What the walled garden is giving
A short list from the kitchen: what is coming out of the walled garden this fortnight, and what is turning up on the evening menu because of it.
The menu is written each afternoon, and most afternoons it starts in the garden a few feet from the kitchen door. Here is roughly what we are picking now.
In the beds
Late runner beans, the last of the courgettes, chard that will run right through to the frosts, and more tomatoes than two cooks can use — so they are going into a slow confit that will see us into November. The herb wall is at its best: rosemary, three thymes, and a bay tree that predates all of us.
On the plate
Because of all that, dinner this week has leaned green and warm. A courgette and lemon-thyme soup to start most nights; the beans dressed simply alongside whatever the day boat landed; and a tomato tart that has quietly become the thing regulars ask whether it is on.
None of it travels more than a hundred feet from soil to table, which is the only kind of local worth the word. If there is something you would rather not see on your plate, tell us when you book and the afternoon’s menu will be written around it.