Kitchen Garden Experts Book Review

I was sent a copy of Kitchen Garden Experts to review, and happily took up the “challenge” of sitting down with a piece of (vegan) cake and a hot squash, with my feet up in the garden whilst I pored over the pages. It’s a hard life, sometimes.

Kitchen Garden Experts celebrates twenty chefs and their head gardeners. The book explores the working kitchens gardens of said chefs, and offers up a variety of special growing methods, signature dishes and growing tips to boot. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for pretty images. I could spend hours looking at grand kitchen gardens, potagers and little veg patches on Pinterest, so the very first pages seduced me somewhat.

The book is split into sections, with each section dedicated to a chef/restaurant, its’ kitchen garden, a focus a few choice vegetables or herbs, as well as a handy recipe. As a vegan, I will probably to struggle to make even half of the recipes in the book, but there are some such as the Uchiki Kuri Squash Soup in the Vallum Farm section that I will be able to adapt easily.

I also have to admit that although I’m an avid reader, I am also a very impatient person so rather than reading from cover to cover, I have a tendency to flick through gardening or foodie books until something catches my eye. Luckily, this book has lots of stunning pictures that serve as inspiration for my own modest backyard plots, and as such I have been inclined to keep the book for myself rather than offer it up for a competition (sorry!).

I particularly loved The Star Inn section, detailing Jo and Andrew’s growing spaces – Rich and I are planning on rigging up some cooking apple espaliers and I would love to emanate the rambling-organised-chaos rustic appeal of The Star Inn plots.

The Felich Fach Griffin section has also been bookmarked (I couldn’t live without onions and garlic), and I am completely and utterly envious of Jack Stein and Ross Geach’s coastal Padstow kitchen garden. That’s the dream, right there. Kitchen Garden Experts also features a Wimpole Hall section, an historic estate which is not far from us at all (I pass it on my way to work in Cambridge each week) so a trip there is definitely on the cards now.

I have a feeling that I’ll be coming back to and referencing Kitchen Garden Experts lots in the coming months, and it will definitely be something I’ll pull out of the bookshelf (along with my John Seymour Self Sufficiency bible) on those long, dark winter nights to keep me inspired about the coming growing season.