The best chefs start with the freshest ingredients. And fruit and vegetables
don’t come better than those grown on your doorstep. This is why many top
restaurateurs get most of their nutritious ingredients – lettuce, herbs and
berries – fresh from a kitchen garden. A window box, some pots or a sunny
wall are enough to get started. We asked leading kitchen gardeners for their
best tips.
LANTERNA RISTORANTE
“In Italy everyone grows things, even in towns,” says Giorgio Alessio, a
Scarborough restaurateur. When his plants outgrew the greenhouse at the back
of his Lanterna Ristorante, Alessio took on an allotment. Now he’s on his
second year’s harvest. “I can guarantee to customers the freshness of the
product. It makes a heck of a difference to salad,” he says of the quality
of his lettuces, which include chicory and red oak. It’s too early yet for
the borlotti, runner and French beans, or for the courgette flowers that he
stuffs with mozzarella and anchovies, or with winkles and cherry tomatoes.
But the kitchen can’t get enough home-grown fennel.
Many of Alessio’s crops are Italian varieties. He and his wife Rachel bring
seeds back from his native Piedmont. British basil, he says, doesn’t compare
with Italian. “It’s a different plant. Here what you buy tastes like grass;
it doesn’t have any flavour.”
TOP TIPS
It’s not too late to grow . . . radishes
They’re ready in two weeks. “You see results so quickly it entices you to
grow more,” says Alessio.
Gardener’s hint
You can pick large tomatoes for salads when they’re still green.
Cook up a bumper crop of . . . fennel
“In Italy we eat fennel by the kilo. Chop into segments, boil for two minutes,
cool down in cold water. Sauté in butter and when the butter begins to turn
brown add a handful of grated Parmesan. Bake in the oven with a strip of
Parma ham.”
Lanterna Ristorante, 33 Queen Street, Scarborough, North Yorkshire 01723
363616
LAINSTON HOUSE
It’s unlikely that mizuna was grown in the 18th century when Lainston House,
near Winchester, was a family home. But the spicy-tasting Japanese leaves
were the first crop that the chef Andy Mackenzie picked from the country
house hotel’s new kitchen garden. Andy and Bob White, Lainston House’s head
grounds-man, have realised their dream of growing exquisite vegetables and
fruit: wild strawberries and white currants, tiny tender French beans and
tangy sorrel, peaches and apricots.
With the garden up and running, the variety of herbs – red and white garlic
and four types of basil alone – and salad leaves such as pak choy and
green-in-snow (also called Chinese mustard greens) have transformed the
chef’s life. “A garden salad means exactly that,” Mackenzie says. The
Lainston chefs can’t keep away from the lovingly tended beds, picking what
and when they need, and nibbling in between. “They’re worse than slugs,”
jokes White.
TOP TIPS
It’s not too late to grow . . . green-in-snow
This is a salad leaf with a mustardy, peppery taste. “It gives a real kick to
salads and doesn’t get easier to grow,” says Mackenzie.
Gardener’s hint
Grow basil and tomatoes together. They work as companion plants, keeping green
and white fly away.
Cook up a bumper crop of . . . tomatoes
Gazpacho dressing: blend 500g of cherry tomatoes (Gardener’s Delight,
preferably) with 2tbsp each of white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive
oil, plus 1tbsp caster sugar and a pinch of salt. Pass through a fine sieve
and keep in a bottle in the fridge for a few days. Makes a great dressing
for a garden salad.
Lainston House, Sparsholt, Winchester, Hampshire 01962 863588
BARLEY WOOD WALLED GARDEN AND CAFÉ
The journey the vegetables have made from plot to plate can be measured in
feet rather than miles at the Barley Wood Walled Garden and Café. The
organic market garden overlooking the Mendips is part of the Better Food
Company (BFC) and, as well as keeping the Barley Wood café endlessly
supplied with courgettes in all shapes and sizes, it produces enough for the
BFC’s Bristol food market and café, and for the fruit and veg boxes it
delivers.
Home-grown vegetables can be bespoke, says the BFC managing director, Phil
Haughton. Green onions aren’t usually available, but right now they’re a BFC
staple. Instead of leaving onions in the ground to reach their usual size,
they pull them up early as giant spring onions like Spanish calcots.
