Chefs and farmers team up for a natural winner
Chefs and farmers are forging new relationships – and it’s a win-win for diners, says Richard McComb.
It may not be the best way in the world to make money.
In fact, Daren Bale calls it a “good way of watching fresh air go by”.
But the country house chef wouldn’t have it any other way. When he’s got a couple of hours to spare, Daren escapes the heat of the kitchen for a quiet wooded Worcestershire valley where he works wonders with the fruits of a herd of British Toggenburg goats.
Daren, head chef at The Elms, Abberley, may well be unique in his profession, making his very own cheese for the hotel’s two restaurants. Delicatus is a hard goats cheese, reminiscent of Parmesan, and is served on Daren’s cheese boards or on salads.
He makes Delicatus a short drive away at St Michael’s Farm, Great Witley, turning out three truckles each week during the summer. Daren is a great advocate of supporting local producers and believes in leading by example. “It is not a money-making scheme. It is the ethos of the thing that attracts me,” says the chef.
He is among of growing band of professionals who are keen to revive the traditional links between the farm and the kitchen, promoting local economies and giving diners what they want: fresh, seasonal food with full traceability and provenance.
The issue was highlighted in a recent report, The Nature of Food, by Natural England, the government’s environment adviser, backed by cook and healthy food campaigner Prue Leith.
It was also coming under the microscope this week at the Soil Association’s annual conference in Birmingham.
Among the topics being addressed at the two-day event are food security and the need to develop new food and farming systems for the 21st century.
The political and practical demands of sustainable food production have a tendency to be portrayed in Armageddon-type terms but the lessons to be learned from The Nature of Food, and the message emanating from practitioners in the field, is surprisingly positive, albeit there is much work to be done.
Natural England, which administers environmental stewardship, or “green” farming, schemes, pumps more than £40 million a year into the West Midlands’ rural economy. The region has almost a million hectares (3,900 sq miles) of farmable land, of which 62 per cent is in some form of environmentally-friendly stewardship scheme, managed by farmers and landowners.
The money provides investment in initiatives such as habitat restoration, hedge laying, restoration of ancient orchards and educational projects, as well as promoting sustainable food production.
The work is in part being driven by subtle changes in food culture. Consumers are keen to seek out menus that showcase local food. As Daren points out: “Diners have a lot more knowledge now and they are pressurising chefs in a good way. There are so many food programmes on the television and we [chefs] have to keep our fingers on the pulse.”
Guests now expect to see producers in the Abberley/Worcester area represented in dishes prepared by Daren’s team. As well as making his own Delicatus, the chef buys artisan cheeses, such as Old Worcester White, from Alison and Colin Anstey, who have a herd of Holstein-Friesians, fed on home-produced fresh grass, at Broomhall Farm, near Worcester; seasonal asparagus comes from Goodman’s in Great Witley; and Harvey Richards, of Lower Thrift Farm, Clifton upon Teme, supplies meats, including the hotel’s Christmas turkeys.
Daren says: “I have relationships with these guys. If they have something, they will phone me up.” So the chef is more than happy to take some of Lower Thrift’s less popular “secondary” meat cuts, such as blade of beef, which his cooks can turn into a superb dishes after seven hours’ gentle braising and the addition of some tasty sauce reductions. “We’ll use the shins, the beef cheeks, the oxtail,” adds Daren.
“As a chef I think it is vital to support and voice the values of our local farmers and focus on natural produce from our beautiful natural Worcestershire.”
The Ansteys, third generation farmers, have been in a Natural England higher level stewardship agreement for a year and a half. Colin says: “This
