Arthur Cole 1:17

Welcome back to The Newt podcast. With me, Arthur Cole, for a special New Year's edition, Food of The Newt. This week, we shall meet the characters that give The Newt's four restaurants their unique identities and set them apart from each other. We shall hear the philosophy that underpins the gastronomic journey curated for our guests. Learn of the details that go into each dish, and explore the relationship between the farm and the kitchen. Join me on this culinary expedition with our guide, Head of Food, Gelf Alderson. Gelf joined us from River Cottage. He is an author of numerous cookbooks and a self-confessed man of healthy appetites. So let's jump straight in.

Gelf Alderson 2:20

It's been quite a long one. So I've been a chef for nearly 30 years now, which you wouldn't believe by looking at me, but I started straight out of school at 16 into a more formal and traditional kind of setup in hotels. But very fortunate where those hotels were cooking quality food, still doing a lot of their own butchery, a lot of their own fishmongery, those kind of core skills that you really need at a young age to develop into a real chef. Very quickly, though, I realised that food in the UK in the sort of late 90s was all about the weirdest and wonderful ingredient you could find from about as far away as possible, really. But I was working in restaurants where I'd look out the window to fields of beautiful produce that we'd never see or touch or feel. So having grown up in rural Worcestershire and the Vale of Evesham, surrounded by market gardens and arable farming and the odd dairy farm scattered around, it felt at odds to what I wanted to do. So I sought out restaurants that were starting on that path towards being field to fork or estate to plate or whatever tagline you want to put on it. Which took me through through my twenties, through a few uh Michigan-style restaurants, and then landing at a place where I spent a good chunk of my career, a place called River Cottage, which is based on a 100-acre organic farm. And I spent 12 years working there as well as developing the farm, also four independent restaurants, which unfortunately closed during Covid, but really bringing that organic local English message right to the forefront of food.

Arthur Cole 3:50

So Gelf, we're sitting in the garden cafe, big glass front to it, looking out across the formal gardens. And if we look down to our left, we can see the structure, the formal layout of the kitchen garden with its kales and its cabbages and its winter veg glistening in that sunlight. Gelf, can you tell us a little bit about why this restaurant is here and really what you see as its philosophy?

Gelf Alderson 4:23

So this restaurant is a perfect place for our members to come and enjoy The Newt and its finest, and it's all centred around the veg. So that glimpse of the kitchen garden down the hill really showcasing seasonal produce. The job here is to show that veg at its best, and that that really leads the way with meat taking much of a sideshow, as it were, whereas a traditional restaurant, the meat is the star, and everything sort of fits it around it. Well, we flipped it on its head here, and the veg is the star, and you order meat as a side dish. So that gives us a great opportunity to celebrate that produce. And you're right, this time of year it is brassica heavy. Um, but our wonderful chefs are very creative with those brassicas and um treat them in lots of wonderfully creative ways. We're gonna touch on breakfast today before we make our way down into Castle Carey and we're gonna have the wonderful gardener's breakfast, which again we tend to lean towards bacon sausage, you know, kind of heavy protein in England for breakfast, but here we're gonna have a much more of a veggie, veggie delight.

Arthur Cole 5:24

Alright, a veggie breakfast. Um, as you say, unusual. Uh I'm definitely quite a traditionist when it comes to breakfast. So I'm looking forward to you re-educating me on this one.

Gelf Alderson 5:35

It's alright, I've ordered you a few sausages as well. Just to keep you happy.

Arthur Cole 5:40

We have approaching Charlie Marshall, the head chef of the Garden Cafe. Charlie, you've produced two beautiful looking plates of food here. Not one of them, not a traditional looking breakfast at all, but it smells amazing.

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 5:56

So this is our estate kitchen breakfast, garden breakfast. So it's got braised greens that are grown over at Avalon. We braised them down with the little snack bite peppers that we got from the summer. We pickled them down in jars with some pickling liquid. They served with some tomatoes, some of our Sutton brew from the creamery, and just topped with a few roasted pumpkin seeds. I mean it seems that nearly everything on that plate has been grown here at The Newt. Yeah, everything on that plate has been grown at The Newt, even the parsley or the garnish that's on the top.

Arthur Cole 6:28

Fantastic. Charlie, can you tell me what's on the other plate here?

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 6:32

So, this is our butchery breakfast at the Garden Cafe. So we have two fried eggs, um, we have our own homemade in-house baked beans, two rations of bacon, our fruit pig black pudding, and then our sausage that is made at the butchery.

Arthur Cole 6:47

Your own homemade baked beans. Can you can you give our listeners a little idea about how you go about making your own baked beans?

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 6:54

Okay, so we just buy dried beans in and we soak them overnight for 24 hours so they soften up. And then we cut down some shallots and some garlic, and then we saute them off in a pan, we add the beans, and then we add some spices and then some tomato sauce.

Gelf Alderson 7:09

Looks fantastic. Gelf, are you hungry? I am, yeah. I am actually starving. Um, having spent all weekend barbecuing, this is quite a treat for me.

Arthur Cole 7:18

So let's get stuck in. Charlie, can you tell us a little bit about the philosophy of the kitchen here at the Garden Cafe and what you and your team um how you go about delivering something unique and something that reflects that philosophy, yeah. Okay.

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 7:41

So I'd say the garden cafe is a little bit different to most places. We the way uh me and Dale always think about it is we like to pull stuff from the garden and put it on your plate, mainly untouched, so you can still so it looks like it's been pulled out of the ground, cleaned off, roasted, or cooked in various different ways, and then put onto your plate. I think that's like what the garden cafe is about. And we all serve vegetable-based dishes, mains, different to most places, and we serve the meat on the side, so it's a little bit of a mix-up, a little bit of a change.

