The Caterer Blog

This Monday's 2008 Chef Conference has been on your radar for months, maybe years - the tie's ironed, the chip-fat burns are dressed and you've degreased your favourite cooking pants. Then the wife announces she's booked you both a break in Benidorm that week.

First up on the speaker-front is eco-restaurateur Arthur Potts Dawson. He's talking rubbish. Bottles, plastics, vegetable waste - "I've been in the restaurant industry for some time and I know the waste that goes on in professional kitchens".

Using a flash machine from Korea, he says, he manages to crush down his recycling and reduce collection to once every ten days. Only one bag a week is un-recyclable. He's also got worms - which is where some of the compostable items end up, as well as on his garden.

It's 9.45 and the first challenge is chucked to the crowd. It's like 1960s Greenwich Village in here. "Can we as an industry be more accountable? Talk to growers, talk to suppliers, talk to delivery men - find alternative ways and be more responsible. Everyone can change and be more accountable in this industry. Let's make a concerted effort to move forward."

Mark vs Marco, question one: how has the industry changed since he started? "When I was a young boy every chef dreamt of winning just one star not two or three, that didn't feature. I was from tough streets in Leeds but look at, say, the pub world now, people from the middle class and upper class are coming into an industry that was always working class."

Describe some of the places you worked: "Gavroche was a powerhouse. Started 6.30 in the morning and worked til late at night. Everything was dealt with in French. It was magical, like stepping out onto the turf at Old Trafford."

Was it scary? "You're programmed to be the a certain way. Even if I was at my most tired, I was programmed to turn food out in a certain way."

"Nico (Ladenis) was very supportive. A great friend of mine. It wasn't the real world, he'd spend an hour making a sauce, but he had a great palette and knew what he was doing."

"Koffmann was Koffmann. He didn't speak to you, you didn't know if he liked you, but every day you got to watch the great master cook. I knew when he accepted me when - I used to have a cup of tea before and after service - he told the kitchen porter to get me a tea after one service and I knew he had accepted me into his kitchen."

I learnt in a golden age of cooking. It was like the golden age of boxing was in the '70s. I look at people like the Rouxs, Koffmann, Nico, Raymond and they were the heavyweights of our time. Their hands didn't touch the food but their eyes did, their palette did. I don't mind paying £300 for Michelin star food but I want the chef to be behind the stove. If I bought Elton John tickets and his right hand man turned up to play I wouldn't be too impressed."

He's joined by mushroom-man forager and supplier of wild food to top end restaurants, Miles Irving. "Noma would not be noma without people like Miles," says Redzepi. Which explains that.

For those unfamiliar with Scandinavian hedgerows; what grows in the wild out in Denmark this time of year is very much the same as in Britain. The noma menu is a mix of costly and everyday ingredients, including foraged native foods and home-prepared vinegars, beers, spirits and wines. I made a home-made beer once. It grew a head that resembled sewage effluent and tasted like I'd stewed a wet dog in pond water. I'm guessing noma does it better.

Irving is running through the wild products Redzepi uses. Dandelion in there. And a few others up on his table; some moss, some sea lettuce - a nice summery ingredient - wood sorrel, wild garlic flowers, a glass of water (probably not foraged), wild celery, pennywort, wild rocket, sweet woodruff.

"There's a huge variation of pureness out there in the wild. And if you represent that in cuisine it should have a lightness to it," says Redzepi.

View more of the dishes from the Chef Conference lunch here >>

For those unfamiliar with Glynn's beef dish, the only recommendation I can mete out is move to Birmingham just to be near it. It is, of course, not yet legal to marry a dish, but as soon as it is, this one can expect a seedy proposition from yours truly. I'd take an eternity wandering the NEC centre just so long as they fed me this each evening.

"I've got a bit of a problem with fillet of beef, never used it before I got this tail of fillet of beef off my butcher. Very few chefs use the tail whole, it goes into things like straganofs," says Purnell. Fillet of beef can be cooking by numbers sometimes, an easy option to look good, but Purnell's is something else. 'Beef with liquorice and malt vinegar, that'll never work,' you might say. Well, you're wrong, it works better than a German engine.

How is Claire finding the Naper Valley, home to the French Laundry? Well apparently it's beautiful, quaint, almost perfect. And the inside of the restaurant freakishly well ordered and borderline obsessive compulsive with its dedication to cleanliness.

How much autonomy does Clarke have with chef-patron of the French Laundry, Thomas Keller? "He gives me a boundary to work in. He might say he wants something with popcorn and I will work within that."

How is Keller to work with? "He's honest, he's hard working, he drives people. He can say nothing, not one word, but you still know what his expectations are. I've never known someone to be so respectful. We're like a little united family, he'd never talk disrespectfully to someone."

"Arbutus is synonymous with cheap cuts and under used items. We're a modern bistrot," says Demetre and starts laying down the beat of flying cleaver on rabbit torso.

Burning a haunting lead vocal, Smith waxes on a few wines. "Maybe I'd choose Pinot Noir with such a classic rabbit dish." Such sumptuous melodies.

The cameraman's panned in on the cleavered rabbits head in a pot- a little eyeball's poking out.

It's still on screen.

And still.

It's actually looking a bit weird now.

Gone.

The heavy cleaver beats are done now and the dainty notes of knife on rabbit ribcage are gambolling from the masterclass table.