Roots

Description

The stunning debut cookbook from Michelin Star chef and Great British Menu champion Tommy Banks. Roots is a glorious celebration of the key ingredients grown, foraged and preserved by Tommy close to his award-winning restaurant, The Black Swan in Oldstead, North Yorkshire. Influenced by the rhythms of the land he farms, he renames and redefines the seasons into three growing groups and shares creative recipes, preserving techniques and ideas on using these 'root' ingredients all year round. Beautifully shot throughout the shifting seasons the images showcase recipes, the ingredients and the landscape from which they hail.

Tommy Banks is the Head Chef at the family restaurant, The Black Swan, in Oldstead, North Yorkshire. Tommy started cooking at the age of 17 and at 24 became the youngest chef in Britain to win a Michelin star. A farmer's son, Tommy has a strong food philosophy of eating off the land and eating local ingredients. He grows his own produce and sources everything from within a mile of his front door. He prides himself on using old fashioned techniques including clamping, preserving and fermenting. All the time Tommy is paying homage to locally grown and preserved produce.

Tommy Banks is a great chef, practising what he preaches about home grown produce cooked with love. - Prue Leith This book, like the author is notable for its integrity - Jeremy Lee, chef-proprietor of Quo Vadis and Guardian Columnist Roots is gloriously, fervently seasonal, revelling in challenge of the hungry months as much as the abundance of late summer and the glut of autumn. Other chefs pay lip service to the seasonal and local mantra: Banks embraces it heart, soul and plate. Gems of simplicity share pages with more complex recipes: Banks values them both equally. - Xanthe Clay, The Telegraph An intuitive, natural chef...his dishes are are precise, imaginative inventions using unusual combinations and ingredients - The Times Tommy Banks is one of the finest chefs working in Britain today. Roots defines his approach to cooking, based on ingredients sourced from a few miles around his restaurant, and transformed by his vision, skill and originality - Matthew Fort The most serious and interesting cookbook of the season is, by some distance, Roots - Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard