The Roux Scholarship
You only have to list the past winners to know how prestigious the Roux Scholarship is. Andrew Fairlie, Sat Bains, Simon Hulstone and Steve Drake, who have five Michelin stars between them, all won the competition as young chefs. Begun in 1984 by Michel Roux Snr the scholarship now offers the winning chef £3,000, a three month stage in a three-star European restaurant, a week's work experience in New York and trips to an Italian coffee tasting factory and the Champagne region. lt's a big deal.
Firstly chefs submit a paper application, with the recipe for the dish they'd cook with the selected ingredients - this years it's veal kidneys. The best go through to prepare it at the semi-finals, held simultaneously in Birmingham and London, then six chefs are chosen for the finals. Lisa Allen, the 25-year-old head chef at Northcote Manor in Lancashire, competed unsuccessfully in the finals last years, but she's back.
l meet her before this year's semi-finals in the shiny kitchens of a Birmingham college. The competitors are unloading their specialist kit, plates and books. The judges, Brian Turner, Charles Champion and Alain Roux, are milling around in their chef's jackets. There's a box of veal kidneys, some still wrapped in their suet, on the counter. One of the contestants is late. Everyone is nervous.
Like most, Allen regards the prestige attached to winning as the biggest prime - 'being up there and meeting such great people'. The dish she entered is bacon-wrapped veal kidneys with hand-rolled macaroni, button onions and spinach, which she describes as (fairly simple', but the blind dessert course, for which the chef's are given a list of ingredients and design a dish on the spot, is a worry for everyone.
‘We get 20 minutes,’ says Allen, ‘but if something pops into my mind I go for an angle on that. Once you start on different things it can make it complicated.’ Each chef has their own reference system to help them decide what to cook- Lisa has a box of recipe cards, while others flick through books such as Gordon Ramsay's Just Desserts, Darine Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course of Larousse Gastrominque.
Then time's up and the first chef - they go off at five-minute intervals, to help stagger the judging - has to begin.
Alain Roux had earlier reassured the young chefs by saying: ‘We're not here to be nasty.’ As if to prove the point he carries a platter of sandwiches around to the waiting competitors while Brian Turner examines a jar of pickles brought in by one of them, to check that they're home-made.
While the cooking goes on, the judges have lunch, watching the monitors and popping into the kitchens if they're curious about something. In between phone calls from his father Michel, Roux explains what the judges are looking for. ‘At the end of the day it's cooking, being able to prepare ingredients, work professionally and not only clean and tidy but in a chef's manner. It's producing the best flavour, the best taste out of the ingredients.’
Brian Turner agrees, but adds: 'It doesn't mean to say that if you know how to cook it, it's the correct dish. You might be able to perform it but the dish might not work!' What they have all seen in winning Scholars is technical skill backed by enthusiasm.
'If you look at the majority of past winners, says Turner, 'you don't really pick it up on the day, but the majority are very passionate about what they do and it comes out afterwards, when you see them move on.'
'Dedication is the quality they need,' agrees Campion. 'It's such a desperately competitive arena.' Soon, the dishes flood into our own competitive arena and the judges begin to circle them with forks and clipboards, making little faces at each other and murmuring about seasoning, portion size and balance. Brian Turner begins to exhibit a distinct - and understandable - preference for hotplates over cold. From the blind dessert box of fruit sugar, eggs, milk, flour, assai tea, pink grapefruit and limes, there are quite a few pancakes and one brave attempt at soufflé. There are 14 competitors in London and six here. Only six can make the final cut and we're chucked out of the judging room so the chefs can speak freely (Turner doesn't swear in front of ladies, or at least always apologises for it) and the London panel can be consulted.
Then we're recalled and the chefs and their supporters come through, too. Matthew Wilkinson, a 23-year-old chef from Harrogate's Rudding Park, gets one of the places in the final, Allen, to what is clearly her great surprise, gets the other. She felt, she says, under much more pressure this time than last, but she's over the moon to have a place in the final, and another change to join that illustrious, star studded line-up.
Emma Jean Sturgess
The finals of the Roux Scholarship take
place on April 2.
www.rouxscholarship.co.uk