In 2010 four friends set up The Ethicurean restaurant in an enchanting Victorian walled garden in Wrington.
The ethos of the restaurant was a focus on seasonality, ethical sourcing of ingredients and attention to the local environment.
In just two years, this inspiring restaurant has been awarded both the Observer Food Monthly Best Ethical Restaurant 2011 and a Michelin Bib Gourmand 2013.
Now Matthew, Jack, Paûla and Iain have put together The Ethicurean Cookbook, a beautiful book that follows the Ethicurean team over the course of a year in its quest for innovative dishes, seasonality and freshness of ingredients.
A total of 120 unique and exciting recipes, presented season by season, reflect the best of ‘new British’.
Most of the produce comes from within just metres of the kitchen.
The recipes are truly mouth-watering and visually stunning:
confit rabbit is paired with lovage breadcrumbs, cured roe deer with wood sorrel, and foraged nettle soup with young Caerphilly cheese.
The salads are as fresh as a daisy: beetroot carpaccio with honeyed walnuts; ewe’s curd and cucumber salad.
And of course British food means pies and puds: pork and juniper pie, milk stout steamed pudding, Eccles cakes with Dorset blue vinny & sherry sauce. The Ethicureans are also known for their cocktails, making their own vermouth to create the perfect Negroni. They produce natural apple juice from the orchard that is home to eighty varieties of apple.
See October’s Somerset Life for some recipes from the book.
