Forage fire

LITTLE more than a sprig, the tiny shoot cowers in the crack of the pavement sheltering from the northerly wind. To most people, it’s nothing more than a weed, but to the expert eye of chef James Burton it is a peppery garnish for his lunchtime sandwich.

“Hairybitter cress goes really well with egg sandwiches,” says James Burton, who has just secured himself a coveted place in the finals of MasterChef: The Professionals.

The former Darlington College catering student has already made a name for himself as a foraging chef. “Really, to make the most of this country you have to be a chef-cum-gardener.

If you spend a lot of time going out and picking, growing and foraging, then you give the ingredients more respect when you are cooking.”

The 33-year-old was brought up in Catterick Village, North Yorkshire, and now lives across the road from Hadrian’s Wall where he runs his chef consultancy, Vallum Cooking.

His love of cooking began as a child watching his mother cook for dinner parties across the region, but originally he wanted to be a gamekeeper.

“I couldn’t get in to Askham Bryan College, York, and I loved rugby but was never going to make it as a professional. So I worked in the kitchens at Darlington Rugby Club and decided to become a cook, signing up for a catering course at Darlington College. Back then it was very old-fashioned cooking and I spent a lot of time with fish and meat, which I loved.

Then I got a job in a country house hotel in Gloucester, where I learnt about smoking your own salmon and how to use wild mushrooms.”

Right on cue he spots and picks for his larder some jelly ear mushrooms growing on the stem of an elderflower in his garden - and that’s in a garden that to the layman looks dead and ravaged by the weather.

A spell at Rudding Park Hotel, near Harrogate, saw James working in a kitchen full of Michelin stars. “This was a steep learning curve as we would have to handle 60 to 80 covers a night and then be around for the breakfast shift,” he recalls. “It was a great place to learn about seasoning, organisation and being on the ball.”

The travel bug then took him to Australia to work in Level 41, one of the best restaurants in Sydney, and then the equally glamorous Formula 1 paddock, cooking for 2,000 to 4,000 people per race meeting, living on site and often working in 40 degrees of heat with anice soaked tea-towel wrapped around his head.

RETURNING to the UK, James found himself at a crossroads. “I really didn’t want to do the London scene and I started doing some private cooking for agencies - shoots, dinner parties, weddings. I found myself cooking for people who thought like me, so I moved to Wall and set up Vallum.

“I think every chef should be prepared to kill what he cooks, whether that is fish, fowl or meat, and to grow and use vegetables and herbs that are in season. Everyone should eat less food of a better quality instead of filling up on processed. Shooting, fishing and foraging is what it is all about.”

James’s shopping is done on the land, starting with his garden and the 60 acres of countryside in which it resides. His “shopping list”

reads like some Chaucerian tale, with blueberries, bogmirtle and meadowsweet. He will use hawthorn blossom instead of vanilla, dried marigold petals instead of saffron, rape seed oil or dripping in lieu of olive oil. “We don’t grow olives in this country, so why use the oil?” he asks.

Other staples include cockles, winkles, sea urchins, elderflower pollen, cauliflower fungus, fennel seeds, pine needles and angelica, countless types of mushrooms and even the curse of every gardener, dandelion root. “This also makes you very ecologically-minded. If you over-pick meadowsweet, for instance, it will not grow back, so you have to be careful not to lose the things that support your cooking.

Also, if I can’t find a certain ingredient then I simply don’t use it.

“I think many chefs have lost touch with the British countryside leading to a lot of waste.

Just look at all of our unpicked berries and apples, yet we import tonnes from abroad. The French and Germans have regional dishes yet we don’t seem to have them in Britain any longer. Foraging, when it is done right, is brilliant. I love to see things being done differently.”

This unique view of the countryside has been shared through his cooking on MasterChef: The Professionals “I was pushed to do it by friends and have ended up in the final,” he says. “I’ve loved it.

I was more nervous about going to London and having to use the Tube than I was about the cooking.

A lot of the skills tests I hadn’t done since Darlington College, but it was fine.”

Darlington College tutor Donna Joyce remembers James as a challenging student but is delighted to see him succeed. “He wasn’t really into patisserie but did like his fish and meat, so it’s no surprise that he is doing so well in this specialist area. It is great for us to see him share his incredible knowledge of the land with the country on MasterChef and he is a real inspiration to our current students with his passion for ingredients coming through his array of amazing dishes.”

“I was a bit wild at college but now I feel I am a countryman and what I do is intricately linked with the sustainability of the land. It is about forest agronomy, improving habitat, letting nature flourish so we can benefit from what it produces,” says James.

“I love eating with my hands, cooking on open fires as well as in the kitchen, and eating at a big communal table. When you have baked the whole salmon you have just caught in the river on an open fire that can be every bit as good as anything you are likely to taste in a top restaurant.”

• James goes head to head in the finals of MasterChef: The Professionals, on Monday at 8pm on BBC 2.