Gelf Alderson 8:16

Yeah, and you've done something quite special with those greens, they're absolutely delicious, but as Charlie says, left them whole, and you could really see that scale straight from the garden. Yeah, with a simple dressing, um, just really effective, and I'd quite happily eat that and and not tuck into the bacon and and the sausages, although they are delicious.

Arthur Cole 8:37

So, Gelf, tell us about those flavour combinations that you've just tucked into there.

Gelf Alderson 8:44

So, we've got a lovely sort of sharp dressing on those uh on that kerolin that, like Charlie says, that's a preserve of those snack bite peppers from earlier in the year.

Arthur Cole 8:52

And where do the snack bite peppers come from?

Gelf Alderson 8:54

So they grow at our lovely glasshouse facility that we have at a place called Avalon, which you'll hear us referenced throughout the day, which is our larger growing space that we have here at The Newt to supply our four big kitchens. And we have a setup that will grow as peppers and tomatoes from February right through till November. And the snack bites were beautifully small, sweet peppers, but obviously now we're in December, they're no longer producing, so we have to preserve some of that summer through through to the winter so we can still get those lovely flavours. Because let's face it, brassicas can become a little bit monotone after after a while, but that pickling adds that just that real lovely lemony sharpness without going down the citrus fruit route. Um, the same with the preserved tomatoes, it just gives you that hit of acid which you need to sort of cut through that rich cheese, which is made by our wonderful cheesemaker Margaretha, which I believe we're hopefully meeting later on.

Arthur Cole 10:52

Charlie, you've been here at The Newt now for quite some years. How important are homegrown ingredients? I guess that traceability to you as the head chef here?

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 11:07

Yeah, the traceability to everything that we produce in the cafe is number one for us. If we don't grow it on site, then we locally source it from local producers in the UK. But yeah, local produce is absolutely incredible. It tastes a whole lot better than it does getting it from elsewhere, and the traceability we know where it's come from, what it's been fed, who's touched it. So yeah, it's perfect.

Arthur Cole 11:31

I'm just tucking in now into the meat plate. We've I've got a little bit of this black pudding here, which you say is from fruit pigs.

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 11:39

That a that's a local producer? Yeah, that's a local producer, yeah. We just find it's the best black pudding around. It's gluten-free, and I don't know what you think, but I think it tastes absolutely incredible.

Arthur Cole 11:52

The combination of the black pudding, the fried egg, which I believe the eggs come from a local producer as well, and those homemade baked beans are brilliantly balanced. This is delicious. Thank you, Charlie.

Gelf Alderson 12:08

Yeah, what a wonderful start to our day, Arthur. And um Charlie's right to touch on those wonderful people that we work with. Without those growers producing these fabulous crates of vegetables which end up with us, we really wouldn't be able to do our job so well, not just here but throughout the whole estate. And specifically here, there's a difference between fresh veg and really fresh veg. Uh, we just assume that fresh just means it hasn't been frozen or dried, right? But actually, fresh for me is the minute it's picked, it stops being as fresh as it could be, right? So every hour you get past the point of pick, that plant degrades, it changes, and it starts to die or it starts to protect itself to try and grow in a different season, and that means all its sugars that it's trying to grow with start to turn to starch. And that's why we find, specifically with root vegetables, are a really good example, carrots and beetroots. When picked fresh, super sweet, absolutely gorgeous. Get them from the supermarket in a bag, they've been on the shelf for a year, they'll be quite different, and that's because all of those beautiful growing sugars have turned to starch, and we're really eating an old product, not a fresh product. Um, so we are really fortunate these veg can walk to us within 24 hours a lot of the time.

Arthur Cole 13:16

I find the the change within the vegetable and how that affects its taste fascinating. It was you, Gelf, who taught me about tender stem broccoli and how as you pick it, and often you know it goes into a plastic packet, doesn't it, before it goes onto the supermarket shelves. But it is changing all the time from that. Can you tell us a little bit about that since we're in brassica season?

Gelf Alderson 13:41

Yeah, I mean actually, if you get really technical on it, if you can blanch it for 30 seconds in hot water or or even steam it for 30 seconds, as soon as you picked it, you will halt that that change and you'll fix the sugars in that vegetable. So, actually, best practice, although it might seem a little bit alien, is if you pick that vegetable, is to get it really partially cooked really, really quickly, and then it just it actually kills the plant and stops it making those changes and stops it degrading on the inside. So that rings true with any of those things. And and things like peas as well, a prime example of that. You a pea offer that's been taken off the plant thinks it's dropped off, and it's trying to say, Well, how am I going to grow next year? It's going to turn those sugars into starch, it's going to harden the shell around it if it's a mange tout or a sugar snap. And it wants to get covered in soil and grow. So if we can get that blanched really, really quickly, it halts it at that fresh stage of pick. So we can only do that if we're in charge of the picking, right? Um, and if we're not in charge of the picking, that veg is old, all right? And that's really sensitive with these leafy greens, which are so dependent on those nutrients from the soil being pumped straight into them. As soon as they pick spinach, kale, any kind of broccoli, they have no access to that and they naturally start to degrade. So we're in a such a fortunate position. Money can't buy vegetables that we can put onto the plates.

Arthur Cole 15:00

Charlie, is there a best season to come into your restaurant?

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 15:05

Um I would say there isn't a best season. I'd say every season is great. I say every season changes slightly, but in the garden cafe, when the season changes, it gives us more time to create new dishes, to thinking about new recipes. So I'd say in the Garden Cafe, we love every season. Every single part of the year is perfect for us.

