Award-winning Alveston gardener publishes new cookbook (From Gazette Series)

Award-winning Alveston gardener publishes new cookbook

9:10am Saturday 26th June 2010 in

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FOR anyone who has ever wondered what award-winning gardener Jekka McVicar does with all those herbs, a new cookbook reveals all.

Jekka’s Herb Cookbook was launched at the Chelsea Flower Show last month and includes 250 recipes, using 50 herbs from parsley and rosemary, to curry leaf and Vietnamese coriander.

The book dedicates a whole chapter to each herb creating delicious dishes such as oregano cottage pie, and smoked mackerel and chive pancakes.

This is the latest cookbook for the Alveston-based gardener, and is a real family affair with four generations contributing, including daughter 28-year-old Hannah who has drawn all of its illustrations.

Jekka said: "This book has been in the making for years, it includes my grandmother’s recipes, my mother’s recipes and my recipes.

"This book is very personal to me. I felt very vulnerable about it."

The recipes within the book have come full circle with many written by Jekka’s grandmother, Ruth Lowinsky, who wrote cookery books in the 1940s.

"When you wrote recipes back in 1940s you never put weights and measures so I have spent a lot of time translating them to modern day and some of them were so good I wanted to share them.

"My mum always wanted to write a book she even bought a typewriter. This book is in memory of them both," she said.

With more than 60 RHS Gold Medals under her belt and having raised two children Jekka said she knows what it is like to be busy and trying to cook good food for the family.

She said: "This is not a chef’s cookbook, this is a mummy’s cookbook. This is not posh food but it’s fantastic, wholesome, tasty food.

"There’s a saying if your grandmother wouldn’t recognise it as a food, is it a food? We have become so reliant on processed food this strips that away.

"But the recipes are very simple. I’m a mum, I’m always running to stand still and I have work as well so complicated recipes have never been any good."

The book has already received celebrity endorsement with Naked Chef Jamie Oliver writing the foreword.

Jekka has planted several of Jamie’s gardens after the two met at the BBC Good Food Show 10 years ago.

"I was doing a display and I went to fill up my watering can and he was there and I told him straight ‘you know bugger all about herbs’," said Jekka.

"He is such a nice chap you don’t think about him as a celebrity. He’s got a heart of gold."

Jekka’s Herb Garden in Alveston is holding open days on Friday, July 23, Saturday, July 24 and Sunday, July 25 (10am-4pm).

For more information visit www.jekkasherbfarm.com