M&J Seafood Workshop

As part of our continued craft development our Director of Food and Service, Mark Stower, took a group of Harrison chefs to M&J Seafood’s training kitchen for a sustainable fish workshop.  This is a regular training exercise which Mark uses to develop our chefs skills who were all looking to benefit from M&J Seafood’s vast experience in selecting, preparing and cooking fresh, sustainable fish.

After the initial presentation by M&J Seafoods on the importance of sustainability, our chefs were given a blind tasting of ten different fish samples to recognize from flavour alone.  They also tasted prawns that were correctly prepared and some that weren’t, highlighting the difference in flavour which was immense and a real eye opener for some of the chefs on the workshop.

In the afternoon they were split into groups to produce a starter and main course from the sustainable fish prepared earlier.  This inspired them to get their creative juices flowing and the results were stunning.  The dishes served were of a very high standard and all the chefs were inspired to take aspects of what they had learned back to their own sites.

The response from chef Andrew Cross was typical of the enthusiasm for the event:

“The fish preparer, blockman, was fantastic and seeing his skills in preparing the fish was very inspiring.  It has certainly inspired me to try the dishes learnt on the menus at school. I also have a Head Teachers’ lunch this week, for which I am going to do a fish dish – with the Pollock that we prepared on the course using my new found skills.”