James Rich - Orchard: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from the Countryside

James Rich hails from the ancient and beautiful apple country of Somerset, England. A cider-makers son, he is a passionate home cook who as a child, was encouraged to explore food and flavour in the kitchen by his grandmother, who showed him the basics and helped develop his cooking. Working as a food writer and brand consultant, James explored the world and lived in the bright lights of the city for over a decade before returning to his roots. He now lives and works in Somerset with his husband Pip and their cat and their very own orchard and kitchen garden.

They say it takes a village - and that was most definitely the case for me when writing this book. Thankfully, my village was full of some of the most hard-working, talented and supportive people imaginable.

Firstly, my publishers; Kate, who initially commissioned this project, and Kajal, who helped me turn an idea and vision into actual real life pages; thank you for your patience and understanding throughout this process. Likewise Eila and everybody at Hardie Grant who have made this possible.

My incredible shoot team; Rosie, Jo and El, you are all so talented. I had so much fun spending time with you all creating these recipes and shooting them for the book. Thank you for all your work, ideas and passion. It was a blast!

A huge thank you to Laura, whose photographic mastery I have admired for so many years and who I couldnt quite believe actually said yes to working with me on Orchard. I adore you and your work and feel so lucky that I had you on board to help me bring this to life.

Thank you to Matilda for also lending your photographic witchery to this book I was delighted to work with you and have a fellow Somerset-er on board.

Thank you to Kathy and Helen for helping me with recipe development and testing.

A special thank you to my wonderful niece, Evie, for helping us shoot some of the recipes. I am so very proud of you and cannot wait to see what the next few years have in store.

Last, but most definitely not least, thank you to my husband, Pip. We did it again! And, yet again, it couldnt have happened without you. Thank you for encouraging me and also propping me up when I needed it most. A house move and renovation, a wedding, a puppy and writing two books in the space of 18 months. Can we have a lie down now?

An orchard, laden with fruit trees and bejewelled hedgerows, can be described in many ways, but for me they are this: inspirational places of stillness and solitude, and a feast for the playful imagination.

It is easy to see how these verdant and beautiful settings have inspired so many, in poetry and stories, music and art. Spending just a few minutes walking around an old orchard, through the dappled light that glistens through the trees canopies and onto the orchard floor, ones imagination is able to drift off into a private space of calm and tranquillity, surrounded by nature in all its glory.

These often ancient places can evoke romantic scenes of a slower, more calming time, when the little pockets of land that had been planted with flourishing fruit trees were dotted in their hundreds of thousands across the English countryside, providing a source of food throughout the year for the people who cared for the land and their animals, as well as the local wildlife.

An orchard is a place of patience and certainty. If you sit quietly in an orchard for a moment, you will start to see and even feel that this unassuming oasis is very busy with life. Those still, gnarled old trees transform with fragrant blossom in spring, along with a sheltering lush, green canopy, which turns into a bountiful harvest of juicy fruit in late summer and autumn (fall). Then, in winter, the sparse thickets, stripped bare of foliage and fruit, create a somewhat eerie wilderness, and, along with the misty, crisp winter mornings, a moody and slightly frightening place to be. All the while, countless animals, insects and birds busy themselves by reaping the rewards of the changing seasons, collecting nectar from the blossom in spring and building nests within rotted trees. In the orchard, field mice, rabbits, badgers, foxes and deer go about their day or night sheltered under the protective canopy.

I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by these magical places, having been brought up in Somerset in the south-west of England, which is the home of one of the orchards most famous products: apples. The county is famous for its acres of apple trees and the cider pressed from them. My childhood was full of adventures: exploring the big outdoors, the fields, woods and apple orchards; climbing trees, making dens and rummaging through the thickets to find creatures like frogs, toads and newts sheltering under old pieces of wood and in ponds and ditches. The countryside, and specifically orchards, were nourishment for my imagination as much as anything else. All the while, Dad tended to and pruned the apple trees.

Having moved away from home as a teenager, eager to see the world and the bright lights of the city, it wasnt until I returned to my home county as an adult in the midst of a global pandemic and in need of space, fresh air and quiet away from the gloomy wider world that I grew a new-found appreciation for the tranquil spaces that so inspired me as a child. The orchard was waiting to welcome me back and to provide the calm and stillness that the (slightly) more mature, and certainly more fraught, me so desired.

I moved back to Somerset with my soon-to-be husband, Pip. Together we wanted to find a new home that would give us an escape from the city and the demands of work and busy social lives; somewhere we could build a life together over time. The pandemic sped these plans up somewhat, providing an opportunity to work from wherever we wanted, and so, in the depths of winter, the car laden with our belongings and a very grumpy cat (who happens to be a terrible traveller), we hit the road, the lights and skyline of the city fading in the rear-view mirror. Houses made way to fields and green, open space.

For us, our new place was a dream house; our first home together and, yes, somewhere we could build a life, but also somewhere that was full of potential a place we could do up and add our own mark to over time. The one thing that I really fell in love with, however, was the small, one-acre orchard that came with it, complete with well-established apple trees, a huge walnut tree bigger than any Id ever seen and a regal-looking mature oak, complete with its very own tree house (albeit mostly rotten, but that could be added to the renovation list).

Over the following months, as we started to build the foundations of our new life together in the new pad, we spent time out in the orchard and adjoining kitchen garden. We took it all in, watching the seasons change and the buds appearing on the trees branches, which gradually turned into tiny fruit that began to swell. All the while we were planting, growing and eventually harvesting our own food to take back to our kitchen, to try to create something delicious from our hard work. It wasnt always a success, but gradually, we started to learn the basics.

That is where the inspiration for this book has come from. My first book, Apple, was a look back at where I came from; a celebration of Somerset and its famous fruit. With