Bristol Living Oct - Nov 2021

THE KITCHEN
GARDENER
YOU CANNOT LEARN TO BE A GOOD
COOK WITHOUT LEARNING HOW
- AND HOW NOT - TO EAT AND
WITHOUT AN ABUNDANCE OF GREED
AND CURIOSITY. MIRANDA SHEARER
TELLS US MORE....
It’s not just about eating the best chefs’ food or cooking
with the finest ingredients. You need to eat bad food
to know what good food is, and to burn and ruin a
lot of your own food and learn from your mistakes.
And learn from the chefs who follow food fashion and
scatter micro-herbs over everything, even sticky toffee
pudding, who paint and glaze, drizzle and dribble, fiddle
and faddle with tweezers and puddles on plates rather
than make the ingredients taste simply and intensely of
themselves.
I was lucky enough to discover French and Italian food
at an early age. My mother would drive crazy distances
in search of a good restaurant when we were children.
We would roam the back streets until we found ourselves
in a fish market where they were hosing down and
closing and she would demand the best bouillabaisse
in town. We ate L’Aioli and Soupe au Pistou in a tiny
village restaurant in Murs in the Luberon. We picnicked
in cherry orchards on ripe cheeses and rabbit pates
bought in a deli in Apt, on rillettes and brandade from
Carpentras, melons from Cavaillon.
When my mother wrote The Art of the Tart I was her
sous chef helping cook for the photographs for the book.
‘But I’ve never made a tarte au citron before,’ I wailed.
‘Nor will the readers of the book have,’ she replied, ‘if
you can’t understand my instructions I’ll re-write them.’
I was twelve at the time!
My passion for bread baking took longer to mature.
At home as a child we were always fed dense, branny,
organic wholemeal bread. Baguettes on holiday were a
treat. So were our nanny Gladys’ ‘scooby snacks’ made
with crusty cobs when Mama was away filming. That
sense of wickedness: giant sandwiches piled with ham
and cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, coleslaw; we
could hardly get our mouths round them.
When I was asked to set up a new kitchen in a pub in
Somerset I decided it was high time I learned to bake
and my mother recommended Paul Merry at Panary.
I went on Paul’s wood-fired course first and was
instantly hooked. Next came, German, French, Italian
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