That ’ s the beauty of the way I write the menus , it leaves it to the creativity
That ’ s the beauty of the way I write the menus , it leaves it to the creativity
what I learned the most at MasterChef , is that it ’ s a real pressure cauldron and obviously things don ’ t go to plan and that you are going to have to adapt and that ’ s where the good chefs are because if you can ’ t adapt and you just send something out rubbish you ’ re going to go off the show , whereas if you can adapt , change it and tweak it and blag a little bit you can get good food out of it .
Jason : Isn ’ t that really the true skill of a chef ? end of last year , there wasn ’ t too much change in the concept but it was really just to get people inspired about what I can do . If this is what I can do at a coffee shop , what I can I do in a permanent restaurant ? It ’ s not easy getting the right investors either , I had a lot of people wanting to put money in but it ’ s got to be the right investment for them to take the pressure off me . I don ’ t want the pressure of having to deliver x amount of money after year 3 , I wanted it to be almost a social investment , a journey for the investors as well but giving them enough back that they feel like they ’ ve got value for money .
Jason : With the pop-ups obviously you ’ re working in kitchens of varying size or not kitchens at all , what ’ s the biggest disaster that happened behind the scenes ?
Steve : That ’ s actually a really good question and I ’ ll probably be embarrassed to answer it but there were the first ones at Norfolk Square and I still remember the dish , it was artichoke and vanilla soup , again using vanilla .
Jason : Not vanilla again
Steve : I know maybe it ’ s a sign . I haven ’ t done it since ; we just used all these thermos canisters to make the soup . So normally the way we do it is we just put the cream soup cold in the canister and then heat it up in a water bath or boiling water and then it heats up because it ’ s a metal canister , but because these were thermos we actually poured the soup in cold , put them in the hot water but it kept it cold in the hot water . I taste everything , so I taste it , it ’ s cold , and you don ’ t know what ’ s going on , I ’ m looking at all the chefs like its cold , and everyone ’ s like scratching their heads but it tasted really nice . So we just sent it out cold and to be honest everyone said it was like the best dish of the night which was surprising , I mean it was a disaster , because for me it just set everyone on edge , you know like the first course going out like this really shook everyone but that was the biggest disaster , we didn ’ t burn anything down , but it taught me to pay attention a bit more .
Jason : So whenever you ’ re serving something cold …
Steve : That ’ s the thing and that ’ s the beauty of the way I write the menus , it leaves it to the creativity you know , if I tasted it and it wasn ’ t right I would have had to do something else but the fact that I felt it tasted exceptional , it ’ s just realigning your expectations and that ’ s why I try and teach my chefs here , is that not everything goes to plan , it ’ s how you get around that , doing the best with an accident . That ’ s
Steve : To adapt yeah because anybody can follow a recipe . Anybody can follow a guide on how to stir things , chop things , do whatever else but actually when that sort of thing happens how you save it and still put out a decent bit of food . That ’ s the skill of a chef .
Jason : I think you ’ re absolutely right and what I would say is a chef is someone that can just look in a fridge and make a dish .
Steve : You get some chefs that are like “ oh have you got this certain type of oil or have you got that ?”, and it ’ s like no , we ’ ve got this in front of you , now make a dish and you can really tell when they might not be the best chefs . I ’ m not saying I ’ m the best chef in the world but I would say I ’ m a resourceful chef , I can do good things with what I ’ ve got in front of me , but then some chefs would really crumble under that situation of not having their things to do what they do .
Jason : Do you like that challenge , the old kind of Ready , Steady Cook challenge of bringing a bag of ingredients and say make me something ?
Steve : I ’ ll be honest , I really don ’ t like that , and that ’ s a challenge , if you ask the team everything ’ s written down , everything ’ s almost fool proof , we do the same things over and over again and I really don ’ t like that unexpectedness of it but I think that ’ s what MasterChef helped me with , it almost brought me out of my comfort zone which is nice to do , but it ’ s also nice to have a fall back . We ’ re relying on suppliers to bring the same ingredients
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