Fish Restaurants And Mayonnaise

I am glad that Nathan Outlaw has been awarded a second star in the Michelin Great Britain and Ireland Guide 2011. The former Rick Stein acolyte has worked hard for his success in his small kitchen in Rock, Cornwall.

His passion for cooking is legendary among chefs in the West Country. When I was down there, his friends told how he loved food so much he would get up early on his one day off a week just to cook them a fancy lunch, and often take hours doing it.

The other reason I’m pleased is because he has been recognised for his handling of simple dishes like cod with tartare sauce and clams. So many Michelin restaurants feel they have to crowd the plate with complex ingredients and techniques that it is good to see the judges hailing a chef who has confidence in keeping dishes simple and tasty.

Derek Bulmer, who helped edit the guide, said: “He has a particular flair with fish. He doesn’t overcomplicate. He knows when a dish is done.”

The only shame is Outlaw’s small restaurant at St Enodoc Hotel is the only Michelin-starred fish restaurant in Britain – which is a pretty poor show for a land surrounded by water and some of the world’s best seafood.

With my love of seafood, and hope of one day owning a fish restaurant near the sea, Outlaw’s kitchen is a place I’d love to cook in. But maybe that will just be a dream. In the mean-time, I’m still getting my knife skills up to speed before my cheffing stint in California. I’ve spent a couple of days working at a restaurant in land-locked Buckinghamshire.

It’s a far cry from St Enodoc, and there are no beautiful harbour views, but the fish arrives fresh from Cornwall and the dishes are simple and delicious. It reminds me of some of the eateries you get in places like Lagos or Le Touquet for some reason.

Perhaps it is the mayonnaise? Every decent fish restaurant should serve an unctuous mayonnaise, even if it is just to dip prawns in or smear over a fruits de mers. The mayonnaise I’ve been making there takes me straight back to summers in France every time I try it.

I know there are loads of well-worn recipes for how to make it, but I thought I’d share it anyway. In fact, there seem to be as many recipes for mayonnaise as there are theories on where the name came from.

Some believe it was created when the Duke of Richelieu took Port Mahon on Minorca in 1756, and named mahonnaise. But for my money, that seems pretty lame. I can’t believe that the skilled chefs who worked in mediaeval courts hadn’t come up with a simple emulsion of egg yolk and oil before that.

Others think it comes from the French verb manier (to stir), or from the Old French word moyeu, meaning egg yolk. Some believe it was invented in the town of Bayonne, and originally known as bayonnaise sauce. I don’t know. Perhaps the chef who invented it had a cold at the time?

Anyway, here’s my method. It’s a belter...

Mayonnaise

5 eggs
Salt and white pepper
1 heaped tsp English mustard
1 tsp paprika
1.5 pints vegetable oil

Take the eggs out of the fridge about an hour before you make it. Break four egg yolks into a soup bowl containing the mustard and leave for ten minutes. Put one whole egg into a mixing bowl and beat with an electric hand whisk, on its lowest setting. Add the yolks, mustard, paprika and seasoning until you’ve got a bright yellow custard.

Then slowly trickle in the oil – it’s essential you do this slowly or it may split - until you’ve got a thick, light-yellow mayonnaise. The amount of oil varies, and depends on the size of the eggs etc, so you may need no more than a pint.

By adding certain ingredients like anchovy, watercress, caviar, garlic, capers etc. you can make sauces like remoulade, maltaise, Cambridge etc. Our place is very simple – we use tartare sauce for fish, and marie-rose for crab and prawn cocktails and smoked salmon cornucopias. The recipes are here:

Tartare sauce

There is a lot of debate in professional kitchens about what should go into tartare sauce, and I once fell out with a chef over it in spectacular fashion, but this recipe is a good one.

1 bowl of mayonnaise (using five eggs as above)
250g large gherkins, drained
1/2 large Spanish onion
salt and black pepper
2 tbsps chopped chives
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2 hard-boiled egg yolks

Make the mayonnaise as above. Chop the gherkins and onion finely, and then add with the rest of the ingredients. Season to taste.

Marie-rose sauce

1 bowl of mayonnaise (as above)
3 tbsps tomato ketchup
½ tbsp Worcester sauce
1 tbsp brandy
1 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
Dash of Tabasco
Sprinkle of paprika to serve

Add all the ingredients, mix well and chill. The dish can be improved by rubbing a spoon with a halved piece of garlic and then stirring the sauce with it.