Arthur Cole 15:23

Charlie Marshall, head chef of the Garden Cafe. Thank you for getting us started on our culinary journey through the restaurants of The Newt.

Gelf Alderson 15:33

Thanks, Charlie. Amazing food. That cow is so good.

Arthur Cole 15:38

Next, we jump into the car and it's on to Castle Carey train station for brunch at the newly renovated creamery. Alright, Gelf. On to stage two.

Gelf Alderson 15:54

Yeah, an ever-growing popular time to eat, and possibly one I'm more familiar with than breakfast. Um it definitely suits where we're going next. This is this is interestingly positioned in a train station, so we have that early morning trade through to lunchtime, is our is our real busy period. So we've got a really fast-paced uh cafe environment that we're gonna go and hang out in with uh wonderful chef called Zach, who leads up the creamery team. Um and yeah, we're looking forward to see what he's gonna feed us.

Arthur Cole 16:30

So Gelf, the Tor Bay Express has just pulled in on platform two on its way down south. And you and I are gonna go and get a spot of Eleven's. Yeah, let's go down and see what they're cooking at the creamery. So Gelf walking down into the belly of the beast, and on the stairway, we've got all of these period posters. The large and commanding one, of course, being the Titanic, the White Star line, and as the poster says, the world's largest liner. And tragically, probably the most famous, but not for the right reasons.

Charlie Marshall (Garden Café) 17:10

Not for the right reasons, no.

Arthur Cole 17:14

We've now reached the bottom of the stairs, and we're now looking into this beautifully lit glass cellar, it looks like, with rows upon rows going deep back to the end of the cellar of different shaped cheeses. What's going on in here then, Gelf?

Gelf Alderson 17:35

Uh so that's our aging cabinet. So those are mainly gouda in there. So Margaretha is a wonderful Dutch cheesemaker, so gouda being very close to her heart. We tend to see lots of that going on. Buffalo milk makes really good gouda. Uh, it's slightly more acidic than cow's milk, so you get a little bit more of a tang in there, depending on the age. Um, depending on your palette, you're either like it young or old. But I I like that slightly older, fizzier taste to it, which um which is pretty beautiful. Then, right at the foreground there, we've got some uh goat's cheeses rolled in ash, which are aging. They'll age only for a few weeks, whereas that howler could be in there up to a year.

Arthur Cole 18:12

Alright, we stepped into the restaurant. First thing that we see is this chimney, which has a story in itself. Many of the people who are architects and planners said, Oh, well, it's gonna be too difficult to really bring that centrepiece back. I shouldn't bother if I were you, but we've bought it back, and it's been a mixture of the original bricks, new bricks, but all of imperial sizes rather than metric. And um, there it stands, it's fire grill with the detailing of the edge of the fire grill made to look like milk bottles. This is a commanding feature and it works. Just another example of the playfulness that's going on here at the creamery. So, Gelf, we've just been joined by head chef of the creamery, Zach Kilmurray. Hi, Zach. How does the how does your menu here reflect this building and and its storytelling?

Zach Kilmurray (Creamery) 19:13

So we focus on a few different elements here at the creamery. We're still very much part of The Newt, we're still very much working alongside The Newt and the ethos around the food. But as being a public restaurant outside of the wall, we really need to attract everybody and appeal to everybody. So the food's very much a blend of the estate ethos, the estate produce, the local producers and suppliers, as well as something everyone can come in, enjoy, and understand in a menu format. So, yeah, it's an interesting challenge, but it's it's it's working for us so far, I think. And a lot of people seem to enjoy it here, yeah.

Arthur Cole 19:43

It's a very different offering here at the creamery. We've just had breakfast at the garden cafe, and we had the garden breakfast of those kale leaves that we could see growing in the in the kitchen garden just below us. We don't seem to find burgers or fries around the other places, and yet here we go, we've got this what sounds like a mouth watering beef smash burger and fries on the menu. Gelf, is this a break from the estate ethos? How do you manage these very different offerings all to come under the same golden thread that ties them all together?

Gelf Alderson 20:22

Well, actually, it fits in perfectly with with the estate because we're almost still on the estate. But this is a different angle because we are still using that estate produce. We've still got our estate beef featuring on the menu, but we've also, this is our estate cheese producers. So actually, this is still an integral part of the estate. And when you're eating in any of the other restaurants that we have, you will see Margarita's cheese in it. You will see the creamery represented strongly on those menus. And our buffalo herd is front and centre to our farm. Um, and this is where we convert some of that buffalo produce into those wonderful cheeses. But like I say, the creamery is a linchpin within the estate. So, actually, although far away from the big house, if we'd like to call it that, it still is a cornerstone of what we do here between here, the bakery, the butchery, and the land, and don't forget the cider makers, obviously. Those are the five key areas for us here at The Newt. So you'll never be far away from the creamery if you're eating newt food.

Arthur Cole 21:18

Excellent. Looks like our dishes have turned up. Theo has arrived with what looks like mouthwatering dishes here. Zach, can you lead us through what's been put down in front of us now?

