Back in September, Monty and I welcomed chef Yotam Ottolenghi to our family home in Somerset to film a piece for the BBC 2 series ‘The Great British Food Revival’. We showed him around our walnut orchards, discussing the future of Britain’s walnut industry and the reasons behind our choice to grow this famous British nut.

We decided to start growing walnuts at Sharpham Park after studying old maps of our estate, dating as far back as the 1500s. It all started to fit the picture when we found walnuts, scallop shells and chicken bones neatly stashed in a 15th century wall, where a hard working mink had carefully disposed of the remains of his lunch and plastered them into the wall as he built it!

Although the majority of our 300 trees are of French origin, we have a growing number of British trees, helped along by our resident squirrels. Sadly at present, a large proportion of Britain’s walnuts are actually imported from abroad, despite the fact that our increasingly warm climate lends itself perfectly to walnut growing. Over time, we hope to be able to compete with the Chinese and Californian imports to help put fresh and local produce back on the plates of Britain.

Describing fresh walnuts as a ‘party in the mouth’, Ottolenghi took a sample from the farm and turned them into a delicious chicken dish, ‘Miso Chicken with Grapes and Walnuts’. This, alongside various other recipes for walnuts, cobnuts and cherries can be seen on the programme.

My son Freddie's amazing walnut pesto, which we served with our spelt pasta, sadly ended up on the cutting room floor, but you can see it in our next blog - it was recently featured in Hello! Magazine.

If you missed the programme, you can find it on BBC iPlayer.