Crumble In The Jungle

One day I heard those golden words I’d been waiting so long to hear. Four tables ordered at the same time, and I’d got those out, and was dealing with a fifth, when I scuttled over to the fryer to rescue some wontons.

Graham was frantically plating up two sea bass, and flashing two steaks under the grill. He spotted the four goat’s cheese parcels in my hand, and a look of alarm spread over his sunken brow. He attempted a smile. Then he whispered those precious words...

“Can you slow those up a bit, or I’ll really be in the shit...”

I felt like saying ‘what’ like I normally did, and asking him to repeat it. I stared at him, remembering all the insults and strops I’d suffered. I went back to my board and pretended to be busy for a few minutes, then I chucked the parcels in. Graham nodded at me en route. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d been called ‘chef’ at Rick Stein’s, and I cherished every moment of it.

Jules had found himself a new girlfriend. He started taking weekends off, and came in full of tales of his sexual exploits.

“Posh girls are so dirty,” he kept boasting.

One weekend his girlfriend decided to delay her return to Brighton, and he took the Monday night off as well. And that's when it happened. A table of three had come in and ordered starters as mains - pork belly, wild mushroom risotto, and a scallop salad. I knocked out the dishes and called in the Dereks.

Cathy held up my pork dish and examined it under the lights, and then made a comment about the scallops. She was really beginning to irritate me.

“Don’t we usually serve the scallops in a circle round the salad, not a square?”

“That’s for the scallops with vierge sauce,” I snapped, “the salad is served in a square!”

She looked in no hurry to move.

“Are you sure?”

Of all the waiting staff, Cathy caused the most friction in the kitchen. There was something in her nature that just stuck in your gut. It wasn’t just the greediness and the way she stole food from plates, it was the sarcasm and coldness.

“Just fucking take them will you!” I shouted.

Her reaction was immediate and explosive. She clearly saw me as nothing more than a jumped-up commis.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do you fucking prick!”

Her doughy face turned a horrible bright purple. Stewie, who was doing pastry that night, joined in.

“Look don’t just stand there with the plates in your hand, put them back under the lights if you’re not going to take them!”

“I’m not going to take that from him!” Cathy wailed.

“CUSTOMERS ARE WAITING!”

Cindy ran in, and the plates disappeared. Cathy was ham-faced and sullen for the rest of service, no doubt planning her attack. Then another fight broke out.

Cindy asked Stewie why there wasn’t any chocolate sauce on one of the plates, and he yelled at her, and told her to “get the fucking plates out”. I was clearing down with Marcus when one of the desserts came back. Cathy looked absolutely delighted as she relayed the news.

“They said the apples in the crumble were too sour...”

They had hardly touched the dish. Marcus tried it. His face crumpled. Even the ice cream couldn’t save it.

“Helsta hasn’t cooked the apples down enough!” moaned Stewie.

It hardly seemed worth mentioning that she'd forgotten the sugar as well. We sent out a free dessert, and were standing out the back, sharing a smoke, when the news came.

“The table that sent the apple crumble back were AA inspectors,” said Cindy coldly.

“Bollocks! There were three of them!” said Stewie.

“Well the woman said they don’t usually go out together...”

A cloud of depression descended. Cindy and Cathy were enjoying every second of it.

“She asked whether the head chef was there and we said it was his night off. So she said she would speak to him another day.”

I drove Stewie home that night and we went through all the dishes they’d had. Most of them had been cooked by me.

“Did you put parmesan in the risotto,” he asked.

“I even put mushroom powder in to pep it up a bit.”

“What about the pork belly...”

But we both knew the damage had been done. To not like a dish was one thing, to send it back was another. Stewie decided he’d better phone Jules – even if it was his night off. There was a short conversation.

With all the drama, I'd completely forgotten to write out a prep sheet for the next day, and hadn’t checked through my fridge. To make matters worse, I had the next two days off, and Jules was covering my station.

When I returned, no-one would look me in the eye. I thought it best not to ask about the AA inspection. Jules came in and flew into a rage. I’d never seen him like that before. Normally, when he was in a bad mood, he just went quiet. He started pulling stuff out of my fridge and throwing it against the wall.

“You really left me in the shit – and I mean that! You really stitched me up,” he yelled. “Look at those fucking wontons! I couldn’t use any of them. And there’s no dates on anything!”

He ran over, still fuming, and said as if reading my mind: “And that apple crumble – that was all of our fault!”

I walked out that night and never went back - I hadn’t served a dessert in all the time I’d been there. A few days later, I got a call from Greeny. It turned out those two evil waitresses had made the whole thing up.

