Hugo Brown

The art of cooking with British produce

  • From Spectator Life
Image: Grantley Hall

It’s well documented how excited, or horrified, food enthusiasts are by the Salt Baes of this world ­– gold coated Japanese steaks certainly look good on social media. But a nice potato? Some bright, green leaves? The frilliest mushrooms or a plump bulb of fennel? We don’t often hear praise for the more humbler kitchen ingredients, especially the ones grown on British shores. Things are changing, but for many raw produce still doesn’t quite cut the mustard.

You only need to look at the amount of salmon consumed in the UK to realise we don’t always care about where our food comes from. Perhaps it’s that we take for granted the availability of everything all the time. The UK has become a-seasonal – ripe lemons in April, tomatoes in January, asparagus all year round, everything in abundance 12 months of the year. Prima vera, what’s that?

But someone who does care about produce is Shaun Rankin, currently of North Yorkshire’s Grantley Hall, near Ripon. The hotel gets all of its produce from within a 20-mile radius. This means ingredients such as rosehip, nasturtium, pineapple weed, lemon verbena, spruce, elderberries (not just a Monty Python joke), meadowsweet and woodruff.

It means no lemons, no tomatoes, no almonds, no flour from Italy to make pasta. And according to Rankin this idea all starts with a concern for sustainability.

He says, ‘I want to show what the UK has to offer. The future of British cooking doesn’t have to rely on flying ingredients in from all over the world. If we teach young chefs this then it becomes their philosophy.’

It seems that Rankin’s time on Jersey – famed for its produce including cream, potatoes, oysters – had a significant influence on his culinary philosophy. There he worked at Loungueville Manor (from 1994 – 2002).

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in