Adiós España... Por Ahora

Two years, four months and four days ago a Ryanair flight touched down at Girona airport and - armed with a suitcase full of clothes, my knife roll and my college diploma - I set foot on Spanish soil to begin my training as a professional chef. It was the start of a great adventure that was to take me from early days struggling to cope with the demands of a pro kitchen to the triumph of being part of a Michelin star winning team to my first appointment as a chef de partie. An adventure that led to my stages at the now Michelin 2* Lasarte at Hotel Condes, followed by an extraordinary seven months with Paco Morales at Juan Carlos Ferrero's hotel in the mountains of València where I learnt a level of kitchen discipline that exceeded anything I'd previously experienced and where I was privileged to be appointed Pastry Chef.

I can't write about my time in Spain without mentioning Barcelona's awesome Boqueria market, my first experiences with the tools of molecular gastronomy, my first real understandings of the immense scope of responsibility of a Head Chef, eating at Bilbao's inspirational Guggenheim, at Barcelona's exceptional Cinc Sentits and at Girona's perfect El Celler de Can Roca. And I have immense pride at having cooked for two of the world's greatest living chefs - El Bulli's Albert Adrià and pastry genius Paco Torreblanca.


But time moves on and we all come to points in our lives when it's time for a change. Last Friday night a Ryanair flight touched down at Stansted airport and, armed with my suitcase full of clothes, my knife roll, my college diploma and a whole bunch of incredible experiences, I returned to my home country. If I had my time over again, I would make exactly the same decision. Two decades ago a young chef would have packed his or her bags and set off for the world's leading culinary country of the times - France. In my era, the country any aspiring young chef was bound to head off to was France's southern neighbour. I don't regret one single minute of my time in the truly wonderful country of Spain and I'm sure I'll be back.

Who knows where the future will take me. But, starting today, I've decided to seek employment as a chef in the land of my birth. It's been great to be away. It's even better to be home again.

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Job Wanted - Chef De Partie in Progressive Fine Dining Restaurant

ENTHUSIASTIC young professional chef seeks post as chef de partie. 3-year Professional Chef Diploma from top college plus two years' experience in Michelin 1* and 2* kitchens in Spain, one full year as chef de partie running starters and desserts sections (cuarto frio and postres), plus experience on meat and fish sections. Willing to travel. Fluent English, Spanish & Portuguese, some French. Excellent references. Salary level not key issue - finding the right kitchen with strong philosophy, good teamwork and bright future far more important.

Maybe, in the words of Michael Pritchard and Frank E. Wright, it was simply "too much, too soon". But having progressed from Comerç 24 to Lasarte and Ferrero, I simply don't want to go backwards. I'm now no longer comfortable cooking at a level below that associated with Michelin 2*, whereas my two years in the professional kitchen don't easily earn me the right to a paid job at that level. Add into the mix the huge problems brought about in the hospitality industry by the economic crisis and the fragility of rural and seaside restaurants during the winter - and it makes the job-hunting task even more difficult.

Mind you, none of that merits what happened to me over the past few days. For a restaurant to invite me for interview knowing I had to fly 1,100km and drive a further 500km and then to have an HR officer who knew diddly-squat about cooking interview me not for the job I'd applied for but for one in a tapas bar they were opening nearby, was absolutely inexcusable. More so as they postponed my interview 24 hours while I was in transit, insisted on a trial shift which continued until all the banks had closed for the weekend and then refused to loan me €50 for petrol to get home after I was caught out with no plastic. I won't name them, but shame on one of the Basque Country's leading Michelin-starred restaurants.

All I want to do is get back in charge of my own section, with my own team of chefs, and turn out the best food I can possibly produce. If anyone can help me do that, I'd love to hear.

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Monks To The Left Of Me, Jockeys To The Right, Here I Am... (For Lunch)

If someone was to suggest lunch in a cramped, white stone medieval blacksmith's workshop wedged in-between a massive Augustinian priory and one of the country's tiniest racecourses, you'd probably show a degree of reticence, especially if it involved a long drive in icy conditions. If they were to tell you to expect one of your best ever British dining experiences as reward for the expedition, you'd probably think they were utterly bonkers. But my dad wasn't daft. The food was truly exceptional.

It was the Sunday after Christmas Day and time for a delayed Christmas present - a planned two-hour drive to what dad assured me was North-West England's finest restaurant, L'Enclume in Cumbria. We headed out in snowy conditions, uncertain whether we'd arrive on time or even arrive at all. But, amazingly, just 90 minutes after we set off from Skipton we found ourselves in the tiny village of Cartmel and managed to negotiate the car across the local racetrack and safely into the icy car park.