What A Squeak! The Tale Of Malty Mouse

This story about a man getting the shock of his life by finding a mouse splayed across the top of his malt loaf has brought back some unhappy memories.

He bought the Hyndman's malt loaf from a supermarket in the Ballymoney area of Northern Ireland for Christmas two years ago. But God knows what he’d done to upset Santa that year.

One can only imagine the moment he unwrapped the delicious loaf to discover the lifeless mammal embedded in the base of the bread, like Ida, the celebrated ‘missing link’ fossil unveiled in New York last month.

North Antrim Magistrates Court heard that the bread tins were filled with dough every night, and the mouse got in sometime between the tins being sprayed with oil and being filled with dough.

A judge was shown pictures of the incriminating rodent-in-the-loaf and fined D Hyndman and Son Ltd £1,000 plus costs for placing unsafe food on the market.

A defence lawyer suggested the mouse might have been put in the tin to "sabotage" the baker who has been in business for 60 years and has never had any complaints.

The hapless customer is now said to be pursuing a civil case against the firm.

Poor buggers. Mice get everywhere. Doesn’t matter how many traps you set.

Reminds me of the time I was living in a shared house on the Old Kent Road with about 300 Kiwis (don’t feed them water) when I popped some bread in the toaster and saw a small flash from the corner of my eye.

I thought nothing of it, of course, and began buttering my toast furiously, ready for a liberal application of Marmite when I spotted some blue furry mould on the bread.

Perfectly alright I thought, as Sir Julian Bashford would say. Besides I was hungry and those pesky Kiwis had nicked the rest of my bread.

Trouble was it didn’t look like normal mould. It just seemed to be attached to one side of the slice.

I took a couple of bites and then looked down into the bottom of the toaster and saw the electrified mouse. Haven’t eaten toast to this day. Or malt loaf for that matter.

Waiter! There's A Snake In My Broccoli!

This has to be the cheffing story of the week – and it still makes me recoil in horror when I think about it. It’s not just my mortal phobia of snakes that’s to blame...it’s how the hell a chef could make such a howling schoolboy error when throwing broccoli on a plate!

Alright, I know the cooks are generally rushed off their feet at TGI Friday’s. And I know it’s not exactly Michelin star cooking, or indeed the standard expected by the SSSSSan Pellegrino world restaurant awards.

But come on! How can you confuse a broccoli floret with a severed serpent’s head?

The story started when Jack Pendleton spotted something grey, and well, distinctly reptile-shaped, mixed in with his veg while dining with his girlfriend at a TGI Friday's restaurant in Clifton Park, New York.

"I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch,” he said using that dramatic present tense so loved by football commentators.

“I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top. I stopped eating and I told my girlfriend, 'I think this is a head'."

The reptile’s head – about the size of a thumb - also had bits of spine and tendons still attached as if the horror wasn’t enough already.

A waiter was called over to remove the plate – but not before the 28-year-old art director had snapped a photo with his mobile phone.

"The manager came over white as a sheet," Pendleton told the Times Union. "He explained in five years he'd never run into anything like this."

The chain has since issued a statement, saying it took the incident "very seriously."

"We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation,” added spokeswoman Amy Freshwater.

“As a precautionary measure, we pulled broccoli from all restaurants that received product from this supplier. We have since isolated the specific lot date of the broccoli in question and have now reintroduced the product in all restaurants not included in the product hold.

"In addition, we are sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing. We... regret that this situation occurred in one of our restaurants."

The couple, of course, were not charged for their meals.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the story is not that the American refuses to sue over his gruesome find...it’s that he plumped for a side-order of vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich.

Restaurants And 'Tips As Wages'

Wage slaves in the catering industry had some rare good news today with the Government’s announcement that employers are to be banned from using tips to top up staff pay.

Some unscrupulous restaurant, cafe and pub owners have been using tips and service charges to meet the minimum wage – currently a whopping £5.73 an hour for workers aged 22 and over.

But now that is to change from October – meaning the tips diners leave will go to those who actually served and cooked their meal, rather than lining employers’ pockets.

Gordon Brown confirmed the move at Prime Minister’s Question Time, saying the public consultation had proved positive and the new legislation would help protect low-waged waiting and catering staff.

Unions, which have long campaigned for change, welcomed the move.

Derek Simpson, Unite trade union's general secretary, said the Government was “doing the right thing” by closing a loophole “which has allowed greedy employers to use tips to pay staff the minimum wage”.

