RACING POST INVESTIGATE RACECOURSE CATERING WEEK

RACINGPOST.com FOOD FOR THOUGHT

MAJOR FOUR-PART INVESTIGATION INTO RACECOURSE CATERING WEEK TO RUN FROM TUESDAY TO FRIDAY THIS WEEK.


DOES RACECOURSE CATERING CUT THE MUSTARD?


DAVID ASHFORTH ON ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT’.
After some 40 years of sampling, or avoiding , what tracks have had to offer, David tells us what he has found.

“The person next to me pulled out a long blond hair from his beef roll. Unfortunately the blond was no longer attached to it.”



LEE MOTTERSHEAD ON ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT’.
"What racegoers really think of the food and drink on offer? You spill the beans.

"Most places are very expensive or else it’s burger and chips’. We asked racegoers what they like, don’t like and what they’d like to find more of. ...."

Pic’s of the huge catering vans equipped to serve vast number of people.



Today (Wednesday September 1st 2010) in part two of our major investigation.

DAVID CARR goes behind the scenes at York

CATERING SUPREMO BOB REEVES talks to HOWARD WRIGHT

PLUS, WEB USERS HAVE THEIR SAY.



MARGARET CLARKE ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT’ FROM TURFCALL

The Racing Post’s ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT WEEK’ new direction for British Racecourses to explore.

Racecourse Picnic Hampers perhaps for families, with a variety of food and drink.
And different varieties of hamper foods. Empty hampers to be returned to racecourses before people leave.

All working people need a decent break from work, to refresh. To have a little treat now and then. To enjoy something quite new and different. Rick Stein amongst others puts this whole subject into perspective in his book:


RICK STEIN
http://www.rickstein.com/seafood-school.html
http://www.rickstein.com/Food-Heroes.html

RICK STEIN’S GUIDE to the food heroes of Britain BBC.
Where to Buy the Best Produce in Britain & Ireland. ISBN 0-563-48742-9


Food Heroes
Over the past few years, Rick has embarked on a voyage of discovery taking him the length and breadth of Britain, searching out the very best of all British produce.

Directory of produce
This directory gives you a taste of many of the producers of excellent food that I have discovered. These are my Food Heroes who are the stars of the TV series and Food Heroes books. The directory is organised into types of food and then into the different regions of Britain and Ireland.

Each entry describes the produce and whether it can be bought at the farm door or shop or by delivery, on the web or by mail order. Please select an option below to discover the Food Heroes in your region:
• Eggs
• Cheese
• Vegetables & Fruit
• Fish
• Poultry & Meat
• Game
• Fruit Desserts, Cakes & Bread
• Special Ingredients
• Farmers Markets
• Restaurants, Cafes & Pubs





JAMIE OLIVER
http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/
http://www.jamieoliver.com/
http://www.fifteencornwall.co.uk/

After three successful series of The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver could have easily retired from television and publishing, bought a little pub/restaurant in the Essex countryside and spent the rest of his life cooking and taking it easy. But there's a part of Jamie that wants to make the world a better place, wants everyone to have the knowledge and the opportunity to enjoy good food, and wants to help people who perhaps haven't had anyone there to help them before.

This side to Jamie was first seen in the Channel 4 series "Jamie's Kitchen" which followed the setting up of Fifteen London restaurant and the Fifteen Foundation charity which helps young people not in education or employment to train for a good career in the catering industry.

Against the odds, Fifteen London became a success and was followed by similar projects in Amsterdam, Cornwall and Melbourne, all still training young people. Yet, Jamie wanted to do more, and around the middle of 2003, he started thinking about how to make bigger, more positive change happen; change that would affect not merely a handful of young people but millions...




ALBERT AND MICHEL ROUX
The Roux brothers are regarded as the godfathers of modern restaurant cuisine in the UK. They put Britain on the culinary map and raised standards across the board through their ground-breaking Michelin-starred restaurants, their TV series, their many books, and the unflagging training and encouragement they have provided to many of today’s top chefs.


Michel currently owns the three-Michelin starred Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire, and the White Hart Inn near Colchester in Essex, which is run by ex-Waterside staff. Albert owns London’s two Michelin-starred Le Gavroche in London and his wide-ranging consultancy work includes a number of cafés in hotels and department stores.


Career guide
Albert was born in 1935 and Michel in 1941 into a family of French charcutiers. For much of their early career they cooked for wealthy individuals – Albert, notably, for Lady Astor and for Peter Cazelet’s estate in Kent – and both gained an insight into British tastes at the British Embassy in Paris.


In 1967, the Roux brothers opened Le Gavroche in London’s Lower Sloane Street (moving it to Upper Brook Street in 1981). In 1982 it became the first UK restaurant to hold three Michelin stars.


The Waterside Inn opened in the Berkshire village of Bray in 1972. It gained its third Michelin star in 1985 and has held onto this accolade longer than any other UK restaurant. Eight guest bedrooms were added in the 1990s.


In 1972 the brothers started a catering service that was bought by Compass in 1993 to become Roux Fine Dining, with Albert as a consultant.


