The Royal Chef At Home: Easy Seasonal Entertaining

SPOTLIGHT The Garden: A Cook’s Paradise

C urries, stews, braises, soups—all the wonderful winter dishes I love rely heavily on humble tubers, roots and greens that grow in the garden. I can’t imagine cooking without them.

But growing up, I was never interested in plants. My mother was a keen gardener and on Sundays (her day off) she would spend most of it either in our garden or dragging me, my brother and my sister off to the local nursery for hours on end. I’d be bored silly and amuse myself bombarding the goldfish in the pond with gravel just so I could see how fast they swam. Fast forward thirty years and to her amazement (and mine too) I am constantly calling her for tips on growing vegetables. I expect it was working for the Royal Family that taught me just how much the garden teaches and inspires creativity in a chef. At Balmoral, the gardener would deliver to the kitchen masses of carrots, cabbages, chard and sturdy bunches of leeks, dirt still clinging to their roots with delicate pearls of water weeping out of the newly cut dark green tops. Beets of all kinds, with their abundant leafy tops looked

like something out of a still life painting. Those tops, shredded and sautéed with a little olive oil and garlic, salt and pepper and a dash of apple cider vinegar, made the most delicious, healthy side dish. The Balmoral raspberries were amazing too; plump fruit picked carefully off the canes in the afternoon just in time to serve with whipped cream inside crisp sweet pastry shells. Whenever it was my turn to pick berries, I swear I ate as many as I picked. The flavor was perfection. At Windsor we gathered up loads of tender lettuces, sweet peas, dill, baby potatoes, and every kind of squash imaginable. The greenhouses yielded fragile tomatoes, potted Italian basil, and all sorts of herbs. With produce this good, half of a chef’s work is already done. No wonder many chefs become absolutely besotted growers. These days I get to garden year round. I don’t have a large garden and ingenuity being the

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