Do Bay Leaves Actually Make A Difference To A Dish?
Lots of recipes, particularly stews, sauces, stocks and soups, include the addition of a bay leaf, and most of us will have a packet of dusty old dried bay leaves at the back of a kitchen cabinet somewhere. But, what’s the point of using bay leaves, and do they make a difference to a dish?
What Are Bay Leaves?
Bay leaves are a Mediterranean herb that can be used fresh or dried, and that are most often used whole in a recipe. They are the foliage of the bay laurel tree (Laurus nobilis, also known as sweet bay and roman laurel), which thanks to its historic association with the ancient god Apollo led to victorious athletes being crowned with a laurel wreath, then later poets and those who have achieved great things (laureates). Bay trees are popular ornamental evergreen shrubs, so you may well have one in a pot on your patio. The leaves are quite hardy and waxy, so when used in cooking they remain stiff and don’t break up which is helpful because in most recipes that use them, you are asked to remove the bay leaf before serving.
What Do Bay Leaves Taste Like?
Bay leaves impart a subtle flavour similar to oregano or thyme when used in slow-cooked dishes. If it’s subtle, you may well ask “what’s the point?”, and plenty of people do. The point is that they add a supporting background flavour that amplifies and deepens a dish. They aren’t mission ciritical, so you can get away without adding them, but if you happen to have a bay tree stood on your patio or a sealed pack or jar of dried bay leaves in your cupboard that aren’t so old that you’ve moved house with six times, then you have nothing to lose (and something to gain) from chucking in one or two.
The leaves of the bay laurel tree contain more than 50 essential oils and aromatic compounds including eucalyptol, terpenes, and methyleugenol. When they’re fresh or only cooked for a short time they can have a noticeable eucalyptus and menthol flavour, but the longer they are cooked for the more those harsher notes tone down and the aroma and flavour softens and becomes fuller and more herbal and tea-like. The aromatic compounds in hardier or woody Mediterranean herbs (which have evolved to try to retain as much moisture as possible in the often arid conditions they grow in) are far less volatile, so they won’t evaporate as the leaves dry and therefore when dried they retain almost as much flavour as fresh – as long as they are stored correctly!
Using Bay Leaves In Cooking
If you are cooking something slowly, such as a stew, casserole, a ragu or bolognaise, or similar, then adding a bay leaf or two and leaving it in for as long as possible will enhance the final dish. That’s why they appear in recipes. But if you don’t have any to hand, it’s not a total disaster. For most recipes, use one or maybe (at most) two leaves and keep them whole; the flavours will be released by the leaves and spread throughout the dish, and they are much easier to remove when left entire. There is no need to leave a whole leaf in your dish for serving – its job is done. If using fresh bay leaves then be sure to allow them to cook for long enough for the flavours to mellow. If using dried, they will store well for a couple of years if kept in a sealed container in a dark place; that often leads to them getting lost at the back of a kitchen cabinet for far longer than that though, so if you’re in any doubt about the age and origin of those dusty old bay leaves you’ve found, consider buying a new pack.
Whether you call them cinnamon twists, rolls, scrolls or buns, the one thing that we can all agree on is that they’re delicious and one is never enough.
Our recipe for cinnamon twists is always a really popular addition to our Scandinavian Cookery or Baking courses. Rather than creating loads of really thin laminations to create a croissant or “cro-nut” style pastry, our version is less energy and time intensive, so you can get them in the oven (and onto your plate) sooner. Here’s a step-by step guide to folding and plaiting them to create those delicious little knots.
Once you have rolled out your enriched dough (to about the size of a piece of A3 paper) and spread the cinnamon paste over it (see recipe here), take one of the long edges and fold it 1/3 over. Then fold the other 1/3 with exposed paste over on top of the doubled-up layer, so that you have a long, thin rectangle. Slice this into 24 strips, approximately 3.5cm wide.
Use a sharp knife to cut two lines down each strip to create three strands, starting 1-1.5cm from the top
Plait the three strands together by taking one outer strand and crossing it over top of the middle one, then repeating from the other side, and alternating.
