I'm a West Country boy. Igrew up in the estates around Gloucester, where you're 5 minutes from the countryside. It's a beautiful place – rolling hills, orchards, Cotswold stone walls – and the land produces some outstanding ingredients to cook with.
As a kid, I was more of a fish-fingers and Pot-Noodle kind of guy, and it wasonly when I started working in kitchens, aged 18, that I first started to recognise the high quality of the produce from the West Country.
I started washing up at a Michelin-starred hotel called Calcot Manor, in Tetbury, and immediately loved the controlled warzone that is life in the kitchen. Being a chef is not just about cooking – it's a lifestyle, and I embraced it: early mornings, late nights, and a rubbish car with low suspension and alloy wheels. I was living the young chef's dream!
Pretty quickly, I got to grips with using some of the fantastic pork raised nearby – like the Old Spot pigs for which Gloucestershire is famous.
Although my pork all comes from the West Country, however, I don't actually look for a specific breed. I put my faith in the people who do my sourcing to find the best ingredients possible. My butcher, Walter Rose and Sons in Devizes, is as important to me as myhead chef. It sounds like a cliche, but my cooking aims to let great ingredients shine - and the best West Country pork from a supplier I trust is crucial.
There's brilliant fruit in the West ofEngland, such as rhubarb, pears and apples. In fact, a lot of pigs in the region were traditionally fed on windfall apples in orchards at the end of apple season, and that's why the sweet white meat goes quite so beautifully with apple sauce. I've given you two recipes to celebrate West Country pork and apples respectively – the blanquette and the dried apple drop scones with apple cider jam, which you'll find online.
The other ingredient that immediately makes me think of my homeland is fish, both fresh and saltwater – river fish such as trout, which is a much-underused alternative to salmon, and eels (see my video of eel recipes here), but also all the fish found in the incredibly rich Cornish coastline, such as red mullet, which look almost Mediterranean with their red skins. As "bottom feeders" (they eat from the sea bed), they have a lovely strong flavour, a bit like gurnard. Red mullet isgreat for the home cook, because you don't have to worry too much about subtlety – throw in lots of big flavours and it's likely to work well– and it's in season right now. The red mullet soup here is a good example, with fennel, star anise and saffron. Provence meets the West Country!
Red mullet soup
I like to think of this as a British bouillabaisse. Serve this robust soup with crusty bread and anaioli, or saffron mayonnaise.
Serves 4-6
4 red onions, sliced
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp olive oil
2 red peppers, roughly chopped
2 heads of fennel, roughly chopped
2 star anise
2 tsp fennel seeds
A pinch of saffron
3 small whole red mullets, descaled, gutted, deboned, chopped
270g tin tomatoes
Zest and juice of 1 orange
250ml white wine, plus a little extra
A squeeze of lemon juice
Brandy
1 Fry the onions and garlic for a few minutes in a little olive oil. Add the peppers, fennel, and the star anise and fennel seeds in a muslin bag. After 2 minutes add the saffron and chopped red mullets. Cook for five minutes.
2 Add the tomatoes, orange zest and juice and white wine. Cover with water, bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
3 When the veg and fish are fully cooked and soft, remove the spice bag. Blend the mix until smooth and pass through a sieve to remove lumps.
4 Adjust the flavour to taste with lemon juice, brandy and white wine. Season and check the consistency.
Blanquette of pork with braised lettuce salad
Another classic French recipe done with a West Country spin by replacing veal with pork. A braised salad of English gem lettuce balances the rich sauce. It's rich in cream and egg yolks, so I've balanced that with the freshness of salad made with lovely English gems. I like to treat salad ingredients like other vegetables – they're cookable too!
Serves 4-6
1.2kg pork belly, skin off, deboned (but keep the bones), cut into 4cm cubes
2 sticks celery
1 large carrot, peeled
1 head garlic halved through the equator
1 onion, peeled and quartered
8 sprigs rosemary
½ bunch thyme
8 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
2 fresh bay leaves
1 tbsp black peppercorns
2 cloves
50g butter
250g button onions, peeled
250g button mushrooms, stalks removed
250ml double cream
3 large egg yolks
100g creme fraiche
For the salad
1 onion, sliced
2 cucumbers, diced
50g butter
6 baby gem lettuce, separated and washed
4 tbsp chopped flat parsley
1 punnet borage flowers
1 First, brown the bones by roasting them in the oven. Remove and chill.
2 Cover the pork with water in a casserole. Bring to the boil. Drain the pork and cover with fresh water. Add the celery, carrot, garlic and onion. In a muslin bag, tie the rosemary, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, cloves and peppercorns. Add it to the pan, bring to the boil, then simmer. Add the bones. Cover and cook in the oven at 150C/300F/gas mark 2, until the pork is cooked and tender. Remove the pan from the oven and place to one Set aside to cool.
3 In another pan, melt the butter. Add the onions and a pinch of salt. Decant 500ml of cooking liquid from the pork pan and add it to the onions. Bring to the boil and reduce by half, until the onions are cooked.
4 Stir in the mushrooms; fry for 4-5 minutes until they are just cooked. Drain the pork and add it to the pan (leave 75ml for the salad). Pour in the cream, bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer. Cook for 5-6 minutes until slightly thickened and reduced by about ¼.
5 Turn off the heat and stir in the creme fraiche and yolks. Keep stirring for 3-4minutes to thicken and not let the eggs curdle. Season and set aside.
6 Make the salad by frying the onion and cucumber in butter for 1-2 minutes until starting to soften. Add the lettuce and 75ml of the remaining pork cooking liquid. Stir for 1-2 minutes until cooked, season and add the parsley. Add the borage and serve immediately with the blanquette.
Dried apple drop scones with apple cider jam
Cream teas are a staple in summer in Devon and Cornwall. In Devon, they put the clotted cream on before the jam, and in Cornwall the other way round – an ongoing tussle between the counties. Whichever way you choose, this recipe is a celebration of the amazing apples and cider to come out of the West Country; I've put dried apples in these instead of traditional raisins and developed a punchy apple cider jam.
Makes 18
780g flour
1 tsp mixed spice
30g baking powder
150g butter
115g apple, finely diced and dried
120g sugar
3 eggs, beaten
285ml milk
1 Mix 750g flour, spice and baking powder and crumble the butter into the mix. Then the apple and sugar.
2 Add the egg and milk together, then work into a smooth doughm adding the remaining 30g flour, but don't overwork it. Roll out 1½cm thick on to a lined tray. Rest the dough in the fridge for about half an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
3 With a 5cm-diameter floured cutter, press out the scone discs and lay on a lined baking sheet. Brush with egg yolk and bake for 10 minutes.
4 Rest on a cooling rack. Serve with clotted cream and apple cider jam.
Tom Kerridge is chef-patron of the Hand and Flowers. Twitter: @cheftomkerridge
