The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
‘Appreciate what’s on our doorstep’
James Martin explains that we might be staying home, but we can still eat and travel vicariously
Right now, none of us is able to explore the far reaches of our own town, let alone the far reaches of the UK - however much we might want to.
By a happy accident of timing though, we’ll get to watch chef James Martin do just that. Jealousy is guaranteed - but if we can’t escape to the huge, sandy shores of Northumberland, or the rugged Northern Irish coast ourselves, at least we can sit in front of the telly and soak up the digitised, Technicolor imagery of them, and imagine ourselves sat on a rocky outcrop, cooking up a plateful of mussels with Martin.
The restaurateur and Saturday morning telly chef ’s latest series and accompanying cookbook,
James Martin’s Islands To Highlands, sees him track up and down the UK, from the microclimates of the Channel Islands (for Jersey Royal potato season) to the game-filled landscapes of Scotland.
“We do take it for granted,” says Martin, 47, speaking several weeks before the coronavirus pandemic broke. “I don’t think we appreciate what’s on our doorstep.”
During a nine-month spell of travelling, he and his crew got to experience sights you just might not expect of Britain; like the Isles of Scilly - “20 miles off the coast of Cornwall but the beaches are the colour of chalk, it’s just incredible” and the astounding Shetland archipelago.
“To fully understand food, you’ve got to appreciate how difficult it is to produce, and where it’s from, and then you’ll respect it a lot more, and respect the people who produce it,” he explains fervently.
Choice is another problem. “We don’t eat a variety, we eat too much convenience food, without a shadow of a doubt, but we don’t have the variety of what we should have,” says Martin. “We still get fobbed off with the same stuff.”
You have to demand different ingredients if you want to eat them he says, and while things are changing (“20 years ago, we wouldn’t have had galangal!”) there’s still much to be done. For instance, we eat a lot of cod, but what happens to the cod cheeks? “You’ve got to ask for them!”
He says it’s particularly frustrating when the produce in and around the UK really is spectacular, but so much is shipped abroad, like Dover sole (90% of sole fished in Hastings is shipped abroad), langoustines (98% sent elsewhere) and the eels hauled up at Loch Neagh. “All of those get exported to Holland - all of them! And it’s weird, you’ll be staying in northern Europe on your holiday and think, ‘Oh I’ll try this’, not realising it’s from right on your doorstep.”
Martin wants us to adopt that holiday feeling on a more daily basis, and approach dinner as a pleasure, not a financial corner to cut. “It’s one of the true enjoyments of life, that we all have to eat, all of us.”