Kitchen Grillings And How To Survive Them
I walked back into Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant that afternoon, and after changing into my whites, was summoned to Jimmy the executive chef’s office. He was there with one of…
'Chef, Can We Have Some More Parsley?'
Chefs like to see themselves as kitchen warriors, showing off their scars and fighting each day like it’s their last. And Rick Stein’s crew were no different – with the…
Masterchef: 'I’ll Stick My Face In It'
“So, Lennie, tell me about your passion for cooking…” the researcher from the Masterchef show began. She asked me pretty much the same questions I’d filled in on the application…
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…
Something Fishy About Masterchef
The dish I decided on for the Masterchef audition was tuna tartare with cucumber and wasabi soup. Don’t ask me why. I’d seen it made in a restaurant somewhere and…
The Fat Duck And Food Poisoning Scares
The producer told me it would be weeks before I knew whether I’d been picked for Masterchef, so I started looking for cooking jobs again. Then I got an email.…
Fat Duck: The Dreaded Grapefruit
After we finished the wrapping, Graham, the Fat Duck’s sous chef, appeared and thumbed a few sweets. Then he led us over the road to the prep room, which would…
Fat Duck: I'm Not An Oyster Shucker…
I got into the Fat Duck at 7.30am the next day and worked under a Canadian chef called Jon on the amuse bouche section – a tiny area of the…
Fat Duck: Sacrifice To The God Of Aero
We started work in the Fat Duck prep house at 8am. After three hours working like devils, we were herded over the road to gobble down food for five minutes.…
Holy Ballotine Of Mackerel 'Invertebrate'!
The gashes and blisters from my battle with the oysters were making it hard to work, and I had shovels for hands at the best of times. The size of…
'How Long Have You Been Cooking For?'
The rush subsided, the adrenal tide went out, and then came crashing back like a vicious tsunami. Seven a la carte orders came in for the radish ravioli of oyster…
Coq Au Van: In Defence Of Gordon Ramsay
I was about to begin my post, telling you how many of the dishes at the Fat Duck were cooked using the ‘boil-in-the-bag’ sous vide method. I was about to…
Celebrity Chef Absenteeism Syndrome
In the three weeks I spent at the Fat Duck, I only saw Heston Blumenthal once, and it got me thinking about the whole celebrity chef phenomenon. I knew it…
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…
Week Two In The Fat Duck House
Somehow I got through the first week of my stage at the Fat Duck, and slept most of the Sunday and Monday. The alarm went off at 7am on the…
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…
Tuna-Friendly Dolphin And Other Stories
I arrived at the Fat Duck prep room the next morning, checked the rota, and found they’d put me down for service on the amuse bouche section. I was surprised.…
Stool Pigeons And The Fat Duck
We finished the day doing the worst job on the prep list – cutting pistachio kernels in half. There were thousands of them, and even before we were a quarter-way…
I'm A Celebrity Chef…Get Me Out Of Here!
And so the celebrity chef cull continues…The latest to bite the dust is John Burton Race. Remember him? You know, the guy who made a tit of himself on ITV…
Ready Steady Crook: Fake Chef Faces Jail
A bogus celebrity chef who claimed to have flushed Jamie Oliver’s head down the toilet as a kitchen prank is facing jail after admitting a string of gastro-pub frauds. Kenny…