A woman’s touch

Whether Emily Watkins would negate or even resent this suggestion I have no idea, but as more female chefs head up the nation’s top kitchens – led by the fine example of Angela Hartnett at The Connaught and Murano, Clare Smyth MBE (chef patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay who became the first female British chef to hold and retain three Michelin stars) and Monica Galetti (Le Gavroche) – it proves that the tide is turning, in what has, until now, been predominantly a man’s world.

The ebb has already reached Oxfordshire where the likes of Lucie Greenwood at The Milkshed, Sonya Kidney at Killingworth Castle and Emily Watkins at The Kingham Plough are flying the flag and showing us, and the next generation of girls, what is possible.

That Emily is married with four young children and still creating the kind of food and seasonal menus that take my breath away, should quell any cynics.

The Kingham Plough is a surprisingly quaint place though, in this world of increasingly luxurious gastro pubs, and as such, honestly, rather than artfully, retro, and more of a dining room.

The menu is equally as modest and you can eat from the bar menu, the a la carte, or mix and match, it’s very relaxed – the simplest sounding dish given a revival, each ingredient being perfected and refined to an nth degree, bringing it alive visually and gastronomically.

The meal itself though surpassed itself. From the moment the crispy homemade loaf arrived on our table complete with the yellowest butter I’ve ever seen, I knew we were in for a treat.

The hot crunchy pig’s ear fritters came with a colourful tartare sauce complete with crunchy capers, gherkins and nasturtiums, the tasty flowers being cycled three miles from Eve’s Edible Flowers in Chastleton, providing the perfect zing, bite and seasonal accompaniment.

Emily’s sourcing is famously painstaking. She can tell you where each component of every dish comes from. The goat’s kid chop and confit shoulder (£25) for example hails from Just Kidding in Stroud which hand rears goat kids otherwise discarded at birth. The same applies to veal.

The resulting heart and liver were pan-fried in garlic and rosemary, the chop and loin brined and then cooked in a sous vide, the confit shoulder soaked overnight in beef dripping, then framed by a fanned courgette and heritage tomato tart – not only a painting on a plate, but a masterclass in meat execution.

The globe artichoke ‘thousand leaves’ didn’t arrive as the traditional whole with dipping sauce, but as a galette, layered with artichoke and shallot between light crispy Feuilles de Brick pastry, served with a rich Cacklebean dressing (the eggs from Patrick in Stow) – piquant, rich, and delicate. We also tried the Cotswold rarebit with homemade sourdough from the bar menu (£6), more like a cheese fondue with toast fingers.

But despite the excellence of what came before, for me, my lasting impression will always be the blackberry and apple baked alaska (£8) which sounded divine in principle but tasted better – the plump, moist, eggshell crisp, sharp, sweet dessert presented like an ornate cupcake.

My companion’s white chocolate burnt custard with raspberry ice cream and raspberry macaroon (£8) was similar to a crème brûlée, while the macaroon and ice cream were sharp with raspberry – it turns out Emily dehydrates the egg and then rehydrates it with raspberry essence. She is still experimenting with the macaroon, currently on trial 50 and although delicious, she is still not happy with the consistency, which I prefer – more meringuey chew than powdery biscuit.

The perfect lunch then in every sense of the word, and despite all the new, ambitious, jostling contenders currently jumping on the gastro/Cotswold pub bandwagon, for me Emily is still right up there at the front, chief wagon master, and a woman too. Progress indeed.