Ground Up Cookery

13/10/2026

Savoury cream tea — Ground Up style! 🌿🧀

A lovely scone featuring Sharpham Dairy | Artisan cheese from Devon Savour, wild garlic salt and fermented wild garlic.

Fresh from the oven, these are topped with cream cheese blended with finely chopped fermented onion, finished with a quick apple chutney made from delicious Bramley apples, our homemade c***r vinegar and warming spices.

A proper Devon cream tea with a savoury, seasonal and fermented twist!

We’ll be making these with guests in the events tent at DartmouthFoodFestival in around ten days’ time. There are still some tickets available, so head over to their website to book your place.

I’ll also be taking to the demo stage at 12 noon on Sunday, so come along, say hello and join me for a celebration of seasonal food, fermentation, reducing food waste and, most importantly….flavour. 🤩

08/10/2026

Wild Mushroom Ravioli 🍄

A bit more detail on our wild mushroom ravioli from last weekend’s Autumn Fine Dining menu.

The filling was made with rehydrated winter chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms, with a sprinkle of smoked powdered hen of the woods and ricotta. Deep, earthy, savoury and packed with forest-floor umami.

The sauce was made by rehydrating dried penny buns and cherry-smoked dried penny buns in a mixture of cream and milk, then cooking sous vide at 55°C for 8 hours before blending and seasoning.

The secret here was not boiling the sauce. Keeping the temperature low preserved the delicate aromatics while allowing the dried mushrooms to slowly release their incredible depth of flavour. The beech-smoked penny buns also gave the sauce a beautiful smoky bite that lingered right at the back of the palate.

To serve, I pickled baby slippery jacks, then cooked them sous vide before chilling. They went underneath the ravioli, bringing a clean, bright acidity and juicy texture to cut through the richness.

Over the top went that incredibly fragrant penny bun cream sauce, finished with honey-fermented girolles.

Those brought another layer entirely — chewy texture, gentle fermented acidity, earthy sweetness and a lovely mushroom intensity.

So, in one mouthful:

Rich, savoury, forest-floor umami-filled pasta.
Juicy, lightly pickled slippery jacks bringing clean acidity.
A rich, glutamate-packed, aromatic and smoky penny bun cream sauce.
Honey-fermented girolles bringing texture, fermentation and earthy sweetness.

A pretty bloody good bowl of mushrooms. 😂🍄

Yes… it was a banger. 🤩😍💪🏻🙌

Would you like to join us for a similar experience? Click the link in the post for more details. Next date 18th December

GroundUpCookery

07/10/2026

🌹 Rose Hydrosol — capturing the essence of the flower

What a flavour bomb this is!

We’ve been experimenting with a really simple piece of kitchen distillation to capture the delicate aroma of fresh rose petals.

The principle is beautifully simple. Rose petals go into a pan with just a little water, with a small bowl suspended above them. The lid goes on upside down and is packed with ice.

As the water gently heats, the steam carries the volatile aromatic compounds from the rose. It hits the cold lid, condenses, runs towards the handle and drips into the collecting bowl.

The result? A beautifully clear, intensely aromatic rose hydrosol.

What I love about this method is that the petals themselves aren’t being boiled into the finished liquid. We’re essentially separating the delicate volatile aromas from the plant material and capturing them in the condensate.

It’s a wonderful example of how simple techniques can create incredibly expressive ingredients — and another way of preserving a sense of place and season in the kitchen.

A few drops of this are going to be rather interesting in the kitchen… 🌹

06/10/2026

A great night for us at Sandy Park in Exeter at the Food Drink Devon | Local food & drink news Awards.

Fantastic recognition for what we do at Ground Up, and we’re absolutely delighted to bring home three Gold Awards for our Wild Plum & Mugwort Gin, Sustainability Pioneers and Training School. 🥇🥇🥇

It was a brilliant evening surrounded by so many inspired and passionate people who are driving Devon’s food and drink scene forward. Great to network, catch up with old friends and celebrate everything that makes Devon’s food community so special.

A very proud night for us at Ground Up. 💚

05/10/2026

There was some lovely crispy, gamey pheasant skin left over from our Autumn Fine Dining event over the weekend.

The aroma and flavour were exceptional, so rather than waste it, I wanted to give it a proper second life in the kitchen.

Pearl barley & crispy pheasant skin miso.

Just the smell of this in the blender had me salivating! 🤤

All that umami, kokumi and Maillard character now suspended in a fermented miso — deep, savoury, intensely gamey and hopefully packed with complexity.

I’m not going to lie… I’ll definitely be tasting this one before Christmas because I have a feeling it’s going to make the BEST roast potatoes ever! 🙌🤩😍

Nothing wasted. Just another ingredient waiting to begin its next life!

