Tom Lewis of Morghew Park Estate is a former City gent now supplying elite chefs with niche spud varieties
I always wanted to be a farmer – as a boy I found great peace in the countryside. I grew up on the edge of Tunbridge Wells, and was able to cycle to scenic farmland very quickly from our house. By 10 I was reading books about dairy farming, and when the other kids were stacking shelves for Tesco, I was making hay and picking hops. But my family were very poor, and my mother said: "You're never going to be able to afford a farm." She was basically telling me I was wasting my time with the whole farming lark.
I went on to work in the City, and set up one of the first public relations companies to specialise in technology. In Christmas 2000 I decided to come out of that and invest some of the proceeds in agriculture. It wasn't just the romance of farming that appealed. It was a matter of wanting to diversify my investments. Everyone said I was mad, because it was a very bad time for agriculture, but I'm contra-cyclical and counter-intuitive, and so [in April 2001] I took over Morghew Park Estate in Tenterden.
I bought it on a lock, stock and barrel basis, with crops in the ground, blokes on the payroll and machinery in the shed. If I had simply bought bare land I would have bankrupted myself in no time. But I had good people who could see the funny side of a PR consultant used to donning a pinstripe suit and a bow tie trying to run a farm.
It's 2,000 acres and we grow 40 acres of potatoes a year. The rest is wheat or oilseed rape. But in a bad growing year for arable crops or a bad prices year, potatoes are great. Now we've diversified with a vengeance: hay, firewood, a pigeon shoot, a pheasant shoot, a duck shoot and some cottages that we rent out. So there's a whole portfolio of little businesses. Potatoes are just the largest of the little businesses. That's basic business training that some farmers don't have – don't become over-reliant on one thing.
We very nearly gave up on growing potatoes altogether. When I started out we were growing for Tesco and it was very difficult to make a living – there are very large potato-growing businesses in East Anglia that are very good at what they do, and even they make very meagre returns supplying supermarkets. And it was soul destroying, seeing all our product leave the farm in 40-tonne articulated lorries. So after a few years we decided to specialise in the exotic varieties of potato you don't find in the supermarkets. We now grow 16 different types.
Chefs love our potatoes. They're very tribal. If they're French-trained, they use ratte as a salad potato. That's what they've been taught. But if they've worked in American kitchens, they absolutely insist on Yukon gold. We stock King Edwards, desirees, and pink fir apple. Then we have highland burgundy red, which is as red as a beetroot all the way through it, and vitelotte, which is dark blue, so you can make bright blue mash and pipe it on to your fish pie if you want to frighten the children. It's a lot more satisfying to know who is consuming our product, and that's something that selling in much smaller quantities and going niche allows you to do.
thepotatoshop.com
*Aloo Ki Burtha (Indian masala mash)*
This recipe works best with floury potatoes like King Edwards or desirees. They soak up the spices when squashed in the bowl with a chapatti and a scoop of saag.
Saag is actually the name for the leaves of the mustard plant, but as they were not traditionally readily available in England, they were often replaced by spinach leaves (palak) which by proxy became known as saag.
Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish
*1 tbsp vegetable oil*
*1 tsp cumin seeds*
*1 onion, sliced*
*2 garlic cloves, finely chopped*
*2 green chillies, finely chopped*
*4cm fresh root ginger, peeled*
*1 tsp ground cumin*
*1 tsp ground coriander*
*50ml water *
*4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced into bite-sized chunks*
*240g tinned spinach with its juices*
*½ tsp garam masala*
*1* Using a frying pan, heat the oil to a medium temperature and fry the cumin seeds until they start sizzling and popping. Then add the onion, cooking until translucent. Pop in the chopped garlic and chillies and grate in the ginger. Keep everything moving – be careful not to let the ingredients stick to the pan.
*2* As soon as everything starts to brown, introduce the ground cumin and coriander. Stir them through so that you cover everything with the powdered spices. At this point the ingredients will start to dry up a little; now add the water and potatoes, cooking for about 3–4 minutes until they become opaque.
*3* Now the hard part … add the tinned spinach and all its juices. Stir regularly and lower the heat, cooking for 10–12 minutes until the potatoes have started to crumble around the edges or you can pierce a chunk with a fork.
*4 *Spoon in the garam masala and salt to taste, mix together thoroughly and simmer for a couple more minutes. The potatoes should be crumbly, yellow and peeping through the dark green mere.
