My favourite ingredient
Robin Couling, chef and co-proprietor of the Falcon Inn, Poulton, Gloucestershire on… Potatoes.
"A lot of chefs might choose something a little more sophisticated, like saffron or truffle oil, but I regard those ingredients as embellishments rather than fundamentals. The potato is a staple ingredient and has incredible versatility. "You'd be a bit stuck in the kitchen without the humble potato - there's so much you can do with it. You can use it in your basic chips and roast potatoes, or you can make more exotic things like gnocchi. "If you look in Larousse Gastronomique, there are more than a hundred potato-based recipes.
But one of the reasons potatoes end to get overlooked is because people don't season them properly. If chefs concentrated a little more on basics like seasoning, their food would be much improved. "We've got Pommes Anna on the menu at the moment, which we make with clarified butter. We serve that with the best end of lamb cutlets and a thyme jus and that's very popular. "We make our own chips, using Maris Piper potatoes which we cook twice, blanching them at a lower temperature and finishing them off in hotter oil.
I was reading about Heston Blumenthal's triple-cooked chips and I'm intrigued to try those at some point. "In the winter we make Dauphinoise potatoes, which is a classic dish with cream and garlic and it's delicious. "We also use waxy, salad-type potatoes such as Pink Fir Apple because they have a much superior flavour, but again you've got to make sure there's plenty of salt in the water and it's properly seasoned. "We made our own gnocchi recently. A lot of chefs wouldn't bother, but we make everything here, including the bread and pasta. "It makes for a higher wages bill because you need to employ more people, but you can get a better margin on the food by making it yourself rather than buying it in."
