Rick Stein hates being called a celebrity chef, but his much-admired TV shows have earned him a legion of fans. Marie-Claire Digbyjoins Irish Times competition winners at his Dublin masterclass.
You don't have to be a food fanatic, a gourmet or even a cook to be a fan of Rick Stein, the celebrity chef who doesn't like to be described as one.
"Rick Stein is somewhat misleadingly labelled a 'Celebrity Chef'. In fact he runs four restaurants, a delicatessen, a patisserie, a seafood cookery school and a 33 bedroom hotel in the small fishing port of Padstow on the north coast of Cornwall," his website declares. But it is for his much-admired TV shows - on fish cookery, artisan food production and, latterly, some absorbing travelogues with food as the star turn, and the books that accompany them - that Stein is best known, rather than for his business empire in the town that is known to some as Padstein.
TV chefs often fall into the love-them-or-hate-them category, but Stein seems to be universally liked. He even managed, five years ago, to leave Jill, his wife and business partner of 27 years, for Sarah Burns, an Australian businesswoman 20 years her junior, without falling from grace and losing the public's affection. Perhaps it's his sincere and straight-talking personality that wins him his fans, but in any case Stein has had his share of troubles, including, when he was just 18 years old, his father's death by suicide.
Not surprisingly, with that to deal with, Stein flunked his A levels and went travelling. Then, at 22, he passed the entrance exam for Oxford, where he studied English at New College. Later he took to running discos; he ended up in Padstow with a failing music venue and a notion that a fish restaurant might go down well. The restaurant prospered, and the music mantle has passed to his nephew, the BBC Radio 1 DJ Judge Jules.
In person Stein is affable and slightly bumbling, apt to lose track of his thoughts and take off on highly entertaining tangents, as he demonstrates when he visits Dublin for a series of publicity events, beginning with an appearance at Cooks Academy, in Dún Laoghaire.
His audience includes, in the front row, the TV presenter Merrilees Parker, of Full on Food, Saturday Kitchen and Planet Food, who is in town for the birthday party of her god-daughter, as well as Irish Times Magazine competition winners Mark Kennedy from Leixlip and Emanuel Kennedy from Athy, in Co Kildare, and David Watson from Clontarf, in Dublin. Mark Kennedy's wife, Jillian, entered on his behalf, and the self-confessed Stein fan, and self-described "Sunday dinner dabbler" is delighted to be among the winners drawn from more than 1,000 entrants. Emmanuel Kennedy's slot was secured by his mother-in-law, Nancy Noonan, who isn't able to make the journey to Dublin but is pleased to receive a signed copy of Stein's latest book, Mediterranean Escapes.
Having breezed his way through a recipe inspired by a visit to Barcelona's Boqueria market - sauteed squid and chorizo salad with garlic, rocket, tomatoes and chickpeas (see right; "don't use tinned chickpeas, the dried ones are better") - Stein turns his attention to the coil of luganega, a fennel sausage that has been ordered for the occasion from the Co Kildare sausage-maker Jane Russell. "Jane told me that a lot of these Italian sausages have Parmesan in them, which gives them a little extra nurture, a salty flavour, so I'm very happy about that, and I wish I'd thought of it for the book," he says.
The sausage is to be braised with lemony potatoes and bay leaves, to re-create a dish Stein had enjoyed in Maritimo de Diso, in Puglia, in southern Italy, where he had been the guest of Alistair McAlpine, a former treasurer of the British Conservative Party (and a good friend of Margaret Thatcher), who has converted an old convent into a small hotel.
It was an entertaining stay, by Stein's account, and he enjoys sharing with his Dublin audience an acerbic observation of McAlpine's about eating out in Venice: "It's come to the stage where people who run restaurants in Venice regard the time spent between you arriving in the restaurant and taking your money as a bit of an inconvenience."
McAlpine is also credited with directing Stein to one of the most delicious dishes he encountered on his Mediterranean odyssey. "He sent us down to this restaurant and asked them to give us all the local specialities. I speedily found I was in another world of Italian food, with a whole table full of vegetarian antipasti, like wild chicory, plates of courgette fritters, aubergine Parmigiana and braised fennel. But the best dish that day was . . . luganega stewed with waxy potatoes and lemon zest."