Recipe supplied by urbanrajah.com Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
I always wanted to be a farmer – as a boy I found great peace in the countryside. I grew up on the edge of Tunbridge Wells, and was able to cycle to scenic farmland very quickly from our house. By 10 I was reading books about dairy farming, and when the other kids were stacking shelves for Tesco, I was making hay and picking hops. But my family were very poor, and my mother said: "You're never going to be able to afford a farm." She was basically telling me I was wasting my time with the whole farming lark.
I went on to work in the City, and set up one of the first public relations companies to specialise in technology. In Christmas 2000 I decided to come out of that and invest some of the proceeds in agriculture. It wasn't just the romance of farming that appealed. It was a matter of wanting to diversify my investments. Everyone said I was mad, because it was a very bad time for agriculture, but I'm contra-cyclical and counter-intuitive, and so [in April 2001] I took over Morghew Park Estate in Tenterden.
I bought it on a lock, stock and barrel basis, with crops in the ground, blokes on the payroll and machinery in the shed. If I had simply bought bare land I would have bankrupted myself in no time. But I had good people who could see the funny side of a PR consultant used to donning a pinstripe suit and a bow tie trying to run a farm.
It's 2,000 acres and we grow 40 acres of potatoes a year. The rest is wheat or oilseed rape. But in a bad growing year for arable crops or a bad prices year, potatoes are great. Now we've diversified with a vengeance: hay, firewood, a pigeon shoot, a pheasant shoot, a duck shoot and some cottages that we rent out. So there's a whole portfolio of little businesses. Potatoes are just the largest of the little businesses. That's basic business training that some farmers don't have – don't become over-reliant on one thing.
We very nearly gave up on growing potatoes altogether. When I started out we were growing for Tesco and it was very difficult to make a living – there are very large potato-growing businesses in East Anglia that are very good at what they do, and even they make very meagre returns supplying supermarkets. And it was soul destroying, seeing all our product leave the farm in 40-tonne articulated lorries. So after a few years we decided to specialise in the exotic varieties of potato you don't find in the supermarkets. We now grow 16 different types.
Chefs love our potatoes. They're very tribal. If they're French-trained, they use ratte as a salad potato. That's what they've been taught. But if they've worked in American kitchens, they absolutely insist on Yukon gold. We stock King Edwards, desirees, and pink fir apple. Then we have highland burgundy red, which is as red as a beetroot all the way through it, and vitelotte, which is dark blue, so you can make bright blue mash and pipe it on to your fish pie if you want to frighten the children. It's a lot more satisfying to know who is consuming our product, and that's something that selling in much smaller quantities and going niche allows you to do.
thepotatoshop.com
*Aloo Ki Burtha (Indian masala mash)*
This recipe works best with floury potatoes like King Edwards or desirees. They soak up the spices when squashed in the bowl with a chapatti and a scoop of saag.
Saag is actually the name for the leaves of the mustard plant, but as they were not traditionally readily available in England, they were often replaced by spinach leaves (palak) which by proxy became known as saag.
Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish
*1 tbsp vegetable oil*
*1 tsp cumin seeds*
*1 onion, sliced*
*2 garlic cloves, finely chopped*
*2 green chillies, finely chopped*
*4cm fresh root ginger, peeled*
*1 tsp ground cumin*
*1 tsp ground coriander*
*50ml water *
*4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced into bite-sized chunks*
*240g tinned spinach with its juices*
*½ tsp garam masala*
*1* Using a frying pan, heat the oil to a medium temperature and fry the cumin seeds until they start sizzling and popping. Then add the onion, cooking until translucent. Pop in the chopped garlic and chillies and grate in the ginger. Keep everything moving – be careful not to let the ingredients stick to the pan.
*2* As soon as everything starts to brown, introduce the ground cumin and coriander. Stir them through so that you cover everything with the powdered spices. At this point the ingredients will start to dry up a little; now add the water and potatoes, cooking for about 3–4 minutes until they become opaque.
*3* Now the hard part … add the tinned spinach and all its juices. Stir regularly and lower the heat, cooking for 10–12 minutes until the potatoes have started to crumble around the edges or you can pierce a chunk with a fork.
*4 *Spoon in the garam masala and salt to taste, mix together thoroughly and simmer for a couple more minutes. The potatoes should be crumbly, yellow and peeping through the dark green mere.
Recipe supplied by urbanrajah.com Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.