As we ambled past the door of our lunch destination, the Maître d' and his staff were attentive with anticipation and, given the road conditions, seemed pleased to have the safe arrival of his booked customers pre-announced. That left us with 20 minutes with which to explore the local priory church round the corner. Which, as you can see from the photo, came literally as a massive surprise. Cartmel Priory was founded in about 1189 by William Marshall, Baron of Cartmel and Earl of Pembroke and was populated by Augustinian monks until dissolution in 1536. Although the priory was destroyed, the church was saved because it had earlier been shared with the local parish and given its own altar and priest.

The nearest sizeable town is Grange-over-Sands, which fronts onto the mud flats of Morecambe Bay, brought to public attention in 2004 with the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster in which 21 Chinese migrant workers were drowned or died of hypothermia after their work gang leaders misjudged the incoming tides. Tragedy apart, the area offers some of England's best seafood, along with hill farms that provide some of the best quality livestock in the UK. If ever there was a perfect location for surf and turf dining, this is it, as the founders of the Priory were well aware. Farming and fishing were the mainstays of life for the local population in the Middle Ages, supported by the monks of Cartmel Priory. And that brings me full circle back to L'Enclume. Those with knowledge of French will be able to translate this as "The Anvil". The building in which the restaurant is located was once the Priory smithy, where iron hinges, horseshoes and farming implements were forged for the monastery. Today they forge superb fine dining experiences, using the very best produce that the local area can provide. Our visit being for lunch, we took the shorter of the tasting menus. Next time we'll take the longest one.

With such limited space it wasn't easy for front of house to accommodate the anticipated relaxation between door and table, but somehow they managed to find a small cosy seating area where we could settle ourselves with an aperitif, select our menu and confirm our special dietary requirements. Taking seats at our table, service began with snacks of goose fat and peanut lollipops, spiced popcorn and flavoured crackers. A pleasant start, but nothing exceptional and no real indication of the pleasures to come.

But our collective experience told us we were in for something very special even as the second snacks were being served. An absolutely perfect mouthful of crab mousse and crabmeat on a corn cracker, accompanied by a cucumber cocktail in a Martini glass, topped with a ginger beer and lemongrass head delicately dispensed at the table from a soda siphon. A superb, challenging combination of a very traditional, conservative flavour and texture with a modern, young flavour and texture. Stunningly good.

In fine dining, good freshly-made bread is taken as as a given - but it's amazing how many restaurants fail this basic task. Not so L'Enclume. The selection of warm rolls baked with white flour, wholemeal flour and a traditional English spelt & barley mix, served in an attractive wooden box and accompanied by a seeded, nutty gluten-free bread for my coeliac dad (which he described as tasting something like a toasted brioche) was absolutely perfect, as was the butter served with it.

The first of our eight-course dishes, Creamed foie, radish and smoked eel, brought smiles as it arrived at the table. My immediate thought as a professional was of the gap between the delight of its artistic creator, the discomfort of the chef tasked with getting it safely to the pass and the misery of those faced with doing the washing up afterwards.

The purses - at first glance white leather - turned out to be ceramic vessels, perched precariously on ridged tiles. Inside, a foie and smoked eel mousse with a foie gel topping and pieces of raw radish adding texture and colour through the dish. The pleasure was in drawing up the base through the topping, with the contrasts hitting your palate unexpectedly. In that respect it reminded me of the signature dishes of two great Catalan chefs - Carles Abellan's potato, egg yolk and truffle kinder egg and Jordi Artal's maple syrup, cream and cava sabayon. A delicious start to the menu.

One of only two dishes unsuitable for my pescatarian mother, the foie and eel purses were replaced for her by a dish of Baby beets and fennel snow. Local baby beetroot, cooked (as far as I could judge) in beetroot juice and served with a fennel granita and garnished with fennel leaf. Here was a dish very much of the modern produce-led era, drawing the purest balanced flavours from the simplest of ingredients, valued in the kitchen every bit as highly as the foie gras that they replaced. Simple perfection. My mum absolutely loved it.

To Cumbrians, the name Humphrey denotes healing. Humphrey's aquifer is a hawthorn-enclosed stone structure set in a cleft in the cliff of Humphrey Head, from which saline water spurts and feeds the holy well of Cartmel Priory, renowned for centuries for its healing powers. The water is now bottled locally as Willow Water and is known to contain the natural analgesic salicin - a close relative of aspirin - produced by rainwater washing through ancient strata of white willow bark.

