Raymond Blanc: The easy-to-grow vegetables that will enhance your garden and your health

Shepherding me through the kitchens at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, en route to his office, Raymond Blanc comes to an abrupt halt by two young chefs preparing mushrooms. 

“Mais non,” he cries with Gallic passion.

Blanc, founder of Le Manoir, where he is the chef patron, takes a knife from one of the men and shows them exactly how it should be done. He deftly and skilfully peels the vegetable as if giving it a haircut at an elite Mayfair salon. “No waste, you see?”

The chefs nod and smile at the boss. Blanc, 73, may be exacting and fervent about food and its preparation, but he is also genial and kind, with infectious enthusiasm. 

As interested in people as he is in food, his energetic and engaging temperament has forged a successful career. This includes being awarded an OBE, writing 12 books, and transforming a rundown manor house in Oxfordshire that he bought 40 years ago into Le Manoir, a five-star, two-Michelin-star hotel and restaurant. 

It is the only country house hotel in Britain to have retained two Michelin stars for more than 30 years, he says. It also has low staff turnover, with a near-100 per cent retention rate for its 250 employees, he adds proudly. 

The hotel runs schools in gardening and cookery, where the self-taught Blanc has helped hone the skills of many top chefs, including Bruno Loubet, Michael Caines and Marco Pierre White.

For Blanc, food, like children, needs a good start in life. This means growing it from scratch in the hotel’s 75-acre grounds. “For me, gastronomy starts in the garden,” he says.

Le Manoir’s 1.5-acre organic, no-dig kitchen garden, micro-herb and herb gardens and orchard of 2,500 trees supply 80 per cent of the restaurant’s vegetables during the full season, which is from around May to December. 

Produce is grown, and then has to pass a strict taste test to see which varieties are the best to serve to guests. It is a team effort, so when Blanc, for example, tests 40 varieties of chilli peppers before deciding which is the most flavoursome, the chefs and the gardening team, led by head gardener Anne Marie Owens, also all sample those 40 chillies. 

“The chefs come into the garden with me so that we can understand the pain of the gardener because gardeners are underpaid and under-appreciated for what they do,” he says. “They have to banish all the enemies that live underground, or are furry, or that fly overhead.”

To Blanc, it is madness that the UK imports so much of what we eat. According to government statistics, almost half of our vegetables and more than 80 per cent of our fruit come from abroad. Instead, we could all, says Blanc, be growing more of our own, even if it is just in a tiny patch of garden, on a balcony or indoors. For example, herbs are easy to propagate on a windowsill.

“Basil is so simple to grow; it’s easy for kids,” he says. “If children grow food themselves, it teaches them something, and they are more likely to eat it. I love pointed cabbage for example, because it does not have a cabbage taste, so perhaps you could get your kids to eat it.”

For those with smaller gardens, tomatoes and strawberries can be grown in hanging baskets, and vegetables including carrots and potatoes can easily be propagated in pots. Blanc cites the example of Alessandro Vitale, a gardener who has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, where he is known as @_spicymoustache_. Vitale grows his food on a tiny 8m x 5m patch of land in London and also forages for wild food. 

“Growing your own is about taking a seed and putting it into the earth, and letting the sun and the rain come, and looking after that plant and letting it grow into a beautiful vegetable or herb. It is the most rewarding thing you can witness,” says Blanc. It is good for your mind and sense of wellbeing, as well as for your body, he adds. “We eat badly in Britain because we eat too much meat and processed food.”

Blanc’s passion for flavoursome, nutritious food cooked well was instilled as a child growing up in France. He learnt the value of growing your own from helping his father in the family’s kitchen garden. His culinary skills come from his mother, “Maman Blanc”, who was, he says, a fabulous cook. 

Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons translates as the house of the four seasons, emphasising Blanc’s belief in seasonality. “You should grow your vegetables in their season so they’re fresh and full of flavour,” he advises. He learnt this lesson as a child, and it was reinforced on his 10th birthday, when his father presented him with a hand-drawn treasure map of the best places to forage, hunt and fish for food, according to the season. 

Blanc started his career in France as a waiter but fled to England after a head chef broke his jaw. The chef had finally lost patience with the young Blanc’s constant questions and suggestions on how he could improve his cooking. 

He and his then-wife founded a restaurant in Oxford, which was awarded two Michelin stars and an Egon Ronay Guide award for the best restaurant in England. Looking for a bigger challenge, in 1983 he found a rundown country mansion for sale that was to become Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. “When I first came here I was frightened because the garden was a jungle, totally overgrown,” he remembers. “I brought my papa over here for two months to help sort it out. It was payback time for all that work I’d done for him in his garden.”

His father’s childhood has had a “mega impact on my life and who I am”, he says. He understands that modern living, often with both parents working while raising a family, can make it difficult to find the energy needed to grow and then cook your food from scratch. But he wishes that more of us would make that effort. “People don’t see it as a priority. But it’s rewarding when you grow it for yourself and your family. There’s something special about it.”

Raymond Blanc is appearing at the RHS Festival of Flavours, which runs at RHS gardens and online until October 15; for details, visit rhs.org.uk. His new TV series, Raymond Blanc’s Royal Kitchen Gardens, is due to run on ITV later this year.

Do you grow your own food? Tell us about your experience in the comments