‘That’s it, you just want to rake the surface and you’ll find them lying underneath.’
Stood in my wellington boots, with the sun warming my back, I feel like a farmer. But this isn’t soil I’m turning, the field in which I am foraging is a huge lunar landscape of damp sand, bright weed and craggy rocks.
‘We’re looking for the Praire clams,’ explains my guide Dominic Jones, a director of Jersey Pottery, one of the island’s most prestigious catering companies (and, as the name implies, the local pottery). ‘We can cook those up with garlic and they’ll be delicious. I also want you to find some of the carpet-shell clams for our spaghetti vongole.’
I’ve come to the island for the inaugural Food Festival and have spent an invigorating week visiting farms with the chefs who champion their produce, learning about what makes Jersey milk, butter and cream so delicious, sampling local ale and talking to Jersey cidermakers. However, it is this ‘Fruits of the Sea Forage’ ringed in red pen in my festival brochure, that I have been most looking forward to – particularly the bit where we get to eat what we’ve caught afterwards.
Jersey has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world, which causes the island almost to double in size at low tide. Our little group, which is about a 50/50 mix of visitors and locals, meet at La Rocque slip in the east of the island, where our guides arm us with rakes, picks and nets before leading us down the beach towards the sliver of sea far off on the horizon.
‘Sometimes I’ll wade out while the tide is still going down,’ Dominic explains as we walk. ‘That gives me the maximum amount of time fishing before the tide turns and I have to come back.’ We wade through saltwater rivulets as we chat, avoiding tangles of slippery seaweed and grinding a plethora of shells under our wellies.
After a half-hour heading out to sea the wall along the coast road looks like a crayon line on the horizon behind, yet we are still nowhere near the water’s edge. We are in a hinterland teeming with ancient life – sea slugs, anemones, spider crabs and Jersey’s precious ormer, the sought-after shellfish otherwise known as abalone.
‘We won’t be able to take that,’ says Dominic, pointing to a specimen clinging to a rock. ‘It’s not the season.’
Throughout our forage he is careful to monitor the size of the shellfish we can gather, so that we don’t collect anything too young. Sustainability is a buzzword I hear a lot during my week on the island. A few days ago at the Crab Shack, a restaurant on the edge of St Brelade’s Bay, I heard how their local fisherman Kevin Holden checks his catch to avoid undersized fish that haven’t had a chance to breed. It makes sense to look after what you’ve got, both ecologically and economically. ‘There’s no need for us to import any fish,’ says head chef Tony Dorris. ‘It’s all here in our waters.’
Tony is not the only chef intent on knowing where his fish comes from. Andrew Baird, head chef at Longueville Manor hotel, the beautifully converted granite manor house where I am staying, explains during a cookery demonstration that he will only buy line-caught sea bass on principle, and reckons Longueville Manor is the only hotel on the island to serve dive-caught scallops all year round. ‘There’s a man who sells them at Bonne Nuit,’ proffers an enthusiastic member of the audience of assembled foodies. ‘That’s Bob, that’s my diver,’ says Andrew. ‘Guess how much we spend on scallops each year?’ The intrigued audience start calling out suggestions, but none come close. ‘Forty thousand pounds.’ proclaims Andrew. There’s a chatter of surprise, and I start to reconsider my career.
Jersey itself is having that effect on me. Everywhere I go I meet healthy, happy people who are incredibly passionate about the island they live on and the food they produce or prepare. I get pangs of jealousy as I trudge around the farm of Classic Herd with the Michelin-starred chef Mark Jordan, from Ocean Restaurant at The Atlantic Hotel, at a ‘Meet the Supplier’ event. Yes, it’s a hard life, up at 4.30am to milk the cows and all that, but it is difficult not to romanticise it when you see the care that husband-and-wife team, Darren and Julia Quénault, take in producing the best-quality meat and dairy and in nurturing the relationship they have with their customers. ‘I love working with Darren,’ says Mark. ‘I can tell a guest the name of the cow their milk has come from, or how long the cheese has matured.’
The Quénaults are the first islanders to break away from the Jersey Dairy co-operative and produce their own milk products. And Julia is the first Jersey farmer to make cheese. ‘For an island that is so famous for its milk it is surprising that we have no tradition of cheesemaking,’ explains Julia. ‘I haven’t been able to find any historical references to it either, perhaps everyone was too busy making cider.’ Julia now produces some excellent cheeses including a soft cheese that has a stronger flavour than a Brie without the kick of a Camembert and a Golden Blue, which won silver at the World Cheese Awards in 2010.
I get similar pangs during a glorious sunny morning at the Fungi Delecti farm high above the sea on the north coast on another ‘Meet the Supplier’ tour, this time with Richard Allen from Tassili, the fine-dining restaurant at St Helier’s Grand Jersey Hotel and Spa. I am amazed to discover a Jersey farmer growing shiitake mushrooms using traditional Japanese methods. ‘We don’t grow anything usual or easy,’ explains Jamie Racjan, a charismatic man in his mid-30s, as we walk through shady woodland towards the greenhouses filled with spawned logs. ‘We like to stick to niche products; gourmet products that meet the demands of chefs like Richard.’
Jamie grows his mushrooms on European oak, which he gets from northern France. He drills holes in the logs, packs the holes with spawn and then leaves the log for two years until the fungi have taken hold. He then kick-starts the fruiting by giving the log a blast of cold, to trick it into thinking it is going from winter into spring. ‘Most European and American farmers grow shiitake mushrooms on bales of straw that are induced with a chemical and they fruit four or five days later. This is a long, time-consuming way of growing, but it gives an excellent product.’
Alongside his mushrooms, Jamie also produces baby salad leaves, micro vegetables and asparagus, and people drive from around the island to see if the stall at the end of his drive has surplus duck eggs for sale – the ones he supplies to the restaurants are always less than a day old.
Both ‘Meet the Supplier’ events ended in exquisite lunches cooked using the produce collected. Perhaps that explains why they were among the finest meals I have ever eaten, though I should also mention in dispatches the excellent, plain and simple sausages I sample in a local orchard quaffing back local cider. The contrasts sum up this foodie feast of a festival, and the island itself, which heartily embraces everything from fine dining to honest to goodness food that is simple, tasty and wholesome.
Meanwhile, back in our ‘Fruits of the Sea’ forage, we walk proudly up the beach with our net sacks full of clams, oysters and a crab or two. After a quick dash back to Longueville Manor for a swim and a freshen up I make my way to the Castle Green pub overlooking magnificent Mont Orgueil Castle in Gorey. On arrival, I’m served an ice-cold glass of Muscadet and greet my fellow foragers like old friends. On the table is a huge platter of our clams and oysters, which we douse with lemon and knock back. We are then treated to course after course of our shellfish served in a variety of ways, including a delicious spaghetti vongole made with our carpet-shells.
We even get to eat some lobster, which I don’t recall anyone catching. We sit at our table outside talking and laughing and eating until the moon is high in the sky. Then one of my new friends gives me a lift back to the hotel and we arrange to meet again tomorrow to wander around the stalls of the weekend food fair in St Helier. I can’t think of a more perfect way to get acquainted with local people, local culture and local food.