As part of our food series, The Modern Menu, we take a trip to the southwest to visit Tom Oxford and Oliver Coysh’s Exeter-based cafe, The Exploding Bakery. Childhood friends, the pair launched the open-plan bakery and cafe in 2011, serving up an enticing selection of traybakes and coffee in a 1930s railway building, as well as providing a wholesale cake business to other coffee shops. As demand has increased over the years, they’ve moved much of the wholesale business to a production kitchen two miles outside the city, but the original space remains at the heart of what they do, offering a delectable selection of seasonal lunches, cakes, coffee, and – naturally – their infamous brownies.

Here, as Oliver and Tom share a recipe for a wild garlic-wrapped baked chicken, they discuss their early experiences with food and tell us why seasonality is at the heart of what they do.

Oliver: “Although my parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, we always had good food. My dad was a trawlerman and my mum worked on local farms around us in Devon, so we’d get given lots of game and lamb. That sounds quite luxurious, but it was a matter of necessity really. My grandmother lived in the fishing town of Brixham and we’d catch prawns or winkles when we visited, which we’d boil, dip in malt vinegar and cover with black pepper.

“Sometimes, my parents would take their little wooden boat up the River Dart and we’d forage for cockles. One day we called in at The Maltsters Arms, which was owned by TV chef Keith Floyd, and he bought some cockles off me, which he then sold through his restaurant. I was in complete awe of him and after university, I ended up working as a researcher for Denim Productions, the production company that made all of his programmes. We were making loads of shows for people like Paul Rankin and Gary Rhodes, and it was this which really got me into food.”

Tom: “I grew up in London and my parents owned a health food shop. It was all woolly jumpers and wholegrains, and I was pretty much raised vegetarian. I’d turn up to school with a packed lunch of seitan pie and aniseed balls while all the other kids were eating normal sandwiches. I was a bit like the kid in About a Boy, minus the singing. I’d help in the shop, often in our packing area in the basement where we’d package up grains such as lentils and bulgur wheat. I guess the health food shop set my base level for what food was all about.”

Tom: “Oliver and I met at school when we were about 14 after my family moved down to Devon. We bonded over our love of films more than food, but we soon realised that we were both really interested in cooking. We lived together in a house share while Oliver was studying photography and filmmaking at the University of Plymouth, and we were constantly trying to push beyond the limits of the kitchen.

“I didn’t go to university, but worked as a kitchen porter in a fairly rubbish place that did microwave shepherd’s pies. It wasn’t exactly a road into food and it was actually my mum that got me into baking when she set up a juice bar in Exeter and asked if I’d make cakes. They went down well and I started to think about creating cakes for local cafes, made from really good ingredients. Oliver joined me and The Exploding Bakery has just grown from there. Our focus is still the same today when it comes to the quality of ingredients. Our butter comes from Cornwall, our eggs are from just down the road, and we’ve just started sourcing ground nut flours through a supplier that supports regenerative agriculture.”

Oliver: “Local, seasonal produce is completely paramount to what we do; in our view, the best thing you can do for the planet is buying organic and local. I think it’s good to eat less meat and dairy, but I’d much prefer to buy good, organic milk from a local farm than drinking soya milk that’s come from the other side of the world.

“At home, I get a weekly vegetable box from a local producer called Shillingford Organics, who also supply all the leaves, fruit and vegetables to our cafe. We basically buy whatever they have going. We sometimes top up through the week from local shops and markets, but we tend to steer clear of supermarkets. They’re more convenient, but the pay-off for me is the flavour of organic, locally grown vegetables. I still forage a bit, but I’m more of an opportunist than a committed forager. I once found loads of clams and mussels washed up on the beach – that was a happy day.

“We tend to cook a really good chicken at the weekend, which we buy from Bulstone Springs Farm in East Devon. They live in the forest by the sea and are left to hang for 10 days, so they have this amazing rich flavour. We’ll then make stock for the week from the carcass, often using it to boil pasta in.

“Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has done so much to teach us about how to eat meat sustainably and how to buy ingredients wisely. Fergus Henderson is another huge inspiration for me and I think he’s one of the most important people in British food at the moment. I admire the intelligence of his cooking, especially in terms of stripping everything back and keeping it simple.”

Tom: “Oliver reads a lot more cookbooks than I do, but I really like Nigel Slater and the way he writes about food in such a thoughtful way. David Chang’s Momofuku is another favourite, because it shows how much fun this can all be. Although we’re quite serious about our ingredients and doing things the right way, we do also try and have a good time along the way. We often use the cafe space for dinner parties and Oli even had Christmas in there once. For us, it’s really about opening our work lives up to our personal lives as the two are completely intertwined.

