Food feature: The Folk House launches its own recipe book

Wednesday 20th January 2010

The Folk House Café has just launched its own recipe book. Mark Taylor leafs through the pages and meets owner Liz Haughton

Ahastily scrawled postcard from Liz Haughton accompanied my copy of The Folk House Café Recipe Book.

It read: ‘Hi Mark, here is our tome! Hope you like it – it’s very us I think, in that it’s a bit chaotic and rough and ready, but with a good heart!’

In a world of glossy cookbooks from over-hyped celebrity chefs, such honesty and lack of ego is refreshing.

A collection of favourite recipes from the popular Park Street café’s menu, the book is a modest affair but one that punches well above its weight.

Running to just 46 pages, it is A5, spiral-bound and printed on thick matt paper. Apart from a couple of shots, most of the photos are black and white and there are a number of simple line drawings of ingredients and kitchen utensils courtesy of chef Olly, who cooks by day and performs in a band called The Dagger Brothers at night.

In a sense, Olly’s love of art, music and cooking encapsulates everything about the café, which is housed within The Folk House, a long-established adult education centre.

As owner Liz Haughton explains in her introduction to the book, The Folk House is ‘a place of learning and feeding of the soul through music, art, reading, language and crafts. The Folk House Café also feeds the soul, through the eyes, nose, mouth and, of course, the stomach’.

Sister of chef Barny Haughton (Quartier Vert, Bordeaux Quay) and Phil Haughton (Better Food Company organic supermarket in St Werburgh’s), Liz shares the family’s passionate support of organic and local food.

Most of the ingredients used in the kitchen at The Folk House Café are organic or sourced as locally as possible, but she is the first to admit that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to attempt to be totally organic.

“Seasonality is the key element in our cooking but we also happen to be about 90 per cent organic.

“I don’t disguise the fact that we try to be as organic as possible, and I do mention it in the book, but it gets a bit boring to bang that organic drum all the time.

“Some people say we should bang that drum harder, and I do feel very strongly about it personally. We do try to stick to organic as much as we can in the café but it would be suicidal to be 100 per cent organic simply because some organic ingredients are too expensive.”

It may be a modest little book, but it’s packed with more than 40 easy-to-follow recipes.

The book is divided into six main sections – ‘foundations’ (pastry, stocks and sauces), ‘bits and pieces’ (bruschettas and dips), soups, salads, mains and ‘sweet things’.

Almost scrapbook-like in design, each page has boxes and panels with tips and additional information.

The recipes will be familiar to regulars at the café – squash, red lentil and harissa soup; cannellini bean, Puy lentil, quinoa and feta salad; chorizo and butterbean casserole; leek and cheddar tart and, of course, ‘Kelly’s flapjacks’ which are worth the journey alone.

There’s even a recipe for ‘Vicar’s cake’ courtesy of Liz’s mum – a fruit cake that originates from Castleton Vicarage in Derbyshire.

Liz says: “It was a big step to produce our own book but the main reason we did it is because a lot of our customers kept asking for recipes and suggested we put them altogether.”

Liz took over the running of the café in 2006 after working for The Better Food Company and the Walled Garden Café in Wrington. Until then, she had always worked in catering but front-of-house, rather than in the kitchen. A self-taught chef, she originally worked at the hugely influential London restaurant The River Café.

“We are very ingredients-driven at The Folk House Café but I suppose it would be called ‘homely’ cooking. It’s certainly not fancy and it doesn’t try to be something it isn’t.

“It’s good food, it’s real food and it’s honest food – a lot of people use those words when they talk about our food.

“The Folk House Café is successful in that it’s popular and I think we get better and better, but I’m not going to get rich on it.

“The people who work with me are brilliant and they make it what it is as much as the food. We are very proud of what we’ve created here and I think the book is very reflective of where the Folk House Café is at the moment.

“It’s a bit rough around the edges, but we are passionate about what we do.

“That’s how we are and I like it better for that.”

But now that Liz and her team have put the recipes in a book, isn’t there a danger that her customers will simply cook them at home rather than use the café?

“Well, that’s always a risk,” she laughs, “but I doubt it.”

The Folk House Café Recipe Book (£10) is available from the café at 40a Park Street, Bristol, BS1 5JG (tel: 0117 9085035) and from The Better Food Company in St Werburgh’s.