URBAN FARMER:A look at what one Michelin-starred chef grows in his glasshouse can prove inspirational and tasty, writes FIONNUALA FALLON
IRELAND HAS many magnificent glasshouses, such as the Turner House in the Botanic Gardens, or the Paxton houses of Lismore Castle but few are in quite as splendid a setting as the tiny glasshouse used by Martijn Kajuiter, the Michelin-starred chef at the Cliff House Restaurant in Ardmore, Co Waterford.
Perched high on the edge of a windswept cliff and with views out over Ardmore Bay, it is strangely reminiscent of a sea eagle’s nest.
Climb down the steep flights of stone steps to perch next to its clear walls and you can hear the murmuring of the Irish Sea far below: the swish, swish, swish of the waves slapping against the rocks, the keening of distant seagulls and the hiss of the wind through the dense windbreaks of escallonia.
Once inside the glasshouse’s delicate walls, however, it’s a different story entirely.
Here calm and order prevail among the neatly arranged trays, pots and window-boxes filled with the tender young seedlings of flavoursome herbs, vegetables and salad leaves. There is land cress, pea shoots, marjoram, chervil, beetroot, salad rocket, bronze-leaved fennel, sweet woodruff, Chinese spinach and strawberry spinach.
Next to those are pots of the perennial viola Irish Molly, whose tawny-coloured flowers are surprisingly tasty, as are the fragrantly delicate, sea-blue blossoms of the Mediterranean herb, rosemary.
You will be impressed to discover that all have been sown and tended by Kajuiter, the famously tall Dutch chef with a deep respect for locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.
Kajuiter came to the Cliff House in 2008 after working alongside some of Holland and the UK’s top chefs, including Henk Savelberg and Marco Pierre White.
By then, the Dutchman was already familiar with glasshouses, having spent some years as head chef at De Kas, a Dutch restaurant housed in a restored glasshouse in an Amsterdam park.
With two vegetable gardens – one on site and another close by – the restaurant was able to source seasonal produce from almost outside its front door.
“The menu at De Kas was 80 per cent vegetables, all organically grown and sourced within the close vicinity of the kitchens,” says Kajuiter.
“Along with the nursery on the premises, we also had a farmer’s collective – 26 farmers around Amsterdam who were all growing for us – as well as four polytunnels set on four acres outside Ilpendam [a small rural village a short distance outside Amsterdam]. The idea was to use ingredients that were as fresh and as seasonal as possible.”
When he became executive head chef at the newly opened Cliff House Hotel, Kajuiter applied those same principles of seasonality and sustainability to his Irish kitchens, sourcing fresh ingredients from local growers wherever he could.
When he found that some ingredients were impossible to source locally, he took the next logical step and decided to grow them himself. “For the really hard-to-get stuff, it makes absolute sense,” says Kajuiter. “I buy most of my seeds from Vreeken (vreeken.nl) the same seed company that we used at De Kas. They have a really excellent range of herb and vegetable seeds.”
Most of the plants grown in the Cliff House’s glasshouse are what Kajuiter describes as micro-herbs, which when picked at the seedling or first true leaf stage are astonishingly tender and uniquely flavoursome. “Herbs like salad burnet or lemon balm are so much nicer when picked very young,” explains Kajuiter. “They are far less overpowering.”
Similarly, he harvests the sweet young shoots of peas when they are just a few inches long, along with many other different tiny leaves and flowers that are used to create his signature dishes.
“Just taste them,” he says, tenderly prising the flowers off a stem of rosemary and proffering a handful. “You’ll see that the flowers have all the flavour of the leaves but are much more tender. It’s like the essence of rosemary.”
“I also like borage a lot,” he says. “It gives a little burst of freshness to a dish. I’m not going to say that borage flowers are an everlasting thing on your palate but that’s the thing, they don’t have to be because they are a supporting act. It’s like a concert where every instrument plays its part.” While Kajuiter refers to the newly built Cliff House glasshouse as his “software”, his “hardware” lies almost nine miles away in the gardens of St Raphael’s in the nearby town of Youghal.
