Chef and food writer Gill Meller shares his recipes, journals and love of the outdoors on gillmeller.com. With a passion for seasonality, here, he talks us through his story and thoughts on garden-to-table cooking, as we shoot our Renewed Stanway table and benches overlooking the sea at his picturesque Dorset home.
How do your home, garden and the surrounding coastal landscape inspire you and your work?
Well, I live quite rurally on the Devon Dorset border, so in between the town of Lyme Regis – a rather sweet little harbour town – and Seaton, just west up the coast. The landscape is made up of farmland, woodland and the beaches. All these places that surround me have, in one way or another, influenced the way I think about food, because I feel so connected to the way the seasons turn, and I get a lot of joy from that. The way I cook helps me keep a finger on seasonality, but it really boils down to where I live and the wonderful food-producing landscapes and communities that I work with.
Tell us about your garden. What flourishes during autumn?
Our home was a bit overgrown and ruinous when we took it on, originally the old summer house of the estate that sits above us. Now, the garden is absolutely beautiful; surrounded by ancient woodland and looking out to sea, it’s got a subtropical microclimate and very fertile ground. Squash, kale and spinach can hack the tougher months, it’s quite a harsh environment in the winter with storms rolling in from the sea. At this time of year, because we’ve had the nice, long summer, the tomatoes have only just stopped. All my leeks and new potatoes are coming through, which I must lift. The chard is in good shape, it’s very nutritious and delicious. Then the perennials, so my normal collection of herbs, thyme, sage and bay, while marjoram is coming to an end, but that’s nicer dried anyway.
What inspired your love of cooking and what was your journey to becoming head chef at River Cottage?
There wasn’t one thing, but I grew up in a very food-centric family. My mum was a great cook and my dad was a good gardener – we lived in the countryside, which I guess shaped my perspectives on nature, food, production and farming. As a teenager, I worked in all sorts of different village pubs, the kitchen environment always felt new and exciting. My wife and I had our first daughter quite young, so I got a job in this café and started getting great feedback. One thing led to another, and I fell into it professionally. Like a lot of careers or chapters in life, you don’t intend to do half the things you end up doing...
During the time I had an outside catering business here in Dorset, I met Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at a party and we got chatting about food. About two weeks later, he called me to chat this TV project over. I was quite excited, Hugh’s work was different, with a stripped-back, seasonal approach. I ended up working at River Cottage for about 15 years as head chef, where I was lucky enough to meet all sorts of inspiring authorities on food and cooking, whether it was butchers and bakers, foragers or gardeners. It gave me greater insight into everything that happens before the food actually hits the plate.
What do you enjoy about cooking alfresco? Can you talk us through today’s recipes?
I’ve always found it intriguing, enchanting. Ever since I was a child, I used to love getting campfires going and mucking around. There’s a combination of fun and reward you can gain from cooking outside, where modern-day life can fizzle out for a while. There’s something inherently inspiring and primal about cooking over a fire.
The first dish is the fresh, hand-eyed scallops from Lime Bay – which is the stretch of water running from Portland Bill down to Dartmouth – and the slow-cooked squash. It’s been a marine reserve for some time, so the only way to catch them is through hand diving for them. I was in the local farm shop and saw these beautiful squash – just harvested from the farm. That was how the dish came about. I baked the squash whole in the embers of the fire in the house by turning it over the course of a few hours, before pan-frying the scallops with sage, butter and garlic. For the salad, it was simply a meeting of ingredients, with the tomatoes coming to an end and the plums coming into season, before the red onions added the extra pep. Sometimes that is enough for the basis of a recipe – that moment.
Seasonality and sustainability are core parts of your food philosophies. Why are they important to you?
I think above all, if you can cook seasonally, it’s more than likely that the ingredients you’re buying are coming from the local area. A great upshot of the seasonal cooking philosophy is that you’re helping to keep sustainable farming alive. Your food choices are serious choices; if you make bad food choices you can end up supporting or promoting food production that isn’t sustainable.
We’ve got the Renewed Stanway table just in front of the kitchen’s double doors that open to our gravel garden. It’s a lovely place to sit, looking out over the sea and down across the wood. I’m a big advocate for anything like that, if you can mend and repair, upcycle and reuse, we’re all better off. We live in a throwaway society, so to give something a second life is so important. I mean, I've got an old 1978 Land Rover that just keeps on going; I just like things that are well made and will last a lifetime.
What advice would you give to someone looking to get into the garden-to-table concept and alfresco dining?
Be brave and take the leap. You can always grow a few things, even in a small courtyard. Just a combination of herbs will really improve the overall flavour of your dishes. Courgettes and new potatoes are a great starting point; you could have just a few big buckets growing and within a few months you’ll have a delicious supper. For alfresco dining, grab some blankets, throw on a warm coat, become a master of managing the fire, and cook something really comforting outside. Enjoy the autumn for what it has to offer, the colours, the smells – everything that the season is well known for.
