Martin Simcock

Head chef at Bread and Flowers

Latest articles from Martin Simcock

Convincing customers to try something new from the plethora of seasonal ingredients

IT’S difficult sometimes. The seasons rotate without failure; right now, wild garlic pushes up through the soil and carpets the woodlands, sorrel appears vibrant and lush, forests of nettles grow, achingly green with nutrients full to bursting. All there for the picking and free of charge if you know where to find them, not difficult in this part of the world.

OPINION: The riches bestowed upon us by our children

I DROPPED off my daughter, Ava, at Gatwick airport last week at 5am. She’s going travelling with two friends for four months – India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali, etc. She’s 19-years-old. They are all off on a jolly before university in September.

OPINION: What is the value in value added tax?

I RECENTLY paid my quarterly VAT bill. It was quite a lot of money. Enough to pay my tab at the Radnor Arms for close to three years or take my children away on a couple of exotic holidays to celebrate the exhaustive effort they have put into their exams over the last couple of years. Equally I could have invested it into my business, spent it on product development, equipment, staff training.

'I’ve brainwashed myself into never feeling hungry or craving sweet things'

HERE we are again, the J word, regular readers know what a fan I am of January. So here are a few sobering (if you needed them) thoughts: Fantastic holiday reading (we’re just back from Goa) Yuval Noah Harari and his fascinating book, ‘Homo Deus – ‘A brief history of tomorrow’. He sets the scene by asking: where we are at now and what have we achieved? ‘In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined, killed about one million people, whereas obesity killed about three million. In 2012, 620,000 people were killed by human violence (war and crime). In contrast 800,000 committed suicide and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.’ It is a complete tragedy that people die from starvation of course, in countries and seasons where there just is no food to eat, we’ve seen it on the telly often enough. But there’s something rather vulgar about individuals stuffing so many calories into their bloated bodies that they live an intolerable life and then peg it 15 years prematurely.