A Life More Wild - Series 5, Episode 3

Season five of A Life More Wild continues as Xanthe Ross takes us on a stroll through the walled garden on the Hawarden Estate, where she made her first experiments in growing and began the journey to becoming a chef, supper club guru and food campaigner.

I always used to have these feelings when I was living here, where I would use bread that I had made at home, and then collect a couple of eggs from the chickens on my morning walk, and then come and collect some watercress or something from the garden. I'd just have that feeling of like, this is all stuff I've made or grown, which is so nice. 

I was doing a lot of reading and a lot of watching of documentaries about sustainable farming, soil, chefs. Chefs Table, I love that show. Watching all these chefs work who had very similar philosophies about where they get their ingredients from, and watching them cook over fire and using the outdoors. That was kind of at the moment when I was working in the office and feeling really unfulfilled and commuting for an hour and a half each way a day, and kind of thinking this London doesn't feel like it's for me, some people are great at those jobs sitting at a desk every day, and I just don't think I'm one of those people. I think I was meant to work with my hands.

So we are currently walking into the walled garden, which is where I kind of started my career in food, and it's also very special because it's been in my family for quite a long time. My grandpa used to grow in here, and he's no longer with us, so it kind of has that element of him in it. And growing is something that I really came to after he died. So it's been really nice to get to know this space that he knew and loved so much, something that I always took for granted when I was younger. Now I’m grown up, I think this space is so cool, and we're going to see about 20 different varieties of apple trees that he planted in here, as well as the Victorian greenhouse. The history behind walled gardens is really interesting. The walls were supposed to contain heat and keep in the good weather. And I think actually in some points in the walls, yes, there's a spot up there where you can see that they had a fireplace where they would light fires to warm up the walls, so that everything in it would be warmed up, which is kind of crazy.  

I actually grew up in Scotland. I have five siblings. We're all very close in age. So when we were eating, it was always quite chaotic, and there were lots of people around, but the kitchen was very much the centre of all activity. My mum's an amazing cook, and we always had things from scratch. We're very lucky in that way.

So we are at the entrance to the greenhouse now. We're kind of perching on a really lovely old bench, and we're facing the greenhouse, which actually, since I was growing here, has had a bit of a revamp. It's looking way smarter now. I would spend hours in the garden and then get to sit down. I mean, on a day like today, when it's sunny, which just makes the break worthwhile. When I started growing, the greenhouse was full of stuff. I think my grandpa was great, but he was a hoarder, and when I first moved here, the greenhouse was stuffed to the brim full of old pots and and all sorts. I mean, calling it a greenhouse kind of does a disservice, because it is really, really beautiful. I love the the handles that open up the top of the greenhouse. I guess it's called a glass house, because it really is a house, and it's made of glass, but it has a kind of back section, which is where I used to plant my seeds. And then in the front section is where I used to grow things. It used to have a big table in it for the seeds. And then I would grow tomatoes along this bit. And to the right of it, we've got the vegetable beds.  

Here in Wales, it's allowed me to really understand the importance of where I get my ingredients from, from the events that I do and for the supper clubs I do. I have such a clear memory of these hedges from when we were younger, and hiding in them and running around. We've got food trees behind. Plum trees, which are just becoming green again, which is so nice. And then we've got all the heritage apple trees. These are all different varieties. There's one actually, that's my favourite. That's the one that's kind of really blossoming over there. It's really wide, and it's got a lovely pink blossom on it at the moment. It tastes and feels like a mix between a pear and an apple. So it's got that kind of tough skin, but it's so sweet, doesn't really taste like an apple, doesn't really taste like a pear. That's my favourite one.

I remember when I was living here, I would get so excited about figuring out when everything was blossoming, because that really, I mean, I'm a Summer girl. So when everything starts to come back alive, you just get this renewed feeling of excitement. And that really is apparent in these apple trees. The menu is really fun for me, because not only am I thinking about what vegetables and fruit and ingredients I can use and what's available to me, whether I've come across a really cool brand doing something, or my vegetable supplier, I still use quite a small scale vegetable supplier, because they send kind of weekly emails with their produce list. So I get really excited about that. My cooking is mainly vegetarian. I say it's mainly because it's not always fully vegetarian, but the vegetables are always the centre of the menu. I used to take all the vegetables that I grew here. I had a mini so it was a tiny car, and I would just fill it with vegetables and fruit and flowers, and I would literally just take them and host the supper the next day. There's a few beehives down the road, and the honey really does taste incredible. So if I've been here and I've managed to save the honey before I've eaten it all myself, then I quite like using that in my menus. 

