I stole dad’s idea... it’s not plagiarism if you’re family
Jack Stein, son of Rick, is a chef in his own right, and is releasing his first recipe book. ELLA WALKER met him to find out more
JACK Stein is frank about the premise of his debut cookbook – he pretty much nicked it off his TV legend and travellercum-chef extraordinaire dad.
“I’ve basically stolen one of Rick’s ideas that he didn’t really capitalise on,” says Jack, wryly. “You can’t plagiarise within your own family, I’ve discovered.”
The 36-year-old is Rick Stein’s middle son, and chef director of the Stein empire. Based in Cornwall, he’s responsible for developing and implementing menus across the family’s restaurants, and now he’s preserved a slew of his favourite recipes – some borrowed, some adapted, some all his own – in Jack Stein’s World On A Plate, his debut cookbook.
The idea he thrifted from his dad was to collect ideas, magpie-like, from his travels and then reproduce them with British produce. “We’ve travelled the world and found these amazing recipes and ingredients,” says Jack, “but what Dad does when he comes back to England is, he does them with local, British ingredients.”
It’s a kind of fusion cooking Jack calls “very iconoclastic – it doesn’t really have any rules this book, it’s just whatever I think works”. As a result, he’s clear: “If you’re a purist, this book’s not for you.”
There’s always a new country to visit and a new cuisine to try
For three months a year, setting off in December, the whole Stein family would travel the world together. The other nine months, Jack’s parents were busy running their Cornwall restaurants. They “were virtual strangers to their three offspring”, he writes in the book.
He slurped oysters in France for the first time aged four, witnessed the poverty of India at 11, and went on to work in kitchens in Sydney, Paris and Switzerland – but the cuisine that’s most surprised and intrigued him is that of Spain. “I know it’s not very far away, but when you’re long-haul and you land in Singapore or Bangkok, and it’s night-time and you’re having a beer and all these crazy flavours, that’s what you go for. But,” he continues, “I always thought Spanish food was just tapas, and a bit of paella.”
That changed on a recce trip to San Sebastian with his dad for Rick’s Spanish series.
They ate at cult wood fired restaurant Etxebarri (in the world’s top 10 restaurants) and Restaurante Arzak, famed for its Basque food, all the while gorging at tapas and pintxos bars. “In one day, we did more incredible eating than I’ve ever known and we didn’t even scratch the surface of San Sebastian, let alone Spain,” says Jack reverently.
But Jack need only take a short stroll to find one of his favourite delicacies.
“I love crab, there’s heaps of it down here,” he says. “Just above the reef where I’m sat now, you can go down with a pole and stick it in a hole and get your own.”
With seafood that fresh at his feet, it’s a wonder he ever leaves the country at all.