The art of cooking with British produce

It’s well documented how excited, or horrified, food enthusiasts are by the Salt Baes of this world ­– gold coated Japanese steaks certainly look good on social media. But a nice potato? Some bright, green leaves? The frilliest mushrooms or a plump bulb of fennel? We don’t often hear praise for the more humbler kitchen ingredients, especially the ones grown on British shores. Things are changing, but for many raw produce still doesn’t quite cut the mustard.

You only need to look at the amount of salmon consumed in the UK to realise we don’t always care about where our food comes from. Perhaps it’s that we take for granted the availability of everything all the time. The UK has become a-seasonal – ripe lemons in April, tomatoes in January, asparagus all year round, everything in abundance 12 months of the year. Prima vera, what’s that?

But someone who does care about produce is Shaun Rankin, currently of North Yorkshire’s Grantley Hall, near Ripon.