Hannah Thomas: seasonal cooking and foraging expert
Hannah is a young chef with a passion for local, sustainable food. After studying at Durham university, she created a food blog, @herbsandwild, focusing on gut health, supporting local food growers and reducing food waste. She has also run nationwide supper clubs and a Herbs and Wild café in Wiltshire.
“I was connected to food from an early age,” says Hannah. “I would try to help my mum in the kitchen: I’d stand on a chair and watch everything. I have a really clear, happy memory of her baking a big fruitcake. She also had a veggie patch – I’d help her plant radishes and pick raspberries.
“Though I’d always loved to bake, I didn’t get into foraging properly until I went to Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland.” The school is run on an organic farm by Darina Allen, celebrity chef and pioneer of the “slow food movement”. Its ethos inspired Hannah to apply: “They grow literally everything on site, champion locally-sourced produce and meats, and cook seasonally. I could see how much their views aligned with my own.”
After Ballymaloe, Hannah joined The Ethicurean, one of Bristol’s top sustainable restaurants, and learned how to thrive in commercial kitchens, and how to cook as sustainably as possible. “I also learned loads about foraging,” she says. “The owners and head chef are really knowledgeable about it. There was an amazing garden on site, and I was given a lot of creative freedom to produce different recipes myself. It was a lot of hard work but it was the best experience, and inspired me to create my own supper clubs.”
Both Ballymaloe and The Ethicurean epitomise seasonal cooking, foraging and avoiding food waste. As Hannah highlights, they are sustainable for a number of reasons: “There are the obvious ones like food miles, but they also support and pay local producers and farmers, rather than industrial-scale corporations, so we can cultivate a sustainable and local food economy.”
Hannah believes that the growing number of seasonally-focused independent restaurants in the UK are paving the way. However, she doesn’t believe creating a more sustainable society should come down to the individual alone: “It should be an industry change - supermarkets should champion or stock as much local produce as possible, rather than all fruit and vegetables all year round.
“We definitely need more education about how to cook in general - especially cheaper, healthier meals, and to give people more confidence in using what’s available, or whatever they have left over in the fridge.”
Hannah focuses on reducing intake of animal products, buying produce from local markets as much as possible, and shopping organically. “I always suggest basing meals around vegetables, rather than meat or fish. If you can shop organically, you’re eating things that haven’t been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, which can pollute the environment and create more carbon emissions. Pesticides are also terrible for nature and wildlife.
“Organic and grass-fed dairy is definitely the best, or you can buy cheaper cuts of meat from local butchers and bulk them out with pulses or other plant proteins. Local markets are a great place to find high-welfare meats and seasonal produce. Also, consciously trying to eat fish and seafood which aren’t in the “top 5” – like salmon and prawns – is more sustainable than consuming overfished species.”
Though her Herbs & Wild café closed earlier this year, Hannah continues to post recipes and lifestyle tips regularly on Instagram. The Herbs & Wild ethos continues to thrive, and her ever-growing following reveals how fulfilling living and eating more sustainably can be.
Our Sustainable Food series features three superhero chefs - Tom Hunt @cheftomhunt , Xanthe Gladstone @xanthegladstone and Hannah Thomas @herbsandwild each prioritise the environment and individual farmers, growers and businesses throughout their cooking. You can follow along in our Sustainable Food series on our Instagram here.