TOM KITCHIN
HE DESCRIBES THE TIME KOFFMANN LAUNCHED A BUCKET OF POTATO TRIMMINGS AT HIM 12 THE LIST 23 Jul–6 Aug 2009
KITC
Donald Reid speaks to Tom Kitchin, Scotland’s youngest Michelin- starred chef, about his first cookbook, From Nature to Plate
A ll cookbooks reveal something of their author; first cookbooks are often most revealing of all as chefs justify their status by retelling formative experiences. As with the opening of their own restaurant, it’s both a statement and a landmark.
Tom Kitchin recalls working at Gleneagles aged 18, sitting in a small room with friend and fellow chef Dominic Jack and reading about Marco Pierre White, Pierre Koffmann, Michel Perraud, Raymond Blanc and Michel Roux. ‘We used to read their books, talk recipes and ideas, and dream about one day meeting these chefs – and possibly working for them,’ he writes. ‘We wanted them to teach us to become better chefs.’
Now that Kitchin is penning the books himself, From Nature to Plate seems as much as an act of homage as something that was expected of him. ‘To have your own cookbook is very surreal,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the most fantastic things we’ve ever achieved.’
Rather than being something Kitchin and his wife Michaela had planned, the cookbook was suggested by some publishers who were in the restaurant after the launch of a book by another of their authors, Ian Rankin. ‘Once you get to the stage of being a two-star, three- star Michelin chef, you have a right to do a proper, gastronomic cooking book,’ he says. ‘When you’re someone like myself you don’t. This book is firstly a story, hopefully one that will inspire others, of being 13 and washing the pots and pans [in a Kinross-shire inn], being 18 in London, 21 in Paris and then Monaco.’
In describing his journey, Kitchin makes it clear that working in high-end kitchens around the world was tough, hard work with long hours, low pay and many challenges. His most formative period was the five years under Pierre Koffmann at the three-star La Tante Claire in London. ‘I will admit that working for him was one of the hardest, most gruelling things I’ve ever experienced, but at the same time it was the best school I could have attended,’ he says. He describes the times when he was ready to pack it all in. When Koffmann launched a whole bucket of potato trimmings at him or exploded when he began to fillet a wild sea bass the wrong way. ‘Those bridge moments