Working in collaboration with this residential and day-care centre for people with intellectual disabilities, the Cliff House Hotel has sponsored the revitalisation of St Raphael’s once-neglected organic nursery, funded the re-covering of its two polytunnels and contributed seeds, plants and a monthly donation towards its running costs.
In doing so, Kajuiter has also established a relationship of trust with St Raphael’s hard-working gardener, Ally Wheeler, and the institution’s out-patients, who work alongside her in the garden. “Cliff House’s involvement has been wonderful for us,” says Wheeler happily. “But what’s also great is that there’s never been any pressure from Martijn. He’s always understood that the people come first and then the plants.”
Having said that, it’s obvious that the gardens and polytunnels of St Raphael’s are highly productive and filled with a wonderfully eclectic range of fruit, herbs and vegetables.
“I give Ally lots of different packets of seed each spring and we experiment together to see what might be good for the restaurant,” says Kajuiter. “But I always harvest everything myself.
“That harvest might include any number of different salad leaves along with sprigs of golden oregano, lovage leaves, courgettes, baby beetroot, broad beans, baby carrots, chard, cottager’s kale, nasturtium flowers and leaves, unusual tomatoes such as tigerella and green zebra, even the spicy flowers of rocket.
“As a chef, you want the best ingredients, as fresh as possible and what better way is there of doing that then to grow and harvest them yourself?” says Kajuiter.
It’s also more than a professional decision, however, he adds. “ As a chef, I have to wear a number of hats,” he says. “I have to be a manager, I have to be a butcher, I have to be fishmonger while I also have my family life as a father and a husband. It can be pressurised.
“So whenever I’m working in the Cliff House glasshouse or when I come to St Raphael’s to harvest what’s needed for the restaurant, it gives a me a little bit of peace. I really like that time to myself.”
The Office of Public Works has a Victorian walled kitchen garden in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4pm
Next week Urban Farmer will cover pricking-off seedlings and potting on young plants in the OPW glasshouse
WHAT TO: sow, plant and do now
Sow in a heated propagator for greenhouse or tunnel cropping: French beans, peppers, tomatoes, sweetcorn, cucumbers, early courgettes and melons, basil, early calabrese, Alpine strawberries (Reugen best) and tender single flowers such as tagetes, French marigolds and nicotiana attract beneficial insects to help with pest control and pollination both under cover and out in the garden.
Sow in gentle warmth for planting outside later: celery, celeriac, coriander, dill, Greek oregano and Florence fennel.
Sow in modules, in a seedbed for transplanting, or in situ where they are to crop: asparagus, globe artichokes, beetroot, broad beans, carrots, endive, all varieties of peas, parsnips (early April), summer and autumn cabbages, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, all varieties of sprouting broccoli including calabrese, cauliflowers, leeks, salad onions, shallots, pak choi, Hamburg parsley, landcress, lettuces, kohl rabi, kale, radishes, rocket, salsify, swiss chards, spinach, seakale, white turnips and swedes, claytonia, lamb's lettuce, salad mixes and hardy herbs. Rhubarb can also be sown from seed (Unwins early red and Glaskin's perpetual are both good varieties). Asparagus peas, cardoons and New Zealand spinach can be sown outside from mid-April. Also some single hardy annual flowers such as limnanthes (poached egg flower), calendula, Californian poppies, convulvulus tricolour, phacelia, and sunflowers will attract bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects, which will in turn also attract wildlife such as birds and bats.
Plant outside: Seed potatoes, onions, shallots, cabbage plants.
Do: Water/prick-off/pot on young seedlings and plants and protect against slugs; earth-up early potatoes; continue hoeing and handweeding; and keep glasshouses/polytunnels well-ventilated during warm, sunny days.
Sowing details courtesy Nicky Kyle, nickykylegardening.com
Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer
