Resident Chef - November 2007
I am hugely excited this month (even more so than usual) as we prepare to go all Italian at Foliage…. For one week, from 5 November, I’ve invited the esteemed Chef Norbert Niederkofler from St. Hubertus at the Hotel Rosa Alpina to come and share his exquisite northern Italian style of cooking with me. He’s an olympic Ulysses of a chef with awards and rosettes to rival the most zealous of pony club mothers. After years of travelling and working in some of the finest restaurants in the world, Chef Norbert currently abides in his native Dolomites where celebrities flock to sample his robust traditional northern Italian cuisine, with its unexpected accents absorbed from his travels – completely different from your classic Italian – it’s perfect fodder for the more wintry months.
This practice of cross-pollination and exposure between chefs and restaurants is quite common in the wonderful world of hospitality. Chefs travel to other chefs’ kitchens, in order to work and gain new knowledge and ideas. I myself have travelled to San Francisco, Hong Kong, Prague and the Napa Valley in California, where I was lucky enough to spend a month working in the kitchens of the great Thomas Keller in The French Laundry. I have also spent time in the kitchens of The Vineyard at Stockcross with John Campbell and hopefully, by the time you read this, I will have spent a week in the Laboratory kitchen at the Fat Duck with the pioneering Heston Blumenthal and his team. This kind of exposure provides the invaluable exchange of ideas and styles, new techniques and ingredients that allows us to develop our craft.The opportunity for you too to learn from the culinary supremos of our day is live and well with the current renaissance of cooking programmes and exhibitions. One of the best is the BBC Good Food Show which returns to Olympia for the weekend of the 16-18 November. It’s a great day out for any serious foodie, with stalls exhibiting the latest products from seeds to sausages, chocolates, Christmas hampers, coffees and cakes. And (this is the good bit) there are also several demonstrations from some of the industry’s shining lights giving you the chance to ask questions and gain kitchen tips from those in the know. With demos from James Martin, Raymond Blanc, Angela Hartnett, Giorgio Locatelli, Mark Hix, Richard Corrigan and Rick Stein to name but a few, there is an expert for every type of cuisine and the opportunity to gain some valuable advice in your quest for the perfect dinner party menu. For more information see www.londonbbcgoodfoodshow.com
Chris Staines is Head Chef at Foliage, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA, 020 7201 3723
www.mandarinoriental.com/london
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