The whole plant can be roasted or sautéed. Though it’s too late to plant
onion sets for this year, courgettes, another BFC speciality, can be planted
now for a September harvest. The soft fruits are turning red and any
raspberries, tayberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and loganberries surplus
to the requirements of salads, pavlovas, mousses and fools can be made into
jams and jellies. Blackcurrants freeze well, too. Leave on the stalks
(stripped of the leaves, though) and when you need them the frozen berries
just snap off.
TOP TIPS
It’s not too late to grow . . . potatoes
If you can find a large old potato that’s ready to sprout simply plant it in
deep soil. Haughton suggests putting two old tyres on top of each other,
filling with compost, sticking the spud in the earth and leaving it. You’ll
be digging baby potatoes out of the earth in the autumn.
Gardener’s hint
Harvest onions early so you’ve got Spanish calcots, giant spring
onions, which are sweet and tender when barbecued. Alternatively, if you’ve
got a south-facing wall, consider training a fruit tree along it. Plums are
especially rewarding.
Cook up a bumper crop of . . courgettes
To make pickled courgettes slice 1.4kg courgettes and 450g onions, steep in
brine (225g salt and 2.5l water), rinse, drain and dry. Marinade in 450ml
white malt vinegar heated with 225g sugar, 10ml each mustard, coriander and
celery seeds, and briefly cook before bottling.
Barley Wood Walled Garden and Café, Long Lane, Wrington, Somerset 01934
863713
THE APPLETREE INN
In a Yorkshire village once famous for its gooseberries, T. J. and Melanie
Drew have revived the connection by growing fruit galore in their orchard.
Now the season for rhubarb is over, the green and pink gooseberries, dusky
pink and golden raspberries and red, white and black currants are almost
ready to take its place.
Their efforts have turned the Appletree Inn into a lively pub, with a
reputation for great food made with top-notch local ingredients. Their salad
leaves couldn’t be more local or fresher. But it’s not rocket science, says
Melanie. “Salad leaves are easy to grow in pots or on the windowsill.” They
have so many growing that TJ goes out every day to pick lettuce “weeding as
I go along which helps to keep on top of it”. Their lavender (six varieties)
isn’t just for decoration; it has inspired their signature dessert: Marton
Mess. Lavender-scented meringues are combined with cream, blueberries and
blackberries.
TOP TIPS
It’s not too late to grow . . . rocket
“Just sow, leave it and keep picking it,” says Melanie.
Gardener’s hint
If you’re making a herb bed, scatter gravel or bark around the plants to keep
weeds away and moisture in.
Cook up a bumper crop of . . . rocket
If the rocket’s growing faster than you can eat salad, turn it into pesto.
Whizz together a handful of Parmesan, a handful of pine nuts, lots of
rocket, squeeze of lemon, olive oil and garlic.
Appletree Inn, Marton, near Pickering, North Yorkshire 01751 431457
KNIGHTSHAYES COURT
The chefs at the National Trust’s Knightshayes Court restaurant can’t
get enough of head gardener John Lanyon and his team’s fresh vegetables:
varieties of spinach such as bright lights and fordhook, and salad stuff
like new red fire and scarola bubikopf. Much of what’s grown in the recently
restored kitchen garden consists of heritage and unusual vegetables, some of
which date back to the garden’s Victorian heyday. In the kitchen, Sharon
Keylock has enough herbs at her disposal to turn other cooks green with
envy. And fresh fruit, too. Her gooseberry Bettys, the red fruit layered in
a glass with cream and buttery toasted breadcrumbs, taste a treat.
TOP TIPS
It’s not too late to plant . . . sweetcorn
Either plant from seed or look for plants in a garden centre. New varieties
have been developed to suit more temperate climates. You should get a couple
of cobs per plant in September.
Gardener’s hint
Grow tomatoes against a wall to provide “rain shadow”, keeping them drier and
reducing the chance of potato blight.
Cook up a bumper crop . . . of strawberries
Turn surplus strawberries into smoothies. For 8 glasses use a 250g punnet, 2 x
600g pots of natural low-fat yoghurt and 2-3 squeezes of liquid honey. Blend
with a little milk to thin if needed.
Knightshayes Court, Tiverton, Devon 01884 254665