Roll the plaited dough up into a ball and place in a greased muffin tray, then repeat until you have plaited all 24 twists.
Having manipulated your dough so much, you then need to leave it to prove again for fifteen minutes to half an hour before baking, so that the dough can relax and expand into its new shape. Then bake!
Cast iron cookware is a fantastic addition to your kitchen cabinet, particularly if you regularly cook outside and barbecue over the summer months. Cast iron pots and pans (often called skillets in the States) are heavy, and they hold and distribute heat really well. They also last FOREVER with the right care and upkeep. Compared to a set of cheap pans that may have hotspots or warp with heat so that they wobble on your hob, cast iron is solid, dependable, and super versatile.
Whether you bought a pre-seasoned cast iron pan from a shop or online, or found a vintage gem at a car boot sale, it will need seasoning every now and then and there are a few golden rules.
Cleaning A Cast Iron Pan
After use, clean your cast iron in hot water with a non-abrasive sponge or cloth, using a wooden spatula to scrape off any stuck-on bits. You can use a small amount of washing up liquid although many people advise against this as it can remove the seasoning on the cooking surface. If food is really stuck on then you can use coarse rock salt as an abrasive to help remove it. Dry the pan thoroughly with a dry tea towel, and you can even put it back on the heat or in a warm oven to dry completely. It’s really important that you pan is absolutely dry before you store it away, so that there is no moisture left on it that might trigger rust. Whatever you do, do not put your cast iron in the dishwasher or leave it in a bowl of water. Once dry, add a teaspoon of neutral cooking oil, such as rapeseed oil, and wipe around and all over using a piece of kitchen paper.
Restoring A Cast Iron Pan
Just like tools, they don’t make them like they used to. Or, when they do, they’re expensive. If you manage to get your hands on some old cast iron cookware from a car boot sale or the like, or if perhaps you left your Dutch oven with all of your camping stuff in the shed or garage over the winter, then nit might need a bit of restoration. Remove any surface rust using an abrasive sponge or a wire scourer in hot or hot and soapy water. This will almost certainly affect or remove the layers of seasoning that have built up on the surface, so once free-from-rust, clean and thoroughly dry, you will need to re-season it.
Seasoning Cast Iron Cookware
The seasoning on cast iron cookware is simply layers of polymerized cooking oil, which means that the oil has been heated to the point where it naturally hardens and creates a blackened, almost non-stick coating. To re-season a pan, you are simply rebuilding these layers of hardened oil. I’d suggest using rapeseed oil, although you can use other neutral cooking oils with high-smoke points (don’t use olive oil). You can either add some oil to you pan and heat it on the hob until it begins to smoke, then turn off the heat and allow to cool before discarding any excess oil and carefully using a clean cloth or piece of kitchen paper to wipe the warm oil around the pan, or you can wipe oil all over your pan and then put it in your oven upside down. Heat your oven to 220, with your extractor hood turned on or a window open in case it creates any smoke. Leave for up to an hour and then turn off and allow to cool thoroughly before removing from the oven. We use our large outdoor pizza oven for this job! Repeating this step (hob or oven) several times will build up layers of seasoning (it should end up looking shiny, like it’s been varnished) and increase the non-stick-ness of your pan. If you frequently cook fatty food in your pan, such as bacon or steaks, then this will continue to add to the seasoning. You ought to do this re-seasoning process a couple of times each year, if you’re cooking with your cast iron regularly. Perhaps that means at the end of the summer after a season of barbecues and campfire cooking, and then again in late spring when you take it out of storage before a summer of use, if you primarily use them for outdoor cooking. However, I’d encourage you to use it throughout the year in your kitchen, as they’re such good bits of kit.
Some Tips For Cooking With Cast Iron Pans
Always pre-heat a cast iron pan before cooking with it – if you try to cook from cold your food will likely stick to it, regardless of how much you’ve built up the seasoning! Because they’re solid and heavy, it’s best to preheat for longer and on a slightly lower heat than with other types of pots and pans. Only occasionally cook acidic foods, such as tomato sauces, citrus fruits and the like in your cast iron pan, because the acids can reduce the seasoning. “Respect the first touch” as live-fire chef Francis Mallmann famously said – that means put your food in a hot pan and leave it – don’t be tempted to move it around too soon, or too much! Clean your cookware as soon as possible after use, and dry it thoroughly – I can’t emphasise that enough!
