Slice of Life

By Peter Gordon - December 2008

Princess Anne, Alan Davidson, Wellington for 3 days, a giant Rugby Ball and a Market Kitchen pavlova

November began and October ended – at full speed. While the world’s economies are collapsing and there have been several high profile restaurant disasters in the UK, with more to come no doubt, it’s been good to keep busy at The Providores and elsewhere in the food world.

The month started with a delicious four-course lunch in Sydney at Universal – which I mentioned last month. Christine Manfield is one of Australia’s leading chefs and her food encompasses a heady mixture of exquisite flavours, wonderfully playful textures, and a great depth of knowledge of many of the worlds cuisines. Chris and her partner Margie Harris used to run the acclaimed Paramount restaurant and they know how to run a restaurant with style and attention to detail. Head chef is Jessica Muir who was also head chef at Chris’s East at West restaurant in London. www.universalrestaurant.com

This month also saw me judging two more culinary competitions, one for the annual NZ-UK LINK Foundation Culinary exchange, and the other for the inaugural Foods From Spain’s Spanish Young Chef of the Year 2008. As with the two competitions I judged last month, the standards were incredibly high and the young chefs keen and eager. Princess Anne presented the awards at the LINK competition, and Ferran Adria, from El Bulli in Spain, presented the Spanish one. http://www.nzuklinkfoundation.org/fellowships/nz-uk-link-foundation-culinary-challenge.php http://www.foodsfromspain.co.uk/chef/index.htm

Alan Davidson, a legend amongst foodies, is to have a programme made about his life. He had a wonderful life which included diplomatic postings in Tunisia and Cambodia, the writing of a book about local Tunisian fish, being lauded by Elizabeth David, and then finally his biggest contribution, the writing over decades, of The Oxford Companion to Food. I met Alan just the once but would often see him at events and he always cut a dash with his brightly coloured silks, a trait he picked up in South East Asia. I was asked to contribute to the show by cooking a dish that might help explain the relevance of Alan to the food world. My dish consisted of squid three ways: raw (Samurai noodles), poached and fried. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Davidson_(food_writer)

In late November I flew off to Wellington for less than three days! I was attending the Air New Zealand Wine Awards, which I always enjoy, and had designed the main course of roast rack of lamb on kumara and confit garlic gratin with spinach, beetroot and shallot ragout and manuka smoked salt and hazelnut dukkah. Ruth Pretty and her team prepared the meal for 800 or so and it went perfectly. I have to say it was quite a quick jaunt out there, but it went well. I managed to eat with some of the other culinary team and wine consultants at Citron - Rex and Wendy Morgan’s restaurant, which was fantastic. http://www.airnzwineawards.co.nz/ http://www.menus.co.nz/citron/

I returned to London on a Monday and the following day the Queen, the Mayor of London, the All Blacks and new NZ PM John Key opened the Tourism New Zealand Big White Rugby Ball on the south side of the Thames between the Town Hall and Tower Bridge. It was the same Ball that had sat next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris that we catered for, and in London it was here for the same reason – to promote New Zealand as a destination for the Rugby World Cup in 2011. To be honest, anyone entering the Ball would probably go out and buy a ticket, rugby fan or not, as the audio-visual show inside was spectacular, energising and thrilling. Again I had created a menu using the best NZ produce we could source and this time I worked with a London caterer, Blue Strawberry, to provide the food for various functions and events. http://www.tourismnewzealand.com/tourism_info/media-resources/video-news-releases/video-news-releases_home.cfm#

Just before the end of the month I made an appearance on Market Kitchen, this time cooking an alternative pudding for Christmas, as well as making Christmas tree decorations! The dessert I made was a pavlova with passionfruit mascarpone cream, kiwifruit and jelly cubes made from Oloroso sherry set with agar agar – a type of seaweed (that grows around the NZ coast) that is vegetarian. The decorations were hilarious, made from poking lemongrass spears through baby clementines from a tree we had at work and studding them with cloves! The day before I’d received some freeze-dried golden kiwifruit slices from NZ which I threaded on ribbons and hung off the trees – they were good to eat too! www.kiwibites.co.nz http://www.optomen.com

And now it’s Christmas and New Year time – always a challenge in restaurants as the guests are either full of the joys of the world, or bogged under with worry. This year stores all over Britain are having pre-Xmas sales (unheard of normally) as they need to get cash through the tills, restaurants across the country are closing due to the economic downturn, and it’s hard to know what 2009 will bring. As for us, The Providores is as busy as it was last year so we’re just keeping everyone focussed on the business, keeping our regulars happy and trying to make the new customers want to come back.

This month’s photo was taken Town Hall and London Bridge on the night the Big White Rugby Ball was launched – Town Hall and London Bridge in view.