FOOD + DRINK
Sex & Drugs & Sausage Rolls
INTERVIEW WITH KENT CHEF GRAHAM GARRETT
INTERVIEW BY LISAMARIE LAMB
Graham Garrett has led a varied life … to say the least. Before he became a chef( who now has a Michelin star and three AA rosettes to his name) and bought The West House in Biddenden, he was a rock drummer with groups such as Dumb Blondes, Panache and YaYa.
Graham’ s fascinating life, his love of food, his recipes and his thoughts are all put together in a beautifully artistic book that should be on any food lover’ s bookshelf – Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls is a new type of cookbook from a new type of chef.
Graham Garrett © Adrian Franklin
How would you describe your food? That’ s a tricky one. I ' ve always tried to cook seasonally because it makes perfect sense to me, and it helps write my menus for me – it kind of dictates what I do. Because of that I concentrate on ingredients; I think,‘ Oh great, asparagus is coming soon, what are we going to do with it?’ Or I find a great grower or farmer – a great piece of meat, a different cut, or produce that I get really excited by – and start thinking about what we can do with it that we haven’ t done before.
Cooking seasonally helps me be more creative without trying to be wacky. We try to keep things as simple as possible, even though a lot of work goes into getting to the finished product. At the end of the day, you want the main ingredient to shine, you want it to be honest and you don’ t want to mask it with loads of other things. And everything
The West House © Adrian Franklin you put on a plate should enhance it – everything on the plate should be there for a reason. I always say to people it’ s just good, honest grub.
What inspires you? Mostly it’ s the ingredients, but there are other chefs out there who do amazing things, and that gives me inspiration. Or I might go eat somewhere that’ s really good and helps me think of new things to try.
You rack your brains to think differently, which is extremely hard because you know within a couple of months everybody is going to be doing it – so you have to constantly keep changing, and searching for inspiration.
If you’ re a chef, you can make something pretty good or pretty acceptable out of most things, but you can’ t make something great unless you’ ve got great ingredients, so I think that’ s the main thing.
What gave you the idea to write your book Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls?
It almost seems quite funny now, thinking back, because I said to everybody I would never do a cookbook. I look at books constantly; I buy them all the time. I found at one point I was buying all of these books and I was flicking through them, only to put them on the shelf. They all seemed the same, almost formulaic, and was always searching for something‘ different’.
I had an amazing photographer, and didn’ t want to approach a publisher only to be told,‘ Yeah, we’ re interested, but you have to use our writer, or our photographer.’ I thought that would be tragic.
I had a conversation with Cat Black who ended up co-writing with me, and was introduced to Anthony at Face Publications – we chatted about ideas and different things, and it turned out we were thinking the same thing he mentioned he’ d be really interested to work with me. I took that as such a compliment that he would consider working with me and thought,‘ Actually, it would be a bit rude not to.’ So my whole not ever doing a book kind of theory went out of the window.
I had the photographer I wanted to use, I had Cat Black involved, and Anthony was the missing piece, putting the whole project together.
I think you’ ve achieved the‘ different’ goal in your book – it’ s not just recipes, it’ s about you and your life, and the photos are beautiful. Apart from a publisher, Anthony is a designer and a brand man at the end of the day – he’ s got a real eye for design. Both he and Cat were on board the whole time to grow ideas, design and write.
It’ s been pretty well received, and all the reviews have been great. I was very sure I didn’ t want to make a chef-y cookbook, which limits the market a bit, but strangely enough it’ s been really well received by chefs and the industry as well as the general public.
Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls is available from www. facepublications. com
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