Tommy Banks - Roots

For Mum and Dad

Salt: Whenever I mention salt in this book, I am referring to good-quality sea salt flakes. My preference is for Maldon sea salt; I think it is delicious and I eat very little without it. Seasoning, and salt in particular, is a very personal thing; some like more than others. When using salt flakes, I think it is important to grind them between your fingertips to make a nice fine powder.

Butter: I always cook with unsalted butter and to be frank I use lots of it. I think butter is delicious and, while it is often an afterthought, I think the quality of the butter you cook with is really important. The rule when cooking with wine is that if you wouldnt want to drink it, then dont cook with it. The same applies to butter: if you wouldnt enjoy eating it on bread, then dont cook with it either.

Pickled vegetables and pickling liquor: I tend to use a lot of pickled vegetables as it is an excellent way to bring acidity and freshness to dishes. There are examples of when I use pickling as a preserving method (pickled onions) but usually this is a technique I like to do fresh and raw so the vegetables retain their crispness. My preferred technique for quickly pickling a vegetable is to place the prepared vegetables and the pickling liquor in a vacuum bag and seal the bag to full pressure. The force of the vacuum will impregnate the vegetables with the vinegar but they will stay fresh and crisp like a raw vegetable. If you are making these recipes at home and do not have a vacuum machine then it is best to bring your liquor to the boil and pour it over your vegetables before storing in the fridge for an hour to pickle.

C ontents

The Black Swan is the pub adjacent to our farm in Oldstead, North Yorkshire. Throughout my childhood it had been a consistently unsuccessful boozer in what is a tiny village. In 2006 my parents, Anne and Tom (AB and TB), bought the Black Swan and started a business with my brother James and me. We are farmers and had little experience of the hospitality and catering industry, other than opening our home up to guests as a B&B. James and I were 19 and 17 years old respectively. Its fair to say the social side of work was far more important to us than the work itself in the early years. We had many parties and late nights! It is important to learn from mistakes and we had our fair share.

Illness arrived at a good time for me if there can ever be a good time. Just one year into the Black Swan journey, aged 18, I developed ulcerative colitis and was unable to work. After a painful 18 months and three major operations, I returned to work much more grounded and determined to be successful. I had spent a lot of my convalescence confined to my room reading cookbooks and watching cookery programmes, and had over that time developed a new passion for food. I had no real interest in food when I was growing up, and believe that sometimes you need a setback to make you realise your calling in life. Although this was a terrible time for me, I look back with appreciation. I think the illness defined my character, giving me the resilience needed to be successful as a young chef.

Recession kills many businesses, particularly ones in extremely rural locations like the Black Swan. In 2008, it became apparent that running a nice pub would not suffice in the depths of a heavy slump. Our business dropped off and the pub wasnt making money. We made the decision as a family that we would try to make the Black Swan a destination restaurant. I am not sure we really had a plan, but what we did know was that we wanted to make everything better. We were never busy but we survived and, with constant tweaking of the business, we kept improving all the time.

In 2011, we won a Michelin star! If Im honest, I had only recently realised there was such a thing. In 2013, the head chef, Adam Jackson, who I had been working under, left to open his own restaurant and I stepped into his shoes. Id just turned 24. I worked without any days off and four months later we retained the star, making me the youngest Michelin-starred chef at the time. This brought a lot of press to the Black Swan and a lot of plaudits my way. I should have been happy, but I wasnt. I felt a little fraudulent. All my food was inspired by books I had read or meals I had eaten. While the food on our menu was good, it was without personality or originality. I had somehow reached what many regard to be the pinnacle of a career at the age of 24, without possessing much skill or experience.

I needed direction. I wanted to create dishes that I believed in, were original and could only really be from the Black Swan. When seeking inspiration, its good to look at who you are and where youre from. I am a farmers son from Oldstead. I cook in my familys restaurant in Oldstead. The penny dropped. We should return to farming. This was not only a defining moment for the Black Swan, but also for me.

We closed lunch services and used the time to build a two-acre garden at the back of the restaurant. The menu would be constructed from what we had grown and foraged and, because of that, we would have to get creative. By putting these restrictions in place it actually became easier to produce dishes with real personality. Everything changed. We built a new kitchen in the restaurant so that I could fulfil my ethos of sowing seeds, nurturing, harvesting and delivering the food to the customer. The new Black Swan was born no longer a pub but now a restaurant with rooms.

The produce we grew dramatically improved our menu and finally I felt happy. The Black Swan had always been hard work, and we had more work than ever before, but now it felt somehow more rewarding. A real family business. TB threw himself at the garden, transforming it into a vast, thriving landscape. AB created beautiful bedrooms and James continued to refine the service. The restaurant continued to be progressive but often business would be very quiet. Whilst the food was clearly at the cutting edge our press was not and nobody knew about us. It is very hard running a family business which is struggling and it puts a lot of stress on everybody. How are you supposed to be creative when you can only think of the survival of your business? In 2016 even after a decade of hard graft we were hard up, and even had to cancel our 10 year anniversary party in order to open the restaurant as we simply couldnt afford to have a day off.

The opportunity to cook on BBC Twos Great British Menu couldnt have come at a better time with the business on its knees. I had the chance to show off my food on national TV and it is an opportunity I knew I had to grasp with both hands. Fortunately, the competition went very well and eventually I went on to win the competition two years in a row, which was awesome! But more than that, the Black Swan was opened up to a huge audience one that was to fill our little restaurant and rooms. We havent looked back, the restaurant is so busy and everything is bigger and better than ever before. After all the years of the Black Swan, I have never been more satisfied. Nothing compares to the feeling of creating something that is truly your own.