There has always been cooking at Highclere. For more than a century the walled kitchen garden has supplied the Castle’s table, and the kitchens below stairs have turned out everything from grand Edwardian banquets to the quiet family suppers that fill most ordinary evenings.
I have wanted to share this side of the house with Friends for some time. Not the theatre of a great dinner, but the everyday pleasure of cooking with what the garden gives you, asparagus in May, soft fruit in July, apples and game as the year turns.
So I am delighted to say that Cooking & Gardening is now live for Friends, with the first films already available to watch.
What to expect
Each episode is a short film shot in the Castle kitchen or out in the garden, followed by a full recipe card you can read, save or print and take into your own kitchen. The recipes are genuinely the ones we cook here, nothing has been dressed up for the camera.
- Around twenty minutes of film in each episode
- A complete recipe card with ingredients, method and my own notes
- Recipes organised by season, spring, summer, autumn and winter
- A saved recipes area, so you can keep the ones you return to
The first films cover the spring: an asparagus tart made with spears cut from the walled garden that morning, wild garlic foraged from the woods on the estate, and a pea and mint risotto that has become something of a family standard here.
The best recipes in this house are the ones that started with whatever the garden had too much of.
Lady Carnarvon
Gardening to follow
The gardening films are still to come. Highclere’s gardens are the work of many hands over many generations, and I want to do them properly rather than quickly. We will be filming through the year and I hope to share the first episodes before the season is out.
If you would like to be told the moment they arrive, you can add your name to the list on the Cooking & Gardening page.
In the meantime, I do hope you enjoy the cooking films. Do let us know which recipes you try, and if any of them find their way into your own family’s repertoire, I should be very glad to hear it.
