Our chefs serve up a mouth-watering silver

DOES the fact Singapore has snatched the Culinary World Cup from Sweden after 12 continuous years indicate a shift from Nordic cuisine? Pan-Asian ingredients and techniques have been infiltrating menus and Singapore’s culinary confidence will be boosted by a gold-medal win.

Anything is possible in the ever-changing global melting pot, it seems. The Scottish Culinary Team – a novice group of 13 young professional chefs and pastry chefs, most of whom had not competed, far less worked together, before – did well to achieve silver in the all-important hot kitchen competition.

Its director, Kevin MacGillivray, has been involved in the competition for many years, and was pivotal in persuading the World Association of Chefs Societies to allow Scotland to compete as a national team separately from the England-dominated British team. He put together a new team for 2016 and, somewhat unbelievably, it only had two run-throughs before departing for Germany days before the competition.

I am told other countries fete and fund their national culinary teams and treat members like Olympic sporting heroes. Not so here: few have even heard of such a thing as a Scottish culinary team, far less that a World Culinary Olympics even existed. As a result, it has had to self-fund its endeavour to the tune of £50,000.

The World Culinary Olympics, held every four years in Germany, are one of the most prestigious international culinary competitions and competitors have described them as “emotionally and physically intense”.

I’m not surprised. Under the scrutiny of the international judges our young team – amassed from such diverse kitchens as the Peebles Hydro, Chester hotel in Aberdeen, Trump Turnberry, New Lanark Mill hotel, Gleneagles hotel and Russacks St Andrews among others – cooked and sweated alongside 2,000 chefs from 58 other nations in glass kitchens open to view by the general public.

For the hot kitchen competition, it had to present a three-course menu for 110 covers, including seafood/fish appetiser, a main course of meat, poultry or game, and a dessert “to contain contrasts in textures and temperatures”. The menu, devised by MacGillivray and team manager Robbie Penman of the Peebles Hydro, comprised seared Orkney scallops, smoked haddock Scotch egg, Barwheys (cheese) espuma, caramelised cauliflower; roast Perthshire lamb, with crisped flank, semolina gnocchi, carrot and apricot puree, goat curd; and bitter dark chocolate mousse, white chocolate and coconut ganache, caramel peanut biscuit, rum baba and a passionfruit sorbet.

The judges’ feedback made it all worthwhile. They loved the Scotch lamb, said the scallops were “majestic” and that the Scotch eggs were the best they had tasted. They also praised the way the team communicated. Apparently there was a “huge buzz” around their dishes. They set out to win silver and did; Not bad, considering a silver score can be as high as 89 per cent and gold starts at 90 per cent. The team has its sights on the Culinary World Cup in Luxembourg in 2018. Fundraising starts now.

‘‘ The judges’ feedback made it all worthwhile. They loved the Scotch lamb and said the scallops were ‘majestic’