OUTLAW BREAKS RULES TO COOK SUPER SEAFOOD
NATHAN Outlaw may just be the nicest chef in the business. The Michelin-starred restaurateur and fish expert talks to ELLA WALKER about his latest book, Home Kitchen
APPARENTLY, Nathan Outlaw still can’t quite master the art of roasting a chicken. This is a man who has a two Michelin star restaurant, was mentored by Rick Stein and has written four cookery books. And he can’t roast a chicken?! “It always turns out differently every time,” says the Kent-born, Cornwall-based chef, with a laid-back, self-deprecating laugh.
Don’t be taken in; Outlaw can handle chicken, he just doesn’t do carbon copy, identikit chickens – but when you’re best known for your seafood, who cares?
His latest book then, Home Kitchen, is something of a detour. “I wanted to write a book that covered all the bases if you had no other cookery book – a book that had all the recipes you needed for life.”
It features some fish, of course, but is also packed with nostalgic classics like toad-in-the-hole, soups, risottos, how to do a proper Sunday roast (yes, chicken included), plus desserts - including his daughter’s sticky toffee pudding - which is to be expected when Outlaw’s last-night-on-earth meal is, without question, trifle.
Throughout the writing process, he had his children (Jacob and Jessica) in mind, imagining the kind of cookbook they’ll need when, eventually, they go off to university or college.
“If they took this one book,” he says, “there’d be enough in there for them to survive.”
It’s a very tasty safety net too, considering that cooking is no longer taught comprehensively in schools.
Outlaw, 39, explains he’s “fortunate enough to be old enough to have done cookery lessons at school”, but says it’s disappointing how children tend to get just a term of Food Technology classes each year now, and are rarely taught basic kitchen skills in detail.
“It’s not really like it was,” he muses. “We all have to eat to survive, so you need to eat well, it’s a no-brainer really, but it seems to be something that’s a little bit lost in schools now.”
After honing his filleting skills alongside Gary Rhodes and Stein, at just 25 – an age that doesn’t seem quite so young when you consider he was cooking for paying customers at 14 – Outlaw launched his first restaurant, The Black Pig. Within a year, he was also a first-time dad (to son Jacob) and the recipient of a Michelin star.
“It’s a bit surreal at first,” he says, recalling what it feels like to be awarded a star – his Port Isaacbased Restaurant Nathan Outlaw currently holds two, the only UK seafood restaurant to do so. “The thing with the Michelin process is that you don’t know anything about it; you don’t know when they’ve inspected, you can’t talk to anyone – there’s no feedback form or anything like that! So it’s nice to know you’ve been recognised for what you’re doing, but it’s more for all the guys that work with me, because they work really hard.”