Mary Berry: Queen of the kitchen and garden
The Great British Bake Off judge enjoys cooking from her own garden.
Mary Berry in the garden
Before I spoke to Mary Berry, I knew we had gardening, cooking and Agas in
common. What I didn’t realise was that we both spent seemingly hours outside
the same headmistress’s door, waiting to be admonished, receive detentions
and the like for our various misdemeanours at the then Bath High School.
Miss Blackburn, the headmistress, tried her best to keep us on the rails.
Still, we have Miss Date, the domestic science teacher, to thank for
recognising and triggering Mary’s interest in cooking, which led her to a
career as one of the nation’s favourite cookery writers, and more recently,
as a judge on The Great British Bake-Off.
Gardening came a little later, when Mary and her family moved out to a garden
of three-and-a-half acres. Mary loves it and opens the garden for the
National Gardens Scheme. While she judges the baking section at the village
show, she picks up tips from the garden judges, such as how to grow better
sweet peas (a favourite): use, apparently, exhibition sweet pea seeds.
The vegetable garden is 40ft x 25ft and was divided by box hedges until box
blight arrived. Now the dwarf Hebe rigidula does the job, but not so well.
Mary’s herb garden is typical of her approach – always experimenting and
trying different plants and combinations.
“I grow parsley in rows, mixing the seeds of the moss-curled and flat-leaf
varieties together,” she says, which seems a great idea. “I pour boiling
water on the drill pre-sowing and have no germination problems.”
Dill is a favourite, sowing it successionally as it does tend to run to seed,
but regular picking helps stop this. She often uses it on new potatoes and
with gravlax (See recipe on telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink). It’s a dish
that’s quick to make, providing the supermarket debones the salmon, leaving
the skin on and preferably removing the pin bones, too. She serves this with
her own Mary Berry & Daughter mustard dressing (available from Waitrose)
but adds fresh chopped dill to it.
Buckler-leaved sorrel is another easy, well-used herb. When cooking spinach, Mary adds an eighth of the quantity of this fresh, lemon-tasting plant. It sharpens the taste. She may add a little cream and butter, but stresses that it is important to quickly wilt it down and not cook it much more than that.
She grows rocket too, advising, “Rocket is a magnet for flea beetle, but sow after August and you will avoid having leaves peppered with their minuscule holes.” For earlier in the year, she recommends sowing it in wine boxes on a ledge, too high for even the most adventurous flea beetles.
Salad burnet, with its pretty, evergreen leaves, is harvestable through winter and she loves to add to salads. Traditionally, this was used for rheumatism. Lemongrass she grows, too, in the herb garden, overwintering it in pots in the greenhouse.
Fennel and beetroot are two favourite vegetables worth growing, underused and easy to grow, especially the tasty, baby-sized specimens.
To deal with a tomato glut, Mary makes sun-dried tomatoes. She recommends taking regular-sized tomatoes, cutting them in half, removing the seeds and putting them cut-side up on baking parchment before sprinkling with sea salt, garlic and fresh thyme. Cook at 120C/250F/Gas Mark ½ for three hours or in the simmering oven of a range.
As for courgettes, Mary recently feasted on a delicious-sounding salad of long courgette slices, 5in or so, cut with a potato peeler and served topped with toasted pine nuts dressed simply with oil and lemon.
Soft fruit is the easiest to grow but needs using or preserving. Mary does a summer red fruit salad from mixed currants, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, loganberries and sometimes mulberries, served chilled with cream or crème fraiche. The blackberries look highly promising this year, so she suggests a coulis, warming the fruit with a little sugar (no water) and then sieving when cooked. It is delicious over ice cream and perfect to freeze.
Mary’s glasshouse is filled with pelargoniums, stacked at different heights, and a large vine, which tempers the sun. This room is primarily for eating in, and the family has supper there every night. It has a fridge, table and chairs and gives a feeling of dining in the garden while tempered from extremes.
“I have tried many plants, including bougainvilleas, but the pelargoniums are perfect. All they need is deadheading, feeding and watering and they always look amazing,” says Mary.
When they have large numbers to feed they cart out old trestle tables, checked tablecloths and folding director’s chairs to a favourite spot under the old ash tree. In their courtyard is a heavy white metal table and chairs if they want to eat outside.
Mary Berry has engaged a wide range of ages during her long career. No doubt both Miss Blackburn and Miss Date would be extremely proud of their former pupil and would ply her with praise if they could see her now.
*Mary Berry’s 'Cook up a Feast’ (£20, Dorling Kindersley) and ' Family Sunday Lunches’ (£20, Headline) are both out now
Buckler-leaved sorrel is another easy, well-used herb. When cooking spinach, Mary adds an eighth of the quantity of this fresh, lemon-tasting plant. It sharpens the taste. She may add a little cream and butter, but stresses that it is important to quickly wilt it down and not cook it much more than that.
She grows rocket too, advising, “Rocket is a magnet for flea beetle, but sow after August and you will avoid having leaves peppered with their minuscule holes.” For earlier in the year, she recommends sowing it in wine boxes on a ledge, too high for even the most adventurous flea beetles.
Salad burnet, with its pretty, evergreen leaves, is harvestable through winter and she loves to add to salads. Traditionally, this was used for rheumatism. Lemongrass she grows, too, in the herb garden, overwintering it in pots in the greenhouse.
Fennel and beetroot are two favourite vegetables worth growing, underused and easy to grow, especially the tasty, baby-sized specimens.
To deal with a tomato glut, Mary makes sun-dried tomatoes. She recommends taking regular-sized tomatoes, cutting them in half, removing the seeds and putting them cut-side up on baking parchment before sprinkling with sea salt, garlic and fresh thyme. Cook at 120C/250F/Gas Mark ½ for three hours or in the simmering oven of a range.
As for courgettes, Mary recently feasted on a delicious-sounding salad of long courgette slices, 5in or so, cut with a potato peeler and served topped with toasted pine nuts dressed simply with oil and lemon.
Soft fruit is the easiest to grow but needs using or preserving. Mary does a summer red fruit salad from mixed currants, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, loganberries and sometimes mulberries, served chilled with cream or crème fraiche. The blackberries look highly promising this year, so she suggests a coulis, warming the fruit with a little sugar (no water) and then sieving when cooked. It is delicious over ice cream and perfect to freeze.
Mary’s glasshouse is filled with pelargoniums, stacked at different heights, and a large vine, which tempers the sun. This room is primarily for eating in, and the family has supper there every night. It has a fridge, table and chairs and gives a feeling of dining in the garden while tempered from extremes.
“I have tried many plants, including bougainvilleas, but the pelargoniums are perfect. All they need is deadheading, feeding and watering and they always look amazing,” says Mary.
When they have large numbers to feed they cart out old trestle tables, checked tablecloths and folding director’s chairs to a favourite spot under the old ash tree. In their courtyard is a heavy white metal table and chairs if they want to eat outside.
Mary Berry has engaged a wide range of ages during her long career. No doubt both Miss Blackburn and Miss Date would be extremely proud of their former pupil and would ply her with praise if they could see her now.
*Mary Berry’s 'Cook up a Feast’ (£20, Dorling Kindersley) and ' Family Sunday Lunches’ (£20, Headline) are both out now
