Spring in the garden, the woods and in the kitchen here at The Dysart Petersham

In our kitchen

Our surroundings are providing wild interest for the plate, notably: nettle tips for nettle bread click here for our recipe, lady’s smock flowers with their mustard flavour, quite stringent this year, for our Spring salads and as a garnish where the natural mustard flavour is right, Jack by the hedge for its mild garlic flavour, ground elder with its nutty flavour as an accent in salads and, of course, the abundant wild garlic itself. The wild garlic fills the woods with scent and freshness and brings intense flavour, natural freshness and vibrant colour to our garlic and potato soup where we use a balance of cooked and raw wild garlic so that the flavour is both intense and mild.

Wild garlic, whether growing wild or on the plate, is full to overflowing of special qualities.

It touches all the senses: beautiful to see, fragrant to smell, fresh to taste and wonderful to touch and brush past on a walk.
It has great qualities for health and healing. It is one of the many plants we use to reduce the need for salt. It features in many traditional recipes and has been in use as long as recorded human time itself. It is one of those simple plants that fill any thoughtful chef with humility, joy and awe and reinforce the importance of simply delivering the essence of an ingredient.

Our cultivated new season garlic is not the less flavoursome variety available in the supermarkets. We use hardneck garlic. The best at the moment is from Lautrec, grown traditionally and one of only seven varieties with a designation equivalent to ‘appellation controlee’. It is closer in character to wild garlic.

Forced rhubarb
Asparagus and Jersey Royals

Many of you will have seen the television programme recently with Raymond Blanc growing plants for the table and cooking at Kew Gardens and will remember the image of their foray into the pitch dark chambers of forced rhubarb in Yorkshire, seen by candles held by hand. Always a Spring treat – we obtain our forced rhubarb from the same place. Sadly now over, we are now using outdoor rhubarb from Hampshire through the Spring and early Summer. Early asparagus is always a treat; although we are reaching the end of the narrow window for white asparagus , we are already receiving two varieties grown for us, one an alpine and the other a wild asparagus variety. Like Raymond Blanc, we have been enjoying the Belle de Fontenay potato and it is soon the time of year to offer another favourite, Jersey Royals.

Herbs and flowers are starting to flow from the garden and around us, for example, oregano, sweet woodruff, geranium, scented pelargonium, heart’s ease flowers and bright blue alkanet. This is just the beginning. Over the year we can look forward to nearly 100 varieties of herbs and daily fresh edible flowers from our gardener.

With Spring we move from the gutsy flavours of Winter to the delicate freshness of the new season, reflecting the renewal of the cycle, growth and the arrival of the sun. We have removed from the menu such Winter dishes as venison and mallard, used the new Spring ingredients to bring a new balance of flavours in some established dishes and brought new dishes onto the menu, including, wild garlic soup, asparagus with vin jaune and Nishiki rice, Spring vegetables with Dorset wasabi and fresh herbs, purple sprouting broccoli with new season garlic and sunflower seeds and Anjou rabbit with hay smoked white asparagus and morels. This is just a natural part of the exciting journey for us and, we hope, for our customers over the year.

You can watch the preparation of Kenneth’s dish of Spring vegetables and herbs with crapaudine beetroot on the film made for March in the Global Knives and Roux Scholarship calendar 2015. Click here to watch, or go to News and Events.

Or, even more at first hand, come to our next cooking demonstration on 20 May when Kenneth will introduce and prepare our Petersham Garden dish, nettle bread and a strawberry pudding using mara des bois strawberries. Barny will introduce the wine he has chosen for this quintessentially Spring dish. Click here for details of the evening, or go to News and Events.

Spring and English wines

We have also looked at Spring and English wines for our wine list. Our rosés are already being enjoyed in the sun:

From palest pink to rich cherry pink.
From light, elegant Frati from Italy  to rich, deep pink Charles Melton from Australia.
For sparkling rosé, Balfour Rosé from Kent.

No ordinary rosés these.

We have also added to our Billecart Salmon and Gosset champagnes a new champagne, Frèrejean Frères non vintage premier cru. This is made in limited numbers by a small vineyard and winery.

Fresh and citrusy, we think it is a fine Spring and Summer addition. It is available by the glass.

To celebrate this addition we are offering a free glass of Frèrejean Frères champagne in May to the first 50 guests who book lunch or dinner, a la carte, in the restaurant.
This offer applies to telephone bookings only – quoting “premier cru” when booking please.

Slow Food – Forgotten Foods and Ark of Taste

Many of the ingredients we use are on the ‘Forgotten Foods and Ark of Taste’ lists drawn up by Slow Food UK, including: dulse seaweed, forced rhubarb, the various asparagus varieties we use and middle white pork.

We have suggested that some of the local ingredients like sweet woodruff and some of the rare herbs and old varieties of vegetable we use be added to the list.
Kenneth is an invited member of the SFUK Chef Alliance.

For more information on the Slow Food movement, our support for it and Slow Food Week from 1 June, please click here.

We have recently added two new ingredients from small scale suppliers supported by SFUK, pepper dulse seaweed, with its high protein levels, from the Isle of Bute and Kentish cobnut oil, with the nuts themselves due later this year. We are currently looking at ‘Slow’ cheese made with raw milk.

Slow Food UK recently interviewed Kenneth. The interview on slow food, with some insights from Kenneth’s Roux Scholars’ study visit to New York in November last year can be seen here.

In the garden and the woods

A great Spring in Petersham – we went from the stark sculptural appearance of apparently lifeless trees to vibrant leaves and blossom in the space of a week.

Spring flowers and blossom have passed as quickly as they came. Magnolia was happily unblighted by frosts, but was only briefly pristine; prunus needs to be enjoyed now before too late. The many hawthorn trees around us are making up for this, coming out in a profusion of blossom. Isabella plantation is filling with colour. There have been lovely clumps of Violets and wood anemone nearby this year.

Flowers in the garden are coming and passing in as quick succession, none lasting as long as usual. Daffodils have come and gone, tulips are almost over, amelanchier was over in a moment. Our viburnum is still flourishing and the bluebells are out.

Planting from previous years is growing apace in the wild flowers’ patch, with ox eye daisies, Californian Poppy (the first one out), field scabious, yellow vetch and some cowslips; the first bees are already visiting. We are watching for the new meadow flower seeds to grow, with extra cornflowers and poppies.

All this rapid activity is happily accompanied by, it seems, more songbirds than we have seen or heard for a while, in number, exuberance and types.

The gardens and woodlands beside us are full of life and song and are already a wonderful walk. Fresh greenness is everywhere and all the ground plants and bushes are growing and filling out apace, with the optimism and fragrances of Spring. Ground elder is springing up in the woods. Queen Anne’s Lace is already beginning to spill over the paths around here and in flower.