Zach Kilmurray (Creamery) 21:30

The first one here we've got is our mushrooms on toast. This has been an absolute staple of the menu for a while now. Um, we're working with local mushroom growers and working with our own kales and brassicas for this time of year in the season as much as we can. Our estate apple waist sourdough and then garlic hang up. So hang up is one of Margaretha's things that she makes. It's essentially uh a Swedish twist on a labna. So it's a seasoned-strained yogurt, it's very similar to a cream cheese, a little bit acidic. We use it in a multitude of ways across this menu. You look now, you'll see it on savory dishes and on sweet dishes. And it's a real staple in how we design a menu. It's a great ingredient that she makes right next door that we're able to put in so many places. This has been one of our staple dishes. People love it, people come back for it, people compliment on it and comment on it constantly. The other dish we've got coming down is our current seasonal salad. So we always try and do a side utilising Margarita's mozzarella. So her mozzarella changes with the season and changes with the animal. It's a really interesting way that the animal, the weather and the attitude and the how the animal feels can change the product, which is a fascinating thing about it. So we had a while ago the buffalo all moved to a new farm and they weren't letting any milk go. We were struggling for produce, and then as they've got comfortable and relaxed, they're letting more and more milk go, or the milk's getting fattier, or the weather affects how it finishes. So working with that product and making dishes around how that product's behaving is a real interesting, fun challenge. That's served up with uh British chicory, rocket, some toasted walnuts from our local walnut farm, and then uh caramel poached apple. So again, working super seasonally, we've got the apple on there, we've got British produce, we've got our cheese, and just trying to make something that's still a salad, still easy and light and comfortable to eat, but really heroes and publicises all those great ingredients and products we have around us.

Arthur Cole 23:14

Come on, Gelf, let's get stuck in. What are we gonna go in for first?

Gelf Alderson 23:17

Why not? Well, I think I'm gonna hit the mushrooms as it's closest to me. Hangop is one of my favourite of Margaretha's products, actually. So between the mozzarella and the hang op, they are the two standout buffalo dairy produce. And interesting, just to echo what Zach says, buffaloes are not as easy to keep as cows. Um, they do love to stop producing milk at every opportunity. So it's been a steep learning curve for our farmers, learning how to whisper to buffaloes to keep them happy. We occasionally have the wonderful Meg and our media team goes down and plays saxophone to them as well, just to keep them extra, extra chilled out and settle them into any new environment that we might might put across them. But dairy produce in in history would have changed throughout the year as we come off that lush spring and summer grass and into winter where that cattle would be either on poor quality grass or being fed on silage. You can taste the difference when cows are fed on silage, but the fat content changes really, really rapidly. So we either get lots more cheese or we get a lot less cheese, depending on what the cows are eating and what sort of mood they're in half the time. So, like I say, it's a it's a journey with a buffalo and uh we like to do things slightly differently. Um, and this is another way we do it.

Arthur Cole 24:30

That mushroom dish is just delicious, really morish. Looks like you've got a couple of different types of mushrooms in there, Zach. So, what is on our dish there?

Zach Kilmurray (Creamery) 24:41

So, we work on a three mushroom blend, basically. It's super consistent. They're three mushrooms that everybody would or most would recognise, but a couple in there that you might not see all the time. So we've got the classic chestnut mushroom. It's in every shop you'll ever go to, you'll find them. They are delicious, they're meaty, they're flavourful. They've got oyster mushrooms that are slightly more savoury flavoured to them, I guess. They caramelise really well, they impart lots of flavour, and then shiitake mushrooms, which is considered a bit more of a premium style of mushroom. Again, these are all grown in England, these are all British supplied mushrooms, so they bring them with that, they bring a lot of heritage. We're able to tell the story, and we really are passionate at the new about our own products. But where that's not possible, we're super passionate about using local producers where we can.

Arthur Cole 25:23

It's really good. Okay, Gelf, let's get stuck into Margarita's mozzarella salad here. I'm just gonna cut in a oh, the consistency is delicious. And I'm gonna take a little bit of this. So remind me, that's uh is that a chicory salad we've got there?

Zach Kilmurray (Creamery) 25:42

Yep, so that's uh that's white chicory. We again we work with whatever's available, so we use white chicory or red chicory. Red chicory, obviously, very, very similar flavour profile to both of them. There's just a slight pop of colour. Um, you've also got a lovely rocket in there to give you a little pepperiness that sort of cuts through the creaminess of that mozzarella. We finish everything with Dorset sea salt, which is a fantastic product that I think the entire state uses. Uh the poached apple has a layer of sweetness that just sort of balances everything out, and then toasted walnuts for that little bit of texture, a little bit of nutty earthiness. Again, it's just flavour after flavour after flavour when they all finish. Oh, of course, well, that's the ingredient I forgot to mention. Uh, our lovely Babylon store and balsamic vinegar, which we make into a lovely balsamic reduction. So we just bring that down with a little bit of sugar. Again, a little hit of sweetness, a little bit of acidity, just balances out the whole dish really well.

Arthur Cole 26:28

It's amazing. It it has got sweet, it has got sour, the texture, the creamy texture of the mozzarella, and then as your teeth bite into the the walnut, it is so pleasing in in every bite that you're getting off this. Um, and and as you say, the the the layering of that sweet, that sour, salt. This is a fine dish, Zach. We've only just managed to winkle out our head of cheese here, Margaretha. Hi, good morning. Good morning. We've been looking through the glass into your creamery. What's it like being part of the production and having to work with, I guess, the end user, the client who's gonna eat that? How does the estate philosophy of food influence what you do in the production area?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 27:30

Well, my remit is to make the best possible cheese that I can make. And luckily enough, I have the most beautiful buffalo milk I can ever have. It's the cleanest buffalo milk that you can find anywhere. And because we work so closely together with the farm team, I know exactly what's coming every day. So I get fresh milk every morning. So I'm just making the best, most beautiful cheese I can. People that have been making cheddar in Somerset have been making cheddar for generations, so there is, I don't want to compete with that, that's beautiful. So I bring my history with me, which is my grandmother used to make gouda, um, and I've been traveling all over the world and had an incredible career in cheese making, so I've learned a lot of different cheeses. And I just had the fantastic opportunity to set up this creamery, and it's uh I'm basically playing every day.

