203. Another Young Birmingham Chef Wins Masterchef.

 

  The winner of the 2021 final of BBC’s Master Chef The Professionals which was screened on BBC1 on 16 December is Daniel Lee from Birmingham currently working as a private chef. The winner usually presented dishes which were related to his Chinese background and also inspired from the time he had spent working in south east Asia. By scoring this success Dan Lee follows in the the footsteps of the 2019 winner, Stuart Deeley, now Head Chef at Smoke in Hampton-in-Arden.

  The competition underlined the great present strength of Birmingham and the West Midlands and its brilliant future prospects in the field of gastronomy although Michelin inspectors seem to find it hard to visit the region and if they do their interest is mainly centred on The Cotswolds or perhaps rural Shropshire (as regards the East Midlands they have been flocking to the cosy pubs of the Peak District recently - see below).

  Each dish in Dan Lee’s winning three course menu cooked in three hours earned near-ecstatic praise and no criticism from the three judges in the programme including Marcus Waring and Monica Galleti. Lee prepared a starter of his version of the classic Singapore chilli crab with deep fried bao topped with crab, chilli oil, nashi pear, lime juice, salted egg yolk and Szechuan pepper topped with a squid ink tuile, a soft shell crab tempura with crab and chilli oil.

  The main course was said to be Lee’s take on the Singaporean national dish - chicken and rice - chicken breast stuffed with chicken thigh meat, sesame oil, spring onion, ginger and Thai pandan leaf, choy sum (a Chinese cabbage) blanched in garlic, chilli and oyster sauce, a red chilli sambal sauce, chicken-infused steam rice with garlic and ginger and a chicken and pandan leaf broth.

  The dessert was a smoked hay treacle tart filled with yuzu curd toasted breadcrumbs, pickled ginger, clotted cream ice cream, Japanese shiso leaves, shiso crumb and smoked hay butter tuile

 

  Throughout the competition Dan Lee always looked like he would certainly be one of the three finalists and had a good chance of being chosen as champion and indeed he lived up to expectations. Food lovers here in the West Midlands must now hope that he chooses to continue his career here in Birmingham or the surrounding region - an exciting prospect indeed.

  We must also remember that three West Midlands young chefs featured in this year’s competition - Yasmine Selwood (see Blog 197) and Matt Willdig who made it into the final week of the competition. Such promise for our local gastronomic future.

  Not that you would think it from the latest monthly update to the Michelin Guide of recommended restaurants. Out of thirty new additions in the list published on 15 December absolutely none are located in the West Midlands region which means that since the monthly publication of these lists began ZERO West Midlands restaurants have been featured - the only region in the entire British Isles to have been completely ignored by Michelin. Utterly bizarre. But the Michelin inspectors have clearly been having a pleasurable time pottering around the gastro-pubs of the Peak District as several such establishments find themselves added to the list. I am glad they’re having a nice time.

  As the omicron variant of the Coronavirus threatens to spread rapidly across England, restaurants are suffering from a large number of cancelled reservations as shown in this appeal from Folium, Ben Tesh’s restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter:-