To the right of us, we have the chicken coop. Hi, girls. My friend Sarah, who works here, inherited my chickens for me when I moved to London. So these, some of them, are surviving, and I think she's had a few replacements along the way, because the harsh reality of chickens is that you do lose them quite frequently to big, bad animals out there. When I first got the chickens and we moved this chicken coop in here, we were so convinced that no animals were going to be able to get into the walled garden. So we were really relaxed with their coop. They didn't even have this outdoor area. They were allowed to roam wherever in the walled garden. And then slowly, as nature took its course on the chickens, we built up a bit more security. A lot of my first ones were ex battery, and when they came, they had no feathers, and it was really sad. And then they and they were really confident, because they were like bolshy from being in a battery farm. So they would let me hang out with them, and I’d pick them up, and they would come and chill with me in the greenhouse. She looks like one, but I don't think she is. No, see, the first ones would like, literally want to cuddle. I remember once taking one of them to the vet with me, you know, I walked into the vet with a chicken. She's definitely the boss. Orange ones are always more confident.

Let’s go in and we can see if there are any eggs in there. Are you laying today? Maybe someone's already collected them. Oh, there we go. We've got five eggs. I remember when I got my first chickens, and they were tiny, so it took a few weeks for them to start laying. And every day I would just come in excitedly, and then the first time there was an egg, I was so happy. I named the first lot. Then I stopped naming them, because I only seemed to name the ones that died. I felt like I was cursing them by naming them! I got too attached. I get attached to things easily.

Something I really struggled with was getting to grips with the adrenaline highs that come with cooking and doing events. And I remember lying in bed at 2am and just not sleeping, or being in the shower after the event and just being so overly stimulated. And so I think I struggled with that, and I struggled with everything, you know, anything going out of my control that was really kind of hard to get grips with for a long time. Eventually I understood that things will always feel a bit out of control. There will always be something that goes wrong, but there's always something you can do about it.  

And I think that with supper clubs, it's really what I've learned over time. I worked out I've done several hundred, maybe 280 but I’ve lost count. What I've learned is it's so much more than just about food. It's about the feeling that you create in the room and how comfortable people feel. Your experience of cooking the food is going to impact people's enjoyment of it. Doesn't need to be fancy or showing, you, know, deep skills. It just needs to be food that, this sounds ridiculous, but food that’s like, really cooked with intention, and this kind of happened by accident. Really the sociable aspect of it, the food is clearly at the centre, but the food is what brings people together. So it's so important to me.  

I think London, in particular, can feel quite lonely for a lot of people, especially people who you know are in the same groups of colleagues or friends, it's hard to meet like-minded people outside of dating just for the sake of being friends. So I like to think that my supper clubs are a really welcoming environment. The social aspect of it is really important. Lots of people come alone and then come to the next ones with the people they met. So it is really about that social aspect, and I'm kind of trying to figure out ways at the moment of being able to host community events that can happen a bit more regularly.  

The weather's been so warm in the last few weeks that everything has just blossomed. It's so nice to come here at this time of year because it's just looking so alive. I actually meant to make my dad a birthday cake this weekend, so I'm gonna pick some Magnolia petals to put on the cake. So in this patch, there's loads going on, especially in summer, there's raspberries everywhere, and they are huge and really, really juicy. They're like, unbelievable raspberries. There's a lot of herbs in there as well. There's a giant bay tree, a giant Rosemary Bush, that have just grown and grown year on year, and never really had much by way of maintenance. I think that's a great thing, because they've just grown in the way that they enjoy. There's blackberries all along here, and then behind us up here, there's lots of different varieties of apple trees and pear trees. As I said earlier, my grandpa was really interested in heritage apples and pears, so he planted a lot, and then kind of behind here are more fruit trees.

When I was working in the garden in the summer, I would just be ravaging all the fruit. They are the most delicious plums. Every time I come here, I'm so excited by what I know I'll be able to get. So now it's the wild garlic, which you can get in London, but it's not really the same as going to pick it. And everything's blossoming. We've got so many actually edible flowers here. Those are forget me nots there, but there's lots of primroses around, and then obviously the Magnolia and I just love that feeling of being in the countryside. It's the excitement of what you're going to get at each time of year. And this place, I mean, the fruit here is just incredible. Sometimes we get figs on those trees against the wall, but they had a really big pruning, I think it was last year, so they are a bit slower now.  

I would say that this point in my career has has been a really nice place to put a pause on things. I've just had this book come out, and it's been a really nice moment to reflect on what's happened before this, I think that everything's happened really gradually. I mean, the first thing I really did was host a supper club, and that was in, I think, end of 2018 and I really didn't know how to cook. Genuinely, I was not really good at cooking, and I just wanted a kind of very, very small platform, basically using my friends and my family to have an opportunity to cook for them, but to also mainly to talk about ingredients and suppliers. And I think my first few supper clubs, I was really trying to use only things that come from the UK, but when I wanted to start using olive oil and stuff, I realised that wasn't that easy. 

