Bryan Webb Kitchen Confidential

From Cardiff to Cornwall, Bryan Webb tracks down the best seafood and spring lamb for his Michelin-starred rural bolthole Tyddyn Llan in North Wales

Cooking With

Any exciting spring menu should be loaded with seasonal produce; from Claremont Farm’s strawberries that go into our Eton Mess, to the homegrown beetroot brought to me by the ladies in Llandrillo village to bake in thyme and balsamic vinegar… there’s just so much good food around.

I love cooking with seafood and, being surrounded by Welsh countryside, there are a few seasonal dishes that always strike a chord. Laverbread is usually made by mixing seaweed lava (which grows on the Llan peninsula) with oats to make fritters, but I like to deep-fry the lava plain, and season with smoked paprika and sea salt, or boil it for a good six hours and purée with a bit of chilli. Either way it goes well with wild bass and beurre blanc sauce.

Further south, River ‘Taffy’ has a good supply of sewin (sea trout) in May. My aim is to let the sewin come through as the primary flavour, so I serve it with a basic sorrel sauce – that classic lemon-butter and fish pairing is unbeatable.

You can’t really be a chef in Wales and not get excited about spring lamb. I serve a whole rack with a ragu of baby artichoke, broad beans, Carmarthen ham – another brilliant local offering – and chopped mint. If I’m cooking for big parties, a saddle of lamb with parsley and pine nut stuffing works well.

As spring really comes alive, winberries creep into the kitchen. They grow on the moors – a little like blueberries but smaller and sweeter – and they lend the most incredible blue-purple colour to sorbets. They’re equally good crushed at the bottom of a crème brûlée. We begin to see gooseberries at the end of the month too; I like them poached in elderflower jelly and layered with custard, like a light version of winter trifle.

Of course some of our produce comes from further afield. I source our lobster from Land’s End – we have a great relationship with Hawkins Fish down there – and serve it dressed with ginger, lime and coriander butter. Brown crab salad is always popular; I pick the white meat and mix it with mayonnaise, chopped almonds, three varieties of melon and top it with a melon purée – it’s so colourful when you plate up.

Who i'm using

T.J.Roberts & Sons in Snowdonia National Park is a brilliant butcher. I see what they have in and dream up the menu accordingly (welshqualitymeat.co.uk). Claremont Farm in Wirral has lovely strawberries and asparagus (claremontfarm.co.uk).

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