Daryll recently spoke to Contract Catering magazine and shared his Desert Island Dishes – you can find out his favourite dishes and luxury items.

Tunworth Cheese from Hampshire

It is my favourite cheese and one that our chef director Pete Redman introduced me to. It can be used in so many ways – plus my wife isn’t a fan so I get it all to myself. I love it in mashed potato with steak.

Fried Chicken

I spent months trying to come up with a recipe once and still can’t get it anywhere near my favourite chicken place in New York. If you ever get time and are in the Big Apple, Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken is definitely worth a visit.

Smoked Turkey in a Pretzel Bun

Something that I make quite often at home. It’s a great excuse to fire up my Big Green Egg barbecue.

My Wife’s Shakshuka

It’s one of those dishes that I could eat once a week, and it’s even better when we trade a sourdough with the neighbours for some of their freshly laid duck eggs. It, makes me realise that I am not even the best cook at home, although at least the bread we have with it is all my own work.

Roast Dinner

It’s something that I really look forward to. My favourite meat is normally lamb shoulder, though any will do because the most important element is the roast potatoes cooked in duck fat or beef dripping. Oh and a really good gravy.

Sausage Roll

It’s something I am particularly good at making, if I do say so myself, so much so that I spent some time showing our former chef director David Steel how to glaze and make sausage meat. Now he goes around town claiming the he is the king of the sausage roll, but I am still the master.

Sourdough

It’s something that I love so much that I set up a pop-up bakery during lockdown in an empty local shop. It made me feel like a bit of a superstar in the village as people would queue to buy my okay-ish bread.

Pizza

Whenever we go on holiday, I always research the best place to go and try out. Again, this is something we look forward to doing at home as well, with us normally planning it the week before. Having a woodburning pizza oven at home does help. It took a while to master, but it turns out it is all down to paddle management – wood to get it in and metal to get it out again. Who knew?

Favourite Book

To choose one is really hard because I spend most of my spare money on cookbooks. I will go with the one  that I am rereading at the moment, which is Sean Brock’s first book Heritage. It’s about southern cooking and I think the reason I love it so much is that at heart I am a truck-driving country boy.

Luxury Item

This would have to be my Big Green Egg, because I am going to need something to cook with and who doesn’t love a barbecue?

Favourite Dish

The fried chicken, going back to my love of southern influenced food and my wannabe hillbilly persona. This might also explain my ever expanding waistline……

 

This article first appeared in Contract Catering Magazine and the full article can be found here

 

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