Taunton and South Somerset Living Feb - Mar 2022

More documents

Recommendations

Info

A multi-award winning 17th century traditional country pub, set in the heart of the glorious Blackdown Hills Ranked in the top 10 best pubs in Somerset by The Guardian We proudly serve locally sourced, seasonal food. The Candlelight experience is not to be missed! Available Tuesday - Saturday Tuesday - Friday 12 - 2pm Saturday 12 - 2:30pm www.candlelight-inn.co.uk Tel 01460 234476 The Candlelight Inn, Bishopswood, Somerset TA20 3RS
Saturday morning, leave my mother to have a rest at home, we would come to the café with my dad and then my dad when he closed at 11 o’clock would lock the doors from the outside. And he would say: “I’m just going to see a man about a dog”. We didn’t realise he meant The Dog and Hound pub next door! So we would then clean up the cafe and get it all ready so that Monday morning when you reopen it was bright and sparkling. For that we were rewarded; we were allowed to have one Blue Ribbon chocolate biscuit. What other projects are you getting stuck into lately? I run a competition called Future chef, which I think is part of which attracted Fuller’s because it is getting 11 to 16 year olds, getting them interested in where their food comes from. All the things that we have talked about, we’re trying to instil those because we’d like to do it earlier in life. But the education system doesn’t allow us to do that. What I don’t understand is that I suspect if you did a poll, that at least 50% of our MPs have children in school. They are then going to finish school and go to university and you need them to be healthy and have a proper functioning brain, which is what we teach kids with cooking. If you get the right balance of food, then you grow to be healthy. We run a scheme as well called Adopt a School for the Royal Academy where we send chefs into classrooms to try and teach young people about the palette and where food comes from and what to look for. So what we want to do is to stimulate. And I have to say we have a waiting list of schools as long as your arm. Once people have been in and done it, everybody gets on telling their mates! That’s fantastic, are you running that nationwide? Yes, we have a Northwest branch and we have a Scottish branch. But it is far more East London centric with the outposts, if you like, who do a great job. Because we don’t really want to send too many people from London to Scotland because it’s A) expensive, and B) it doesn’t help our carbon footprint. How it started was one gentleman whose daughter was at school in Putney and learning nothing about food and he was getting frustrated. “Well I’ll come and do it!” he said. So he did and it was as simple as that! My husband has only just got into cooking and now he’s into it in a big way. And I’m now not allowed in the kitchen! Well that’s the thing, you can share it around a bit now! You’d be gobsmacked the number of people, when I did the shows, that walk past, men by themselves, and they say: ‘Hi Brian. You saved my life because my wife passed away and I’ve suddenly nobody to cook for me”. It’s so gratifying to see this system actually works. Do you ever get a chance to eat out yourself? Yes, I do. I haven’t been out as much just recently. But certainly, it’s in my DNA if you like. I go out to lunches more than dinners these days. Then I can get home at a sensible time. But it’s keeping up with what’s going on. And there’s so many things that are changing these days and so many people that need supporting that the list of where to go is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Apart from James Martin who you’re very friendly with, do you have any other foodie heroes in your life? Well two of my heroes have sadly passed away, the Roux brothers. But then there’s the wonderful Raymond Blanc who is a foodie hero of mine. He’s a wonderful man and we have had some good times together. But let me just take you back a little bit; there was a guy called Eric Scamman, who taught me to make sauces at the Savoy Grill. I’ll never forget the words that he gave me, helping me understand how to make the right the right sauce. Then of course, Paul Bocuse; the great French chef of my era, who has also sadly passed away. He was a great contributor to all our lives. He influenced your cooking? Oh yes. The way I look at it is you know with music colleges when you come to do your examinations? They ask you to choose a piece of music that you want to play and you choose whatever you want to play, and you play. And then they say ‘Right, that’s very good. Now, here’s a piece of music you’ve never seen. Play that’. You have to cite read it. I think that’s how we should look at cooking. We need people to be able to understand the basics of the classics, the French cuisine as I understood it. Once you’ve learned that you can go off on a tangent and you can cite read someone. I don’t wish to uplift Ready, Steady Cook too much, but that’s what that programme did. Here are some items, do something with them. Sometimes you did something phenomenal. People would say ‘Oh I must make that!’. Other times people would say ‘Oh, that looks rubbish. I’m not going to do that’. But in fact, the two principles were aligned with a music examination. What’s the best meal you’ve ever had? You’re going to ask me for the dishes, which I won’t be able to tell you but many moons ago, I can’t remember when it was now, I was filming in Hong Kong. The food and beverage manager of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which was where we were staying, invited me to dinner one night after we had finished filming. We had dinner in the Mandarin Oriental overlooking Victoria Harbour in a Chinese restaurant called Manwah and that was probably the best meal I’ve ever had. I’ve been very fortunate to have some wonderful meals around the world in the houses of some great chefs. But I have also sat around the table with friends and just sat and eaten and you couldn’t ask for much more. What are your plans for this year? I think that Fuller’s Sunday lunchtime is going to take quite a bit of my time this year and I’m quite happy to devote my time to that. I think that certainly in winter times when you can go into a pub like Fuller’s and see a an open fire going…to me that suddenly tells you this is the time to sit down and eat and enjoy yourself and the company of others. To find your nearest Fuller’s pub and to book a table, please visit: www.fullers.co.uk/pubs/pub-finder www.minervamagazines.co.uk | 17
Page 2 and 3: A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE AWAITS YOU Visi
Page 4 and 5: COMPETITION To enter any (or all!)
Page 6 and 7: HENDRIX, CLAPTON & CREAM BY VOODOO
Page 8: ADAPTING TO A VERY DIFFERENT WORLD
Page 12 and 13: 5 things I wish I knew when plannin
Page 14: gravy IT'S ALL FULLER’S PUBS HAVE
Page 19 and 20: MOROCCAN MINCED WALNUT FLATBREADS P
Page 21 and 22: Mortgage & Protection Advice in the
Page 23 and 24: New Display Models out including: N
Page 25: ALL THOSE NEW SMART DEVICES DESERVE
Page 28 and 29: SHOP ONLINE VISIT SOPHA.CO.UK TAKE
Page 30 and 31: The West Country welcomes you to it
Page 32: discover our world michaelspiers.co

Taunton and South Somerset Living Feb - Mar 2022

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?