Cooking with cast iron pots and pans may seem like a lot of effort, when you could just use any old cookware. But believe me, it is worth it – for minimal effort (you wash your pans anyway, right?!) you get a great cooking experience and a pan that can cook most things, on the stove top or in the oven, or both for the same dish. If you see an old pan for sale on your travels, pick it up, clean it up, re-season it and enjoy many years of good cooking with it.
In our Store Cupboard Essentials series we’ve dived into the details of which cooking oils and vinegars you should always have to hand when cooking, or the differences between the various types of paprika, for example. But, I’ve not yet shared my list of the staple items that I suggest you keep your store cupboard or pantry* stocked with. Whether you’re starting afresh or having a spring clear out of your kitchen cupboards and getting rid of all of those tins and jars that are waaay past their best-before date, I hope that this helps.
*Few people have a pantry in their homes, but pantry or larder cupboards are popular in larger modern kitchens. Historically a larder was a cool cupboard or room built into the north or west side of a house (because those walls get less sun) with stone shelving built into the walls so that the whole space is below ambient room temperature; they were used to store perishables such as butter, milk, cheese and eggs, and the name comes from a time when they were used to store meat that had been covered in a layer of lard to further help in preserving it. A pantry is a similar large walk-in cupboard or small room dating back to medieval times used as additional storage for a kitchen, used to store bread originally but that over time became a general dry goods and crockery store.
Menu planning has never been more important, or necessary. Sure, in winter we all spend more evenings at home and each January many of us make commitments to eat better or scrutinise and experiment with our lifestyles, but as we start 2023 with a cost of living crisis, it’s a great way to eat well, for less.
As with the one week meal plans that I prepared and shared at the start of each of the three COVID19 lockdowns, this menu carries ingredients and leftovers from meal to meal to minimise food waste and maximise value for money. Ingredients with short shelf lives such as meat and fish are used in the first half of the menu so that those of you who do a single weekly shop don’t have to worry about expensive ingredients ticking over their use-by dates.
For our vegetarian, vegan, dairy and gluten-free followers or those with other dietary needs, I apologise that not all of these dishes will work for you however I hope that you can still perhaps adapt some of these meals to your requirements or take inspiration from the core concept of carrying over key ingredients or leftovers into other meals. Feel free to replace or omit ingredients and to play around with the recipes and the menu to suit your dietary requirements.
Please click each link to be taken through to the web page with ingredients and instructions.
Use leftover chicken (you can really strip the carcass and use all the bits for the soup) for this classic comfort food meal. Vegetarians and vegans, omit the meat and replace with additional oriental greens, and swap chicken stock for veg stock. Take leftovers to work for lunch.
Leftover winter veg and a few eggs is amazing served with cavalo nero salsa. Vegans can make bubble and squeak with leftover roast veg. Take leftovers to work for lunch.
It is said that cheese and fish don’t go together, but I’d say there are a couple of exceptions: fish pie, and this recipe. This dish is a cross between a kedgeree and a classic rarebit. It’s simple, full of flavour, and amazing for a light midweek dinner.
Another great light and easy midweek dinner, and if this menu is a bit light on meat for your liking then you can always pair it with sausages or similar. Use veg stock instead of chicken stock and cream to make this vegan.
Lentils are a great and versatile source of cheap protein, and if you want to reduce your impact on the planet then they are absolutely the way to go. Dhal is a lentil dish that is then tempered with a spiced oil (the tarka). Dhal is almost infinitely adaptable, easy to make and a great source of leftovers for lunches.
A warming dish for a winter weekend that I prepared for our friends at Rodda’s this autumn. Make it vegan by leaving out the cream.
We teach elements of menu planning and how to make the most of all of your ingredients through all of our cookery courses. Our upcoming Eat Well For Less cookery course is now fully booked, but keep an eye out as we’ll be running it again in 2023.