Arthur Cole 28:26

Gelf and I earlier were talking about the importance of having freedom to experiment and express your creativity. How important is it in cheese making to be allowed to play?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 28:42

So, because we're working with such an incredibly unique milk, buffalo milk is very I don't want to say volatile, but it changes every you know, if they're out, if they're eating straw, it it changes a lot. So, as you need to be on your toes every day to see what's coming in and how you need to adjust your makes. So, you need to be in a playful spirit most days to just be able to deal with the milk. And yes, um, I'm somebody that gets bored very quickly, so I need challenges, and this place gives me enough opportunity to challenge myself with new recipes, new cheeses, and you know, I can say to Guelph, I want to make something like a mountain cheese, and he goes, Go for it. So I get a lot of freedom to play. And uh basically, what I'm trying to do is to translate the cheeses of the world into buffalo milk, which sometimes works well, and sometimes it's a complete mess. Because everybody makes buffalo milk into mozzarella, which is stunning, but we have a lot of milk, the cows are very happy and producing a lot of milk, so I need to diversify. So we make a gouda, but now we started to make like a manchego style cheese, which translates beautifully in this milk. So we're we keep on playing and working out new recipes. Margaretha, thank you very much. You're welcome. I'm going back to make some more cheese. Thank you.

Arthur Cole 30:11

Train stations are transitional places, different stories, getting off and getting on. Zach and his team, the Margaretha and hers, managed to reflect this in the multifaceted offerings at this extraordinary new restaurant and production facility of The Newt. So we've just left the creamery and we're driving back, and look, we get a glimpse of Glastonbury Tour over there, which serves as a reminder of the other things that are outside of The Newt. This is a really interesting, vibrant area of Britain. And of course, very colourful and vibrant is Glastonbury Festival, and and the um Castle Carey train station is the official train station of Glastonbury Festival. This is where revellers on their way in and on their way out stop off and get the buses into the festival. Well, Gelf, we're just pulling up to the front gates of the farmyard, which used to be the dairy farm here, and now it has 17 of our hotel rooms and its own unique restaurant, the farmyard kitchen.

Gelf Alderson 31:30

Yeah, so this is uh our hotel tucked away in the countryside, really off a beaten track of the estate, and we're gonna go in and have lunch, and it's uh it's all gonna come out of the wood-fired oven, Arthur.

Arthur Cole 31:42

Fantastic. The farmyard kitchen is a hark back to simpler times at a slower pace, with food cooked over coals by head chef Alan Altschul. Alan's love of food has been cultivated over traveling the world. He came to us and started off in the bakery, moved into a junior position in the farmyard, and over the years, his love of food and that sense of place and storytelling has elevated him to the position of head chef of the farmyard kitchen.

Allan Altschul (Farmyard Kitchen) 32:22

I tried to say to everybody that the menus at the farmyard, the joint effort in between the chefs, the butchers, the idea that we need to close a circle, use the whole carcasses, but also use the chefs and then the skills that we have. Amazingly, the goat cheese flatbread has been here since day one. And it's the only dish on all of our menus that's been there since day one. I tried to take it out once, but the public didn't take it very well. So uh that's why it's still there. And then uh the lamb, the lamb is amazing because when we put it on the menu, what we did is we called uh the butchers and the butchery and said, what's the next idea? What's the next thing that we're gonna be able to do it, and then we're gonna be able to showcase in our restaurant. And then they gave the idea of like stuffing the lamb belly with the lamb mergers and then cook it, and then that that's where it comes out, and then we have the slow that represents like our gardens and the winter slow and the cabbages that are coming in, which is quite interesting.

Arthur Cole 33:14

It seems that there is this almost this other character that's so important to the farmyard's identity, and and that is that amazing, very attractive wood oven. Is it just for show or do you use it?

Allan Altschul (Farmyard Kitchen) 33:29

No, no, it's it's an amazing piece of equipment. I wish it was for show, but it's not it's not for show. It gets used uh very, very much. I would say about 70 to 75% of our menu gets cooked in there. And amazingly, what we don't do on the wood fire oven is the classic pizza. Uh I tend to say to our guests that the best thing we can do on the wood fire oven is cook a piece of fish, uh, which is amazing because you can get that super crispy skin and then still not overcook the middle of the fish. And for us, getting fish from like down in Brixham and showcasing it here, being able to use the wood firewood fire oven for that is amazing. But no, we we cook everything on the wood fire oven from all some vegetables to some meats to some bread for dinner, which we do a similar flatbread uh with a sauce on the side. So, yes, no, we use a lot of the wood fire oven, and it is a part of our identity. I keep on saying that is my baby, uh, and it's gonna stay here forever. Um it's just an amazing bit of piece of kitten that we we have to work with and we have the opportunity to use here at the farm yard.

Arthur Cole 34:29

Come on, let's get to our dinner, yeah. Gail, what's that? What's our our main dish here?