So I just started to use it as an opportunity to talk about the supplier. So I'd write down the menu, and then at the beginning of the supper club, I would, you know, do a little spiel about where everything had come from, and they would essentially buy tickets, but they were sort of eight pounds, and they would just help me cover the cost of the ingredients. But I really appreciate that support from them, because that kind of led me on to do the supper clubs, and that's kind of where I'm at now. So I think it's been really gradual. I mean, my parents run hospitality businesses, so I was really lucky to kind of get my foot into understanding how to run things and run events.

This bit is in my mind, from when I lived here. This is kind of the wild section. And I loved coming up here because you can see the wall, like the most bare part of the wall. So if we go up this part, we've got a little pond. I mean, it's crazy the amount of plants that grow in here, like everywhere you can see herbs... lemon balm, nettles. Obviously, it's spring, so everything edible that's coming up is really aiding our bodies to detoxify after long winters of eating stews and soups. I was really excited to come here and have a week of drinking nettle tea every day, because that's just something that I've always really enjoyed. And the kind of herbal side of cooking has really been interesting to me. I think starting my food career here and learning how to forage and learning all these things that come at different times of year in order to give us certain things is really, is really lovely.  

You’ve got to be careful. But I think actually, the things that are easy to forage are the ones in spring. I mean, two staple ones being nettles and wild garlic. They're both quite easy to identify. So spring is quite safe in terms of foraging. I think that it is hard for people to get out to the countryside, and you are lucky enough to spend, you know, a couple of days here, and you realise the difference in the birdsong and the smells and just the feel of being out here, I think you really understand the impact. There's so much to learn from nature, and it's a huge privilege to be in nature and have had an upbringing that allowed me to be outside. So I see that as a privilege massively.  

I do think, you know, we're lucky in London to have so many people doing amazing things with food and with growing in the city, which is really inspiring in most communities in London. There's a great growing community. Allotments are now really hard to get into, but there's just beautiful people doing, you know, great things. If children can get a bit involved in growing food, that's a huge win, because once you really understand it, then your relationship to consuming it and buying it and eating it massively changes. I think also farmers markets. Although, again, they are a massive luxury, they're not, unfortunately, like a lot of Europe, they're not the way we really do our shopping, which I think there's something to be said for. Going to a farmers market and saying to yourself, okay, maybe realistically, I'm not going to do my weekly shop there because it is expensive and because it's so hyper seasonal, but just thinking, I'm gonna treat myself to the ingredients for one meal, the meat from the amazing butcher and the vegetables from the amazing vegetable store, a lovely honey. You know, every few months or so, can really just change your perception of of things. And it's really rewarding.

This is a watercress pond. So we've got new season watercress coming in. This pond has been here for a long, long time. It's this beautiful stone, oval pond, and it's never got that much water in it, but it's got enough damp just to start growing the watercress. It's probably at its best now, because it's got that young, tender leaf. This watercress is beautiful and a deep green colour. I think it kind of symbolises spring as well. I love eggs and toast and watercress or rocket or whatever for my breakfast, so just as it is, but also watercress soup. I mean, you can't beat that. 

We’ll have a little picnic in here. Got a few pieces of bread. So these are from the farm shop. The bread is from the bakery. And actually, when I used to work here, I kind of helped them set up the bakery. Some cavalo nero, and I've kind of just blended it with some wild garlic, a little bit of nettles and olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Greens really emulate this idea of detoxification, but in a nice way, not in a kind of faddy wellnessy way. When our bodies have been in winter and they're feeling a bit heavy and, you know, we've been eating a lot of stew and warming things, and we haven't been outside much. Then you get to this time of year, and you have all these green vegetables and herbs really just help, kind of get you feeling good again. If it's a bit older, I would say toast it, but this bread is super fresh, so I'm gonna just put the cavolo nero straight on it, because then it's gonna soak in all the juices. I'm not going to portion skim here. I'm greedy, so I assume that everyone else is too! The colour of that is so nice. Then I'll just zest a lemon on top, then I'm actually because these anchovies are such nice quality anchovies, I'm gonna use a bit of the oil that's in the tin just to drizzle over the top, and we're just gonna place an anchovy on top too. 

 Everyone's version of cooking, in a professional sense, is very different, and I think that my version is my version, and I'm happy with that. I've just released my first cookbook, which is called Stay for Supper, so that's been a really exciting experience and process to go through, and I think that's something that's helped massively with my confidence, because it's something that I've produced, and it's a real thing. So I think that's kind of spun me into an exciting direction. I'm not sure what that direction is yet, what the future holds for me, hopefully cooking for a lot more people, it's really what I love doing. Hopefully writing some more recipes and sharing them. I went into growing really, knowing nothing about it, and I guess the same with cooking.  I think something that I've always had is that I'm fiercely ambitious, but I've always been curious and I've always wanted to learn. And I think with cooking and growing, there's so much learning. It's a lifelong lesson. I mean, you learn from lessons and you get better. And I think running supper clubs and running events. Gosh, you learn so much every time you do them. Everything that goes wrong will teach you 100 things. I'm sure I'll be learning until I'm 90 years old.