At home, we had a brilliant book called The Times Cookery Book by Katie Stewart. It must have come out in the early 1970s and I basically became the pastry chef for my mum’s dinner parties. I made chocolate mousses, chocolate rum gateaux, profiteroles, eclairs and genoise sponge in the summer with three, or even four, layers of cream, raspberries and cake. But it wasn’t Bake Off: I didn’t try and make it look like Vesuvius or something.
I learned early on that it’s not a brilliant idea to name all the animals you’re planning to eat. On the whole you name the breeding stock but not the fat stock; so the sows and the nannies and the cows have names, but not the ones who are passing through, you might say, a little faster. I did call my first two pigs Charlie and Tom, after two of my best friends, and it didn’t make it any easier to take them to the slaughterhouse.
After I’d done a couple of TV shows called A Cook on the Wild Side and then River Cottage, my sister said to me, “My friends think you’re very eccentric.” I’d never thought of myself as eccentric, and I still don’t.
My career has been pretty much a series of accidents and lucky breaks. I did any job going: I was an obituarist on the Telegraph; I was a subeditor on Punch just before it finally folded. I remember saying to my dad that I wouldn’t mind being a restaurant reviewer. And he said, “I don’t think anyone would mind being a restaurant reviewer.” He didn’t try to put me off – my parents have always been very supportive – but he was quite amused that I might make a living doing such things.
Five-a-day is a slight distraction from what How to Eat 30 Plants a Week is really about. The real secret of great plant-based cooking – even if, like me, you’re still an omnivore – is to mingle your fresh ingredients with store-cupboard ingredients: pulses, beans, nuts and seeds. Outside of muesli, people hardly eat nuts and seeds unless they’re in the pub and they’re very salty. And yet, in a curry, a soup or a salad they add a great deal of interest and crunch and deliciousness. If you put them in the oven for 10 minutes, tossed in a little bit of soy sauce, they taste just like Twiglets. What’s not to love about that?
For Christmas, you really need to think in terms of one meal a day, because the rest is going to be a bit of breakfast or a bit of leftovers. We’ll do fish on Christmas Eve and something meaty on Christmas Day, probably a shoulder of a goat of mine that’s in the freezer: Manuel. We had three kids called Manuel, Basil and Polly. Basil’s been demolished, but there’s still a nice shoulder of Manuel left. If you’re livestock, being female often gets you a much longer life, as you can imagine, so Polly’s still producing.
It doesn’t take much to keep me up at night. What am I going to put in the stew tomorrow? Shall I make a curry? Where am I going to put my lobster pots next time I go out on my boat? Along with: when are we going to have a government that takes the issue of the national diet seriously? And back to: where am I going to put my lobster pots?
My favourite things
Food
I love roasting a massive tray of vegetables, whatever’s in season, putting some fillets of mackerel over the top when the veggies are almost done, and putting them back in the oven to bring out all those wonderful flavours.
Drink
I love wine, but I’m a sucker for really delicious cider. Our River Cottage elderflower cider is my go-to because I quite like a lighter cider, and it’s made with real fresh elderflowers so it’s got that lovely, extra-aromatic feature.
Place to eat
Just in the garden, at home. Where we sit is between the kitchen and the vegetable patch, with a lovely view across the valley. So it couldn’t be better, really, as a place to eat.
Dish to make
Everything that comes together at the Christmas table is great, but I love a big tray of roast roots: parsnips, carrots and celeriac. And brussels sprouts roasted in goose or beef fat, all crispy and caramelised corners.
How to Eat 30 Plants a Week: 100 Recipes to Boost Your Health and Energy by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Bloomsbury, £25) is out now