So it was a reasonable guess that our second dish, Humphrey's pool, was L'Enclume's tribute to the local healing waters of Grange-over-Sands. The dish was a lightly salted seafood broth, made with shellfish juices and containing mussels, razor clam and cockles, with locally-collected seaweed providing colour as well as additional links to the coastline. We agreed that it was a delicate and pleasing dish, although none of us thought it outstanding. The otherwise good execution of the dish was spoiled for me by the beards left on two of the mussels.

The third course of our tasting menu was billed as Salad of Artichokes and fresh goat's cheese, though there was no need to highlight the third word to deliver the wit of the dish.

Globe, Chinese and Jerusalem artichokes worked brilliantly together despite the fact, of course, that only the former is a true artichoke - the second being a tuber of the mint family and the latter a tuber of the sunflower family. They were presented with a cheese wafer, goat's cheese cream, baby chard leaf, malted soil (gluten-free ash for dad) and drops of tarragon oil. This dish combined the most delightful flavours, textures and colours - held cleanly apart but working harmoniously together. It was simply perfection on a plate.

Our fourth dish surprised me. I can't ever remember being served chopped scallops in a fine dining restaurant before, but this was billed as Sea scallop meat and pearls and comprised scallop pieces with scallop and mustard cream, watercress purée, samphire, dulse seaweed and chervil. Dad declared that the scallop meat would inevitably be overcooked during searing, but he hadn't realised that they were cooked whole and cut afterwards. They were absolutely perfect. This was yet another beautifully balanced plate with a superb choice of flavours and textures.

Douglas fir - native to North America and introduced to Britain in the C19th - is not something you often see on a dinner plate, though our next dish made good use of it. Actually, this evergreen pine has multiple uses. The young shoot tips offer a subtle woodsy flavour in cooking, whereas a refreshing tea is made from young leaves and twigs. The fresh leaves have a pleasant balsamic odour and are used as a coffee substitute, while the inner bark has been dried, ground into a meal and mixed with cereals for making bread in times of famine. The tree was employed medicinally by various indigenous North American tribes who used it to treat a whole host of conditions from cuts to coughs and venereal diseases to athlete's foot.

Skate 'belly', cauliflower, buttered stems and Douglas fir used the pinnate leaves in a flavoursome air to dress a dish of skate. Being a flatfish, skate cuts into upper and lower fillets - the lower being the thinner and more delicate. This was perfectly pan-fried and served with cauliflower purée, wild mushrooms, parsley stems and the air of Douglas fir leaf. As with so much of this meal, we were all in agreement on this plate. There was nothing wildly original apart from the foam, but it was as well executed as anything we'd eaten anywhere. We all really enjoyed this dish.

I remember watching a Ray Mears Wild Food programme extolling the virtues of sea buckthorn, a salt-tolerant coastal shrub which bears vibrant orange berries in the autumn. In the sixth and final savoury dish of our tasting menu, Goosnargh duck breast, wild greens, parsnip and sea buckthorn, the plant was put to good effect in generating a golden emulsion to accompany sous-vide cooked duck from across Morecambe Bay, crispy gizzards, foraged greens and roast parsnip chips.

The dish was well presented with a great balance of colours. Unfortunately the meat, although still pink as a result of being cooked at the right temperature, had been cooked for too long and passed its optimal point of tenderness. A very attractive dish, sadly not executed correctly on this particular day.

It's a long time since I ate in a restaurant where they brought a cheese trolley to the table. Very retro and very French, but the selection of fromages on L'Enclume's Chariot of cheese was very modern and we devoured every last morsel. Our selection from the amply-stocked chariot included a Livarot, a Bleu D'Auvergne, two goats' cheeses, a Brie and a local ewes' milk cheese. They were served with crackers and wafers - tapioca cracker, poppyseed wafer, walnut crisp and fennel biscuit, along with toasted gluten free bread for our coeliac diner and a caramelised red onion relish.

Our cheese chariot break over, it was time to attack the menu's pre-dessert of Ice cream made from Cumbrian stout, pistachio, blackberry. This dish comprised ice cream flavoured with Cumbrian oatmeal stout from a local micro-brewery, pistachio sponge and a blackberry granita. The dish cleverly balanced sweet, bitter, tart and nutty flavours without being oversweet. We all agreed it was a clever pre-dessert that served well as a palate cleanser and introduction to the main dessert.