But the British Hospitality Association has warned that it may result in the loss of 45,000 industry jobs as hard-pressed employers struggle with the extra financial burden.

And because of tax and National Insurance implications, it argued, staff could in fact be worse off – and the only real winner would be...yes you guessed it, the tax man.

That said though, the BHA did not “oppose the introduction” – it simply questioned its timing, what with the recession and all.

But many see the move as just window-dressing from a Government keen to show it’s doing something to help the working poor (after all, when New Labour introduced the National Minimum Wage in 1999, it specifically allowed tips to top up pay packets).

The legislation also covers people on low salaries – rather than just those paid by the hour - but how much effect it will have in restaurants is open to debate.

In my last full-time cheffing job, I was paid £12,000 a year for a 14-plus hour day, meaning my hourly rate was £3.50 an hour. Tips were divvied up and came to about £100 a month, pushing my wage to about £3.90 an hour – still way below minimum wage.

My income as a commis chef was about average, and my hours in no way excessive. Some staff in Michelin restaurants pocket less money for 18-hour days – putting their wage at about £2.50 an hour.

They can of course report their employer to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, but I don’t know any who have.

And who can blame them? They’re too busy catching night-buses home or sleeping on the dry store floor in those precious hours between shifts. After all, a slave, as Marco Cato liked to say, should be sleeping when he’s not working.

Interestingly, a survey this week by StarChefs.com showed that even though the recession had dented chefs’ salaries on the other side of the pond, most were still well above the average US household income of $50,740 (about £34,000).

Maybe it’s about time we in the UK paid our chefs more? It may even be why it’s one of the few professions that still has a skills shortage...

:: Got an opinion on this? Please spare a moment and leave a comment below...

Masterchef: From Office Into The Pan

I sat there looking at the questions on the Masterchef application form. I had no idea what to put down. The whole show was a farce. The prize was a job as a trainee chef at a top London restaurant. They didn’t say how much you’d get, or what the hours were, or what to do when you’re thrown out on the street because you can’t pay the rent. I couldn’t see Wallace buying the Big Issue off me when he stepped out of his Bentley. And Torode looked like he wouldn’t give a fly to a blind spider.

Maybe the prize didn’t exist at all. I mean, who the hell would take them up on it? The whole thing was about getting on the telly, and society’s mushrooming obsession with fame. I couldn’t see any of the contestants swapping their cushy day jobs for 16 hours slaving in an underground furnace on a wage just enough to keep them alive. Not if there weren’t any cameras about. They weren’t as mad as me. Nowhere near.

The recent winners and finalists seemed to be too busy churning out recipe books to spend much time learning the trade. A few had apparently done a stint here and there in a top kitchen, and Thomasina Myers had set up her own restaurant. But how long she spent there given all the book deals and TV appearances was anyone’s guess.

All I knew was that even if I did get in the finals, it was unlikely to lead to any proper paid cooking work - one winner had turned up at Le Gavroche to find it was unpaid. I needed professional training and a way to support myself if I was to do it properly - to open my restaurant by the sea.

There was also the time delay. I’d have to get myself a cooking job in the mean time. The programme was likely to be months away, and I was dying to get back in the kitchen. One hopeful had to wait eight months before the producers contacted him, then spent 40 minutes on the phone whispering about why he wanted to be a chef with his boss earwigging in the background.

What the hell. I filled in the form anyway...

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

Why Didn’t You Do The Cornish Pasties?

It was all going well. I’d have an early night, get up at 5am; shower, shave, and drive up to Rick Stein’s industrial unit for a day learning about Cornish pasties and successful side-crimping.

Then the phone rang. It was Colin, a pap I knew from the paper. He’d rung the day before and said he was doing a piece on the ‘snob yobs’ that pillage the village of Rock – that favourite summertime haunt of Princes William and Harry. He was in a pub at the harbour and had already got me a drink in. I promised myself it would only be one or two and walked back down the hill.

Colin was fishing cockles from a jar, listening to a folk band. He leapt up when he saw me and crushed my hand. He had cockle juice in his beard and looked like he’d been there some time. He wanted to hear all about my day at Stein’s, and kept running off to the bar to refill our glasses.

“What are you worrying about?” he kept saying. “Chefs don’t sleep! If they did, they wouldn’t have a social life!”

A posh old lunatic with his trousers tucked into his socks walked in, and made horn sounds with his fist clenched to his mouth. He danced around the pub, shouting: “Do you like hunting? I do!”

