The consumption of this glistening mound epitomises many of the things that excite me about food. The asparagus is local and fresh and seasonal. It can be prepared very simply. It’s delicious and there is a ritual and excitement in eating the warm, butter coated spears with your fingers.
I started cooking very young with my grandmother on her farm in Wales. Baking, mostly and preparing huge high teas, which if my memory serves me well, threatened the structural integrity of the table and, no doubt, our constitutions. I would watch with fascination at the alchemy of milk being churned into butter and as she plucked birds in the small farmhouse kitchen.
At home we ate whole foods and were members of whole food and fruit and vegetable co-operatives. My mother ran a restaurant for a while where my brother and I sliced vegetables, made cheesecakes, played the Pianola and vetted the clientele.
In my early teens I made bread and pate and pizzas and curries and a whole plethora of seventies delicacies for my friends and family whether they wanted me to or not and struggled in home economics lessons to make Victoria sponges with wholemeal flour and muskovado sugar.
I was interested in food; I was interested in eating healthily and I was interested in feeding my friends. I still am.
In addition to my involvement with food I am an artist and find strong links between the way that I work in both areas.
I am interested in people’s response to good food and the sharing of food, food as celebration and how a meal can be a performance of sorts.
When I cook the food will usually be prepared in a simple but precise way with the aim of awakening the taste buds and satisfying and provide an interesting experience. It is important for me that people feel good after eating and so a balance of ingredients and dishes is important.
I aim to use the best ingredients possible. We have a large vegetable garden so for at least half of the year we can eat our own soft fruit and vegetables. When crops are lean, I will supplement them with an organic veg-box scheme or down at the local co-op but when it comes to meat, I will only buy local, organic or wild meat. I enjoy working with what is available at a particular time.
I have strong ideas but I'm not evangelical about it (although, if nudged gently, I might become a little exercised about poor animal husbandry, processed food and supermarkets)and if it's high tea we're talking about or the middle of winter then a fine cake or steamed pudding made with good butter, sugar and double cream etc, is just the thing.