Fat is almost as essential for cooking as heat, and you’ll struggle to find a single kitchen that doesn’t contain a bottle of cooking oil. But which one should you be cooking with, and when? Most of us will have a collection of bottles, so here’s a short guide to the most common edible oils that you’ll have in your kitchen and what to use them for.
What Does Cooking Oil Do?
Cooking oil is most often used for frying, roasting or baking, and fulfills a number of important roles. Oil transfers heat from the pan to the food, and because oil can be heated to a much higher temperature than water it allows food to be cooked faster. It also acts as a lubricant to prevent food from sticking to the cooking surface. Fat is a flavour carrier so improves the taste of food, and also the texture because oil facilitates the Maillard reaction, which is what gives us a crispy, golden crust on fried or roasted foods.
Oil For Flavour
Oils aren’t only used in the kitchen for frying. As well as enhancing the flavour of a dish they also have flavour in their own right, and can carry flavour. The choice of oil used in a salad dressing will have a significant impact upon the flavour of the dressing, and oils flavoured with chilli, garlic, truffle and so on are often used to add that flavour to a risotto, pizza or similar dish.
How Edible Oils Are Produced
Some oils, such as olive oil and coconut oil, are made by pressing the flesh of the fruit, however most oils are extracted by pressing the seeds (sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, sesame oil, peanut oil and so on) and then in many cases solvent extraction is used to collect the maximum yield. Taking olive oil as an example, the different types and grades available are based on how the oil was extracted – extra virgin olive oil comes from the first cold press, and has the strongest flavour. The second press will be heated to help extract more oil and the product will be lighter in colour and flavour, and so on. Sunflower, rapeseed and peanut oils can also be cold pressed by squeezing the oil out of the crushed nut or seed. Cheaper oils, of the sorts used in high volumes for frying, are pressed and then the “oil cake” of crushed seeds has any remaining oil harvested by a process called solvent extraction which uses a volatile hydrocarbon to dissolve the oil out of the cake before using fractional distillation to remove the solvent. These oils are then refined (unpleasant sounding industrial processes to “degum”, “bleach” and “deodorise” the oil) before bottling. You can see why so many chefs advise you to buy good quality oil, particularly for use in salad dressings.
The Cookery School’s Store Cupboard Selection, From Left to Right:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Extracted from the first cold pressing of the olives, this oil has a richer, sometimes “earthier” flavour so is great for salad dressings or dips where you want that flavour. You can cook with it, but it has a low smoking point and it’s expensive so you might want to save it for specific uses rather than frying your eggs in it.
Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil
A lighter oil for cooking or salad dressings with a delicate nutty flavour. Rapeseed oil is high in mono-unsaturated fats so is one of the only unblended oils that can be heated to high temperatures for frying without the risk of spoiling. Rapeseed is the bright yellow flowering crop that fills British fields in the early summer months, meaning that you can buy locally produced rapeseed oil (because there aren’t too many olive groves here in the UK).
Olive Oil
It’s good to have a lower grade olive oil to hand for occasions where you don’t need or want to cook with your precious first cold pressed! Virgin olive oil also comes from the first pressing but is slightly more acidic and can be used for cooking. Standard “pure” olive oil is blended and its flavour is blander, but it is a good multi-purpose cooking oil.
Sunflower Oil
Sunflower is your go-to cooking oil for higher temperature methods, such as roasting, frying or deep frying, because of it’s high smoke point (the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke). It has a mild flavour so is a great general cooking oil, but wouldn’t be a good choice for salad dressings.
Sesame Oil
A must if you cook any Asian cuisine, sesame oil is great for stir-fries, dressings and marinades. It has a pretty intense nutty flavour, so you’ll know when you’ve used it.
White and Black Truffle Oil
Flavoured oils are often the sorts of things that you might bring back from holiday, or that a relative might give you for a gift. They’re also super common in hampers. Truffle oil is wonderful though. Because of the high value of truffles, infusing slices in oil is a great way of imparting some of the highly sought-after aroma and flavour into a dish. White truffles are one of the world’s most expensive foods, so don’t expect these bottles to be big or cheap! Truffle oil is strictly a finishing oil, to be drizzled over a dish just before serving (don’t cook with it!) – creamy dishes such as risotto are the most obvious choice, but have you ever drizzled truffle oil over scrambled eggs?
