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www.thecaterer.com Revelations Jay Brady, chef, the Mulberry, Falmouth
What was your best subject at school? I want to say cooking but it was definitely mathematics
What was your first job? At a little fish and chip shop in my home village of St Merryn
What was your first job in catering? At a golf club
What do you normally have for breakfast? I think mine is the same as most chefs – copious amounts of tea
What do you do to relax? A costal walk around Cornwall
Waste tips Feta cheese Don’t throw away the brine from feta. It is salty and creamy with a lactic edge that makes it a lovely addition to salad dressings, as a marinade for meat, or added into the water when boiling rice.
Filo pastry sheets These freeze (or even re-freeze) well, but if I am left with just a few I often make sweet filo crisps: Preheat the oven to 200°C fan. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Lay on it a piece of filo, brush with melted butter, sift over icing sugar and perhaps a little ground cinna- mon, and repeat with two more layers. Give the top layer of pas- try a thicker dusting of icing sugar, cut into strips/squares and tease them slightly apart, then bake for 10-15 minutes until
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golden and crisp. Serve warm or store in an airtight container for up to two days.
Soft herbs The leaves and/or stalks of soft herbs can be blitzed into herb-infused oils. Blanch herb sprigs for barely 10 seconds in very hot water, then run under cold water and delicately dry in a cloth. Put the herbs – stalk and all – into a blender with the oil. Two or three bushy sprigs per 150ml oil. Blitz, then strain through a fine sieve or muslin. Pour into a sterilised bottle and store out of direct sunlight. I like to put a fresh (blanched)
sprig of the chosen herb in the bottle. For prettiness as much as to remind me what it is. (I seldom remember to label them, but I know that I should and so should you.)
Which is your favourite restaurant? Restaurante Pica-Pau in Lisbon – classic Portuguese small plates, very easy going
What’s your favourite hotel? Boringdon Hall. I’ve never had a bad experience there and it has a special place in my heart
Which ingredient do you hate the most? Coriander
Are there any foods/ ingredients that you refuse to cook with? Mint and chocolate. It tastes like toothpaste
How would you describe your desk? Covered in cookery books
Which person in catering have you most admired? Nathan Outlaw. He treats his staff like family and he doesn’t over-complicate his dishes, he just lets the ingredients do the talking. He’s just an all-around nice guy
Which person gave you the greatest inspiration? My girlfriend, her attitude to work and life is just incredible and she inspires me every day
Cast away on a desert island, what luxury would you take? A walkie-talkie to talk to my family. I would be lost without them
If not yourself, who would you rather have been? Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall. I love his outlook and his
way of life is very much how I see things
If you had not gone into catering, where do you think you would be now? I did public services in school and wanted to be a police officer
Describe your ultimate nightmare? A mid-service power cut would be horrendous
What’s your favourite film? Legend with Tom Hardy
What irritates you most about the industry? The stigma you need to work your staff into the ground to achieve what you want
22 March 2024 | The Caterer | 41
IMAGES: AJT AND JOSEF DE SOUZA, BOTH SHUTTERSTOCK
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