Last year, at the Wilderness Festival on the Cornbury Park Estate in the Cotswolds, I was congratulating the caterers on the food, and their boss, Alex Head, said, ‘You should be one of our guest chefs.’
I said that would be fun – and then promptly forgot about it. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have assumed it would be for 40 or 50 people for a couple of courses for lunch.
So when I had a reminder that my recipes for this year were two weeks overdue, it was a shock. Especially as they were to be for not 50 people but 450.
Twice. Lunch and dinner. And five courses. And no nuts. And gluten-free and vegan options, please. Oh dear.
I did what I always do in a food crisis, which is call on the miraculous Katrina Whittaker. She has helped me write my last few cookbooks, been the home economist on my Cotswold Kitchen TV show, filled my freezer, assisted me on stage demos and catered for our parties.
We devised a menu and set off to test the recipes with the caterers in their London kitchen. I hadn’t worn whites since demonstrating ten years earlier at the Good Food Show. I dug out a jacket and put my favourite knives in a canvas roll, and we got the train to London.
It reminded me of my days as a cook for hire, travelling on the tube, afraid of being arrested for carrying dangerous weapons.
I’ve been a guest chef before only in hotels, for a week in New York, in Hong Kong and in Bangkok.
I hope attitudes have changed – in my day, head chefs were arrogant, scornful of women in the kitchen and resentful that a ‘British Week’ or ‘Leith’s Dinner’ was being forced on them by management.
The hotel in Hong Kong was the worst. The chef did his best to sabotage my efforts: not collecting our Scottish raspberries and Angus beef from the airport, refusing to let us use the pastry kitchen (then the only air-conditioned kitchen in the hottest month of the year) and lumbering us with doing the room service for the hotel.
Event catering chefs can’t afford to be arrogant or stuck in their ways. They have to keep up with the latest trends, offering new and exciting menus to customers on their big day. Every event is different. You don’t get a rehearsal, and if there is a crisis, you have to fix it and keep smiling.
I loved my catering days.
I’d forgotten what a joy it is to work with a bunch of talented cooks, who love what they do. The head chef, Richard Gynn, was a joy, helpful, enthusiastic and efficient. We tested, tasted and tweaked all our dishes, and I was thrilled with them.
Of course, I’ll be nervous on the day in August, but I’m pretty sure it will go like clockwork. My only worry is Hollandaise sauce for 450!
But Richard has no qualms.
Prue Leith presents The Great British Bake Off
