Rick's tricks of the trade
From fish and chips to cashew nut curry, there's no stopping Rick Stein. His culinary odysseys have taken him from sleepy fishing ports to bustling markets and forgotten villages in the search for gastronomic delights.
The British chef and restaurateur with a multimillion- dollar food empire which includes a seafood restaurant at the boutique hotel Bannisters, in Mollymook, 230km south of Sydney, will join an international line-up at this year's Margaret River Gourmet Escape.
On the list are Heston Blumenthal, Brazil's Alex Atala and the UK's Sat Bains, along with Shane Osborn, from St Betty in Hong Kong, Luke Dale-Roberts (The Test Kitchen, Cape Town) and Al Brown (Depot Eatery, Auckland).
Australian talent includes Neil Perry, Guillaume Brahimi, Tetsuya Wakuda, Mark Best (Marque), George Calombaris, pastry king Adriano Zumbo and WA's own Matt Stone (Greenhouse), Tony Howell (Cape Lodge), Dany Angove (Leeuwin Estate), Aaron Carr (Vasse Felix) and Nigel Harvey (Voyager Estate).
Stein will run four Catch of the Day masterclasses as a new addition to the Gourmet Village at Leeuwin Estate, using seafood from the Indian Ocean to stay true to his motto: "Nothing is more exhilarating than fish simply cooked."
At 66, he's a legend - second only to his beloved seafaring Jack Russell, Chalky, which died six years ago. Stein's Seafood Restaurant on the north coast of Cornwall, England, put the small fishing port of Padstow - nicknamed Padstein - on the world's foodie map. The business also takes in a bistro, cafe, fish and chips outlet, guest accommodation, cookery school, deli, patisserie, fishmonger and gift shop. The secret to his signature fish and chips?
"The batter is deep-fried in beef dripping to make it really crisp," he said down the line on a fleeting visit to Australia a few weeks ago. "And we serve our fish and chips with mushy peas and curry sauce."
The curry sauce is a British thing. His NSW restaurant just does the mushy peas and tartare sauce. When it opened in 2009, Stein said he had dreamt of setting up base on the south coast since eating Pambula oysters and flathead at Merimbula in the Sixties.
"People ask me where Rick lives and I tell them business class," Toby Evans, food and beverage manager at Rick Stein at Bannisters, said. "He's probably here about five times a year but always at least once each season to go over the menu and make sure the produce is up to scratch."
Stein walked out of his 27-year marriage to Jill - they still run the Padstow business toegether - in 2002 and married his Australian PR consultant, Sarah Burns, two years ago after a much-publicised affair. The pair live between the UK, Sydney and Mollymook.
Their beachfront home close to Bannisters, where Stein's chef son Jack does occasional shifts in the kitchen, is available for overnight stays and holidays when they're not around.
He's written more than 20 cookbooks and his latest takes him to the heart of India with recipes for fragrant kormas, spiced fish - the snapper curry with tomato and tamarind is his favourite - and slow-cooked biryanis. But it's his memoir, Under a Mackerel Sky, which is being released today in the UK and on October 1 in Australia that captures the soul and rocky road to stardom of one of TV's most high-profile chefs.
It's a disarmingly honest account of his life, shaped by the Oxfordshire farm where he was raised, his family's much loved holiday home in Cornwall, and his bipolar father's suicide by jumping of a Cornish cliff on to rocky coast when Stein was 17, which precipitated his escape to Australia three years later. He thumbed lifts and took whatever jobs he could get, including a stint at an abattoir as he struggled to find his place in the world.
He became a chef by default after leaving Oxford University with a third-class degree and opening a mobile disco called the Purple Tiger in Padstow, then a nightclub.
Licensing laws dictated patrons had to be supplied with a meal, so his first attempt at cooking was watery chicken curry, or beef stroganoff with rice served on paper plates. It morphed into the Seafood Restaurant.
The 2013 Margaret River Gourmet Escape is on from November 22-24. Stein's masterclasses have sold out but you can catch him at a Chef's Skillery session on Saturday, 4-4.30pm, or at a Q&A Chef's Table on Sunday, 3.30-4pm. For details, visit gourmetescape.com.au.