Between 1969 and 1996 Roux Restaurants opened a number of restaurants and brasseries in London – including Poulbot Pub, Le Gamin, Gavvers, Les Trois Plats, and Roux Britannia – which the brothers sold to focus on their consultancy work.


In 1986 the brothers separated their businesses, with Michel taking on the Waterside Inn and Albert retaining Le Gavroche. In both cases, their sons – Alain in Bray and Michel Jnr in London – now run the kitchens.


What we think
The Roux brothers were voted the UK’s most influential chefs by their peers in a 2003Caterer & Hotelkeeper survey and their profound impact on food and cooking in this country has not been lost on the British Government. Awarding the brothers honorary OBEs in 2002, Foreign Minister Jack Straw described them as: “two of Britain’s finest ambassadors who together have greatly enhanced Britain’s gastronomic standing in the world … Thirty years ago just the phrase ‘British cuisine’ would have led to a belly laugh. That we can now talk proudly of ‘British cuisine’ owes a huge amount to the outstanding work of the Roux brothers,” Straw added.


The brothers arrived in Britain in the 1970s as hardcore French professionals in an era of enthusiastic amateurs. In the 1980s, they pioneered the use of quality ingredients by setting up a company to freight in produce from Rungis market in France.


They have won countless awards in Britain and in France, including four Caterer & Hotelkeeper Catey awards – the Waterside Inn won the 1984 Menu of the Year award; Michel and Albert were voted Independent Restaurateur of the Year in 1985 and 1988 respectively; and in 1995 the brothers scooped the Lifetime Achievement Award.


Among other key awards, Albert was the youngest chef to be elected as Maître Cuisinier de France (in 1968) while Michel has held one of the top culinary awards –the Meilleur Ouvrier de France en Pâtissier – since 1972.


Perhaps their most lasting legacy has been the countless young chefs they have trained and nurtured, including such luminaries as Pierre Koffman, Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay. In 2004, when Michel was voted the AA Chef’s Chef, he calculated that he had trained more than 1,000 people over the past 35 years.
In 1984 they set up the Roux Brothers Scholarship, in which 50 young chefs compete annually to win three months’ experience in any UK or European three Michelin-starred restaurant of their choice.


Michel bought the White Hart Inn near Colchester in 1995 and has acted as a consultant to British Airways from 1983 to 2003, and to the nine-strong Celebrity Cruises group since 1990.


Albert, a founder of the Académie Culinaire of Great Britain, has explored many different avenues. He opened a boucherie in London in 1982 which transformed into a deli and retail traiteur until it was sold in 1999. Between 1981 and 1999 he was involved with the five-star London hotel 47 Park Street. In 1983 he worked with Bournemouth University to experiment with sous vide (boil-in-the-bag) cuisine, opening the UK’s first sous vide factory in 1985.


Since 1999, the House of Albert Roux has operated Roux Express and Albert Roux Cafés at House of Fraser department stores while the Albert Roux Consultancy has set up restaurants at Accor’s Sofitel The Grand Amsterdam hotel and its Sofitel St James hotel in London.




DELIA SMITH
http://www.deliaonline.com/

French food and wine: a marriage made in heaven!
Delia Online recipe sponsorship

We’ve sourced some fantastic French wines for you to try – and the good news is that they pair perfectly with Delia’s gorgeously Gallic casseroles, salads, seafood, tarts and steaks. You can also enter our competition to win 12 bottles of Plaimont’s star wines Le Faîte red and white.


Producteurs Plaimont represent over 1000 vine growers based in the South West of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains. Wine lovers will be particularly interested to learn that these wines tend to be made from grape varieties that are new to us in the UK: Tannat, Pinenc, Gros Manseng, Petit Courbu – allowing you to discover exciting new wine favourites!


e have paired eight Plaimont wines with recipes from Delia that will complement them to perfection. For more information, visit www.plaimont.com/uk/
The food and wine flavours of France
Win 12 bottles of Plaimont's Le Faite wine

THE HAIRY BIKERS
http://www.hairybikers.com/index.php?hairybikers_food_tour_of_britain


Food Tour of Britain

First transmitted: 08/2009
The Hairy Bikers have travelled the globe but in a new series for BBC Two Daytime, they’re out to prove that for world-beating food, there’s no place like home.

In this series, Si and Dave are back on their bikes, sampling the best of British fare from across the isles. There are 86 counties in the British Isles and the Bikers have covered 30 of them, from Aberdeenshire to Cornwall, Fermanagh to Norfolk, north to south, west to east.


Covering 15,000 miles in their culinary tour of Britain’s counties, they meet the locals and learn about how the land and the produce has informed the way we eat. In each episode, the Hairies will taste that county's 'signature dish'. They visit local food producers and hunt for their ingredients before cooking the county's traditional favourite on location in front of an audience of locals. The crowd are then invited to sample the food and pass their verdicts.


The boys are then pushed outside their comfort zone as they face a cook-off against some of each county's best chefs to create a unique dish using local produce that typifies the county. Not used to cooking in the kitchens of fine-dining restaurants, the Bikers need all the help they can get to find inspiration and source their ingredients.


END