Cooking should be fun

Jan 25 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Cordon Bleu-trained Jane Lovett believes cooking should be fun – a good philosophy when we all need to eat three times a day. She’s also passionate about local food and believes the North-East can hold its head high with the best, as she tells Jane Hall.

IN the imposing baronial hall of a Northumberland country mansion, a petite and slim woman with a feathery blonde short haircut and a sunny countenance is frantically rushing around a make-shift kitchen.

Behind her, light is flooding in from a magnificent stained glass window, and a rainbow of blues, greens and reds plays over the bannister of a grand oak staircase that rises regally to a gallery beneath a high arched ceiling supported by huge wooden beams.

Across the room, with its patterned flagstones, a small group is standing chatting and drinking coffee by a Medieval-style stone fireplace.

Chief among the mid-morning coffee drinkers are Sir Hugh and Lady Anna Blackett.

For the setting is Matfen Hall, the grand country house hotel they privately own just off the A69. And the mobile kitchen around which linen covered tables and high legged chairs have been placed, is where cordon bleu-trained Jane Lovett is set to hold the first in a series of half-day cookery demonstrations which have been planned over the coming weeks.

Today’s topic is speedy winter lunches and suppers – seven labour-saving recipes in just over two hours which Jane hopes will provide inspiration for her food-loving audience.

The 50-year-old is a firm believer in taking the stress out of cooking. It should not, she maintains, “be seen as frightening or a chore”.

She doesn’t look like she’s having fun, however. While the biscuits and coffee do a disappearing act at the opposite end of the room, she’s standing biting her lower lip as she tries to figure out the temperature settings on a fearsome looking Smeg table top oven. “I had the manual out last night and read it from cover to cover, but I don’t know, I can’t seem to figure out these temperature settings.

“I think it’s going to be fingers crossed this morning. Be prepared for the recipes not being as quick as I had hoped.”

Throwing her hands up in mock despair, she gives a wide smile. After a lifetime of cooking – often under difficult circumstances – she’s not going to let an unfamiliar piece of kitchen equipment throw a spanner in the works. “What’s the worst that can happen? We burn some tarts?” she states. “Time to throw myself into the fray I think,” she adds, smoothing down her Jane Lovett-branded white apron.

Jane has an engaging, chatty but at the same time, no-nonsense manner.

You get the impression there are few obstacles she cannot overcome. Which is just as well, as she has endured a “nightmare” cross-country journey through this week’s snows from her rural home off the B6349 between Wooler and Belford to reach Matfen. “That was one scary trip,” she breathes. “I’ve seen worse snow, but boy some of the back roads were icy. Not the start one likes to one’s day.”

At least she made it through. Some of her audience has cried off. “But that will mean more food for everyone to try,” Jane announces brightly.

The next two hours see her move rapidly from Swedish salmon through to tomato Dolcelatte and pesto tarts with roast red pepper sauce, Moroccan lamb and couscous, meatballs with honey and mustard sauce, griddled chicken and finally lemon posset.

The oven realises her worst fears, and dishes that should take five to 10 minutes to cook take double the time.

She is unfazed when her recipes begin to overlap, however, somehow managing to keep a handle on what needs doing when. “Organised chaos,” is how she later describes it. And all the while she finds time to answer questions from the audience and champion the virtues of local food.

To her embarrassment – an oversight she freely admits – she has chosen recipes that don’t always lend themselves to North-East produce. Locally grown red peppers would be a rarity at the best of times, let alone the middle of winter. And when was the last time you spotted a lemon grove in the heart of Northumberland?

But if the ingredient can’t be reared, grown or made regionally, Jane will recommend the next best thing – buying locally. And not from one of the big supermarkets.

Living in the back of beyond, she knows how vital it is to support independent sellers and producers, whether they be the local corner shop, delicatessen or butcher, or buying direct from source.

“It is better for us to eat food that is locally grown, it hasn’t travelled as far, it’s fresh and it’s good for you nutritionally,” Jane expounds as she sits munching cheese and biscuits at the end of her demo.

