Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
KEEPING IT EASY AND AFFORDABLE
This Morning’s Phil Vickery tells Lauren Taylor about his latest cookbook celebrating store cupboard and frozen food
You wouldn’t think a top chef would dare serve a Michelin inspector instant custard power – but that’s exactly what Phil Vickery did.
“I did a steamed sponge pudding, and I served it with Bird’s Custard – and I got a [Michelin] star for that meal. OK, I adapted it – I put a few vanilla seeds in it and bits and pieces – but essentially, it was a thickened starch-based custard – and he loved it!” says Phil, 60.
Not only that, but in the same meal in 1999, he served something out of the freezer, too. “I had a frozen baby cockerel, because I couldn’t afford to throw them away – I froze and defrosted them – and the head of Michelin had that cockerel as well.”
The chef, who’s been a mainstay on ITV’S This Morning for 23 years, first started using canned and frozen ingredients in the early Nineties when he took over as head chef of a hotel in financial difficulty. “That hotel owed a huge amount of money to the bank, all the staff had gone, it was the recession and the bank were going to shut the doors in six months, so I just couldn’t afford to buy expensive ingredients,” he says. So, he delved into the store cupboard and used what was there instead. “I never cooked halibut, I couldn’t afford it, I never cooked turbot.”
Even when a famous chef came to lunch with a renowned food critic, Phil served them soup made from water, stock cubes, tinned butterbeans, onions and garlic, with a sprinkle of thyme and olive oil on top.
“That food critic said, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s the nicest butterbean soup I’ve ever had – can I have another bowl?’ So I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for my customers’.”
What was originally conceived out of financial
necessity made him “view things in a different way”, and he’s been cooking this way for years at home. His new book, the Canny Cook, celebrates all things canned and frozen, and the cheap, sustainable, easy meals you can make from them.
On This Morning, Holly Willoughby, Dermot O’leary and co. give rave reviews of Phil’s dishes using store cupboard ingredients.
You might have seen him rustle up rhubarb crumble with strawberry jam and instant custard, or corned beef hash, on the show – “As long as you explain it, it’s fine,” he says, but he’s been criticised by fellow chefs for ‘deskilling’ the industry.
“I don’t give a stuff,” he says.
“I’ve been called some awful things on Twitter but I just laugh at it.”
Still, Phil’s everyman charm
is what This Morning fans love, and he’s no stranger to cooking disasters on live TV.
“I drop stuff, burn myself, the oven’s not on, I’ve tipped stuff or forgotten to put stuff
in, but people love it – tea towels catching fire is quite normal,” he laughs.
Phil turned 60 last year, and while he does consider what he eats, he definitely isn’t
about to give up his favourite chilli-flavoured Doritos, and enjoys a pint of beer every single night, saying: “Life’s too short – you’ve got to have some sort of enjoyment!”