Chilli Flavoured Rapeseed Oil
Another “back of the cupboard” bottle, so many of us will have bottles of infused oils that don’t often see the light of day. These are finishing oils for drizzling over things like pizza – this chilli flavoured rapeseed oil makes the most of the rapeseed oils delicate flavour to focus on the chilli. You might have a similar bottle of garlic or herb infused oil, or you can make them yourself.
Summer has hit good and proper, so if you’re cooking up at the beach over the next few weeks, here are Rupert’s top tips for an easy and delicious experience:
Take a reusable BBQ (check out the ProQ Smokers Flatdog, but don’t overfill it with charcoal because this piece of kit gets super hot, so it’s better to start small and top-up). They’re more efficient, great value for money over the course of their lifetime, and cool down quickly enough that you can carry it back to the car after finishing your beers.
Kebabs and koftas… prepared and ready to go… bang them on a ready-made flatbread and you’re winning. Check out our recipe here.
Portobello mushrooms with butter and herbs. Prepare them at home and they’re ready to put straight on the grill.
Ice cold beers, of course.
Enjoy the sun, be careful and sensible when cooking outside over fire given the recent dry conditions (this article is about barbecuing at the beach, but you might be barbecuing in your back garden), and if you’re cooking and eating in a public space then leave no trace.
There are several different types of paprika, but hands up if you’ve read a recipe requiring paprika and just used whichever one you have to hand in your store cupboard? Because they’re all pretty much the same, right? Wrong! You should be able to buy at last three different types of paprika from your supermarket, and here’s why you should have all three in your spice rack, and use the right one for the right recipe:
What Is Paprika?
Paprika is a spice made of sweet red peppers that have been dried and then ground to a powder that varies in colour between terracotta and dark red. It ranges from mild to hot, but is primarily used to add flavour and colour to dishes rather than heat. Paprika is used in a lot of Spanish and North African dishes (think: chorizo), but is an essential spice in Hungarian cuisine (dishes such as goulash). Historically, peppers originated in Mexico and North America before being introduced to Europe in the 16th century – initially into Spain before spreading across Europe and North Africa. It didn’t become popular in Hungary until the late 19th century, however its popularity there means that the country is a major producer, alongside Spain where it is known as pimentón. Many different varieties of paprika are available, listed as either sweet, mild, spicy/hot (picante) or smoked, or as combinations of the above!
Sweet Paprika (right)
Also labeled simply as “paprika”, sweet paprika has a sweet pepper flavour and adds colour to a dish, but not heat. If your recipe simply says “paprika” then use this, because substituting in hot or smoked paprika will impact the flavour and warmth of the dish and may not work.
Hot Paprika (centre)
As the name suggests, hot paprika is spicier and is used to add heat to a dish, as well as flavour and colour. Hot paprika is the paprika of choice in Hungarian dishes such as goulash and paprikash, in which it is the key flavour. If you don’t have any hot paprika to hand but a recipe calls for it, then you can use sweet/regular paprika instead and use cayenne pepper to add the required heat.
Smoked Paprika (left)
In Spain it is common to dry paprika over oak fires, giving the paprika a rich and smokey flavour. Smoked paprika is usually available as mild (pimentón dulce), mildly spicy (pimentón agridulce) and spicy (pimentón picante), or you can buy Spanish pimentón de la Vera, which is smoked paprika from the La Vera region of western Spain that has EU “Protected Denomination of Origin” status (just like Cornish pasties, clotted cream and Fal oysters). Smoked paprika is used for its rich and smokey flavour, so you could use sweet/regular paprika at a push but the dish will lose that signature flavour that the smoked paprika is used for.
Summer’s not over yet. If you’re keen to make the most of every opportunity and enjoy a beach feast at least one more time before the end of the summer holidays (not to mention the fact that most establishments in Cornwall have been fully booked all summer), then don’t settle for sandy or soggy sandwiches or a disposable bbq. Here are my top three tips to make it a simple, fun and memorable experience.
