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 Chef Arthur Potts Dawson |
Camden review | Restaurants | Acorn House | King's Cross | The Acorn House Cook Book
Chef Arthur Potts Dawson has a plan for cutting down on food waste – but is his approach to writing about it sustainable?
ACORN House in King’s Cross has earned a reputation for great, “green” food.
Now its founder, Arthur Potts Dawson, a self-styled eco-chef, has poured his kitchen philosophy between the pages of a new cook book.
The story of the place goes like this: chef Arthur Potts Dawson bumped into restaurateur Jamie Grainger-Smith in Muswell Hill and the pair vented their frustrations at the wasteful nature of restaurants in London.
What to do, they railed, about the daily waste they saw in the catering industry? Acorn House restaurant at King’s Cross, in the former entrance to the National Union of Journalists, was the answer.
Arthur, originally from West Hampstead and schooled at Quintin Kynaston in St John’s Wood, had worked at a number of restaurants, including Jamie Oliver’s 15; trained with the Roux brothers; and been held the role of head chef at the River Café.
In many of the kitchens he saw disgraceful amounts of rubbish produced – piles of food were thrown in to black bags and sent off to the landfill.
The pair decided now was the time to open a place themselves and use it to train a new generation of chefs in how to run a place with green credentials.
“I was in a trade where there were some really big sinners,” he admits. “But to be a saint, you have to be a sinner first.”
The book describes not only seasonal recipes, but is dotted with Potts Dawson’s musings on how we can all do our bit to make the world a better place.
“This is the type of food I want to cook, and how to get rid of my rubbish,” he explains. “This book is not about reinventing the wheel. It is a book I want you to have lying open on your kitchen table, well used with greasy olive oil smudges across it.
“It is not just a cook book, it is a narrative and a great story within it,” he adds. “I have avoided any glossy pictures. I want the reader to feel empowered to cook nice food and have a better understanding of how to buy produce. It is a lifestyle book.”
Potts Dawson’s recipes are mouthwatering, his restaurant is superb and the concept behind it is admirable.
It is particularly helpful that he breaks his recipes up into months, featuring food available at any given time of the year. May recipes include artichokes, asparagus, beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, new potatoes, spring onions and watercress.
The recipes for such delights as broad bean salad, and asparagus, broad bean and pea soup sound amazing, as does a ravioli of summer herbs and ricotta. The month finishes with a rhubarb sorbet – which includes the magic ingredients of gin and juniper berries.
Very nice indeed.
Sadly, the book stumbles a little with the concept Arthur uses to set it apart – his views on sustainable lifestyles are presented in a simplistic way. He says his philosophy is common sense, as “green” ideas are: but while peddling his views on the state of the planet, he runs the risk of negating what is an important message.
In the chapter called Water, he tells us: “Everything on Earth needs food and water... I think we must be careful and swiftly turn to sustainable ways of producing food and conserving fresh water in order to survive into the future.”
The chapter titled Earth says: “Plant life is the basic food produced by the land, and plants feed humans, animals, insects and most other creatures. Many animals in turn feed humans, thus plants are doubly important to us...”
He continues: “Soil is one of the world’s most important natural resources and along with air and water forms the basis for life on earth.
“Without soil there would be no plants, which would mean no food for animal or man – and indeed little oxygen.”
It is all a little like a primary school science lesson.
Such statements are a distraction to what Arthur is good at: cooking well-sourced and tasty food, while cutting waste and caring about the environment.
Dan Carrier
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