TASTE OF THE SEASON
What’s cooking in hotel chef Martin Baker’s kitchen
“A bright pea soup is one of the simplest ways I know to celebrate the arrival of spring”
I’m like a child in a sweet shop when spring arrives. There are so many tantalising ingredients to play with, so many fresh flavours and colours. Peas and broad beans are coming into season, and nettles are at their young and tender best. I pick them early in the morning when I’m out walking my pug, Dash. At the hotel, we garnish our pea soup with freshly podded peas and broad beans – our veg man at St Nicholas’s Market in Bristol gets us the very best from local growers.
When food is fresh and seasonal, you don’t need to do much to it. The rump of spring lamb that’s on our April menu is cooked so simply that you could easily do it at home. I pan-roast it, basting as I go with butter, garlic and fresh herbs, then pop it in the oven for a couple of minutes. We get our West Country lamb from Larkhall Butchers in Bath, an award-winning shop that’s renowned for sourcing the best meat from the region’s farmers. They make sure their rump of lamb has a good coating of fat, so when you pan-roast it – skin-side down first, then turning it over – all that sweetness renders down and drips into the meat, making it incredibly tender. It’s served in thick, pink slices on top of braised Puy lentils and roasted seasonal roots. I love lentils: they taste great, look good on the plate and tick so many nutritional boxes. We braise them with shallots, garlic and celery before draining them and folding in olive oil, roasted vegetables and baby spinach.
One of our most popular desserts is a retro classic: rhubarb cheesecake. It’s inspired by a Gordon Ramsay recipe I’ve adapted to make the most of the flavour and colour of outdoor rhubarb, which is at its very best right now. I cut it into fat matchsticks and slowbraise it in a sugar syrup infused with lemon zest to retain its zingy taste. Once cooked, it is easy to mould, and you can press the pieces around the outside of the cheesecake so that they’re lined up like soldiers. A sprig of mint on top, a scoop of rhubarb ice cream on the side and you’ve got a pudding that tells you summer is coming.