Local Food Heroes - Stephen Wheeler talks to Richard Cook of Severn & Wye Smokery
There are families living on the banks of the river Severn who have been fishing Britain’s longest river for over 400 years. Nowadays they net and hook around 1800 wild salmon in a season, and anywhere between six to a hundred tonnes of baby eels or ‘elvers’ on their incredible return journey to the Sargasso Sea. A proportion of the catch goes to the Severn and Wye Smokery at Chaxhill near Westbury on Severn, owned by fishery expert Richard Cook.
Over coffee in the smokery’s stylish delicatessen and fishmongers, Richard told me that he set up the business when he was just 18. “I worked in my father’s small fish delivery company after leaving school, but quickly decided I had to do my own thing.” Fast forward 30 years and the business now has sales worth £14m a year, and employs over 100 people in Chaxhill and in their South Wales depot.
Around 60 tonnes a year of farmed and wild salmon are cured in Severn and Wye’s four smokeries, and sent to exclusive retailers and hotels, and to top chefs including Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White. They also smoke herring, mackerel, eel and trout. Spectators at this years Wimbledon tennis championships will be eating ‘skippies’ – smoked sardine fillets from Severn and Wye. Richard told me that they only use sustainable deciduous oak for the wood chippings in the smokery. Last year they felled 5 trees and planted 250.
Elvers, traditionally caught on the night tides, used to be part of the peasant diet along the banks of the Severn – and a serving would have filled their pint beer mug. A pint of elvers today would cost Gloucestershire peasants around £200, but most are now farmed – wild elvers being used to establish the farmed stocks. I asked Richard for his favourite elver recipe. “Fry off some bacon cubes in lard. Remove the bacon from the pan. Tip in the washed elvers and fry till they turn white. Break in some beaten egg, the bacon, and cook till just set.”
“We like to think of ourselves as one of chefs best kept secrets,” said Richard. I think Severn and Wye is one of Gloucestershire’s best kept food secrets.
To see the actual article, click here
27th March 2010
Richard Cook with some fresh elvers
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