“The one thing about living where I do is that there is no supermarket, and I think as a result people living in this area of the county are more in touch with the rural producers and what is going on.

“In towns you are lured by the supermarkets and they make it easy to buy everything you want because they want your money – but little or nothing will be local.

“If supermarkets would seriously start stocking local produce in their local shops, think how much better it would be for everyone.”

Born and raised in Nottinghamshire before she moved to London to train as a Cordon Bleu cook, Jane went on to work for Leith’s Good Food in the City, providing catering for financial institutions, government departments, Livery companies, The Orient Express and many more.

In 1980 she moved on to teach at Leith’s School of Food and Wine. Jane then started her own business in London, specialising in catering for large parties and Press launches for a number of well- known companies, as well as many high profile private clients.

During this time, she also worked as a consultant home economist, testing recipes and preparing food for cookery books, magazines and television programmes.

It was 20 years ago that she moved with husband John, 56, a company director and business consultant, to his family home at Hetton House.

Three children in three years – Flora, now 20 and working as a teacher in London, Freddie, 19, on a gap year working as a cook at a ski resort in France, and Lucy, 17, at school in York – saw her put her cooking career on hold.

“I looked after the kids at home, but I always kept my hand in,” Jane explains. “Cooking is a way of life – as is using the best ingredients you can.”

Like many, Jane admits she saw the North-East as a food desert before coming to live here. “Whenever I’m out of Northumberland and the North-East and I tell people where I live, I get two reactions.

“One will be from people who have been here and seen for themselves how beautiful it is, and the other will be from those who have never ventured this far north and think we’re living in a wilderness with nothing in it.

“They’re couldn’t be more wrong. But we don’t jump up and down enough and sing our own praises. Just in the area I live I have Doddington’s cheeses. I hear nothing but good reports about them. They are very innovative and always thinking of new cheeses. They also do ice cream, and while I’m not an ice cream fan, I know devotees of theirs.

“All the butchers I use in Wooler sell quality local meat. Then there’s the Blagdon Farm Shop just off the A1 which rears and sells its own wonderful free range chickens.

“We have a farmers’ market once a month at Alnwick and I love going to the Tritlington vegetable stall. What amazes me is that you can smell the vegetables as you approach.

“Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes are just up the road and are excellent. I always tell people about them at my cookery demos. I do a lot of research for my recipes, so I can let people know where they can buy things.

“We keep our own bees, but we have Chain Bridge Honey at Berwick, and I get bread from The Great Northumberland Bread Co at Etal, and flour from Heatherslaw Mill via the Good Life shop in Wooler.

“ My eggs I buy from a local producer who lives high above Chatton and just serves the local people. Then we have the Oleifera rape seed oil people virtually next door. It makes cracking roast potatoes as it has a very high smoking point and it gets really hot and makes the potatoes seriously crispy.

“I would say the produce from the North-East is without a doubt the best you can get.

“We have a fish man who comes every Thursday at 8am. The array of fish rivals Harrods’ fish counter. That is repeated up and down the county. We have all the sheep grazing on the hills. I think we are very well off – and there’s no pollution.”

Jane, who took up cooking professionally again in 2000 and runs demonstrations both from her home and at outside locations, including Alnwick Garden and now Matfen, is as keen on gardening as being in the kitchen and has a thriving vegetable patch at Hetton House.

“I grow all the beans – broad, runners, French – potatoes, celeriac, lettuces and the full range of herbs. I also grow tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in the greenhouse.

“What could be nicer than stepping outside my back door, picking all the fresh ingredients for a dish and minutes later sitting down to eat it? That’s what I call being lucky.”

For more information on Jane Lovett go to www.janelovett.com

Jane’s half-day cookery demonstrations at Matfen Hall cost £60 per person. The next will be on January 30 (Speedy Winter Lunches and Suppers), followed on February 12 and February 26 with Winter Weekend Entertainment. To book or for more information call Matfen on (01661) 886500 or go to www.matfenhall.com