A fish clamp or grill basket is the only piece of kit that you need to cook over fire at the beach. Use it for grilling veg, sausages or meat as well as fish over a fire or bbq, and simply flip it over – no more chasing sausages around a grill with tongs, or dropping them on the coals.
Buy cooked crab from a fishmonger and on your way to the beach stop off for some chips from the takeaway for an amazing, messy, seafood feast on the sand. Don’t forget some crab cracking tools, though!
If you want to barbecue at the beach, then get yourself a bucket bbq, wood and charcoal, rather than a disposable bbq. Light a fire in it, add charcoal, then cook over it, thus avoiding the flavour taint of firelighters. It’s also tidier and better value for money because you can reuse it.
“For those that don’t have an extensive vinegar collection, I urge you to go and change that. Vinegar is the biggest thing and it will change the whole way you cook.”
Rupert Cooper, Owner and Head Chef/Tutor at Philleigh Way
Why Use Vinegar?
A well-stocked store cupboard makes it so much easier to create great midweek meals at the drop of a hat, and a small selection of vinegars should be central to it. It may be that you’ve collected a few bottles of different vinegars for specific recipes in the past, but now they’re at the back of the cupboard gathering dust. Don’t let that happen! Acidity is every chef’s secret, and that’s why so many recipes call for a dash of vinegar or a squeeze of lemon; acidity lifts a dish, cuts through the fat in rich recipes, and means that every mouthful of food sets off more of your taste buds. It’s not about making your food taste like vinegar (leave that to the malt vinegar that the fish and chip shop put on your chips…), and if used correctly and complimentary, it won’t. Our recent set of recipes for oyster mignonette sauces demonstrates the importance of an element of balanced acidity in making a delicious mouthful of food.
What is Vinegar?
Vinegar has been made and used all over the world for hundreds of years – in some cases dating back more than two thousand years. If people were fermenting natural sugars to make alcohol then in most cases they were also making vinegar, because vinegar is the result of the final product gone awry from being exposed to air. The word “vinegar” is derived from the French for “sour wine”, and that’s why most vinegars that you can buy correspond to an alcoholic drink.
If you’re sorting out your kitchen cupboards whilst staying safe at home, or can add a bottle of vinegar to each of your weekly shops over the next few weeks, then these are the five vinegars that I suggest you move to the front of the shelf, and why:
Red Wine Vinegar
A good red wine vinegar will fast become the go-to bottle in your store cupboard – it’s a great all-purpose vinegar. Use it in vinaigrettes, marinades and sauces, or add a slug to soups and stews, especially in French or Italian dishes, as I did in the recent Italian beans and steak recipe video that we shared (click here to watch it).
Apple Cider Vinegar
Apple cider vinegar, ideally an unpasteurized one which will appear cloudy and may have sediment, has become popular in recent years as claims that taking 1-2 tablespoons each day delivers a range of benefits to your health (plenty of them yet to be fully scientifically proven, I ought to add). It’s amazing for cooking with too, and is interchangeable with red wine vinegar in many applications. Use it in vinaigrettes or slaws in the summer when its lightly tart apple flavour adds a whole new dimension. This corner of the UK is well known for its ciders, so keep an eye out in farm shops next time you’re visiting and take a bottle of small batch cider vinegar back home with you.
Rice Vinegar
Sweeter and lighter than other vinegars, rice vinegar (derived from rice wine, or saki) is a must in so many Asian recipes. Sushi actually means “vinegared rice” in Japanese, such is its importance as a core ingredient. So many dishes from almost all Asian cuisines will call for a rice vinegar of some sort (different countries or regions often have their own variants) but a good Chinese rice vinegar, although slightly stronger than Japanese rice vinegars, should be a good all-round option.
Balsamic Vinegar
Balsamic vinegar isn’t technically a vinegar, because it’s not made from fermented alcohol but is instead produced by fermenting grape juice in oak barrels. The longer that it’s aged in oak barrels, the sweeter, thicker and more expensive it becomes. Balsamic vinegar is used in small quantities as a condiment, drizzled over a dish or a salad, perhaps even a dessert (have you ever tried it drizzled over strawberries?), reduced and drizzled over pizza, or paired with a great olive oil for dipping.
