Chef's Choice
Nigel Haworth is the Michelin-starred head chef at Lancashire’s Northcote Manor in the Ribble Valley.
His love of Pennine Lancashire is clear, from the landscape to the food and his beloved Blackburn Rovers football club.
He advises getting on your bike to see a little more of the region: “When you walk, run and cycle, it’s like the blinkers are taken off and you see so much more. When you actually walk and cycle and go to one of the little cafés, everyone connects again.
I think that’s where my food is important. It connects. The land influences so much of how I cook. I’m very much inspired by the feel of Lancashire and the raw beauty of my surroundings.
I worked in Switzerland for five years so I’ve seen a European side and that’s influenced the way I approach cooking, but I can go over to Tarleton and see one of the best growing areas in the country; I can go up onto Beacon Fell and get fantastic cheeses and then I can go into the Trough of Bowland where all of my beef and lamb comes from.”
He continues: “The food heritage of this part of Lancashire is very strong. Nowadays, people are interested in provenance – where things come from, why they’re there, what’s the heritage? That really interests me. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get the British White Cattle back to this area. It’s the indigenous breed, so I want to see them back. They were at Whalley Abbey in the 1600s.”
There are lots of successful businesses in this part of Lancashire says Nigel and he puts it down to location: “There are lots of positives about running a business where we are. It gives me a great deal of pride that Craig [Bancroft, co-proprietor of Northcote Manor] and myself have built a business over 25 years and that people associate with it and want to visit us.
We fell in love with the place first, we didn’t go there to make money, that’s the truth, we fell in love with the place and we made a business out of it later.
I’m here to stay now. Even if I were lucky enough to make loads of money, I wouldn’t move away. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else for the world. It’s where my heart is, it’s where my food roots are and I’ve so much that I still want to develop. It was never the masterplan to come back, it just happened… and then it felt right.
Every part on the UK has its characteristics and its intriguing bits and Lancashire’s no different.
Lancashire is one of those places that was stereotyped by many visions of the 1940s and ’50s and that’s stayed with us, the cobbled streets and the chimneys and the clogs but that is part of our heritage.
It’s this heritage that links into the raw beauty of Lancashire and makes it into the wonderful place it is. You’ve got to do a bit of digging and a bit of searching around, but there’s so much going on around here. The intrigue of the area is there and it’s not that deep under the surface.”
Northcote Manor
Langho
www.northcotemanor.com