04/10/2026

And that’s a wrap on our Autumn Fine Dining Menu! 🍂

Last night was the final service of our Autumn menu. We changed the plating for the second night, but kept the menu exactly the same.

I actually forgot to photograph the venison carpaccio 🤦‍♂️🤣 but it looked very similar to night one!

I have to say, I love the mackerel dish even more in this beautiful Willow Pattern bowl from Steelite_EMEA 😍 The combination of the torched mackerel, fermented apple, pickling liquor and spruce tip oil really came together beautifully.

We also had some fantastic w**e pairings from Regency Wines — particularly the Sherry with the wild mushroom ravioli, which married beautifully with the cep cream sauce.

A huge thank you to all of our team who helped make these evenings happen. There are so many moving parts behind the scenes, and we genuinely couldn’t do it without you. ❤️

And now… we’re already planning our Winter Fine Dining Menu, which we’re hoping to host just before Christmas. 🎄

As always, our email subscribers will be the first to know when dates are released, so make sure you’re signed up if you’d like to join us.

Enjoy your Sunday! 🙌

03/10/2026

03/10/2026

Well, that was a blast — and the feedback was outstanding!

Our Autumn Fine Dining Evening last night was a great success, and we thoroughly enjoyed creating these dishes for our guests.

Sitting around a communal table, our guests made new acquaintances, experienced new flavours and enjoyed a matching w**e flight from Regency Wines.

Following yesterday’s mackerel post, here’s the finished dish. It was absolutely sublime. Thanks again to Jacksons Fishmongers for supplying such incredible fish.

All the beautiful crockery from Steelite_EMEA

The menu

Venison Carpaccio
Hawthorn ketchup, cured deer heart, fermented hazelnuts, charcoal oil

Torched Mackerel
Fermented apple, pickling liquor, spruce tip oil

Wild Mushroom Ravioli
Pickled wild mushrooms, cep cream, honey-fermented Girolles , dill oil.

Pheasant
Ballontine, confit leg Bon Bon, crispy skin, beetroot kimchi and potato rosti, cauliflower purée, elderberry jus, nettle ash

Pear & Apple Tarte Tatin
Pinecone tree-le ice cream, smoked pear powder

And alongside the menu, our guests enjoyed a selection of canapés and breads:
Warm leek & Gruyère tart
Sourdough cracker with fish pastrami & green apple
Whipped smoked lovage miso butter
Sourdough baguette
Wholemeal focaccia with honey-fermented garlic & laver seaw**d
Japanese milk bread with fermented pineapple skin & chipotle sugar

Petit fours
Rose & lemon drizzle cake
Brown butter & popcorn fudge
Chocolate torte with port-marinated fig

And finally, foraged tea made with yarrow, fir, pineapple w**d & mint.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us and made the evening so special. We loved sharing this menu, and seeing the reaction to the dishes made all the preparation worthwhile.

Autumn really is a wonderful time to cook. 🍂

01/10/2026

The most amazingly fresh, iridescent and translucent rod and line caught mackerel today from Jacksons Fishmongers — thanks guys, this is amazing fish and it was prepped beautifully.

As a chef, I usually expect to have to tidy or trim any fish or meat that I request to a specific spec from a supplier. Not today. This was beautifully prepped. I asked for it filleted and V-boned to remove the fine bones along the lateral line, and it was perfect!

So what am I going to do with it? Well, it’s going to be epic but simple!

I’ve cured it in salt, sugar, toasted ground hogw**d seeds, bruised spruce tips, crushed coriander seeds, lemon rind and pepper. Cured for an hour, then washed and patted dry, it’s now drying uncovered in the fridge overnight before being torched and sliced, then served with spruce tip oil, pickle juice and fermented apple tomorrow and Saturday night at our Autumn Fine Dining event.

Simple ingredients, beautifully fresh fish and a little bit of technique. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Might plate up an extra one of these! 😍🤩

2 places left for Saturday night- interested? click the link!

30/09/2026

Roasting trays of pear and apple Tarte Tatin. 🍐🍎

A classic autumn dessert with a Ground Up twist.

Bramley apples and Conference pears cooked in our pine cone treacle, with the pastry dusted with fir needle sugar to carry those gentle resinous flavours through the dish.

Served with pine cone treacle ice cream and smoked pear powder alongside, bringing sweetness, smoke and a little woodland character to a classic Tarte Tatin.

We’re serving this as part of our Autumnal Fine Dining evenings this Friday & Saturday, and we now have just two places left.

Fancy joining us? Check out the link below. 🌲🍐🍎