It is regrettable that once again the Central Heat of BBC’s Great British Menu 2022 was won by a Chef who worked outside of the region - in London of course - and indeed, on this occasion, had never worked in the region. Not that Sally Abé failed to produce what appeared to be the best dishes (who can tell really?, they may look fabulous but in the end flavour is (almost) everything and that’s something the programme viewers never get to experience).
Liam Dillon of The Boat in Lichfield was eliminated at the end of the second round (main course, intermediate course and dessert) leaving two London-based chefs to battle it out in the final ‘Judges’ round and so once again the London-centricity of the BBC won out. For his main course Dillon, necessarily continuing the theme of the BBC’s centenary, had produced a dish titled Bridge Farm, which alluded to the name of one of the fictional farms featured in the radio soap opera - the world’s longest-running - The Archers, set in the fictional West Midlands county of Borsetshire in the equally fictional village of Ambridge and produced in non-fictional Birmingham (unless you are watching an episode of Peaky Blinders in which case it is fictional). The dish was made up of a fillet of dairy cow beef (brined, cooked sous vide and then roasted) with slow-cooked shin of beef served in a Roscoff onion, pickled horseradish, turnip and beef fat-roasted, glazed heritage carrot. Guest Chef Judge Aktar Islam awarded the dish 8 points, complaining that the use of a water bath in part of the cooking of the fillet had meant that Dillon had not been able to achieve as fine a crust on it as would have been the case if the meat had been solely roasted and also, sounding a little too obsessed about carrots for his own good, thought that Dillon should have used a different type of carrot as the quality of the flavour of heritage carrots in 2021 had not been up to scratch (which is interesting given how obsessed with serving carrots so many chefs are at the moment, something I have moaned about before. I shall soon be revisiting Opheem so I will be interested to taste any carrots served there).
For pre-dessert Dillon prepared ‘Grab the Star’ inspired by the ITV programme I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with mango stars and when his rum jelly worms failed in their moulds he added wood ants to provide a citrus flavour. Islam was moderately enthusiastic about the dish and placed it second behind Sally Abé’s sky rocket.
Liam Dillon’s dessert was ‘The Phantom Flam Flinger’ from another ITV programme, Tiswas, which was a star anise espuma and damson jam custard tart with plum sorbet and Aktar Islam awarded it 7 points because the tart was served still warm and the custard element not fully set. This score was insufficient for Dillon to go through to the final heat where all the dishes were to be judged by celebrities of varying degrees of silliness apart from chef Tom Kerridge who added a note of seriousness to the proceedings. One of the celebrities’ main contributions was the constant expostulation of the word ‘Wow!’ every time a new dish was brought into the judging room and the bulk of comedian Ed Gamble’s comments were fatuous, flippant, tiresome and not in any way funny. Nevertheless Sally Abé was chosen as the winner of the regional heats and once more the Central region found itself represented by a London chef.
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