StrEATFood Awards interview

We speak to Stuart Dale from Mellors Catering (above right), who won Meat-Free Dish of the Year sponsored by Quorn last year...

What as your winning dish and how did you come up with it?
It was a South American-style Quorn arepa (pictued below). It’s basically the South American version of an English muffin, like a breakfast/brunch kind of thing.

It was quite a simple dish inspired by the Quorn fillets, because travelling around lots of schools, I see them not always being cooked in the best way. I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the texture and seeing how you could create something nicer. I stir-fried it once it had made been marinaded and serving it on this South American arepa with a green sauce and pickled sweetcorn, which we grew at home in our garden.

Were you pleased with the result and did you expect to win?
I was delighted, but no, I definitely didn’t expect to win. I’d only been in education catering for a year at that point, before that I was in care homes, and I’d not done much in the way of competitions before, so yeah, it was a bit of a shock! Also, obviously I was going up against much bigger companies too.

You must have been delighted …
Yes, absolutely, the company was, I was, especially to win with the Quorn dish. We had a big focus last year on our plant-based range, so that kind of set the tone for what I was doing.

We have a plant-based recipe pack and we do pop-ups with that. We went around giving out between 600 and 800 samples a day to kids in secondary schools. We get them to try different things and we used the winning the dish. It went really well. It finished a couple of months ago and we did 35 to 40 schools.

And what was your signature dish?
It was called The goat Vs the scorpion. It was birria tacos, which oddly has become really popular since, you see them all over Instagram now. It was like a homemade tortilla filled with a very spicy goat stew.

My first ever job was in a Mexican restaurant and I’ve just loved the food ever since. Somebody bought me a bag of scorpion chillis as a kind of a joke Christmas present and said that I would never use them, so it just built around that really.

Did you enjoy the event? Would you recommend that other chefs enter?
Absolutely, yes. It didn’t really feel like I was working, it was much more fun, but as much as you’re standing there cooking, it was really enjoyable. I think it was the most relaxed I have ever been while cooking. It just felt nice to be there and, to be honest, if I hadn’t won, I would have been happy that I just got to have a go.

What’s next in street food?
I’m a little bit biased because I’ve been to Japan recently, but Japanese food is definitely on the rise. And it works well on the meat-free side too.

Great, hopefully we’ll see you back in a few months…
Hopefully, I’ve started working on my dish already.

Really, can you give us a sneak preview or is it top secret?
All I can say is that it’s Japanese…

The deadline to enter the StrEATfood Awards is fast approaching! Go to streatfoodawards.co.uk now...

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