Tom Kerridge - The Hand & Flowers Cookbook

Liam Gallagher

@liamgallagher

Hand and Flowers, Marlow. Food of the Gods.

Tom Kerridge fantastic chap LG x

29/03/2015 16:16

To Bef and Acey

Bef, mate, Im sorry that the three years you gave me at the beginning took a little longer than expected, and no matter what your dad says, the water is not that warm. However, I couldnt think of a better person to be swimming in it with!

Contents

Introduction

For as long as I can remember, Ive had a passion for pubs. I love the heart that they bring to a community, their laid-back vibe and their lack of pretension. I love the user-friendly style of food they offer and the extensive range of products in their well-stocked bars.

I can vividly recall me and my brother, when we were young, sitting in the back of Dads car travelling to a pub near Whaddon in the Gloucestershire countryside. It was called the Four Mile House and we went there on more than one occasion. Dad would put us in the beer garden, get us a couple of Panda Pops and a packet of crisps, then head off into the bar. We would play for hours in the pub garden, happily kicking a football around until he was ready to go home.

When I was in my teens, I started to play rugby and joined Saintbridge former pupils rugby club: and thats when I first encountered beer and ale. After training or a match, wed all have a drink in the club bar. Everyone would sit around chatting about what had gone on in the past week, and what theyd got planned for the week ahead. Maybe wed be playing cards or darts. Somehow, we had created a great energy in what was, essentially, just a bare room.

That social aspect of the rugby club of getting together, regularly, with a core of mates is available in spades in pubs. I discovered that fact when I was about 16 years old and started going out on a Friday and Saturday night with my mates (and my fake ID!) to try and get into pubs and nightclubs. Pretty standard teenage behaviour, I think, which meant that by the time I was a young man and formally allowed to buy alcohol, pubs had cemented their place in my heart.

That love of pubs was reinforced as I got older, when I began to pop into my local and get to know its regulars. Now, in retrospect, I think, Wow, I sat with the same people telling the same stories to each other, over and over again every week! But it was (and still is) lovely how people can create a buzz and atmosphere in a pub. Its also nice when you go into your local and dont get caught in a headlock by one of the regulars! Instead, you are welcomed in by a core group of drinkers. Those are the best pubs: buzzy and still a proper local. As a punter, you always feel lucky to stumble across them. Theyre great places and theyre the pubs that succeed.

Given my affection for pubs, its not surprising that when I was in a position to open my own business, I gravitated towards a pub-restaurant. My career as a chef prior to The Hand & Flowers was spent almost entirely in fine-dining, so I instinctively brought those traditions and standards with me, fusing them with what I loved most about pubs.

I was able to do that because pub food had undergone something of a revolution across the UK. In 2006, not long after The Hand & Flowers opened, we were lucky enough to win a Michelin star at the same time as the Masons Arms in Devon, which is owned by chef Mark Dodson. In doing so, we joined a cluster of pubs that had achieved that accolade. I was only 31 years old when I opened The Hand & Flowers and Im sure it helped to make other young, would-be chef-proprietors realise they could do the same thing: create great food in tiny kitchens, with relatively low overheads.

Things have moved on even more now. People are still opening pub-restaurants very successfully, but pubs in local communities and on small high streets have done so well that theyve pushed the British neighbourhood dining scene away from top-end fine-dining or French-style bistros. The pub dining scene broke that posh barrier down; it made it possible for people to go out and eat simple food in lovely, unstuffy environments.

Now, disused shops, old containers and abandoned restaurant sites on the high street are being transformed into places where you can eat some of the most exciting food in the UK.