White Wine Vinegar or Sherry Vinegar
White wine vinegars are lighter and don’t pack quite the same flavour as red wine vinegars. You’ll most likely reach for it when creating more delicate dressings or when you’re cooking with fish or shellfish.
On March 7th we’ll be joined at Philleigh Way by guest tutor Andi Tuck, to lead a special Cooking With Fire course. Andi is widely regarded as a rising star on the Cornish foodie scene for both his incredible abilities with smoke and fire but also for his incredible flavour combinations. He’s head chef at the award winning St Kew Inn, a beautiful 15th Century establishment in North Cornwall, and also the founder of Tan & Mor (Cornish for “Fire and Sea”) his live fire cooking experience business. St Kew’s forward thinking “custodians” (they don’t refer to themselves as landlords, instead seeing their role as looking after the historic inn) allowed Andi to install a live fire set-up in the kitchen and also to build an incredible outside kitchen for the summer months when he arrived there a year ago, and he’s built an incredible reputation for the food and theatre of his live fire cooking.
Ahead of his upcoming course we took the excuse to head up the road to St Kew and sit down with Andi in the historic bar after a busy lunch service to find out a bit more about his food, what attendees can expect on March 7th, and how you can add a bit of cooking with fire to your culinary skill set.
Andi, what is it that you love about cooking with fire and smoke? The flavour, first and foremost. And I think it’s quite nostalgic, as well; growing up with barbeques in the summer. I think there’s a flavour that cooking over fire gives that’s hard to replicate any other way.
St Kew’s outdoor kitchen. Photo by Sam Buckle.
What does it allow you to do that you couldn’t otherwise, in a normal kitchen? It’s really the offset cooking. You can’t generate the same flavour smoking with smoke chips as you can smoking over an open fire. There’s not that depth of flavour. It creates a flavour profile that smoke chips try to replicate, but they produce a much harsher flavour. Smoking over an open fire is much more subtle and has more depth. With the smoking chips it’s like “BANG! SMOKE!” but when you’re smoking over wood that has been soaked in water so it’s generating its own steam as well, it creates a deeper flavour. Offset cooking also means you tend to be cooking low and slow, and drawing out more flavours.
How did you develop your skills cooking over fire? Working with some of the best live fire chefs in the country. Lots of research, going to evens like Meatopia which is like my annual pilgrimage. Working with chefs like Ben Quinn and Simon Stallard here in Cornwall, and then at Meatopia working with some amazing international live fire chefs. I got to work with Lennox Hastie who’s an Australian chef and the stuff that you learn with him in a day is more than some people learn in a lifetime.
Before moving to St Kew Inn, you cooked in various notable kitchens around North Cornwall. What is it about cooking in Cornwall that you enjoy so much? The produce. You’re getting ingredients from the sea to the kitchen in a matter of minutes, not hours. With the local connections that I’ve made now with people like George Cleave the fishmonger in Port Isaac, his fish is at the kitchen door within minutes of being landed, which is awesome.
Is the produce that you have access to here particularly suitable to this style of cooking? Yes and no… it’s more all of the foraging and wild coastal ingredients. I could go out for a day’s foraging and get enough to run a menu for the night. I love cooking fish on open fire… I will never put a fish in the oven. The set-up that I’ve got in the kitchen here is basically an oven, it’s just an open oven. You’ve got it really hot near the flames but because the heat rises I can take it up to the next level, which is a foot above the flames, and then I turn it every so often and it’ll get through to about 48-50 degrees on the bone which is perfect.
Fresh mackerel and sea leeks on the grill
What are the ingredients that you like working with the most? Fish is my number one. Fish and fire is my thing I suppose. Anything foraged. To know what you’ve gone through to get that is really special. There’re quite a lot of wild and foraged ingredients that people have forgotten about now, but historically, and as far back as the days of hunter-gatherers, they were what people lived off. There are quite a few companies that are starting to use more foraged ingredients and it’s getting bigger. Hopefully it doesn’t get so big through that there’s nothing left for me to find! 99% of what people eat today was wild at some point, like broccoli for instance – we could go out now and forage for sea broccoli, which is an ancestor of that.
