Simmering with enthusiasm
Rick Stein tells Gemma Dunn why life’s too short not to enjoy the good stuff
Rick Stein’s latest foodie mission, Long Weekends, is all about enjoying life’s simpler pleasures.
“It’s what we do really,” quips the 69-year-old seafood maestro, who over the years has cooked for a host of famous faces, including the Queen.
“I’ll leave campaigning cookery to other people - people like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who do a fabulous job. For me, it’s about saying, ‘Hey! We’re alive’, and what’s the best part of being alive? Eating and drinking... apart from the obvious,” he adds with a chuckle, “so let’s enjoy it while we can!”
For those who haven’t caught Stein’s BBC Two food travelogue series, picture a colourful culinary adventure that follows the chef as he embarks on a string of European weekends, in search of good food, wine and traditional recipes.
Meeting at the office of his London publishers, Stein who splashed onto the foodie scene in the Nineties, with his early seafood cookbooks and TV series based on his life as owner of The Seafood Restaurant in the fishing port of Padstow, Cornwall - cuts a relaxed figure, excitedly reeling off vivid anecdotes of Palermo’s bustling markets and latenight dining in Thessaloniki, Greece.
“It’s great fun. Crikey - to be paid to go off to these cities,” he notes, rolling up his shirt sleeves as he speaks. “For most people that work during the week, having a weekend off is wonderful anyway. But if you add a bit of travel, it makes it so special.”
For a man who has now written more than 20 bestselling cookbooks, and incurs coos of ‘I love him!’ at the mere mention of his name, the decision to pen a tie-in book for this latest series was a “nobrainer”.
There are sections dedicated to Friday night suppers, substantial Saturday brunches and Sunday dinners, and the tome is intended to inspire in two ways - as a travel guide for the destinations visited while compiling the recipes, and as a go-to guide for those keen to cook for family and friends at home.
“If you’re cooking for your family during the week, you tend to stick to things you know because you haven’t got time. But at the weekends, you might well try something - and this is what this book is all about, really.”
And the Oxford-born restaurateur (he moved to Padstow in the early-Seventies, shortly after completing his English degree at Oxford) certainly knows a thing or two about rousing enthusiasm in the kitchen, after decades of small-screen appearances on the subject, and having built an empire that includes six acclaimed Cornish restaurants, a seafood cookery school, delicatessen, patisserie, fishmongers, gift ship, pub and cocktail bar.
“I’m lucky. Because I have such great managers, I can do less and less, but still have an overall feeling for how the business is going,” he says,
“If I want to retire, I will, but I don’t think I will, to be honest,” Stein reasons. “I don’t see why I should!”