Roast

Place the tomatoes, seeds and all, into a bowl, and season them with the celery salt and pepper. If you have time, allow the tomatoes to stand for an hour, so the salt has a chance to draw some of the juice from the tomatoes, breaking them down slightly.

Heat a griddle pan until very hot. Drizzle the bread with olive oil and grill in the pan, pressing on it lightly to achieve the flavoursome burnt bar marks from the hot griddle. (Use a barbecue for an even better flavour.) Once the toast is grilled on both sides, rub it lightly with the garlic clove half.

Toss the celery leaves with the tomatoes and dress with the lemon and rapeseed oil dressing. Scatter the tomatoes, celery leaves and all the juices over the toast, then using a vegetable peeler, shave the Berkswell over the top.

1 preserved lemon (homemade or shop-bought), flesh and pith removed, rind finely diced

If you’re making your own preserved lemons, you will need to allow 2–3 months and follow the recipe here.

In a large saucepan, gently cook the onion in the rapeseed oil over a low-medium heat until it’s soft and translucent. Add the vegetable stock, season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil. If using a stock cube, a quarter will be enough.

Have ready your blender and fill a zip lock plastic bag with ice cubes and seal it tightly. Place the bag of ice into a large bowl and have a fine-mesh sieve to hand.

Add the peas and mint to the boiling stock and after 1 minute, remove from the heat and blend in batches. Be careful not to overload the blender or you may end up cleaning soup off your ceiling! Allow the soup to blend until very smooth before straining it through the sieve into the bowl containing the bag of ice. Keep stirring the soup in the bowl as you blend the next batch, so the ice cools it quickly and it retains its vibrant green colour. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper if required.

Serve the soup straight from the fridge and sprinkle with the diced lemon rind. Add a few dollops of goat’s curd and a drizzle of olive oil to each bowl.

Blanch the broad beans for 1 minute in boiling water and then refresh in iced water. Once the beans are cold, pop them out of their bitter skins.

Slice across the fennel, shaving it very finely with a sharp knife, or if you have a Japanese mandoline, this will do the best job. Plunge the shaved fennel into a bowl of iced water. The cold water shocks the fennel and it will emerge very crispy. It only needs about 30 seconds though, or it will lose flavour. Drain in a colander.

Toss all the ingredients except the cheese in a large bowl, dressing liberally with the vinaigrette and seasoning to your liking.

To serve, lay the salad out in a large shallow dish so you can see all the different components and vibrant colours. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the Caerphilly over the top.

The next day, slice across the chicory at 1cm intervals and place in a large mixing bowl. Slice the kohlrabi into long thin strips – about 3mm wide – and add to the bowl. Slice the apple, leaving the skin on, into strips the same size as the kohlrabi. If you have a Japanese mandoline, use it to slice the kohlrabi and apple for a more uniform finish. Toss the apple in the apple vinegar and mix with the kohlrabi and chicory. The vinegar stops the apple from turning brown.

Finally, drain the plump raisins and add to the coleslaw, along with the parsley and mayonnaise. Fold all the ingredients together gently and season to your liking with salt and pepper.

Remove the woody ends from the asparagus and slice each spear very finely on the diagonal.

Cut the bulb of fennel in half lengthways and remove the core. Slice across the fennel as finely as possible with a sharp knife (it should be shavings), or if you have a mandoline, this is even better. Plunge the shaved fennel into a bowl of iced water. The cold water shocks the fennel and it will emerge very crispy. It only needs about 30 seconds though, or it will lose flavour. Drain in a colander.

To segment the oranges, cut both ends off each orange using a small sharp knife. One at a time sit each orange on its flat end, and in a curved motion, cut off the skin all the way down to the flesh, removing all of the bitter white pith. Holding the now peeled orange in the palm of your hand carefully cut out each segment, removing them one at a time and removing any pips.

Toss all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Dress liberally with the blood orange dressing and season to your liking. Serve immediately.

Remove the stems and leaves from the beetroot saving any delicate new leaves for the salad. Wash the beetroot and place it in the middle of a large sheet of foil. Drizzle over the rapeseed oil and add the thyme. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Lift the sides of the foil into the middle creating a trough and pour in about 80ml of cold water. Seal the foil at the top to create a small parcel. Place the parcel into the middle of your oven and bake for 40 minutes, until the beetroot are cooked through. Test one with a sharp knife. Allow the beetroot to cool a little so they can be handled. Once cool, the skins will rub off easily in your hands. Make sure you peel the red beetroot last or the dye on your hands will leave its distinctive mark on the other varieties. Cut the beetroot into bite-sized wedges and place to one side.

Serve the salad on a flat platter so all the vibrant colours can be seen. In a small bowl, dress the beetroot lightly with some of the blood orange dressing and season. Lay out the beetroot first and add the goat’s cheese, breaking it into bite-sized nuggets as you go. Scatter over the wild herbs and then the orange segments. Finally, drizzle a little more dressing over the salad and serve.

Stand each corn ear on one end, holding it at the other and run a sharp knife down the cob, slicing off the kernels. Work your way around each ear removing all the kernels. Scrape out all the juices and any pulp left in the cobs carefully using the sharp edge of the knife.

Melt the butter in a large heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat and add the onion, chilli and thyme. Cook for 4–5 minutes, stirring regularly, until the onions are soft, then add the sweetcorn, red pepper, potato and half the smoked haddock.

Cook for a further 5 minutes stirring regularly before adding the fish and chicken stocks. Season with salt and pepper and bring it to the boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes, until the diced potato is soft.

Remove a third of the soup from the pan and blend it in a blender until smooth. Be careful not to overload the blender or you may end up cleaning soup off your ceiling!