Photo by Sam Buckle.
And you’ve recently won an award for the food that you’re cooking at St Kew Inn? Yes, out of all of the 180 pubs that are part of St Austell Brewery we won the best food pub of the year. I’ve only been here a year – it was a year to the day since I started and it’s quite a big accolade to win within the St Austell Brewery family, when you’re up against pubs like The Cornish Arms in Tavistock who win it year after year. It’s been a good way to start 2020!
You’ve cooked over fire at food festivals such as Meatopia in London and on the beach at St Ives Food Festival. What do you cook when looking to show off what’s possible with live fire? Anything that people can do at home. I’m not one of these chef’s who’s going to show you all of these secret or unobtainable things that you can’t replicate at home. If you’re demonstrating then people want to know how to do it, they want to learn how to do it. Things like octopus that people assume is going to be unobtainable, you just go through how to do it step by step and you can get it easily. I wouldn’t rock up with a load of dry ice!
Local Porthilly oysters. Photographed by Sam Buckle.
Which other chefs do you look up to and admire, and why? For me it’s the chefs that don’t seek the limelight… they’re not TV chefs. People like Niklas Ekstedt who’s got the Ekstedt restaurant in Stockholm. And then chefs like Ben Quinn, he’s been a massive inspiration in my career; he was the one that got me to see my true potential in live fire cooking. Generally though, people that do something a bit different. Tom Brown is a great inspiration being a Cornish boy as well.
What’s the simplest dish that you’d suggest for people wanting a gentle introduction to cooking over fire? Mackerel. But it’s learning how to do mackerel well, because nine times out of ten your dad or granddad will have done mackerel on the BBQ and cooked the hell out of it; it’ll be dry, and horrible. It’s knowing the cuisson and knowing when to take it off. You let the residual heat of the fish finish it off. You can eat fish raw (like sushi), so if it’s still pink on the bone when you take it off the heat then it’ll be absolutely fine.
Cook this dish on our Fire course with Andi!
Do readers who are aspiring to cook over fire need any special equipment? No! As long as you’ve got a barbecue and a safe place to do it. That’s the best thing about cooking over fire. Anyone can barbecue. There’re certain things that I’d suggest, like I’d never suggest cooking with a disposable bbq just because of the flavour it gives off – they’re often soaked in paraffin which really isn’t good to cook over. It’s more about sustainable wood or charcoal, and I’ll cover things like soaking wood on the course… going in to depth on things like using different woods for different meats. Meats like beef and chicken can take a heavier smoke flavour like oak, whereas with fish you’d want to go for apple wood or something subtle like chestnut.
Lobster, on the coals. Photo by Sam Buckle.
What are you looking forward to sharing at your course at Philleigh Way? My enthusiasm, really. I want to make people not just stick paraffin firelighters under their food and actually show them that they can cook gourmet style food over fire, which is what we do here at St Kew. I’d like to challenge preconceptions about cooking over fire, and show them what they can achieve. It can and should be so much more than having a raging fire and chucking stuff straight on. Some things need a hot heat and some things need a smouldering heat…. We might “black and blue” a steak by just rolling it in the hot coals to clinch it and then knock all the coals off, rest it and cut it. It’d be nice to do my octopus dish but because of time we might not be able to do the full dish – I might start cooking one but bring a cooked one with me that I’ll prepare the day before so that I can show the finished result.
Whether you want to start introducing cooking over fire into your regular repertoire, or simply up your barbecue game in preparation for the summer, Andi’s course is going to cover all bases. We have just a few spaces remaining.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR SPACE ON ANDI’S COOKING WITH FIRE COURSE
BBC Radio Cornwall’s Debbie McCrory invited Rupert back in to the studio last week to share his cookery tips for Christmas, including how to make your sprouts special.
Skip ahead to the 1 hour 39 minute mark to hear his slot.
