Island life
Despite living on the genteel island of Madeira, Jonathan Bishop claims that his work productivity is now much greater than when he was back in England. "Living in a climate which is sunny and warm all year round, and generally enjoying a better standard of living, has made me a lot happier, and as a result I am able to prioritise my work better," he explains.
Twenty-nine-year-old Bishop arrived on the Portuguese island of Madeira nearly a year ago as executive chef of Casa Velha Do Palheiro, a 25-bedroom country house hotel which opened three months later. Owned by Adam and Christina Blandy, whose family is synonymous with Madeira wine, the hotel offers five-star service and standards in the hills above the island's capital, Funchal.
He applied for the job, which was advertised in Caterer, having already spoken to some friends who lived in Madeira about the highly regarded reputation of the venture.
Bishop, who is working abroad for the first time, was given a free rein to set up the kitchen and employ the 13 chefs he needed for the hotel and adjacent golf club, for which he is also responsible. He is particularly grateful that he has been allowed to produce a menu which is a true expression of his style. "I've worked at several places before where my creativity has been stifled by owners who wanted to impose their own style of food," he says. "Here, my ideas have been able to flow freely, and as a result I think I'm producing food that is better than anything I did in England."
Bishop also believes that he has introduced a new style of food to Madeira. Local people eat very simply - a lot of boiled fish, rice and chips - and there are few typically Madeiran dishes. Although there are five other five-star hotels on the island, Bishop's food is probably more refined and adventurous than anything they offer.
"My menu is very influenced by what I can buy locally," he says. "I need to keep my importation costs down in order to meet my food cost of 35% in the restaurant and 33% at the golf club." He currently imports nearly one-third of his ingredients, but hopes to get this down to 10% as he gradually searches out local suppliers who can provide him with the quality of produce that he demands.
Chicken and pork are purchased on the island, but beef comes from Brazil and Argentina, and lamb from Wales. The majority of Bishop's fruit and vegetables are grown in Madeira, but good-quality fresh herbs and spinach have to be flown in. Local fish is, naturally, plentiful, and Bishop now cooks with the likes of scorpion fish, stone bass and dusky grouper. However, most seafood is shipped in from the Azores.
Influences on Bishop's food are global and he seeks to create new combinations of ingredients. But he cautions: "I'm careful to achieve a well-balanced dish and not just throw ingredients together for the sake of it." He remembers well the experience of working with the two chefs who have had the greatest influence on his cooking - John Burton-Race at L'Ortolan and Ron Maxfield at Cliveden. "John taught me to combine only ingredients which complement each other," he says, "and Ron gave me the confidence to try new ideas."
The Portuguese love of pork is reflected in a main-course dish, pork "five ways", a pork-lover's delight. For the first four ways, a trotter is stuffed with a chicken-and-mushroom mousse, belly of pork is confited, braised pork tongue rests on an onion sauce, and a home-made blood sausage is made from pig's blood, liver, a little kidney, diced fat, sultanas, thyme and white wine vinegar.
The fifth element of the dish is roast fillet of pork encased in a topping of crispy pig's ear. Sea salt is used to draw the moisture from the ears, which are then roasted until crisp. The sinewy part is removed and the remaining flesh ground to a fine powder, used to coat the fillet prior to roasting. The result adds an intense pork scratching flavour to the dish.
One of the most popular fish among Madeirans is the scabbard, a long thin fish with an intensely black skin which is removed by rubbing with a cloth. It accounts for most of the fish sold to the locals daily at Funchal's fish market. "At first I resisted putting it on the menu because it is eaten everywhere, but I got so many requests from locals that I eventually succumbed," says Bishop. "It is usually poached and served with boiled potatoes, or fried and accompanied by bananas. I wanted to do something completely different with it."
Bishop's scabbard fish dish combines those ingredients that are most dear to the Portuguese - the fish itself, tomatoes, olives and garlic. A moist poached fillet, topped with a tomato compote and persillade, is placed on a bed of olive and garlic mash, and accompanied by roasted winter vegetables, and a clam and mussel ragoÁ±t.
When Casa Velha opened, Bishop initially assumed total responsibility for all the desserts, as he was unable to find a pastry chef of the required quality locally. However, he says: "The workload was getting too much and I knew that the only way to solve the problem was to employ someone from the UK." So the job was offered to Ben Batterbury, a 19-year-old British chef who had previously worked with Bishop at Holne Chase in Devon.
While most of the seven desserts on the Á la carte menu feature much of the abundant fresh fruit of Madeira, there is one that he has brought with him from England - a compilation of chocolate desserts. It includes a teardrop of orange chocolate filled with white chocolate mousse, a torte of milk chocolate scented with rosewater, a bitter chocolate and hazelnut tart, a white chocolate sorbet, and an orange chocolate, Grand Marnier and vanilla brÁ±lée.
The dessert that perhaps best sums up the location of Casa Velha is a warm chestnut tart accompanied by pine-needle ice-cream and a Madeira wine and redcurrant syrup. "It started with the Madeira wine, as it is at the heart of my bosses' empire," says Bishop. "Chestnuts go very well with Madeira. They are local and are roasted on every street corner in Funchal. Then came the pine-needle ice-cream, which stems from the pine trees that surround the hotel - it provides a light menthol flavour to the dish."
While it is the hotel's 36-seat restaurant that preoccupies the majority of Bishop's time, he also spends at least two mornings a week at the golf club, a vital part of the business. As many as 120 covers are served here daily between noon and 7pm.
Golfers can enjoy simple ham-and-cheese toasted sandwiches or more exotic dishes such as marinated squid with grilled aubergine and oregano; or turmeric marinated chicken on onion pilaf rice, coriander cream and corn fritters.
At present, Bishop is in no hurry to return to the UK. He enjoys a salary "probably equivalent to any head-chef position of a top country house hotel back home" and perks that include a car and a three-bedroom apartment with garden. With the general cost of living being lower in Madeira, he, his wife Hayley and son Thomas are able to enjoy a more comfortable standard of living. They love the clean environment, the weather and the outdoor life they enjoy all year round. "Probably the only thing that would get me back would be a rich backer willing to support me in my own restaurant," says Bishop. "But with the freedom I have here to employ the staff I want and choose the food I want to serve, it is almost like having my own place.
"But it hasn't always been easy," he adds. "Learning Portuguese has been a struggle at times, but is an absolute must if you are going to get on here. And working with staff who are less skilled than those back home has required me to adapt the way I work. We have had three changes of Á la carte menu since I've been here and each time we've been able to take it up a level, so the skills are constantly improving.
"Living on an island can get claustrophobic," he concludes. "Sometimes I just yearn to get in my car and drive for hours on end on a motorway - but the feeling doesn't last for long."
