The recipe: 1 food critic, 1 virgin farmer (either will do, as long as he's fresh and green), 1 sweet-natured Welsh Black bullock and his misanthropic half-brother, 4 psychopathic ducks, a dozen belligerent and bewildered sheep, 5 pigs with eating disorders, 6 geese with anger management issues, 30 free-range chickens prone to petty squabbling. Method: Place the ingredients in a lush West Wales landscape, add a dash of naivety, a tablespoon of idealism and a liberal sprinkling of incompetence. Gently warm over a flame of passion, stir in the help of some friends and finally season with a little ridicule.
Simon Wright is one of Britain's leading food critics. He is a former editor of the AA Restaurant Guide and has worked as the Restaurant Consultant on every episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. He is also a partner in the award-winning restaurant Y Polyn, near his home in west Wales. All these things mean he is well qualified to comment on the quality of the food we eat. His credentials as a farmer are, however, far less impressive. In The Wright Taste Simon learns the realities of farming the hard way, drawing on the experience and support of a series of obliging but sceptical friends as he struggles with rebellious sheep, ailing chickens and bloody-minded cattle. It's a demanding, comical and sometimes emotional struggle to try and produce meat that will satisfy some of Britain's top chefs - and, ultimately his harshest critic, himself. "Running a farm? Getting up at 4.30 in the morning? You're having a laugh."Gordon Ramsay "He's got a great palate and a real sense of what's good and what's not" Heston Blumenthal
The Wright Tast - Recipes and Other Stories is the story of one man's meat and how to cook it