Gelf Alderson 34:37

Well, as we're in for a bit of a marathon of eating today, Arthur, I've I've skipped our starter on this occasion, and we've gone straight in for uh some of our beautiful Dorset Down Estate Lamb. Now, Dorset, we're not we're not in Dorset, but it is a very local breed, very traditional breed. But more importantly, with sheep, it's a well-behaved breed. Um, so sheep are quite high maintenance, shall we say. They do like to get into trouble. Um quite quite frankly, they quite like to die if you don't if you don't look after them very, very carefully. The Dorset down are quite placid sheep and they get into less trouble than than other breeds. And here we've got a great example of using a lesser known cut of the animal. So this is lamb breast, which is the piece of meat which covers the rib cage of the animal, and it's a bit akin, you know, the same place which belly pork comes from, or brisket from a cow, but with a lamb, it's got less, less of a sort of fuss and pizzazz around it. It takes a while to cook, and we've rolled it and stuffed it with minced lamb flavoured with lots of different spices, cumin, coriander, caraway, a little bit of chili in there as well. And then we put it in the wood-fired oven as it's cooling down overnight to braise it really slowly, and then we get this beautiful crisp finish on the outside where we flash it back through just to finish it off. And this is quite a traditional way of preparing a lamb rest, minus the spices, and then just with a really fresh slaw of red cabbage, carrots, uh, and a little onion to go on the side. So very clean, very simple dish.

Arthur Cole 36:07

Sweetness coming through, I guess a little bit from the spice sausage meat there, some thin strips of muscle that are coming through in that belly, a saltiness and that unctuous fattiness, really satisfying, sort of binding those flavours together. This is a fantastic dish, girl.

Gelf Alderson 36:28

Yeah, it really works, and like I say, using that that slightly lesser curk cooking for a long time, it just brings that real lamb y flavour to the front. And at this time of year, we're we're eating quite old lambs as well, which in my opinion is better, so they're getting towards a year-old mark, which means lots more flavour in there, nudging towards a hogget, which is a year-old lamb. Not quite a mutton, but somewhere in between.

Arthur Cole 36:51

It looks like quite a sophisticated dish. I mean it's beautifully presented. Why aren't people cooking this at home? I mean, I've been to the butcher, I've been to the um supermarket, I've never seen lamb breast on offer. Why is that?

Gelf Alderson 37:08

Because it it isn't cooked that often, and food and cooking isn't really taught at school, so you have to take an interest in it, you have to pick it up, and you have to spend your own time learning how to cook. And if you don't know how to cook this particular cut of of meat, it's not going to be very nice. It's actually gonna be chewy, it's gonna be grisly, it's gonna it's gonna be fatty, and you'll be disappointed. The one thing we can all do is cook a tender piece of an animal, either well or badly, but it will still be edible at the end. Okay, it might be a bit overcooked and a bit dry, but you'll still have dinner, right? It's with these cuts that take longer cooking and a and a little bit of knowledge about how you do it that you tend to find them disappearing because people don't know what to do with it, so they're not buying it. So the butcher doesn't have an out for it, so it generally gets put in the mints. Whereas for me and most chefs, these are the bits that we're after because we know this is where the flavour is, right? So the belly, the neck, the shin, the hoof, whatever bit is doing the most work is what we're after because it's the work that puts the flavour into the muscle. So the the more a part of an animal works, the more flavour will get in there, and the more interest that we'll get in that piece of meat. So you may not see it um in your butcher, but they will certainly have access to it if you wanted to go and get it. It's a it's a special request. And I think if you if you get to know your butcher, they'll love you asking these questions of what about the breast of lamb? What about the shin of beef? What about beef cheeks, those kind of really odd things because actually you're taking an interest in in their passion uh and they're so used to giving people steaks, it's very boring for them to do that, just serving steaks non-stop all day long. Um, they absolutely love it when you go in and ask for something a little bit unusual, and normally they'll have a bit of advice of about how to cook it as well. And what you will get from these these different parts is a much better deal as well. So you'll no meat's cheap anymore, but some bits are slightly cheaper than others, and you will get a little bit of a better deal out of these lesser, lesser-known, harder to cook pieces.

Arthur Cole 39:02

I've been on one of the butchery workshops that you led in this year. We've we've now got a new head of butchery, the marvellously named Andrew Sharp, who's gonna be taking over leading those workshops. This is the sort of cut that he teaches how to extract from the animal and and then what to do with it. But it's lovely to come to the restaurant and see the team here provided in such an attractive way. Our team, do you think part of their uh role here is not just to provide beautiful food but to also educate us as the customer?

Gelf Alderson 39:49

Yeah, absolutely. And um the thing that we we have a responsibility for is the animals we rear. Um, I'm very much a believer that they should they should only have one bad day. Okay, so we should look after them up to that point. And after that bad day, we need to do justice to them in the restaurants. But we must never forget that we we have the whole animal to use. So, again, we can't just serve steak all day, we can't just serve the pink bits and the tender bits, we have to go through the whole animal, and and that's the way we need to educate, and that's the way we need to connect with our guests, is to explain why the cut might be different every time they come and see us, because we're just a different part of that animal in that part of the week. Um, and it for me it's it's there's a lot of noise around people saying nose to tail and things like that, but for us, it really does mean nose to tail. We we have produced that animal, we've lovingly looked after it until it goes off to a really small abattoir, and then when it arrives back in our butchery, we can't throw any of that away. It would just be disrespectful for a start, but also, you know, from a commercial point of view, you need to use it all. So, this is a great representation. We have the belly, we have mints from the trim of the animal, and we also have a sauce made from the bones of the animal as well. So we're you know, we really work towards making sure that every little part is considered and and thought of. And for me, like I've always felt that keen responsibility that if we are going to eat meat, then we should make sure that every last scrap is used and celebrated as well, not hidden away like well, this is a slightly poorer cup, we shouldn't serve it. Actually, we should absolutely serve it, we should put it right at the centre of things, and we shouldn't be embarrassed or or shy away from saying, Yes, this is the breast of lamb, it's not a best end of lamb, it's not a rack of lamb. Because for me, every single part of that animal has the same value because it is one animal, um, and we're in a unique position where we get to showcase that and we have really good communication with our guests. All our kitchens are open, the chefs are there to chat, um, and that's where we that's where we can explain these slight nuances which are being lost in our sort of modern day food systems, which it's a real shame actually, because we're losing special moments like this by not eating all of those little bits that we would normally be forced to eat because we would have the whole animal to deal with.