It seemed that we'd not long sat down, though by the time our final dish arrived at the table with the customary perfect timing we'd been feasting for well over two hours. Time was simply drifting by in a haze of hedonistic pleasure. Caramelised quince, Ribston pippin sorbet, rosehip and cobnut crisp was yet another dish drawing on the very best of local produce, totally seasonal and beautifully thought out.

It was a dish that had everything. Contrasting temperatures with the warm quince and membrillo and the cold apple sorbet; complementing textures with the softness of the rosehip jelly, the crispness of the cobnut and the crunch of walnut powder and a colour spectrum from the deep ruby of the quince to the delicate green of the aniseed leaf. Drawing on local, autumnal produce with the rosehips, hazelnuts and heirloom variety of apple. It was a superb conclusion to our meal.

Well, not quite the conclusion, of course. We were still to be treated to petit fours and coffee. The waiter arrived with stylish wooden platters bearing malt macaroons with a malt cream filling, mint cake & dark chocolate lollipop and red grape & raisin Turkish delight. However eclectic these may have sounded they were - as with so many of L'Enclume's dishes - deeply rooted in local produce. Not least of this was the mint cake for which the nearby Cumbrian town of Kendal is world-renowned.

Dad couldn't resist taking a close-up shot of the chocolate lollipop half-eaten, with that delicious local mint cake filling on the verge of dripping from the centre. Our sweets were accompanied by as much coffee as we could comfortably consume. I didn't enquire as to details of its source, but I can be certain that it wasn't locally grown. It was an excellent choice of fine coffee bean, selected and ground by people who really care about their work. Our petit fours and coffee made the ideal end to a near-perfect meal.

This was food at a level indisputably above the 1* ranking of the restaurant - many of the dishes held their own against those of the best 2* restaurants at which I've eaten in Britain and Spain. Simon Rogan's menu showed consistent and clever use of traditional local products, especially local wild herbs, flowers and fungi and ingredients foraged on both sides of the water-line along the local coast. The hallmarks of a chef known to admire Marc Veyrat , Homaro Cantu and Grant Achatz are unmissable, despite his more conventional tutelage by The Great White. There were many hints of modern French cuisine but with a strong English theme throughout, very good execution of dishes with clear, delicate, well-balanced flavours and good textures and a great eye for colour and form. All within a relaxed and informal service environment very much to my personal taste, but probably with too many violations of Michelin's strict codes for their inspectors to overlook when considering a second star. I could find a few criticisms here and there, but no more than I found at Mugaritz or Quique Dacosta. This was a splendid fine dining experience from a team clearly able to maintain the highest standards despite the boss being on his day off when we visited. It was a meal that will long be remembered. Photo of Cartmel Priory Church courtesy of Roger Savage, Flying Pictures, Penrith. Other photos by my dad.

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Ximo Canet - The Art Of Food

When the words "food" and "art" are juxtaposed, most people with an interest in gastronomy are likely to think of Pierre Gagnaire - the iconoclastic chef universally acknowledged to have reinvented French cuisine by creating challenging plates of food through the artistic juxtaposition of contrasting flavours, textures, aromas and, most importantly, the visual appearances of individual components. Turn the concept of arty food on its head... and you have the amazing Ximo Canet, who creates foodie art.

I met Ximo recently, quite by chance. For the final meal of my family visit to my home village of Banyeres de Mariola, we made the short trip down the road to the excellent La Alquería del Pilar. It was my chance to say goodbye to Angeles, who had become a close friend when working in front of house at Restaurante Ferrero and is now employed as the Maîtresse d' at this elegant and multi-awarded casa rural (country house with rooms) with its own blog. Ximo was there - like so many artists engaging in his second, "mortgage-paying" occupation - in his case, as the chef. Keen to support a fellow cuisinier, I eagerly purchased a copy of the guidebook to Ximo's latest exhibition at Alcoy's Ovidi Montllor Centre. The exhibition "Safrà, Canyella... Diàlegs Íntims amb les Espècies: Paisatges Onírics" - translates as "Saffron, Cinnamon... Intimate Dialogues with the Spices: Dream Landscapes" - and the catalogue contents blew me away. If you haven't got the food link yet, the exhibition title should be a good clue to the reason for this post.

