BaxterStorey chefs take the win at ACE Ready Steady Cook
Big cheers for Chris Jarman and Megan Jenkins, who cooked their way to victory at the ACE’s 27th Ready Steady Cook competition on 24th September at OKN1 Hackney.
Going head-to-head with 11 other teams across the industry, our dynamic duo pulled together some seriously impressive dishes in just 45 minutes.
The first dish had to be a show-stopper dessert using ingredients from suppliers 4 degrees C and Belazu, plus larder ingredients from Vegetarian Express. The second mystery basket dish had to be a family-style main, featuring guinea fowl from Gressingham.
Their winning menu, judged by Sarah Hartnett and Hayden Groves, was:
Calabrian chilli and lemon guinea fowl, ginger and ponzu bone broth, beetroot and spice puree, pickled apple, cavolo nero, coconut fried thigh and coriander oil
Apple cider savarin, with a roasted vanilla crème fraiche cream, caramelised sake plums, apple compote, masse seeds, rooftop shisho and a zingy timur pepper and sansho sherbert
The competition’s youngest competitor, apprentice chef, Megan said: “We both really enjoyed the competition and pushing ourselves to cook the dishes over the 45 minutes – it’s surprising how quickly 45 minutes goes! For the guinea fowl, we wanted to make the most out of the ingredients we used, wasting nothing and packing in as much flavour as we could. We roasted the breast, made an Asian bone broth and a buttermilk-style fried thigh”.
Head of food and sustainability, and BaxterStorey Chef of the Year, Chris added: “The initial idea to do a savarin was Megan’s, and then we worked together on the flavours – choosing apple and plum as our seasonal British ingredients. We utilised some of our rooftop herbs and apples from my sister-in-law’s garden. Savarin is a classical dish which we wanted to showcase as modern British cookery, so we paired it with unusual flavours of sake, timur pepper and sansho”.
Their prize is dinner for two for each of the chefs at a choice of restaurants.