Arthur Cole 42:13

How important is it to you and I guess your steer on the food journey here to have perhaps a a nuanced or or or a wider experience of eating at one of the four restaurants here?

Gelf Alderson 42:32

I think I for me I want every dish in every restaurant to touch our estate. So we should never have a dish in any of our restaurants that doesn't have something to do with a connection to the estate and linking us back to where we're sat because we have lost that connection with our food over the years. And like I said, we're in such a unique position where we can say this is how we believe it should be done, and this is how we're we're going to do it. We're gonna make everything delicious, but we are gonna use every last scrap from our land. Um but I also think you know, because we have lots of lovely guests that stay with us over a period of time, to be able to move around our restaurants and have that different experience of the same estate produce because we only produce so much stuff, right? So everybody's gonna have to use similar ingredients, but as you've already seen, they're used in wildly different ways, and to be able to eat your way through the news is is a really intriguing thing to do, and it will become more and more intriguing over time as we get better and better at it.

Arthur Cole 43:31

Well fed and satisfied, it's time for a short siesta before sitting down to dinner in the opulent surroundings of the candle-lit botanical rooms, prepared for us by Sous Chef Sophie. First off though, it's a cocktail at the bar.

Zach Kilmurray (Creamery) 44:05

One Beezantium and one dirty Martini.

Arthur Cole 44:08

Thank you very much. Cheers Gelf Delicious Joseph. Great. Well, looks like our table's up. Let's move on through to the botanical rooms. Welcome, welcome to the botanical rooms. So Gelf, as we move out of the bar and walk through to the botanical rooms restaurant, we're actually travelling through um a different period. So the bar is from the Georgian period, and that part of the building would have been built completed in 1747. We're now moving through into the botanical rooms restaurant, which was completed in 1886. So we're now moving into the Victorian part of the house. And our audience could probably hear that clatter that's gone on. We've walked past the what's called the chef's table, I believe it is. That sort of lovely display area, large marble topped with a rill running around the edge of it. Um, and you're using that at the moment, Gelf, to display some of the seasonal produce.

Gelf Alderson 45:23

Yeah, so whatever's best in season from the estate, we pop up on the on the passes so people can uh get an essence of what they're about to eat as they enter the restaurant. Um still on some pretty significant beautiful squashes uh at this time of year. Our gardeners had a bumper year when it came to squash, so we're gonna be staying that on the menus uh for a while. But yeah, it gives just gives you that sense of anticipation before you sit down for your meal.

Arthur Cole 45:47

As we walk through, we can see the past there. So chefs on one side in their in their pennies, I guess, and then our serving, our waiters on this side. Dressed immaculately, all in blue chinos, blue shirts with white collars, and uh and the red braces. So we're sitting down in the botanical rooms. We have citrus trees around us, and it's a lovely setting to sit down. Very sophisticated, isn't it, Gil?

Gelf Alderson 46:21

You can imagine the dinners that were thrown in this house in its heyday, um, with the aristocrats knocking around again in their ball gowns, etc. Um, and it's nice just to have that little touch of it and that little experience of it when you're staying here with the meat.

Arthur Cole 46:38

So, Gil, can you tell us what is the identity of the botanical rooms when it comes down to the dishes that your chefs are creating here?

Gelf Alderson 46:48

So the botanical rooms is where we use the estate projects right at the forefront of reasonably elegant dining, I would say, still using the humble ingredients from the estate, uh, still making sure we're really grounded in Somerset, but providing that quality, really chef-driven food as well. So we have an incredibly talented group of chefs working there that really understand not just the veg but the meat as well. Um, although increasingly with an estate like this, the veg will make an appearance almost ahead of the meat because it really explains what we do here a little better. But giving people that option on the estate for something a little bit more refined, I think, is is the way we look at it. So, just uh whereas the farmyard is all about sitting around that kitchen table, this is that slightly elevated experience, slightly more personal touch.

Sophie Fraser (Botanical Rooms) 47:41

Good evening. I am Sophie, the sous chef that's in our kitchen. Here we have our estate British White beef fillet with a pickled gyrols that we harvested at the end of the gyrol season that was picked locally. Our estate parsnip, a steak kale, and then a braised beef shin served on the side with a beef juice split with juniper berry oil. And then to serve as the dessert, we have a ginger crumb using the ginger that was actually grown on the estate in Ellie's garden, a sourdough waste product ice cream using all of our reserved sourdough so that there's no waste across the estate at all, and a russet apple sliced up with aromat in between, a mint leaf, and then a vanilla stalk on the top served with an estate cider caramel.

Arthur Cole 48:32

Enjoy. Thank you. This looks amazing. Gilf, I know, is delighted because he's been waiting for the beef to come out, and um, we've been purposely holding back with all the other restaurants here. Sophie, how much of you are you able to impart in these dishes in your creativity?

