Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes us inside River Cottage to celebrate all that's wonderful about autumn eating
Never get between Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his mushrooms. It's like being between a wild boar and her offspring. Hugh has set aside this afternoon for mushroom foraging, and nothing and nobody will stop him. The foraging is being filmed for his new series, River Cottage Autumn, which will showcase the best seasonal food in River Cottage style. For Hugh, as ever, that means getting stuck in and getting his hands dirty - literally.
It's probably the most bountiful time, actually. Spring is the time of new growth, and a lot of excitement, but as I think we made clear in the River Cottage Spring series, there's a lot of frustration in spring - lovely weather, everything's green, but there's not always that much to harvest, until you get to the end of spring, into early summer. But autumn is incredibly bountiful - the veg garden right now has probably got a greater variety and volume of veg than at any other time of year. October is probably the best month of the year. You've still got beans and lettuces, you could even have radishes, but you've also got the autumn and winter stuff, the roots, the brassicas, all coming through. There's a hell of a lot going on.
It makes it quite hard work, but it also makes it extremely good fun. We're shooting stuff today that’s going to be on screen in a couple of weeks. The ingredients that we're cooking with now will be in season when the programmes go out. We're foraging for mushrooms and other hedgerow goodies today and, when the show goes out, those things will still be in the hedgerows and woods. That's the thrill of it, really. You can watch the show and then go out and do something that we did on the show.
It is having an effect, yes. Strange things are happening. Aside from the global concerns about climate change, as regards the growth of our crops and wild foods, some of the results are good - English wines are undergoing a boom time at the moment, due to the general milder average all year round. This summer seems to have been a little bit arse-about-face, with all the rain, and now possibly a bit of an Indian summer. We've been filming through it, which has been really nice. But it’s a bit frustrating for mushroom lovers, because what you need is a long dry spell through August and early September, and then the rains to bring the mushrooms. We've had the opposite. But if we get a wet period soon, we could still have a late, bumper mushroom harvest.
A bit of both. I'm wary of saying 'I've invented a brand new recipe'. But we improvise and use alternative ingredients. For example, programme one culminates in the first ever River Cottage duck fair, and I wanted to make a fantastic sauce to serve with my ducks. The French use orange, the Chinese use a plum or hoi sin sauce. In the end I went for a version of the hoi sin, but using hawberries instead of plums. It's very unusual, and tastes really interesting, with a sort of feral, hedgerow tang to it. I think it'll go really well with the duck.
We made a nettle beer for this series and I forgot to stir in the yeast. It did ferment, but it was all a bit yeasty at the top. I've now stirred it back in, and I hope that we’ve saved it. But it's challenging enough to say to people 'I’ve brewed some nettle beer for you', without having to add 'and it’s gone slightly wrong'. You're not exactly over-selling it if you do that. But I'm hoping it'll still come good in the bottle. All will be revealed in programme three. I haven't tasted it yet.
I often think I'm about to have that sort of a moment, when I'm on my way home and I'm feeling knackered. But once I get home, that feeling goes. Even if I've been cooking professionally all day, my favourite way to unwind is - well, first pour myself a large drink - is to cook. The difference about cooking at home is you can cook with alcohol - and I don't mean as an ingredient, but with a glass of it in my hand. And that's still the way I like to relax at home. Most of the cooking I do at home, as in the programme, is very simple. Yesterday, I got home and noticed that, as a result of the funny weather we've been having, I've got a second growth of artichokes. And I picked about seven or eight of them, flung them into a saucepan and shook up a quick vinaigrette. It's not exactly hard work, and the results were delicious. I do still cook when I get home most days.
We've got our own separate veg garden at home, up the road from River Cottage, and lots of what we eat comes from there. But I have to say that one thing I do a lot is steal from the River Cottage kitchen, and take leftovers from the River Cottage fridge. And often, if I'm cooking recipes on camera, there's food to take home at the end of the day. If the crew haven't eaten it all. It's a free-for-all.
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