In 1988, on the advice of Saatchi & Saatchi, the V&A ran a series of campaigns declaring itself as, ‘An ace caff, with quite a nice museum attached’, asking the public, ‘Where else do they give you £100,000,000 worth of objets d’art free with every egg salad?’

If that seemed like an outrageous proposition at the time, the only thing shocking about it now is the mention of an egg salad – we’ve all come to expect something slightly more stimulating from our museums and galleries, haven’t we? Just about every cultural institution in the country has felt the effects of that V&A campaign (thankfully), and we now live in a world in which an eye-opening exhibition at the ICA, for example, can be followed up by lunch at Margot Henderson’s Rochelle Canteen.

At Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset outpost, the merging of gallery and restaurant has, itself, been turned into an art form. Along with world-class, crowd-drawing exhibitions, the restaurant Steve Horrell runs with his wife Jules, Roth Bar & Grill, has become something of a destination, lauded by locals, restaurant critics and DFLs (Down From Londoners) alike for its ultra-local, sustainable approach (90 per cent of ingredients come from less than 15 miles away), gutsy, over-fire cooking (the clue’s in the name), and restaurant-cum-gallery interior (there’s a Henry Moore on the wall).

Here, we meet chef Steve to talk to him about how home cooking has informed his work, what he cooks for his family in his downtime and his dish for Lyme bay scallops, chorizo, samphire, spicy tomatoes and crispy breadcrumbs.

Steve: “Cooking at home should be easy, and you should only do as much as you feel comfortable with. It’s better to do a small number of nice dishes, rather than stretching yourself. Keep it simple and, if you’re cooking on fire and things get a bit charred, people will forgive you; don’t worry too much!

“Last night my family and I had roast chicken and salad, with tomatoes from the greenhouse. We try to eat well. Sometimes we’re lazy but, even then, you can still eat good food with some nice cheese and cured meats. Other times we like to make the effort and if we’ve got stuff to use up from the kitchen garden, we’ll definitely make the most of it.

“I never plate individual plates of food at home. It’s probably not the best thing if you’re trying to lose weight, but I always try to do platters, bowls or roasting trays of food and put it in the middle of the table so everyone can help themselves. I often go overboard, but I also try and save a bit too for the next day. So, if we’ve had roast chicken, we’ll get a soup out of it or, if there’s a bit more, we’ll manage to make a salad.

“We’re a daytime restaurant, open Tuesday to Sunday, but we also open Friday and Saturday nights. I rarely like to eat after a Friday or Saturday night in the kitchen – most of the time it’s just a beer and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps when I get home before bed!

“When Jules, my wife, and I have been working, we like to eat quick things. When we’re not working nights, we get back home at about half six after we’ve picked the kids up and I don’t want to be spending a whole evening in the kitchen cooking. We go for quick options like a chicken Caesar salad, a quick steak with portobello mushrooms, or we’ll do a stir fry with vegetables, noodles and fish.

“We’re always off on Sundays so we’ll normally do a big roast, or, if the sun’s out, we’ll do something on the fire outside, like a fish, half lobster or spatchcock chicken.

“My favourite cookbooks to use at home are Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California, which is a restaurant my friend runs in LA. I love all the River Cafe books for that style of Italian cooking, and it’s a good reference for how to use up leftover stuff from the garden.

“Anna Del Conte’s books are great too. She’s a local and is writing a foreword to our book that is coming out in spring next year. I love her style of cooking, which is very simple but is about getting the most amount of flavour from the ingredients. The River Cottage books are like bibles for all sorts of things, curing and cooking with meat especially.

“My childhood wasn’t a massive foodie experience. As a youngster, I hated things like peas, broad beans, Brussels sprouts and those sort of things. As a kid, you push those vegetables to the side of your plate and wait until the very end to finish them off, after you’ve eaten everything else.

“Now when I do Brussels sprouts I cook them with pancetta, chestnuts and cream and they’re delicious, rather than the cause of retching at the end of a meal. Peas, broad beans and artichokes we always love and look forward to them coming into season – we use them a lot at home and at the restaurant. Childhood memories of courgettes for me where thick, boiled things, whereas they should be cooked quickly over a grill or eaten raw. They’re delicious that way.