Sophie Fraser (Botanical Rooms) 48:53

Uh so luckily within uh botanical rooms especially, uh, we utilise all of our chefs, so it's not just dishes coming from our sole head chef. We get a lot of influence throughout the team as well, not just from myself but also our junior chefs as well. We've set up initiatives that there's a dish of the month that's provided by our junior team that's obviously trialled, tested, helped out by our senior team as well before it goes on the menu. But it gives everyone an equal opportunity of getting their food on, and even if it's just an element. But recently it's been entire dishes, which has been really good. It helps them stay creative as well as obviously us as well. But yeah, I just love the fact that we get to use the state products and locally sourced products. There's not very much of our menu whatsoever that's sourced externally, it's always within a very short distance of the Nuke, which is just an incredible feat that we can actually achieve here. Um yeah.

Maisie Stent (Botanical Rooms) 49:58

The wine I've chosen for you today is from one of our sister estates, uh Babylon Storin in South Africa. They were our first property since 2007. We opened to the public in 2012. Uh but this is one of their staple red wines that I've chosen. This is the Nebuchadnezzar.

Gelf Alderson 50:13

Lovely, thank you, Macy.

Arthur Cole 50:15

What a treat. What a treat. So, Gelf, not cider, but wine in this instance. Gelf, how important is it to have these other elements being brought in for a whole meals enjoyment from the cocktail to begin with, the surroundings of this restaurant, the the pairing of the wine. I mean, in many ways, there's many moving parts here.

Gelf Alderson 50:40

Yeah, absolutely, but that's what makes it the complete experience, right? Is that you know the beef is now elevated by this beautiful wine that we've we've got in front of us. And although, yes, it comes from South Africa, our sister estate, but it's still part of our story and part of what we do. And if you're in South Africa, you'll be drinking our cider near Cape Town. Um so it's it's still lovely to have that link, and um, like I say, for me the wine just finishes it off and makes it just that perfect experience. But the flow of the evening is super important for diners. Okay, that relaxed start, that that aperitif leads you into your beautiful starter's main desserts or to digestifs. Um, and who doesn't love a little tipple once in a while?

Arthur Cole 51:25

Shall we move on to dessert? Yeah, why not? Sophie, can you talk us through what's in front of us? It's very attractive. A sliced apple with a scoop of ice cream, which has got that sourdough colour to it. And what's that delicious caramelly coloured jus that you've just poured over the apple?

Sophie Fraser (Botanical Rooms) 51:45

So that is our cider caramel. We do a dry caramel and then pour in the alcohol to burn off and finish with melting in butter and a little bit of cream. So it's very, very rich, very sweet, but you get the acidity from the cider as well, and then you get the nuttiness from the dark caramel that's made. Um, it's served with a ginger crumb underneath the apple and also underneath the sourdough ice cream using ginger cultivated on the estate in Ellie's garden, which is incredible to have that as an item within our menu. The apple itself is a russet apple that's been very thinly sliced and then built back together to form an actual apple. Uh so visually it looks like a whole apple that you're getting, but in between each layer, there's different aromats picked across the estate. So we've got some herbs picked from the spa garden, and then we've also got herbs such as sweet Sicily, uh Rosemary gold, uh, picked from Ellie's garden as well, just layered up in between, uh, and then the caramel gets poured straight through the centre, so it goes through every single layer, and then obviously onto the plate as well. And the sourdough ice cream, as you mentioned, with the colour, is a very nice kind of beige slash slight torched, torched kind of brown tone. I personally think this isn't my favourite dessert that we have on the menu, uh, both lunch and dinner, but especially dinner, this is this is definitely up there with the with the top favourite.

Arthur Cole 53:15

Amazing. You've got something in mind to um to pair with.

Maisie Stent (Botanical Rooms) 53:19

Yeah, I have. What I've chosen for you to pair with this apple dessert is actually one of our own ice ciders that we make here on our estate. Uh, so as part of The Newt's kind of cider range, we have two ice ciders, the first one being the regular ice cider, um, made with ray burnt apples, and it produced like a really sweet, almost like ice wine style ice cider. This one is slightly different. This is the Yarlington Mill ice cider. So these are made solely with Yarlington Mill apples, which are actually grown and hand-picked just down the road, about a mile down the road. And Yarlington Mill apples tend to be a little bit more on the tannin side, but this ice cider has really nice caramel almond notes to it as well, so it will definitely complement those elements of the dish. So I hope you enjoy it with it.

Arthur Cole 54:03

Lovely, thank you, Maisie. Right, let's get stuck into this pudding. So, girl, if we're an apple estate, an apple tends to make its appearance frequently. Is there any risk that you'll get bored of apple?

Gelf Alderson 54:21

I don't think so. I haven't yet. I haven't yet in the 30 years of cooking. Um is such a versatile fruit. It has the beauty as well of all the well-renowned fruit finishes quite early in the UK, so all our soft fruits, strawberries and berries, have gone pretty early. But the the mighty apple lasts us right through until that soft fruit appears again. Endless different varieties to choose from, all with unique and different qualities, the russet being the one we're eating today. Soon that'll be over though, because they go quite mealy once they've been off the tree a certain amount of time. But we have almost infinite choice to replace it and replace it again. Um, it's paired excellent. That ice cream is one of my favourites. I think it's absolutely stunning with that little toast flavour in there.

Arthur Cole 55:07

That's exceptional pairing. Sophie, as you say, these these flavours develop through each different process that you apply to this. All I can say is bravo, chef. Gelf, what a wonderful way to round off this culinary journey around your restaurants of the nudes.

Gelf Alderson 55:34

Cheers. Cheers. Thank you for joining me on what is just my normal day at work, Arthur. Eating in four top quality restaurants. Um, but great company and thank you so much.

Arthur Cole 55:44

Let's do one every season. Thank you for listening. Subscribe and tune in for more episodes from the estate every month. See you next time.