PETERSHAM NURSERIES’ greatest hits
A stone’s throw from the banks of the Thames as it flows past Richmond, south-west of London, across a meadow of grazing cows, you’ll find Petersham Nurseries, the most rustic of restaurants but with a passion for provenance and produce. Here, owners Gael and Francesco Boglione share favourite recipes and Gael explains what inspires them
There’s a lot of talk about what constitutes healthy eating these days, from both a personal and an environmental perspective. Should you avoid wheat and dairy? Exist on a diet of fermented food or juices? Should you be vegan or ensure every meal includes meat?
Ours is a very simple philosophy: eat fresh, seasonal, locally produced, chemical-free food. Make fruits and vegetables the stars of your meal and, if you eat meat or fish, make sure it’s well-sourced. Waste as little as possible and enjoy!
Food is one of life’s pleasures, not to be agonised over, but we feel it’s important to be responsible consumers and to know where our food comes from. It seems logical to us that food should be organically, sustainably grown and GM free. How can it be a good idea to eat food that has been sprayed with chemicals so toxic they kill every non-resistant plant? How can it be right that pesticides are permitted that harm the pollinating insects we rely on for our crops? That animals we eat for meat are routinely given drugs rather than being properly cared for? Or that chicken can cost less than a loaf of bread? That’s perhaps the biggest travesty: that the food produced in these ways ends up costing less than food that has been produced in a way that supports and enriches the environment. Of course, we pay for it elsewhere – through taxes for farm subsidies, water rates to clean up rivers polluted by the run-off of fertilisers, and healthcare costs as we become more resistant to antibiotics due to over-exposure – but the whole system seems counter-intuitive. After all, only 60 or so years ago, ‘good’ food – sustainably produced, high-welfare and nutritionally rich – was the norm. Yes, people spent more of their income on food, but the hidden costs were far lower. There was far less packaging and so less need for oil-based plastics. There were more jobs in serving and selling the food to the public – both Francesco and I remember buying meat in the butcher that was wrapped in waxed paper and deposited in our string bags, as is still the case in much of Italy. Without much packaging, families produced barely any waste that couldn’t be composted, so there was less demand for landfill. Food was sold locally, which meant fewer lorries and fewer pollutants emitted in its transport. The farmers received a fair price for their produce, so they could care for their animals and allow them to live in their natural environment. Sugar wasn’t yet over-exploited, and the thought that we could face an obesity epidemic that costs more each year than the police and fire services would have seemed obscene.
As a family, we feel strongly about these issues and believe a return to sustainable farming would go a long way to addressing many of the problems facing us today. But at the nurseries, as with everything we do, we don’t want to lecture, but to lead by example, showing what can be achieved through careful sourcing and merely being more aware of our actions and the effects they have. More than anything else, we want to inspire, to show eating healthily doesn’t have to mean a boring plate of spinach or dosing up on synthetic vitamins and supplements; we want to show in practice how beautiful, exciting and simple eating well can be.