H&C News is pleased to introduce Kudos Head Chef Richard Webb, who summarises below some of the challenges of event catering, the use of local, seasonal produce – and a delicious recipe for strawberry sorbet.
The daily challenge
Whether it’s your first time or you’ve been working for years, cooking for several hundred people can be quite daunting. From start to finish, the time it can take to create a bespoke menu, source the produce and prepare the food all quickly adds up. Before you know it, it’s time to serve it to the 300 guests eagerly waiting to see what delights await them.
I’ve been working in catering for over seven years and trying to tie all these factors in is a daily challenge, never mind the added factors that can arise in event catering; the facilities and equipment available to cook with, the time you are allocated to serve in, as well as the distance between the kitchen and the function room.
Using local, seasonal produce
Our ethos at KUDOS is to source products locally whenever possible and keeping our menus updated with seasonal produce. Over the summer months, we’ve been keen to make the most of fresh local produce. Recently, the ripe cherries, broad beans and ever-growing cucumbers have been appearing all across our menus, through salads, garnishes and even desserts – you name it, we’ve tried it!
Along with these, strawberries are very much in season. If you’re a fan of tennis, no doubt your mind has wandered into the thought of some strawberries and cream while watching a game at Wimbledon.
Homemade strawberry sorbet
With some nice patches of weather across London, we here at KUDOS tried to add a refreshing touch to our dessert dishes with homemade strawberry sorbets. With our strawberries locally supplied from Assington Farm in Suffolk, we’ve been shipping them in by the crate load. With a nice quick recipe and method, it’s been a super seller at our venues and easy for us to create in bulk with such a nice enlivening taste.
Such additions to our dishes work wonders for us because we can create this element a few days ahead of the event, as it will stay fresh and fruity even while frozen. We can also spend the time shaping the sorbet to how we like it presented (imagine the time it takes to make 300 balls of sorbet!). So this gives our chefs plenty of time to focus on other parts of the event, knowing they can pull this from the freezer at the last moment with confidence in its taste.
You can try creating this yourself and add this to one of your own dishes or simply to cleanse your taste buds with the light fruity taste alone.
Ingredients
- To feed 4 people
- You simply need 750g strawberries, 140g caster sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.
Method
- Start by chopping all the fruit into a bowl, then mix the caster sugar in with 300ml of boiling water.
- Once dissolved, pour this over the strawberries adding in your lemon juice, then allow the mixture to cool.
- Once cooled, blend in a food processor and pour the mixture through a sieve into a freezeable tray, occasionally whisking the mixture.
- Leave in the freezer until it’s set.
After your meal, simply serve this up to your friends and enjoy the compliments. You’ll be left smiling, knowing how easy it was to create such a wonderful addition to the evening!
Kudos Head Chef Richard Webb outlines his career to date
“Fresh out of college I was unsure of what I wanted to do and it had always been a dream to experience other cultures and their cuisines, so I saved up some money and set off to travel the world.
“On my return I managed to get a job working as a commis chef at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster, where I spent most of my days doing simple jobs, chopping and preparing a variety of foods, generally the bits nobody else wanted to do!
“For me, the large quantities of fruit, vegetables and meat that were used on a daily basis was overwhelming. I worked hard learning basic knife skills and adapting to the environment and after two years I took my chance to escape the rat race of London and spent a year out with a friend visiting the remote forests of Indonesia, the bustling cities of Sydney and the tranquil coasts of Ireland. I was always keen to try the local food whilst abroad, tickling my taste buds, often not even knowing what I was eating.
“Upon my return, after spending more than I owned, I returned back to my previous position in Church House. I worked there for two years, becoming a chef de partie in charge of the larder section and producing in the region of 200 covers per day.
“It was a big step, considering my lack of experience and confidence but with the help of the chefs around me I soon became an integral part of the team. I enjoyed working there and came to love the pressure and relish the busy days and weeks that often arose. It was always satisfying to get to the end of the week and look back at everything we had created.
“After working there for two years and learning my way, I was then offered the chance to run a unit of my own, which I welcomed with open arms, knowing there would be plenty of new challenges ahead. The tasks and pressures of being a head chef soon become apparent and I’m still learning as the days go on and always looking to improve my work and push through new ideas.”