Born in 1967 a few kilometres south across the Sierra mountains from Banyeres de Mariola, Ximo developed a passion for painting at an early age and mounted his first exhibitions in his home town of Alcoy, in Benidorm and the Catalan capital Barcelona when he was exactly the age I am now. Since then he has remained fiercely loyal to the province of Alicante, working and exhibiting regularly in the towns of Alcoy, Xàbia, Cocentaina, Elda, Altea, Banyeres and Benilloba with occasional ventures further afield to València, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Girona. Ximo turns his back on artificially coloured paints wherever possible and engages with his subjects - largely, but not entirely, landscapes - by using a combination of plain acrylics and natural materials. His browns, oranges, reds, blues, greens, blacks and yellows are derived from local herbs and spices, as well as vegetables, blood, milk, coffee, rock dust, earth, grass and anything else that can provide the colours, aromas and textures to complement his visual impressions. Here are just a few recent works: A month ago I ate at Quique Dacosta's restaurant, just a few kilometres from the epicentre of Ximo's artistic world. The final dessert dish, "Stones", represented the dry crunchiness of a Valencian road on a summer's afternoon - a chocolate mousse path sprinkled with dusty chocolate crumbs, panettone and mint stones, grass-like strands of kataïfi pastry and dancing crystallised herbs and flowers. Had it been presented on a wall instead of a plate, it could have been a work by Ximo Canet. Both artists bring to their work a profound and exceptional awareness of the multi-sensory offerings of their beloved native land of La Comunitat Valenciana and translate this into their work. I'm honoured to have met them both.

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And So That Was Christmas...

Another Christmas is over. I've been oop North to 't' grim frozen wastes and despite the best attempts of the local highways department to convince me otherwise, I've managed to get back down to the Smoke. Happy to have survived the snow in Yorkshire, I hadn't realised that there's also been snow chaos back in Spain until I saw the photo on my Christmas e-card from Hotel Ferrero and read the news.

Despite everything with legs (apart from us) being banned from the Christmas table this year, we enjoyed a right royal feast. We began with a glass or two of Gran Campo Viejo Reserva from Rioja, chosen as a tribute to my adopted country. To start our meal, I made Scallops on bok choi leaves with a warm Thai vinaigrette, while dad put together the main course of fresh herb stuffed sea bass, Maris Pipers roasted in goose fat and a selection of roast Yorkshire root vegetables including some delicious seasonal parsnips. It being a Christmas table we couldn't go without the mandatory little round green brassicae, so I made truffle-creamed sprouts that went down rather well if I say so myself. And just to prove that the best of wining and dining isn't entirely Spanish, we enjoyed a superb Maison Louis Jadot Mersault from the Côte de Beaune. Our meal was rounded off with dad's infamous and seriously alcoholic gluten-free Christmas pudding and cream.

It all goes to show that, much as I enjoy meat, it's perfectly possible to create a superb feast with little or no trace of four-legged friends. A truth that we experienced at Quique Dacosta a few weeks ago and one that was to be reinforced on Christmas Sunday when we sat down to one of Simon Rogan's tasting menus at L'Enclume in Cartmel (more on this to follow soon). Although we worked our way through many of the other vegetarian, fish and seafood dishes planned for the week - the moules marinière, fish pie, king prawn curry with dhal and kedgeree were all eagerly devoured - somehow we never found the time to manage the broccoli & Stilton soup, the butternut squash risotto or the American breakfast pear pancakes. Still, we managed to consume large quantities of chocolates and nobody went hungry. The photo on the right, by the way, shows my response to dad asking me to "make something with an interesting texture using leftover sprouts and carrots". Well, there comes a time when you've done enough cooking.

To all my readers - have a very Happy New Year or un feliz año nuevo! Postscript: A little note to the vicar of Holy Trinity Church Cowling. No, you weren't imagining it on Christmas Eve. Your small, dedicated Anglican congregation was indeed augmented by a party of Agnostics, Catholics and Jews taking the opportunity to enjoy a brief period of contemplation and spirituality before the gregariousness and over-indulgence began. So get that letter off to The Church Times.

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Happy Christmas Everyone

May I wish everyone the very best at this seasonal time of year. Belated greetings on the celebration of Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Al-Hijira, Yule and Litha. Have a happy Christmas, Makar Sankrant, Oshogatsu, Zarathosht Diso and Ashura. Whatever is your thing and whoever is your God, if you believe in one, may peace and happiness be with you over the winter holidays. Salaam and shalom to you all.

Yesterday morning I received an email from my dad, with two photos attached. The first picture shows a toy Santa, sat up high on the brightly decorated Christmas tree with a sack of presents alongside, waiting for the real Santa to pay a visit on Christmas Eve. This year my brother Joel is spending Christmas here in London with his mum-in-law Jacqui, while mum and I are spending the holiday week up in North Yorkshire with dad. As per last year, it will be the best of local food. This year the livestock get a break and surf takes over from turf, as we indulge ourselves on king scallops, king prawns, crab, mussels, smoked haddock, smoked salmon and baked stuffed sea bass, along with roasted Maris Pipers and a selection of Yorkshire's finest root vegetables, brassica and herbs.

