The Watercress Company has joined forces with a raft of top quality chefs, some with Michelin stars, to provide our hard working doctors and nurses with mouth-watering restaurant quality food as part of the Heroes initiative supporting NHS staff across the country. With the majority of restaurants closed, chefs are offering their services for free, while suppliers from across the country are donating their goods to ‘Help Them, Help Us’. NHS workers had identified access to healthy food while working long hours as a key issue and this is one way that the food industry could help.

As well as supplying freshly harvested British watercress, The Watercress Company is providing other fresh salad leaves including spinach and rocket. Meanwhile from sister business The Brace of Butchers, recently judged Best Butcher at the 2020 Farm Shop & Deli Awards, the finest quality meat has been made available.

Tom Amery, MD of The Watercress Company said:”We’re delighted to be involved in such a worthwhile cause. Providing nutritious fresh watercress, salad and the finest quality meats to be made into spectacular meals for NHS workers is the least we can do. They are guaranteed a well deserved treat, cooked by some of the UK’s finest chefs!”

Here’s how we’re helping to feed our NHS Heroes with nutritious and filling meals served with gratitude and love:

EVENT 1

After a long and distinguished career, establishing himself as one of the great Italian chefs working in Britain today, in 2017 chef Francesco Mazzei set up Radici in Islington to pay homage to his Calabrian roots serving up pizza, pasta and rustic dishes typical of the region. It was to this restaurant that he had delivered kilos and kilos of the freshest watercress and spinach donated by The Watercress Company to make hundreds of portions of that classic Italian favourite, pesto and pasta.. Over the last week, Francesco and his team delivered these and other dishes to the canteen at Mile End Hospital, a canteen being used by staff members across the St Bart’s Health Alliance in London.

Talking as he prepared the meals, Francesco said: “We’ve made everything fresh, the pasta made fresh, all the veg is fresh. We’re so proud to be helping the NHS with this, so it’s going to be good. We really hope the NHS staff enjoy.”

Associate director of culture change and wellbeing lead at Barts Health, Geraldine Cunningham, said she was delighted that staff members were being treated with such tasty, wholesome meals.

“Francesco and his team have already delivered 900 meals over the last week and is delivering another 150 each day this week which is absolutely fantastic. Colleagues are really enjoying them as they come in a refrigerated van, cold with heating instructions and ingredients listed.”

EVENT 2

Galton Blackiston has held a Michelin star for 21 years at his leading country hotel, Morston Hall in Norfolk. On Thursday 7 May, Galton will be cooking in the kitchens of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn where he will be serving food to the 200 NHS staff based there.

Galton says: “It’s a real honour and pleasure to cook a morale boosting lunch for the front line workers, for the staff and the patients at this fantastic hospital.”

Galton opted to make a daube of beef, a slowly braised beef dish, which he is serving with a rustic ratatouille, Norfolk asparagus and a very rich mashed potato. Having thanked all the suppliers who willingly donated the ingredients for free, Galton added: “I can’t wait to get in the kitchen and do something really nice and simple….. simple, simple!”

It may be simple but for 200, it’s big! Galton needed a whopping 50lbs of beef skirt donated by the Brace of Butchers and to allow for the cooking time for that quantity of meat and veg, Galton and his team were already in the kitchens at Morston Hall prepping everything the day before, ready to take it into the hospital kitchens the following day.

Amanda- Jane Weir, Head of Staff Engagement at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital said: “We are very excited to welcome Galton to our kitchens. It will be a huge morale boost for the staff and patients. Our staff have been working incredibly hard over the last six weeks and often eat sporadically and, I think it is fair to say, also nutritionally poorer than they would normally.

“Galton’s dish is certainly a feel-good homely dish which will put a smile on an awful lot of faces.”

EVENT 3

Delighted with the response to his watercress pesto and pasta, Francesco Mazzei is keen to continue providing meals for the staff and patients cared for by Bart’s Health Alliance. He is taking delivery of around 30kg of minced beef and venison from the Brace of Butchers, 25kg of Spinach, 25kg of Watercress and 10kg of wild rocket all from The Watercress Company while MD, Tom Amery went foraging in local woods in Dorset to gather wild garlic for the dish.

We wait to hear, salivating, what culinary delight Francesco will conjure up with this delicious range of ingredients to present to our NHS heroes shortly.

Top Nosh from Top Chefs for our NHS Heroes