“When I cook at home, it’s all about enjoyment and comfort for me. Even if I’m just making something super simple like beans on toast, I’ll take my time over it and really enjoy the process. We have exactly the same approach at the cafe too – we want customers to feel comfortable and don’t want it to feel too worthy, or to impress our principles on our customers.

“That said, we really try and interrogate how we source ingredients and try and make them better and better – both in terms of quality and sustainability. Chocolate is a good example, as we use a lot of it, but obviously, we can’t buy it locally. Originally, we bought blended chocolate that had been imported from all over the world, but now we work with Luker Chocolate in Colombia, a 123-year-old B Corp company that is really onto it in terms of ethics and staff welfare. I visited a few years ago and was so amazed by their work.”

Oliver: “I always love going to farms and meeting producers directly, as you get a much better understanding of how food gets onto your plate. We’ve become divorced from where ingredients actually come from, so these experiences are really important.

“We live very humbly and we want the cafe to reflect this. We’ve recently collaborated with a company called Pollenize and sell packets of their wildflower seed, which help fight pollinator and insect decline. We’re also a member of 1% for the Planet, which gives a portion of our profits to environmental charities. For us, it’s about creating a business that has a bit more purpose and is relatively low impact when it comes to the environment. It’s all about creating deep, meaningful discussions.”

Oliver and Tom’s recipe for steamed chicken wrapped in wild garlic with local leaves

Oliver: “We used a beautiful Bulstone Springs chicken for this recipe, and cooked it low and slow. It is basically a wild chicken, so it’s quite gamey and the flavours are amazing. It’s worth using a meat thermometer to check that it’s cooked to about 60°C.

“The salad is made from local leaves and salad from Shillingford Organics, such as turnips, radishes, lollo rosso and chive flowers. To make the dressing, I macerated the onions in a bit of honey, salt and cider vinegar and then added hot chicken fat rather than olive oil. I’m quite proud of that addition, as it gives a delicious flavour.

“This is a bit of a take on Alain Passard’s Hay Baked Chicken, crossed with the idea of steaming the bird in banana leaves, but with wild garlic leaves instead. It’s garlic, butter and chicken – not much can go wrong. Replacing the oil with chicken fat in the dressing came about from running out of olive oil one day; somehow it manages to emulsify really well.”

Serves 4 to 6

1 whole chicken (the best you can find)
¼ block of butter
1 big bag of wild garlic
1 bunch of woody garden herbs
A pinch of salt

For the salad
1 onion
100ml vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
A few tbsp of hot chicken fat
Soft garden herbs
Green leaves
Radishes or turnips

Get a handful of decent sea salt and rub your chicken inside and out. Leave in the fridge overnight to boogie with some dry brining. The next day, remove the chicken from the fridge and pat dry with a towel; allow it to come up to room temperature before cooking.

Wash your wild garlic in plenty of water to get rid of any beasties or unwanted plants, like ivy. Don’t worry too much about drying it, as you want some steam.

Find a big pot, big enough to put your chicken in. If it doesn’t fit, chop the legs off and find a way to squeeze them in. Don’t put the chicken in yet.

Firstly, create a nest of garlic leaves in your pot and place your chicken in the middle. Press your butter on top of the bird. Add some garden herbs of your choosing and more wild garlic on top to protect the breast. Put the lid on and bake in a moderate oven for about an hour and a half, or up to two hours. Wild birds benefit from more gentle cooking as the leg meat can be a little tough. Rest the chicken in the pot for at least 15 minutes.

Whilst the chicken is cooking, thinly slice up your onion and macerate in half of the vinegar. Elderflower vinegar is great, but cider vinegar or wine vinegar works too. After 10 minutes or so, drain off the vinegar and discard, then add the remaining half, along with the salt and the honey.

When the chicken is rested, drain off the juices into a jug and spoon a few tablespoons of hot fat onto your macerated onions to make a bit of a dressing. Some English mustard in here works too if you want some piquancy for the sinuses. Spoon your onions and dressing over your salad and top with some soft garden herbs.

Take the rested chicken out of the pot and discard any wild garlic leaves that have stuck to it; you can eat them if you fancy or blend them into a broth made from the chicken bones to make a soup. Carve up and portion the legs and wings, place on a platter drizzled with any remaining juices from the pot. Serve with good bread or potatoes to soak up the juice.

Dig in!