst the staff, maintaining customer interest and controlling the quality of the food led to something having to change. And having to change fast!

One day it hit me. All this chicken was crazy, maybe we all eat too much meat. I hardly eat meat at home so what were we doing in this business? So, we decided to open a restaurant with vegetables as the star of the show, with a small amount of protein on the side as an option. I wrote one menu and showed it to Rob. First thing he said was, can I change this? Of course, you can! Was it my opening menu? Was it hell? It was it littered with our DNA? Yes, of course, but now it had its own.

We told no one we were going to change from Chicken Shed to Root. We finished one Saturday evening and spent two and half days decorating and changing the logos and opened the following Tuesday evening. Everyone showed up for chicken, but we only had vegetables.

Its fair to say the business exploded. Ive cooked in Bristol for 20 years and have never seen that happen and the amazing standards only ever get better.

The recipes in this book are a reflection of Robs life work and Im so proud to have been a part of it. This will be a book for life and will cement itself into one of the classics. You will be able to use the recipes over and over or just simply learn some of the simple preparations that bring the dishes together. It is a great education in how to get maximum flavour out of vegetables. In my opinion vegetables taste better than anything else you just need to know how to cook them. Root will show you how.

I have been lucky enough to have had people around me throughout my life who have made food a joy.

Growing up, my sister, brother and I enjoyed delicious home-cooked meals which were eaten as a family around the kitchen table every night. At weekends, wonderful roast dinners were placed before us to enjoy and relish. Looking back, I really dont know how mum did it!

Our annual summer holidays were spent in the north of France. Though very young, perhaps five or six, I can clearly remember the wonderful time spent visiting the local shops for special treats and shopping at the supermarch gathering provisions for the days ahead. I was fast becoming fascinated by the many exotic local delicacies of Normandy and Brittany; the amazing cuts of meat in the butcher, the glistening shellfish at the dockside, the snapping of the crabs and lobsters in the fishmonger and the preparation of the freshly caught wriggling eels. Waiting for July to come around, to get back on that ferry across the channel, each year more special than the last with another regional delicacy on our minds. But my culinary fascinations had their limits at that age and so I tended to play it safe with an endless supply of filled baguettes!

At the age of 14 I started working in a local restaurant on Friday and Saturday evenings and for Sunday lunch, plating starters and desserts. After leaving school I went to catering collage for a year and then secured a full time job under chef Adam Fellows at Goodfellows. My first year was spent helping in the patisserie section alongside the talented Gunther Repper. I started my working day at 5am and finished in the afternoon, making everything from pastries to bread, operas to lemon tarts and I loved it. I then moved over to the fish section in the small open kitchen, working alongside Adam Fellows and Adam Dwyer. To this day I still have the little the notebook in which I would write up the recipes and plan our menus.

After two years at Goodfellows I took myself off to London to work under French chef Pascal Proyart. My six-month spell under Proyart taught me not only about life in a full-on professional kitchen but also about full-on life! Working in a brigade of 12 chefs, most of whom were at least ten years older than me, was tough and challenging but ultimately rewarding. The passion the guys showed and the sheer hard work they put in was inspiring. I once watched three of the Italian chefs cooking a staff dinner with just a few fish scraps they made a wonderful fresh pasta with a sauce of olive oil, chilli, garlic and red mullet off cuts. Watching them make the pasta and then using the pasta water to make an emulsion was a revelation. It was one of the best dishes I had ever tasted, and I remember thinking that this was proper cooking and that I really needed to learn how to become a proper cook. And so I went to France to work in a hotel kitchen in the French Alps for a season.

With my six-month stage in France over, I headed back to the UK and got myself a job in Edinburgh to work for another legendary chef, Roy Brett at Ondine. In Roys kitchen I became a real chef, confident and creative. I learned the importance of using the freshest of ingredients and how simplicity is the best friend to flavour. The passion and dedication of everyone in the restaurant was inspiring. The ability and the luxury to use the very best Scottish produce was a thrill. As young chefs we would spend all of our time cooking at work together and then cooking and eating at home together. I made friends at Ondine to last a lifetime.