“My children don’t have the same problems with broad beans and courgettes as I did – they have them how I like now. They’re having a very different food experience to what I had!

“It wasn’t all boiled vegetables, though. My parents used to make really good curries at the weekend. One of my grandmothers lived down in Cornwall so she used to make a ton of pasties when we went to visit her, which was something we always looked forward to. My other grandma did a great Sunday lunch, with lots of dripping and nicely roasted meat. So those are my home cooking experiences.

“I think those memories have informed what I do now. They’re simple things done well, and that’s what we try and do here, and at home too.

“My general approach to food is to do rustic, seasonal, fresh food with local or homegrown produce. We have Durslade farm attached to the restaurant, so we have all our own pork and lamb, and we know exactly where those animals have been grazing, what they’ve eaten and when they were killed.

“It’s the same if a supplier comes to the back door with a tray of mushrooms: it’s good to know the story behind the food and where it’s coming from. We don’t like our food to be too fussy, and really, it’s just about balancing the basics of things like texture, fat, heat, saltiness, sweetness, and acidity.

“I started working on fires and grills about eight or nine years ago. We were asked to do a big summer party in Bruton for the whole of the town, which we still do today. We cooked a whole lamb and loads of chickens, just for ease and because we had a lot of mouths to feed. I’m also really inspired by the Argentina chef Francis Mallmann, who works a lot with open-fire cooking – I’ve read through all his books and watched him on Netflix, so that’s where my interest really came from.

“We’ve tried to recreate that Argentine style of cooking with fire here at the restaurant, and we have a series of cooking equipment that we’ve designed and made to cook with fire, that we use at home as well. We can go home, stick a fire on and cook very simple things. If we have people over, or even if it’s just the family, we’ll cook on a small fire. It’s a nice way of interacting with people when you’re cooking because people will always gather around a fire.

“We’ve had a big push on sustainability over the last couple of years. And, really, it’s just about addressing simple things like getting Bruton Dairy, our dairy supplier, who are just across the field to the restaurant, to deliver milk in big milk churns rather than cartons.

“We turn off our gas when we’re not using it; we’ve asked suppliers not to deliver in plastic bags; we’ve got a food waste bin; we collect all our rainwater and use it on our veg garden and all the feed for the animals is grown on the farm, so we’re self-sufficient in that way. We feed all our kitchen scraps to the chickens, and we’re doing a big hit on plastic containers in the restaurant, swapping them for metal ones when they need replacing. None of it’s that hard, but it makes a difference.”

Steve’s recipe for Lyme bay scallops in the half shell, chorizo, samphire, spicy tomatoes and crispy breadcrumbs

Serves six

12 scallops in the half shell (get the fishmonger to clean them)
150g chorizo (cut out of the skin)
250g samphire (blanched)
240g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 pinches of spice mix (dried chilli, dried coriander seeds and fennel seeds, crushed)
1 clove garlic (sliced)
6 tablespoons olive oil
100g crispy breadcrumbs
Cracked black pepper
Maldon sea salt
1 lemon

First up, light a fire. Start with the small dry kindling wood followed by seasoned split logs, then put the next lot of logs around the fire so that they start to dry out and will catch a lot quicker.

Now place a grill over the fire and place a large, heavy-bottom saucepan on it. Add three tablespoons of olive oil and get it smoking.

Add the garlic, followed by two good pinches of spice mix and then chopped tomatoes. Reduce this down by half over the fire and season.

Next, season and oil the scallops, then stoke the fire so that you have some nice hot coals. Place the scallops meat-side down on to the grill, leaving for two minutes before turning over and removing from the grill onto a tray.

Quickly divide the chorizo into twelve, putting a bit in each scallop, along with a spoon full of the spiced tomato sauce and a few bits of samphire.

Place the scallops back on the grill, keeping them in their shell, like it’s a mini saucepan as this will keeps all the juices in.

Sprinkle the crispy breadcrumbs over and bake on the grill for five minutes. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze over the scallops, then remove from the grill and serve in the shells.