If you can't get luganega - and Russell's is a one-off order made for this demonstration - Stein suggests using good-quality pork sausages, with as high a meat content as possible, and adding a few fennel seeds to the pan, with the onions (see right).Stein shares the limelight in the Mediterranean Escapes series with the characters he interviews along the way, but not all of his subjects are impressed by his cooking skills. "The Italians are very fond of putting me in my place. It's a very difficult country to film in, because they know better, they so know better."
It makes great TV, but Stein isn't always comfortable with his interviewees' taking charge. "Having to cook something for an Italian, in Italy, is like, well, they think you just don't know how to do it. You do get a bit 'Whose show is this?' if they're doing all the cooking. When I started doing food programmes I felt, I'm supposed to be presenting this; I've got to give some semblance of being a chef," he says.
He's more relaxed now, but shooting a cookery show on location can lead to frayed tempers, and Stein is not afraid to show it, and tell it, like it is. His Dublin audience was treated to a few insights into the rumbustious, but ultimately fairly mutually respectful, relationship he has with David Pritchard, who directs his TV shows (and who previously worked with the ebullient Keith Floyd). "The programmes are much more him than me. I write the books and do the recipes, he does the programmes, and I think it pisses him off because I'm in front of the camera and he's behind," Stein says.
That observation backs up the perception many viewers were left with after watching Cabin Fever, last year's award-winning warts-and-all documentary depicting what life was really like on that slow, slow cruise down the canals of southwest France during the filming of the BBC2 series Rick Stein's French Odyssey. "Bloody irritating" is how Stein describes being filmed for Cabin Fever. "But when the thing came out it wasn't too bad; some of the stuff was a lot worse."
Stein's well-travelled team will be pressed into action for another 12-week gastronomic adventure early next year, when he begins making his next series, in southeast Asia. "We start filming in February, and we're going to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and northern Australia." Plenty of scope there, then, for fiery exchanges.
Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes is published by BBC Books, £20 in UK.
SAUTEED SQUID AND CHORIZO SALAD WITH GARLIC, ROCKET, TOMATOES AND CHICKPEAS
- Serves four
- 100g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
- 300g prepared medium-sized squid or cuttlefish
- 8 cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1½ tbsp lemon juice
- 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium-hot red chilli, seeded and thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- Small handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 500g chorizo picante (hot chorizo sausage), cut into thin slices
- 15-20g rocket leaves
- Salt and coarsely ground black pepper
Drain the soaked chickpeas, put them in a pan and cover with fresh cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the skins begin to crack and they are tender - about 40 minutes - adding a teaspoon of salt to the pan five minutes before the end of the cooking time. Drain and leave to cool.
Cut the body pouch of each squid open along one side, then score the inner side with the tip of a small sharp knife into a fine diamond pattern. Then cut each pouch lengthways in half, then across into 7.5cm pieces.
Stir the tomatoes into the chickpeas with the lemon juice, four tablespoons of the olive oil, the chilli, garlic, flat-leaf parsley and some salt and pepper to taste.
Heat a tablespoon of the remaining olive oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. Add half the squid pieces, scored side facing upwards (this will make them curl attractively), and half the tentacles. Sear for 30 seconds, then turn over and sear for another 30 seconds, until golden brown and caramelised. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the pan. Repeat with the remaining tablespoon of oil and the rest of the squid. Return all the squid to the pan with the chorizo and toss together over a high heat for a further minute. Briefly toss the rocket leaves through the chickpea salad and spoon on to one large or four individual plates. Top with the sauteed squid and chorizo and serve.
LUGANEGA SAUSAGES WITH LEMONY POTATOES AND BAY LEAVES
- 450g luganega sausages or other meaty pork sausages
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- fennel seeds (optional)
- 750g small waxy potatoes, peeled and quartered
- Pared zest and juice of ½ lemon
- 4 fresh bay leaves
- 2 tbsp chopped parsley
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees/gas four. Twist the sausages into 7.5cm lengths, then separate into individual sausages. Heat a tablespoon of the oil in a shallow 26-centimetre flameproof casserole dish. Add the sausages and fry until nicely browned all over. Lift on to a plate and set aside. Add the onion, garlic, another tablespoon of the oil and, if you like, a few fennel seeds to the casserole and fry until soft and lightly golden. Stir in the potatoes, sausage, lemon zest and juice, bay leaves, half the chopped parsley, half a teaspoon of salt and 10 turns of a black pepper mill. Pour in the rest of the oil, along with 120ml of water, cover tightly with a lid, then bake for 30-40 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Remove the lemon zest and sprinkle with the rest of the parsley before serving.