There was just one potential problem with our plans, illustrated by the second photo which shows dad's driveway, pictured from an upstairs window on Monday night. The local road is under about a foot of snow and the hill up from the village has been impassable to all but four-wheel drive vehicles. But never mind. Dad has parked his car on the main road up in the village, so we can get out to do the last-minute shopping. And neighbours have offered him the services of their Freelander to ferry us from the village if needed.

And that's what it's all about, really. Fighting its way through the materialism and self-indulgence, Christmas and New Year is all about community, friendship and people helping and supporting eachother. So together we can all celebrate the ending of one decade and the coming of a new one. As it happens, we didn't need the rescue service and we arrived safely a couple of hours ago. The food is in the fridge and the freezer, a bottle of Cava has been opened and we're ready for the festive season regardless of what the weather brings. I hope you are too. Wishing you all the very best. Aidan.

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Westminster Kingsway Quality

I've never been into competitive cooking. Not because I'm particuarly nervous in a competitive situation or in public - I used to be very successful at youth football and I've worked on stage in public alongside Gordon Ramsay, Jean-Christophe Novelli and Raymond Blanc. It's simply that some people are turned on by cooking contests, while others including me are not. Selin Kiazim is certainly someone who gets a big buzz from culinary competition. The 23-year-old chef was a year below me at Westminster Kingsway College, from where she graduated in 2008 with a Professional Chef Diploma with Distinction.

While still a student at WestKing, Selin won two cooking gold medals at Hotelympia, Britain's biggest professional hospitality event, and went on to reach the final of Taste of Mexico, before winning the winning the NZ-UK Link Foundation Culinary Competition. The prize was a five-week working trip to New Zealand where, after work experience at Peter Gordon's Dine in Auckland, Selin secured a job back in London at his flagship restaurant, The Providores and Tapa Room. My opinion of this Marylebone eaterie is well known to regular readers - I spent two of the most formative weeks of my culinary development working there alongside Peter Gordon, a truly brilliant chef for whom I have the utmost respect. Last autumn Selin was voted top achiever at the 2008 Graduate Awards presentation lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel, a month before setting off for the Culinary Olympics in Erfurt Germany as a member of the multi-medal winning British junior team.

The other week Selin was in front of the cameras once again, this time reaching the semifinals of BBC Young Chef of the Year. No disgrace coming third behind chefs with years of experience at two of the country's most talked-about restaurants - Fergus Henderson's St. John which I hugely enjoyed back in 2007 and Simon Rogan's L'Enclume, where I have a family reservation for post-Christmas lunch next Sunday. With such drive and passion, Selin is bound to make a great career for herself. I can only wish her the very best and congratulate WestKing on yet another quality graduate.

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A Pastry Chef Comes To Hotel Ferrero

I wasn't able to show my readers much of our food while I was working at Ferrero, but now for the first time I can give you an insight. Scottish ex-pat Brian Campbell is Pastry Chef at Kermadec, a stunning, award-winning restaurant overlooking Auckland's Viaduct Harbour in New Zealand. He recently decided to take a month out to visit Spain - but it wasn't to laze about on beaches. I know this because Brian is a blogger who made contact just before visiting and has subsequently written about his experiences.

In my Restaurants section, I quote Ferran Adrià: "The best chefs I know are the ones who most enjoy eating" and explain how he inspired me to improve my knowledge and standards not only by cooking in many kitchens but also by eating in many dining rooms. This October Brian Campbell put me to shame. In three weeks he ate at El Celler de Can Roca, El Poblet, Martín Berasategui, Arzak, Mugaritz, Sergi Arola Gastro, L'Angle, Ferrero and several great tapas and pintxos bars, shopped at two of Paco Torreblanca's pastry shops and experienced the fresh food delights of La Boqueria. And he wrote up most of his experiences, with loads of photos! Click on the links above for Brian's reports.

