My writing is observational, sometimes it feels like drawing, or recreating images of things remembered. It helps me to make sense of, and communicate with individuals and communities, and find my own place.
WRITING
Scribehound
I am honoured to have my stories published regularly on this platform alongside the musings of culinary greats. Writing is a great way to communicate, but then so is food, together they are a winning combination. All the pieces have food as a reference, although many are not primarily about the subject, they take food as a catalyst and let the stories drift through thoughts, memories, people, friendships and chance bonds. They often celebrate and champion inspiring producers, growers and makers, particularly in West Wales as that’s where I’m now based.
Cooking the Books
I am a recipe man, always have been, never more comfortable cooking than with an open cookbook in the kitchen, and a group of people to cook for. We used to host pop up evenings back at our old, rambling farmhouse in Salisbury, where we would invite celebrity chefs to come and cook for sixty or so, gathered, paying punters. Later on in our history, I would curate menus myself, and cook dishes from a stream of different cookbooks, then rattle round the dining rooms after service and show the punters where the recipes came from.
Bread and Flowers
Before ‘The Constant Cook’, there was ‘Bread and Flowers’, which operated from a beautiful old farmhouse in a place called The Lands, a lost pocket of dwellings near the villages of Nunton and Odstock, belonging to neither, just outside Salisbury, Wiltshire. There was a lovely, monthly parish magazine called News and Notes which I was encouraged to write for, about anything vaguely relating to food. I still write for this gem of a tome, albeit from Pembrokeshire in a manner of Alastair Cook’s letter from America. It inspired a parallel monthly commentary on our website, News and Views, any opportunity to voice off is always welcome.