Marcus Everyday: Easy Family Food for Every Kind of Day. Marcus Wareing

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      I feel like a child again when I’m there, and the kitchen garden, the bees, the orchard, the apples, the pears … they all inspire me as a chef. We transported numerous boxes of freshly harvested fruit and vegetables, as well as honey from the beehives, in the back of the car into central London, to the chefs in my kitchens. Their excitement was a joy to see. The logistical challenge of growing, harvesting and then getting produce from Sussex to London was a little trial and error, and we learned a lot in the first year. I’m currently creating a pond at the back of the house, around which we’re growing herbs and wild flowers to use in the restaurant. But I have even bigger plans, so watch this space!

      I have therefore dedicated a whole chapter to celebrating my first year at Melfort – ‘My Garden Patch’. While you may not have your own garden patch, you can source some great produce from farmers’ markets, community gardens, and even your local supermarket. Or sign up for online vegetable boxes. We sometimes forget to celebrate the humble vegetable, instead spending time sourcing and investing in a great joint of beef or other meat. I implore you to put the same effort into sourcing good-quality garden produce and use this chapter to inspire you. My kids now know the difference in taste between tomatoes grown under the sun, harvested within their rightful season, and the tomatoes from the supermarket – they’re chalk and cheese! But what I’ve also taught them is how to take those everyday tomatoes we all buy and improve their flavour if we need to.

      What you will also see scattered throughout the book is a focus on honey as a fantastic ingredient, used in many different ways. Having comb honey from our own bees at Melfort has made me think about this ingredient in a completely different way and about the flowers (in particular the lavender and roses) they pollinate – all of which flavour our honey. This ingredient that I have always taken for granted as a cook suddenly has magical implications now that I’ve witnessed its making.

      Running a restaurant kitchen from a young age instilled in me an awareness of waste and resourcefulness; of not wanting to needlessly discard a single thing. The cost of food, how you prepare it and how you eventually sell it, can make or break a restaurant business. The notion of throwing something in the bin that could still be used is sacrilege to me. So, for me, this principle should also be applied at home. After Marcus at Home and New Classics I wanted to write a book that celebrated home cookery and seasonal produce, which would also be a practical guide to creating delicious meals from ingredients that may not have been completely used up, or might otherwise typically be destined for the bin.

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