The Hidden Hut: Irresistible Recipes from Cornwall’s Best-kept Secret

The Hidden Hut: Irresistible Recipes from Cornwall’s Best-kept Secret
Simon Stallard

Irresistible feasts to share and remember with family and friends from the ocean, fields and clifftops of Cornwall.Simon Stallard set up The Hidden Hut to huge critical acclaim in 2011. An outdoor restaurant in Cornwall, tucked down on a remote sandy beach with no road access and completely off grid. He cooks up huge atmospheric open-air feasts for their diners throughout the year. In 2017, over 22,000 people applied for just 600 covers over their summer season, with tickets selling out within minutes of release each month, making it the hottest restaurant ticket in the UK. Simon’s cooking techniques have become iconic in Cornwall – from fire pits in the sand to wind-chime fish smokers and wood-fired rotisseries – his feasts are influenced by the smouldering fires and field-to-fork Cornish produce that fill his outdoor beach kitchen.The Hidden Hut cookbook showcases inspiration for creating magical and memorable feasts. The recipes are adapted for the home cook and include delicious, achievable dishes for both small family meals and larger gatherings. Many of the recipes have the option to be cooked indoors conventionally or outdoors over fire.As well as sharing the feasts that made them so famous, there are further favourite Hidden Hut recipes for filling your flask with soups, chowders and spiced dhals, alfresco summer salads, warming winter braises and homely Cornish treats.

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

FIRST EDITION

© Simon Stallard 2018

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Source ISBN: 9780008218010

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008218027

Version 2018-04-13

CONTENTS

Cover (#u27c1c895-f40a-5f51-8dd3-7eccaa25a06f)

Title Page (#u215b6971-47de-5b85-96c8-6babc315ba35)

Copyright (#ulink_2c04e678-abf7-5c0b-9e1f-d1d351df73e9)

Introduction (#ulink_6f64d0b4-96ee-5222-8ea3-6a7558241235)

1 (#ulink_0798a9c8-4223-520e-a3ed-a20f1cdbc8c5)

Dawn (#ulink_0798a9c8-4223-520e-a3ed-a20f1cdbc8c5)

2 (#ulink_a90d6369-23f8-59cb-97c2-bd9f935d0ca8)

Noon (#ulink_a90d6369-23f8-59cb-97c2-bd9f935d0ca8)

3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Dusk (#litres_trial_promo)

4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Afters (#litres_trial_promo)

Index of Searchable Terms (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Introduction (#ulink_b3e7cd46-655c-5159-ab9b-1901d2ade739)

It’s a brisk April evening on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall. In a small sheltered cove, storm lanterns flicker as a bobble-hatted crowd clad in Gor-Tex and goose-down huddle together. Friends and families sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers on long, weathered tables. Hot-water bottles are stowed inside coats and wines are shared generously. Behind, a team of chefs tend to steaming pans over wood fires as a local fishing crew deliver their last catch of the day. Spirits are high and the atmosphere is alive with anticipation.

The reason for the gathering? It’s ‘feast night’ at the Hidden Hut.

© Sally Mitchell

I remember it wasn’t the easiest of conversations, persuading my partner Jem that we should give up our jobs and take on the lease of an old wooden shed on the coast path. The country at the time was in the midst of an economic downturn, restaurants were being hit hard and we’d not long signed the mortgage of our first house. Only something really special could have drawn us to take such a risk.

Having trained and worked as chef since I was 16, my career had taken me all over the world, from New York and New Delhi to the fish markets of Newlyn. Cornwall was now my home and I felt it was a truly exciting place to be a chef. The region is flush with some of the most desirable produce in the country. Its frost-free climate allows for a longer growing season and beautifully ripe fruits. The seas are clean and plentiful, and the fields are lush with rich pasture. Large intensive farms are a rarity down here. It’s mainly small-scale, traditional production. Everything feels slightly slower and a little less refined, and that is just what I love.

I used to walk past the little green shed every morning on my way to work. At the time, it was used as a kiosk for selling lollies and plastic beach toys. It had a retro charm to it, but it was only open during the summer holidays. For the other ten months of the year it was closed and boarded up. I would watch the cattle grazing in the pastures above and the fishing boats harvesting the seas below; it encompassed everything I loved about Cornwall. There was something special there that moved me. However, the hut had been leased from the National Trust by the same family for over 25 years and I was told there was no way they would be letting it go. It had to remain a pipe dream.

However, three years later, I heard some news from a very reliable source in our local, the Plume of Feathers. The National Trust was accepting tenders for the hut from interested parties. I literally grabbed my coat and came straight home to Jem to let her know. Our proposal was sent off to Lanhydrock House the next morning. As the only people who’d shown an interest, it wasn’t long before the lease was signed and our journey had begun.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. I remember the February morning I picked up the keys and trekked over the cliffs to take a proper look at our new venture. The mud track that was meant for deliveries had been eroded into a stream, leaving the place only accessible by foot, and in wellies at that. As I tried to work out which key went where, I realised the locks had frozen tight in the salty air, so I had to break in through the hatches. Huge spiders the size of my hand scuttled away as I clambered over the counter into the dusty, derelict shed. The view from it was breathtaking and there was so much potential, but Porthcurnick Beach was no Padstow or St Ives. This was remote, deepest, undiscovered Cornwall. There was not a soul to be seen as far as the eye could see. What on earth had we taken on?

It took ten long weeks of hard graft to renovate the hut. Being in such an unspoilt, natural setting, we couldn’t add anything of any permanence. We built an outdoor kitchen that could be dismantled and removed at the end of each season and installed long tables in the sand made from a fallen tree. What seemed like an impossible feat only added to the magic of it. We were finally ready to open.

To create the daily menu, I struck up deals with local fishermen, farmers and growers. Having worked at the local fish markets, I knew what to buy, and when. If they had a huge glut of, say, mackerel, we would take a load at a good price and set up a couple of grills on the clifftop. We’d put a blackboard up on the road and a post on Facebook, and just hope enough people would see it and drop by. It was simple but it worked well. We would always be busy on those days and I loved people’s enthusiasm for this type of offering. But it soon became apparent it wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t long before too many people would turn up hoping for the blackboard menu and we couldn’t feed them all. There was nothing worse than people trekking over only for them to leave hungry. We needed to adapt our tactics.

We decided to move these events to the evenings when the coast was quieter and, because we didn’t have a phone line, we sold tickets online as the method of booking. They became known as ‘feast nights’ and they were the offering I had been dreaming about all these years. We cooked one dish over a wood fire, showcasing just a few key ingredients delivered direct from the fields and boats. Anything from slow-roasted lamb to huge steaming pans of seafood paella over fire pits. There was no choice and all the food was served at once, straight from the grill; but it was the freshest food you could wish for. All the usual dining luxuries such as waiter service, wine menus, even plates and cutlery, were pared down — we just provided the food and setting, and let people make the nights their own. As only one dish was cooked per evening, we had a calendar rather than a menu; it certainly wasn’t a normal way of running a restaurant service, but it felt right for this place.

© Sally Mitchell

Eight years and 64 firewood deliveries later, we have created something I am so proud to be a part of. The shed became the Hidden Hut and our feast nights the fastest-selling ticketed food events in the UK. Despite no formal advertising — not even a signpost on the footpath — people stumbled across us and shared their discoveries by word of mouth. It wasn’t long before it took off on social media and then the mainstream media were spreading our story, too.