A young chef at BaxterStorey, the UK’s largest independent work place catering company, has been announced as the first apprentice to have a recipe feature in the prestigious Great British Cookbook.
Created to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support and Hospitality Action, the Great British Cookbook is supported by some of the UK’s most renowned chefs and has showcased recipes by big names such as Michael Caines and Cyrus Todiwala.
National competition winner
This year’s edition will now include a recipe from 26 year-old Karlis Pumpurins who was selected as the winner of a national competition run by HIT Training, during which, apprentices across the country worked with the national hospitality training provider’s Professional Chef Trainer Assessors to design a dish to be entered into the Cookbook.
Karlis, who works as chef de partie at BaxterStorey, will see his Caribbean inspired dish of jerk pork belly with coconut-infused sweet potato dauphinoise hit book stores in 2016. He came up with the dish with the help of his head chef who, alongside his trainer, nominated Karlis during his level one training at the BaxterStorey Chef Academy.
Karlis said: “I was thrilled to be selected by BaxterStorey to compete for the chance for my recipe to appear in The Great British Cookbook. To have a dish I’ve created published alongside those by really respected celebrity chefs and to know that it is going to be cooked in kitchens across the country is just incredible.”
Talking about how he developed his winning dish, Karlis added: “I developed the dish while at a BaxterStorey Chef Academy workshop. We had visited a local meat supplier, spending time learning about butchery and cooking with a variety of different cuts of meat. I loved the quality of the free range pork and instantly knew I wanted this to be the basis of my dish.”
The Great British Cookbook will be available to buy next year with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support and Hospitality Action.