Bootcamp with Rosemary
I happen to like Chef Rosemary Shrager alot because she’s such a no-mess charlie in the kitchen, very sargeant major-like but with a heart of gold. I’m a self-confessed Rosemary fan for that reason alone. If you’ve been watching her latest series of Rosemary Shrager’s Cookery School you might be ever so intrigued (as I was) by that beautiful castle she’s doing the series.
Swinton Park
I thought a sticky beak was in order because it’s such a lovely castle. The castle is called Swinton Park, the ancestral home of the Cunliffe-Lister family and was bought back by the family in 2000 and opened as a hotel in 2001 following an extensive refurbishment.
Rosemary opened her award winning Cookery School at Swinton Park, in North Yorkshire in May 2003. She had moved on from Amhuinnsuidhe Castle the estate owned by the Bulmer family where she had run her previous Cookery School for four years to wide acclaim. However, since opening at Swinton Park, Rosemary’s Cookery School has been awarded the BBC Good Food Magazine’s Cookery School of the Month for November 2003.
Pierre Koffmann
I love the way that six degrees of separation works. There’s a New Zealand connection, infact there’s a Hawke’s Bay connection. Rosemary had previously worked for Pierre Koffmann at Tante Claire. The name Pierre Koffmann has been synonymous with the finest French food in England for the past 35 years.
“In 1998 Tante Claire moved into The Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge. Customers would flock there for Koffmann’s signature dish, a stuffed pig’s trotter with morel mushrooms. Koffmann was, famously, the first chef to gain widespread acclaim in the UK for transforming pigs’ trotters into haute cuisine. “I didn’t invent it, just changed the recipe a bit. I used to do it with sweetbreads, morels, chicken mousse to bind, onions. The funniest thing was teaching young English chefs to debone a trotter – they took ages,” he recalled with a smile.
La Tante Claire, run to Koffman’s notoriously exacting standards, was a beacon. When Koffman closed his kitchen doors in 2002 he seemed to disappear from sight completely. “I was fed up,” he explained. “At the beginning it was fun and I enjoyed it, but towards the end I was cooking food that wasn’t my style any more.
I always wanted to stop cooking at 45, but then you get to 45 and you can’t afford it. But at 55 I said ‘enough’.” He added: “Then Gordon [Ramsay] came into the restaurant one day and said, ‘chef I want to buy Tante Claire.’ So I said, ‘I’ll give you a price but you won’t be able to afford it.’ A week later his father-in-law came back with the money.”
The Kiwi Konnection
Twenty seven years earlier Robert Wilson, a dapper Scot and his wife Robyn, a New Zealander gave up their journalistic careers and bought the initial piece of what was to become their Bleeding Heart empire, a restaurant, wine bar and bistro on the borders of Farringdon and Chancery Lane to which they subsequently added The Don, in the shadow of the Bank of England.
These restaurants have in common a distinct historic heritage with roots back to the 17th and 18th centuries respectively; an obvious reflection of their owners’ enthusiasm for wine since the Wilsons also own Trinity Hill winery in New Zealand; and a punctilious (meaning attentive to minute details) but friendly style of service. As Robyn explained,
“We were customers long before we became restaurateurs so we think we know how people want to be served. And, just as importantly, in a city like London where there is now so much good food on offer, what makes a meal memorable is as much how it is served as what it tastes like.”
Bay Winery
If you read my blogs regularly then you’ll know I think Robyn Wilson’s last comment is so on the money. She’s my kind of lady so I’m going to repeat what she said for the hospitality industry in my beloved Hawke’s Bay. “What makes a meal memorable is as much how it is served as what it tastes like.” That, from the mouth of a Bay Winery owning girl! Take NOTE and action accordingly!
The Wilsons’ friendship with Koffmann began, like so many others, through admiration for what he cooked. And perhaps their offer to him that he come in to oversee the kitchens of their two restaurants would have come to nought had Koffman not gone with a friend four years ago to see Claire Harrison, a ‘potato specialist’, at work. The two became a couple. Happily for the Wilsons and their customers, Harrison encouraged him to accept their offer. She immediately noticed a difference in him.
Reading between the lines, I’d say Koffman began to experience a bit of kiwi magic. That feet in the mud is fine. But what would it matter, this Master chef was already serving pigs feet to well-heeled Brits, he more than anyone knew about feet in the mud! Harrison said, “He was very nervous on the first day but when he came back that night I could see he was a different person, he was really alive and since then he has come back every day with a different story.”
The Don with The Bleeding Heart
Koffmann began working four days a week at The Bleeding Heart but then transferred his attention to The Don Restaurant. And with equally characteristic enigma, he slipped away from the kitchen without a word in June 2008 for good or so the rumours went. The truth was he was working, but in a more consultative role for the Wilson’s.
He returned to a London stove for one night to host a culinary demonstration for industry butcher Nigel Fredericks and a select gathering of chefs. Pierre Koffmann’s La Tante Claire restaurant closed its doors in London five years earlier, yet his reputation as an immensely skilled “chef’s chef” had remained undimmed in the intervening half-decade. Industry butcher Nigel Fredericks announced a one-off Koffmann masterclass and there was no shortage of chefs taking up the chance to see their idol in the flesh.
Koffman conceded that he still thought about buying another restaurant. “My head says ‘yes’, but my legs say ‘don’t be stupid’.” If he did go into business again he added, it wouldn’t be to chase Michelin accolades, rather to put out tasty, brasserie food.
There’s a lovely story that Egon Ronay tells. He said, “Pierre Koffmann is a great, gruff man, a real peasant with a soft heart. There was an old gentleman who lunched in La Tante Claire every day. He used to come down to Pierre’s from Hampstead by bus. Then he died, and I found out that when the old gentleman had been in hospital, Pierre had sent him one of his favourite dishes for lunch every day.” See what I mean. Earthy. I only half-heartedly apologise for the the cullinary aside that has been Koffman but the Hawke’s Bay connection was too serendipidous to pass up. So back to Rosemary.
Rosemary’s Cookery School
Her cookery school is housed in the converted Georgian stables at Swinton Park which overlook the castle and parkland. The hotel has a 4 acre walled garden which has been restored and provides a plentiful source of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs for the school. Perhaps, the most intriguing thing in her successful career as a chef, series star and teacher, is that Rosemary is a mostly self-taught cook. How I read that is, with lots of practise you and me can do what she does! I knew there was a reason I loved her earthiness. It’s real. Like Koffman’s I suspect.
“The move to Swinton Park had been a big step for the Cookery School, but it was the right one to take. “It is a great opportunity that I couldn’t afford to miss, both in terms of the facilities and the abundance of good quality local produce available, but also because my guests are able to enjoy all the luxuries of a first class hotel”, commented Rosemary.”
Practice makes Perfect
Practicing in traditional and modern European cuisine, her dishes are inspired by Scottish influences, and in her cookery book you can come across such delicacies as Smoked Haddock Tartare, Saddle of Rabbit with the Chicken Mousse and Black Pudding, Umbrian Duck (preserved duck, served thinly sliced) and Medallions of Venison with the Spinach and Morel Sauce. The thought of it all makes my mouth water. That’s me for today, I’m going to practise a bit.