Chef Campbell has now published an excellent summary of his Spanish gastro-tour, which I encourage everyone to read. It's clear that Brian and I share a very similar opinion of food. He chose El Poblet (now Restaurante Quique Dacosta) as his best dining experience in Spain, closely followed by El Celler de Can Roca. I would cite the same two, albeit in reverse order, for my own best meals in Spain. Brian's choice for best individual dish was the squid dish from 3-star Restaurante Martin Berasategui. Although I have yet to eat there, I've worked in MB's Lasarte restaurant in Barcelona and wouldn't hesitate to cite a dish from one of his kitchens on the basis of the ability of his head chefs to deliver stunning natural flavours. Runner-up was Quique Dacosta's Foie Cubalibre dish, which I experienced as part of my birthday meal and thought was absolutely brilliant.

Brian's choice for best hotel of his trip came as no surprise to me: "Hands down this goes to Hotel Ferrero. The hotel has it all - a world class restaurant, a stylish and luxurious design, stunning bedrooms with everything you want, beautiful outdoor pool area and attentive staff. It has just recently been included in the Relais & Châteaux guide, which is all about luxury. I loved every minute and felt so relaxed at this hotel." Of the food, he kindly commented: "The meal was standout, and I certainly don't understand Michelin any more - they are blind to the food coming out of that kitchen."

This slideshow of Brian's photos comprises some of the hotel, followed by the individual dishes of the restaurant's Menú Innovación. Click on slides for dish descriptions and Brian's comments. Now safely back home, Brian recently posted Exploding Strawberry Milkshake. Why do I mention this rather odd-sounding dish? Let Brian explain: "So here we have another dish recently gone on our menu, influenced by my trip to Michelin 3* Restaurant Arzak in San Sebastian. I serve a milkshake poured tableside, which then starts to bubble up and sauces the rest of the plate which actually makes up the main part of the dish... A jelly veil is made from an intense jus extracted from strawberries. This is draped over cheesecake mousse and then we garnish up and around the jelly with strawberries, raspberries, black and blue berries, a blackcurrant meringue, strawberry and blackcurrant fruit tuiles, pineapple sage flowers, coriander flower and corn flowers. Also compressed watermelon adds... extra freshness to the dish. A small amount of black olive and muscavado powder adds a little savoury touch. The dish is finished off with a lavender ice cream and... the strawberry milkshake is poured by the waiter." Click on this link for a clip of his innovative milkshake in effervescent action. And that sums it all up. Even a non-professional can see clearly in this write-up a whole plateful of influences from Brian's trip to Spain. And that is what creativity is all about. It's so important to eat at other chefs' restaurants, but we don't do it in order to steal their ideas. We eat at other chefs' restaurants in order to fill us with the inspiration to be truly creative and original ourselves.

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TGRWT #20 - Chicken And Pumpkin

Launched in April 2007 by Norwegian organometallic chemist and gastronomist Martin Lersch of blog.khymos.org, They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) is all about unusual flavour pairings - combining culinary ingredients in ways that we aren't necessarily familiar with from classical cooking. The scientific hypothesis behind these experiments is that if two foods have one or more key odorants in common, they might go well together and perhaps even complement and enhance each other.

I was pleased to host TGRWT #18 and when I saw that the current event TGRWT #20 was being hosted by my friend and professional mentor John Sconzo, aka. Doc Sconz, I was quick to volunteer an entry. I couldn't do anything at first because I was busy moving myself from Valencia to Catalunya and getting ready for my Christmas trip back to Blighty. And it was while I was packing my things and considering options for a chicken and pumpkin dish that I came up with an even better idea. I'd get my staff to do it.

I've got a year's experience as a chef de partie under my belt now and in shortlisting potential employers for my next job I've focused on larger kitchens where I would get the opportunity to manage a team. So why not test my powers of delegation on TGRWT #20? After all, my dad thinks he knows something about food these days and, after eating with me at Quique Dacosta the other week, he should have learnt something about technique and presentation. More importantly, I've discussed the taste spectrum with him many times, so he should know where to start when designing a dish. So I briefed my father... and what follows is the result. All his own handiwork, including the photos.

The host of TGRWT #20 initially chose cooked chicken and lemongrass for the ingredients, before amending the challenge to fit the technical criteria by replacing lemongrass with pumpkin. So I decided to follow his initial line of thought and attempt a dish using all three of these ingredients. My offering is a slow-cooked chicken and pumpkin roulade on a bed of pilaf rice, with a sauce of coconut and lemongrass. Mostly Cambodian, in tribute to my son's love of Khmer cooking, with a bit of Thai and some French and Persian influences. The place to start, so Aidan explained to me, is analysing the principal flavours of the key ingredients. For pumpkin, the dominant flavour is sweet and for chicken the dominant basic flavours are umami and sweet. So my first thought is to cut through these with salt, sour and bitter flavours along with some astringency and pungency if possible. It was that line of reasoning, together with the lemongrass hint, that led me to the cuisines of Cambodia and Thailand.

