TV chef promises tips to suit everybody

Cyrus Todiwala believes his exclusive dinner and Masterclass in a couple of weeks’ time will appeal to experienced and novice cooks.

The internationally-renowned restaurateur, author, educationist and media personality, who is well known for his support of British produce and a champion of sustainability, will use ingredients everybody can buy in their local supermarket.

The MBE and OBE together with Pervin Todiwala runs three top London restaurants including Café Spice Namaste, the longest standing recipient of a Michelin BIB Gourmand award.

And he cooked the first luncheon for HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

His visit to the five-star Fairmont St Andrews on March 24 and 25 will celebrate Scottish produce, Asian flavours and French wines.

As part of the hotel’s commitment to sustainability, he has created an exclusive menu for guests using the finest local produce sourced in Scotland.

Seafood from St Andrews Bay and East Neuk of Fife fishing villages and seasonal produce from Fife and Tayside are on the menu.

Guests are set to experience Asian cuisine paired with selected wines from France. Sophie Lurton-Cogombles, owner of Chateau Bouscaut of the Lurton family of Bordeaux, has chosen a selection of Grand Vins de Bordeaux to complement the six-course menu.

The chef said he will create the dishes in front of the guests offering a unique and interactive evening.

The following day his Masterclass will take guests on a journey of combining flavours, spices and ingredients to make the perfect dish.

Cyrus, who teamed up with Edinburgh-born chef Tony Singh in the hit prime time series on BBC2, The Incredible Spice Men, said: “I’m looking forward to preparing my menu of pan-Indian dishes, all based around Scottish produce, with guests.

“I’ll be sharing my tips to on how to get the best out of Scottish. The team at the hotel are world-class and the stunning backdrop is the perfect location to host this unique gastronomic experience.

“The Masterclass is for anybody, for a beginner and for an experience chef.

“People don’t have much in-depth knowledge of Indian food. The whole idea of the class is to give a brief about Indian food, the origins, where it comes from, what the different regions are and then into a few simple dishes that people can create in a restaurant environment or in a domestic environment.

“They can be for anything. A dinner party does not have to be very fancy, everything is around taste, texture and quality.

“The ingredients can be picked up from your local supermarket.”

The equipment required, he said, would be available in a normal domestic kitchen.

The author of seven books added: “We use a lot of Scottish food in all our cooking and we have plenty of suppliers right across Scotland. I work with them on various projects as well.

“Scottish product is high on my list but the whole idea is to raise the value of sustainability and how we British have changed in our thinking about sourcing.

“Some of the things going on now in Britain are wrong right across from top to bottom and is that we are not using more British shellfish, we are importing thousands of tonnes and ignoring British shellfish.

“Thousands of tonnes go to China and the Far East because many of us do not buy the stuff.”

Langoustine, he said, is one of the products and so is crab. He explained that from Peterhead in the North-East they export hen crab because restaurants here have spoiled customers to eat only white crab meat.

And the top chef said: “The idea is to promote the use of all our shellfish, cockles, whelks etc.

“There is some amazing produce up there. For instance, I have a special mutton which comes from North Ronaldsay. They are in a crisis situation.”

He claimed the local authority has gone and shut down the abattoir on Kirkwall and and added: “All the little farmers dotted around the Orkney islands are in a little bit of a crisis at the moment.

“The idea is to promote all the regions so that the Scottish people themselves, or whoever comes, appreciate that there is so much produce out there that they do not know about.”

Packages from £650 per room per night.
Dates: Saturday, 24 March and Sunday, 25 March