Miles Collins

My first taste of global cuisine

For me food and travel are joined at the hip, from the days of our earliest explorers and traders to the modern day Lonely Planet armchair wannabe, food has travelled thousands of miles to reach our plates and we, in turn travel thousands of miles to eat the same thing in its original location. I was trying to pin point a time in my life when I first developed this thirst for knowledge of food from other cultures and it was a comment on this blog by my chef mentor, Chef Barker that prompted a timely reminder.

I first began my training under Chef Barker when the hotel we worked for was part of Crest Hotels, a big company comprising of some fifty three, four and five star hotels which would go on to become part of the Forte hotel group. I remember Chef winning an award for overall Chef of the Year for the Crest group, I remember feeling very proud of his achievement before the reality of his two week abscence from the kitchen that was his prize of a holiday in Rio sank in.

Crest came up with a food and drink promotion based on the ’Around the World in Eighty Days’ story and, if memory serves me correctly each chef had to write their own menu with wines to match. I vaguely remember chef having a book on Chinese cuisine from where the duck main course came from. I still have a copy of the menu and can remember certain parts of it, to this day I can still see myself as a young commis preparing fish cakes for one of the starters.

What strikes me about this menu is the lasting impression it had upon me, I remember being fascinated by the different flavours and the countries they came from. Google Earth was some way off our radar back then and most cookery books had only a few black and white photographs so imagination was everything.

Here’s some sample dishes from the menu, should Chef Barker read this and correct me on one or two facts then I make my apologies now. I’m sure they are his dishes though!

Starters:

Prawn Chowder (USA) Light prawn soup with potato and onion £1.65

Lomi Lomi Salad (South Sea Islands) Fresh salmon salad with tomato and onion £3.45

Fischbouletten Von Kabeljou (Germany) Codfish fritters with a spinach and butter sauce £2.35

Grenouilles a la Meuniere (France) Shallow fried frog’s legs £3.85

Main Course:

Dony-Goo-Man-Arp (China) Braised Duck with Chinese mushrooms, soya and garlic  £10.25

Otak-Otak (Malaya) Stuffed trout with coriander, onion and garlic, wrapped in cabbage leaves and poached, garnished with a small salad £7.55

Sumiachi Kotiety Z Shyukamy (Russia) Boneless pork cutlets with prune sauce  £8.85

Dejaj-Meslook (North Africa) Braised chicken with herbs and spices and sliced potatoes  £7.95

Sukiyaki (Japan) Japanese farmers dish of steak and vegetables with bean curd and sake  £12.95

Sweets:

Apfelstrudel (Austria) Layers of apple, sultanas and cinnamon, bound in strudel pastry and baked golden brown £2.00

Zabaione (Italy) A light blend of egg and marsala, decorated with cream and chocolate  £2.80

Wine List:

White Wine:

France: Mouton Cadet Blanc, Selection Baron Rothschild £9.95

England: Three Choirs, Newent 1986  £9.75

Australia: Wolf Blass Riesling Gold Label  £.95

Red Wine:

Spain: Coto de Imaz, Rioja, Reserva D.O 1982  £10.55

Italy: Valpolicella Classico, Superiore, Masi, D.O.C. 1984 £8.45 

All of the above have been copied exactly as it read on the menu, I have included the prices for comparisson twenty years on.

 I hope you get the idea of this post, if it wasn’t for Chef Barker I may never have been a chef and certainly not to the standard I am now and if it wasn’t for menus like these to inspire young chefs to broaden their horizons this blog might never have begun.

I can but hope my menus have a lasting impression on my chefs in the way Chef Barker’s had on me.