The pumpkin choice now became obvious, although I had a lot of trouble finding one until last Friday, when Waitrose in Otley obliged. Kabocha is generally assumed to be indigenous to Japan (it's commonly called Japanese pumpkin), but it surprised me when I first discovered that its origins were in Cambodia, from where it was brought to Japan by Portuguese sailors in the 16th century. The Japanese name has roots in the words 'Kambuja' and 'Kampuchea' (the Khmer names for the ancient and modern states of Cambodia), while in Khmer it's called 'Lpoeu'. On the left is my trophy. She's not the most beautiful of vegetables (actually, if we're going to be correct, like all squashes, she's a fruit), but she's really delicious all the same.

My first task, the night before cooking, was to remove the breasts from a corn-fed free-range chicken (who said I had to make a peasant dish?) and marinate them in home-made kroeung paste. The use of kroeung lends this dish its distinctly Khmer character. I used finely chopped shallot, sliced lemongrass stalks, crushed kaffir lime leaves, some dried lime, a little chopped chilli, crushed and finely chopped garlic, a teaspoon each of galangal paste and powdered turmeric (rhizomes of the latter two are difficult to obtain in Britain and especially so in Yorkshire!).

The kroeung didn't entirely go to waste after use as a marinade because I used some of it in the next component of the dish, a soured variant of Somlor Machoo Ktiss, or lemongrass and coconut soup, inspired by this dish from Bay Area Cambodian food blogger Khatiya of Khatiya Korner that I found quite easily via a Google search. For my version I used coconut milk, the kroeung paste made for the marinade, some nam pla, shrimp paste and tamarind paste - cooking slowly for 30 mins before straining through muslin and reducing to a thick sauce. Wow, those flavours were intense!

Next I prepared my chicken roulades, starting by carefully trimming and slicing into each breast of marinated meat to create large, thin sheets. Having already cooked down my pumpkin pieces (setting a few aside for the final plating) and roughly blitzed the resulting purée together with sautéed spinach and finely chopped mushroom, I seasoned this mixture and spread it across the chicken breasts. They were then rolled in clingfilm and tied at each end to create stuffed meat sausages, which I cooked for half an hour in a water bath maintained at around 85°C.

While the chicken was slow cooking, I tossed some pre-soaked short grain rice in fat that I had set aside when trimming the chicken the previous day and subsequently rendered down. I used Thai kao niao (sticky rice) on the assumption that this would not be dissimilar to a Cambodian sticky rice, although with hindsight I would probably have substituted a less glutinous product for this part of the dish. After adding some chopped Thai basil leaves, I covered the rice in stock made from the chicken offcuts and bones and put the rice in the oven to cook.

Just before serving the rice, I unwrapped the chicken roulades and seared them in very hot chicken fat. Plating up, I made a mound of pilaf on which I placed slices of the stuffed chicken. I poured some of the reduced sour lemongrass and coconut soup into the bowl and finished off the dish with some pieces of reserved pumpkin lightly caramelised in chicken fat with a sprinkling of palm sugar. So here's the final dish - Kroeung Marinated Chicken Roulade with Pumpkin, Spinach and Mushroom on a bed of Chicken and Thai Basil Pilaf with Caramelized Pumpkin and a Reduced Sour Coconut and Lemongrass Sauce. So, how was the pairing? I don't know if chicken and pumpkin is a traditional combination in other cuisines, but a quick search on Google turns up recipes for Thai, Moroccan, American, Italian and even British dishes. Anyhow, it's certainly a combination that works. It stood up well to competition from the intense flavours of coconut and lemongrass, shrimp and tamarind. My pilaf, combining sticky rice fried in rendered chicken fat with chicken stock, was simply too rich and sweet. If I repeated the dish, I'd also think more carefully about the colours. The combination of turmeric and tamarind turned an otherwise beautiful soup into a muddy brown liquor, so next time I'd make part of the kroeung without haldi and look for a clear tamarind extract or use another souring agent. I'd also make the dish more sour, because the sweetness still dominated. It took me ages to make this meal, but it was happily consumed within minutes. And it certainly convinced me that chicken and pumpkin go really well together. Mike.

OK, so I wouldn't advise dad to give up the day job (actually he's retired) - but for someone whose idea of fine dining used to be a pickled gherkin with his spare ribs and chips, that's not at all a bad effort.

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