He had an altercation with the band, and then sat next to us.

“These folk lot are so bloody serious aren’t they!” He scrunched up his face and impersonated a constipated cat. “No fun at all! One of them – that woman making that hideous sound with the violin – was bending down, showing her thong to the pub...and all I said was ‘I can see your shitty bootlace!’ No sense of humour...”

“Sure it wasn’t her G-string?” I asked.

The mad bastard wasn’t listening. He was one of those barstool boors whose lives are one long, befuddled monologue.

“That’s the trouble with these folk lot - I know how it should be sung. They’re too nasal – they should sing like this…” He burst into a powerful bass-tenor. “Bella was young and Bella was fair with bright blue eyes and golden hair. Not…” He sang the lyrics again in a flat, nasal voice, his teeth protruding like a demented vole.

“What are you doing in here listening to this shit anyway,” he yelled. “You young people should be out binge-drinking and fighting.”

He introduced himself as Roger and claimed he owned 1,000 acres up the coast. He said he used to be addicted to amphetamines, and spent his twenties drinking and fighting. He could barely remember his thirties.

“Do you know Simon Cursley?” he said suddenly. We shook our heads. “You would if you knew him – I bit his nose off!”

He got louder and drunker, and insulted everyone who walked past. “I bet she was quite pretty once,” he shouted at one woman. And when a plump barmaid arrived to collect glasses, he yelled: “My word that woman has a body on her!”

I slouched lower in my seat, but Colin was loving it. A nearby drinker tried to intervene, but our drinking companion would not be silenced. “Have you ever been burdened by the ravages of intelligence?” Roger screamed at him.

Later, a small, tattooed man sat next to us, and clinked glasses. I asked him how he knew Roger. “I met him in a toilet – think it was in a prison,” he laughed. He said they used to make a living dynamiting salmon in rivers.

“But you had to know when they were going past. I’d be in a wet-suit dynamiting them, and he’d be on the bank fishing them out! We used to flog them to restaurants in the West End...”

At some point, I crawled up the hill to my room. I was too drunk to remember my alarm, and woke at nine with a stinking headache. I don’t know what happened, but bleary-headed, and embarrassed by the thought of going in late, I found myself agreeing to go on a fishing trip with Colin. I was braving my first cigarette of the day on the quayside when Raymond phoned. He sounded confused, and slightly hurt.

“I just wanted to know you were alright,” he explained, almost apologetically.

My head was still thumping, and I babbled about my friend coming down and how I’d promised him a fishing trip. A few minutes past, then Jimmy phoned. He was Stein’s executive chef, and far more direct.

“Why dinnae you dae the fuckin pasties this mornin?”


:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow.

You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...

Is There A Chilli In The House?

I took a deep breath and walked in the restaurant, wondering what the hell lay ahead. I gave my name at reception, and was told to wait in the conservatory area for the head chef to arrive. I sat there amongst the foliage, flicking through a menu.
It was true what they said about Rick Stein putting chilli in everything. He couldn't leave the stuff alone. There was monkfish vindaloo, Goan lobster curry, Singapore chilli crab, hot shellfish platter with chilli, smoked mackerel and green mango salad with bird eye chillis, mussels, clams and cockles masala, grilled scallops with chilli and coriander sauce, and probably other ones I can’t remember.
I was about to see whether there was chilli in the desserts when Raymond the head chef rushed in, and apologised for making me wait. I was surprised by all the fuss - the last time I’d done work experience anywhere, they'd taken the piss out of me all day, asked for tea every two seconds, and then sent me out to buy a pound of elbow grease.
I figured the same was going to happen at the restaurant. I thought when they weren't asking me to dice flour and wash salt, they'd be asking me to fetch strawberry deseeders, left-handed parsley curlers, buckets of steam, and cans of mise en place.
Raymond plainly wasn’t sure how good a friend I was of Stein’s, and was taking no chances. He led me through the restaurant and introduced me to the staff. The kitchen was clean and airy, and there was no smell of fish. The white-tiled walls gleamed under the fluorescent lights. In the centre was a large stove area, with stockpots and bubbling saucepans. One of the chefs handed me a freshly boiled langoustine.
The forelock-tugging continued as Raymond showed me each section of the kitchen, and then it stopped abruptly when I was introduced to a stocky man with cropped hair, and barnacled hands named Ted the Turbot. He looked me up and down as if choosing a ragworm for a hook, and pointed at the pass.
“There’s the coffee machine, I take two sugars.”


:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow.

You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...