Place the blended soup back in the pan along with the remaining smoked haddock. Simmer the soup for a further 5 minutes or so until the haddock is cooked and flaking. Add the cream and chopped parsley and bring the chowder back to the boil. Adjust the seasoning if necessary and serve.

For the squash purée, place the butternut squash in a roasting tin skin-side up. Rub the flesh with a little rapeseed oil and season it well with salt and pepper. Cover with foil and bake it in the oven for about 1 hour, until the flesh is soft and cooked through.

At the same time, roast the heritage squash, following the instructions for the Sage-roasted Heritage Squash recipe, but omitting the bacon.

While the squash is roasting, roll out the pastry for your pastry case. On a floured work top, roll out the pastry with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 3–4mm. It’s best to use a flat baking tray without raised sides for this, so the tart can be easily cut for serving. Cut out a large rectangle (about 35 x 25cm) to fit your tray. Grease the baking tray with a little butter and lay the sheet of pastry on to it. With the pastry you’ve trimmed from the edges, cut four strips about 2½ cm wide to form the sides of the tart. Using a pastry brush, brush the edges of the tart base with the beaten egg, then stick the four strips of pastry to the edges of the pastry base to form a frame. Prick holes all over the pastry base with a fork. Docking the base in this manner stops the pastry from rising so freely, enabling the undocked edges to rise up and frame the tart.

Brush the pastry case with the beaten egg, giving it a generous coat. Place the pastry base into the oven with the squash and bake it for 15–20 minutes, until the pastry is golden and crispy. Remove the tart case from the oven and if the centre of the base has risen, gently press it back down with a spatula.

Remove the butternut squash from the oven and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Place the flesh in a food processor and blend to a smooth purée. Season the purée with salt and pepper and spread it on to the base of the pastry case. Place the roasted heritage squash, garlic and sage randomly inside the case. Make sure the squash is still hot as the tart, once assembled, will only be flashed through the oven briefly to warm the goat’s curd and pickled walnuts.

Scatter the pickled walnuts over the tart, then spoon the curd among the roasted squash in random dollops and place the tart back in the oven for 5 minutes to warm through, and drizzle a little rapeseed oil over the top before serving.

Forager: leaders in the British wild food renaissance

The satisfaction and sense of achievement I feel when cooking with ingredients I’ve gathered myself is indescribable. In the grand scheme of things, until only a few thousand years ago we were a hunter-gatherer society.

I believe that this way of life is somehow naturally embedded in our genetic make up and only requires a little encouragement and know-how to be tapped into.

The nutritional benefits of eating wild food are vast. Wild plants are generally high in antioxidants, minerals and essential vitamins, particularly vitamin C. Through years of cultivation, in an attempt to grow large perfectly formed vegetables, in some cases we may have inadvertently bred out much of the nutritional value they once had.

At Roast we work with a company based in Kent called Forager. They supply us with a wide variety of leaves, stems, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits of wild plants.

I was first introduced to the owner, Miles Irving, and his foraged produce about 10 years ago when I was working as a sous chef at Le Caprice, and have been using them ever since. During that time I also moved out of London, living in Colchester for four years, where I spent much of my spare time scouring the woodlands, hedgerows and the seashore of Mersea Island for various herbs, fungi, vegetables and fruits. After four years I had gained a real knowledge of my local area and foraging had become something of an obsession, to the point where I once drove into a ditch having spotted a patch of parasol mushrooms growing on the side of the road. When I finally left Colchester, the hardest thing about moving back into London was leaving behind my wild garlic grove, the high yielding seashore of West Mersea and my secret mushroom spots.

Once a year we hire a van and I drive some of Roast’s staff back out to Essex to visit my old foraging spots so they can see firsthand where and how abundantly some of these plants, which were once a very important part of our ancestors’ everyday diet, actually grow.

Miles Irving and his foragers have been a driving force behind the foraging movement, enlightening many chefs over the past few years with their interesting, often forgotten bounty. These wild ingredients can be found on menus all over the country. I have been lucky enough to spend a morning on the East Kentish seashore foraging with Miles. His knowledge of British wild flora is astounding and he shares this wealth in his The Forager Handbook (Ebury Press, 2009), a must-have for any aspiring forager. We spent about two hours scouring the beach front and found 15 or so varieties of edible plants and seeds that would probably be looked upon as weeds by the unenlightened. The species I found most intriguing was the wild carrot we stumbled across. It’s the parent plant of the carrot humans have been cultivating for centuries. Miles handed me the tender leaves – the tops – from the plant itself to taste. They had a light herbal flavour with a hint of carrot and would be an interesting addition to a salad.

But it was the small root that was the obvious champion. Miles scraped back the skin with a small knife to reveal the clean, creamy-coloured root which had the most intense carrot flavour. Other species we found were sea purslane and sea beet, which we often use at Roast as a garnish for fish. We also found some alexanders, which was a widely used herb and vegetable until the sixteenth century. Dried alexanders seeds were also used as a spice before pepper became available with the onset of the spice trade. Alexanders grows in abundance throughout England, there’s even a healthy crop growing behind Clapham Common tube station in London, near where I live, which the council cut back every year or so but to no avail as it just keeps coming back.

Like many chefs, working with Miles and Forager has really opened my eyes to what is available right there at our feet if we only know what we’re looking for. With the newfound knowledge I have eagerly developed, a walk or drive in the countryside holds so much more pleasure and meaning than before. Please note: if you are an amateur forager, I advise you to use a good handbook and that you know exactly what it is you have found before eating it!

Scouring the Essex beach front with Forager’s Miles Irving, and some of the wonders we uncovered.

A selection of our finds from the day foraging: top, left to right: alexanders, fennel, ground ivy, lesser salandine, Judas ear fungus bottom, left to right: pepper wort, sea beet, sea purslane, stone crop, wild chervil

Miles Irving and I scouring the Essex beach front.