to a house. People are getting their supermarket shop delivered to their doors. So they’re not doing it.They’re not even choosing the fruit or the vegetables that they’re going to eat.” She notes that stories of where ingredients have come from are often used by restaurants to make it more appealing. “They’re really keen to tell you it’s locally sourced, or the name of the farmer – as a selling technique. But we don’t do it ourselves.” Humble learned how to cook from her mum.“I grew up in a household and in an era where people did cook.We didn’t have takeaways or deliveries – certainly not in the Seventies and not in the countryside.All the food that we cooked, my mum cooked from scratch and we grew a certain amount of vegetables.” She describes herself as “not a proper cook, just a home cook” and she hopes her recipes reflect that.“They are super easy,” she says,“and I’m unapologetic about that.To me, cooking should be a pleasure, not something that’s scary or a trial or an endurance test. “There’s something about cooking for me that is just very therapeutic. I don’t try and make anything that is really out of my comfort zone, I just think that is not what it’s about. I love the process of taking raw ingredients and transforming them in the most simple and uncomplicated but mindful way.” Humble grew up in rural Berkshire and, back in 2007, moved from London to Wales to live on a smallholding with husband Ludo, and went on to set up a working farm in the Wye Valley – where Channel 5’s Escape To The Farm is filmed. “I’m just not cut out for city living. It actually came into sharp focus when I was working on Springwatch, but still living in London. I loved doing Springwatch so much because I loved that reconnection with the process of spring. I loved the response of nature to the lengthening days and the temperature getting warmer – and I love being witness to that.
“And I realised how much I missed it. It was an inherent part of my childhood that I’d never really considered before.”
Moving, she says, brought her back to herself.“I found city life really difficult.”
Her life-long travel bug is deep-rooted, though.At 18 she was working in an office to save up to go to Africa and someone asked her why.“I just thought, there’s a whole world out there and I haven’t seen any of it yet. I was really surprised by the question. “I hope I never get to the stage where I’m happy just to be in one place and work in the same place all the time. I know it suits some people, absolutely fine, but I didn’t want it to be me. “I suppose I’ve always tried to engineer things are much as you ever can to lead a life that makes me happy and hopefully makes other people happy. “My mum still thinks I’ve never had a proper job – which is sort of true, but, yeah, it suits me, and it’s just being true to yourself, really. She gets “homesick” when she travels now though.“We live in such an extraordinary world full of incredible places and people and animals. I still have this real desire and joy to see it. But I also have this added element of really loving coming back.” Home Made: Recipes From The Countryside by Kate Humble is published by Gaia, priced £26. Photography by Andrew Montgomery.Available now
Recipe - Kate Humble’s cauliflower curry recipe on page 56 Recipe - Kate Humble’s Thai-spiced fish stew recipe on page 58 Recipe - Kate Humble’s autumn winter board recipe on page 60
64 | mccarthyholden.co.uk
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online