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Patrick
Williams - TV Chef
Patrick
recently appeared (6th August 2002) on CBBC's programme
XChange feature about Jamaican Food. He demonstrated
how to make fried dumplings and banana fool and had
a display of popular Caribbean fruit and vegetables, including
breadfruit, plantain, jelly coconut.
Patrick
Williams took home economics to meet girls and then found
that he was hooked on cooking. His creative vision may have
been snubbed at the Ivy but that hasn't put him off
'Pigeon,
beetroot and dandelion are at their best in August and baby
beetroot is particular to summer. Beetroot is like the Marmite
thing, you either like it or you don't. It has a strong earthy
taste, which can work well with other strong flavours such
as pigeon. In my seasonal dish, roast pigeon, dandelion salad
and beetroot jelly, I've added a few tablespoons of bitters
to the jelly to enhance the flavour. Bitters really lift the
natural beetroot flavours, matching it well with the earthiness
of the pigeon and the tartness of the dandelion. The recipe
usually uses traditional techniques for the jelly. In a restaurant
I would use calves feet instead of gelatin but you have got
to adapt the recipe to cook at home.
Cooking
in a professional kitchen is a different experience from cooking
at home but I don't think that you always get better food
from a professional kitchen. I loved eating the Caribbean
food my mum would cook, but it wasn't until secondary school
that I got a taste for cooking. At my school in East Ham we
were given a choice between doing needlework and cookery or
metalwork. I'm terrible at metalwork and I thought cookery
would be a chance to meet girls, so I studied cookery and
I found that I was good at it. I went on to catering college
and then got a job at the Ivy in London.
Let's
say the Ivy was an experience. I found that the emphasis was
more on a whose eating there rather than what they were eating.
I didn't get on very well because I questioned everything
so I could learn from it. They thought I was a cheeky upstart,
and I thought that they were very straight and blinkered.
Creativity
in cooking is vital. If 20 chefs were given the same five
ingredients and were asked to cook the same dish, the outcome
of each would be completely different. Every chef has their
own tastes and vision. I've worked with Marco Pierre White
and Richard Neat but my time spent with Gary Rhodes at the
Greenhouse is the most memorable. Out of all the chefs around
I do tend to like Gary Rhodes's cooking because it's simple
and clean, but all the flavours are there. It was when I worked
at Greens, a bastion of English food, that I had my first
proper chance to experiment. I'd take standard dishes and
give them a little twist here and there and it worked out
very well. Food in Britain can be excellent but I've always
felt that Caribbean food should be more widely available.
I don't cook strictly ethnic food but I think a Caribbean
version of the Ivy or a top class restaurant would work brilliantly.'
Patrick
Williams will be launching a new joint venture restaurant
The Green, in Willesden Green, London NW2, where he will be
resident head chef and co-owner. He is author of The Caribbean
Cook.
Source:
Chloe Diski - Observer Newspaper
Sunday
August 11, 2002
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