Celebrating the best of British
LAUREN TAYLOR MEETS POPULAR TV CHEF JAMES MARTIN, AFTER HIS EPIC ROAD TRIP AROUND THE BRITISH ISLES
JAMES MARTIN has been chopping, frying and serving up dishes on our screens for more than 25 years, in his straight-talking, homely and down-to-earth manner.
Following popular foodie road-trips around France and America, he’s back with James Martin’s Great British Adventure on ITV, plus a cookbook of the same name (his 23rd, he says).
Now, especially as the Brexit deadline looms at the end of March, is an important time to really embrace British food, says the chef, admitting this was one of the “fundamental reasons” for wanting to do the book and series in the first place.
“I’m a farmer, and this is an amazing country we live in. There are some amazing people producing some amazing food – whether they cook it, serve it, make it, or brew it,” James enthuses.
Like a love letter to Britain and its food, James Martin’s Great British Adventure takes viewers and home cooks on a journey the entire length and breadth of the land – from the Isle of Wight for feta and halloumi and Wales for beef and lamb, to Northern Island for langoustines and Scotland for “the best fruit in the world”, along with many other gems in-between.
“It was one hell of a road trip,” James says. “I’ve always wanted to travel but I spent
10 years on Saturday Kitchen in the studio.
“I was doing home comforts that were all based here, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I wondered what it would be like, to venture out.”
He did venture out – and the result is a showcase of the best of the best; from cooking with Michelin star chefs and some of James’s personal food heroes – including Clare Smyth, Sat Bains and Michel Roux Snr – to uncovering little-known food producers and suppliers in rural locations. It’s these people James is most passionate about.
“The lamb farmer working in -7˚C up in Scotland, getting up at 5am in the morning, isn’t doing it for a new Range Rover every year – he’s doing it because he’s the seventh generation of the family, and we need to keep supporting that,” says James.
He’s almost overflowing with stories of fascinating people and underrated produce from his exploration of the British Isles.
There’s the vinegar producer in the Orkneys who set up his business in his dad’s garage, a breed of acorn-fed hairy pig called Mangalitsa in the New Forest – and another, Middle White, farmed on the Wales Gloucestershire border. “It’s the best pork you’ll ever taste, and used to be really famous in the Thirties but now we all want pigs to look like they’ve done 100-metre hurdles, with no fat on them, but that’s where the flavour is,” says James.
“There are 200 Middle White sows in the world and this guy has got 100 of them – they’re rarer than the king panda” – but only because we don’t buy their meat. “People are creatures of habit,” James adds.
We import a lot of meat from Europe, so whatever your stance, a departure from the EU will have a bearing on this, and the British food industry in general.
“There are positives and negatives,” James says.
“Fishermen hopefully should be better off because they’ll stop exporting Dover sole and langoustine. But the offset of that is that the floodgates (of import trade) will open to New Zealand and, if we don’t sort out this bl**dy mess, it will decimate the lamb industry overnight.
“Everyone knows about Welsh lamb, but people always want cheaper and cheaper food – New Zealand can produce masses of it and we can’t compete against them.”
Famed for recipes that don’t overcomplicate for the sake of it, fans of James will be pleased to know that his latest collection stays true to that approach.
“I’m still of the ethos that you should never cook anything on TV that my mum can’t get north of Watford,” he says. “I think chefs can go too restauranty and you’ll start to lose people.”
Although he takes some inspiration from British classics and age-old techniques, “it’s fundamentally about the place, about the ingredients, about now”, he adds.
■ James Martin’s Great British Adventure continues every weekday on ITV at 2pm. The accompanying book, is published by Quadrille, £25.