The art of simplicity
They are mischievously nicknamed the Lancashire Mafia - talented chefs born in the county who started their careers in the north, went south to make their names, then returned to their home region where they are now firmly ensconced, and pledging never to leave again.
The ranks of this brotherhood, which includes Paul Heathcote, Nigel Haworth and Steven Doherty, have now been swelled by Mark Prescott. He moved back home to Lancashire after 16 years of working with the Roux brothers at a number of their restaurants, including the renowned Le Gavroche in London, where he was joint head chef with Michel Roux Jnr.
But Prescott has not returned home to set up a fine-dining restaurant. Rather, like former Gavroche colleague Doherty, he has gone into the pub business.
The Mulberry Tree pub, Prescott's new venture, has a 50-seat white-tablecloth section, as well as informal tabling in the bar area to seat a further 85. It is located in the village of Wrightington, in the middle of rural west Lancashire. Prescott was born in the village, so he is truly returning to his roots, but there is a sound business reason for choosing Wrightington: its accessibility to the region's main cities. The village is minutes away from the M6, 15 minutes from Preston and 30 minutes from Liverpool and Manchester.
Having cooked at the very top of the market, where ingredient cost was as large as the kitchen brigade, it is interesting to speculate why Prescott has chosen to work in a sector where food costs are as tight as the margins and his brigade has diminished to just three chefs. The simple answer might be that he has grown disillusioned with fine-dining cooking, although he is guarded about laying the motivation for his shift of emphasis at that door.
"I had a very happy time working with the Roux brothers," he says, "but I wanted to come back to Lancashire. I always said I would - London is very tiring. Annie, my wife, and I said that if we didn't come back now we might never do so."
He continues: "I've always liked informality. I don't want to wear a tie when I go out to eat, and I want to cook the kind of things that I like to eat when I go out. Just because the menu sounds simple and doesn't cost a lot of money, it doesn't mean it isn't good. Food doesn't have to be complicated to be good."
Prescott believes that you can mix simplicity of menu description with complexity in the cooking and also provide the kind of plate surprise usually associated with a fine-dining restaurant.
An example of this can be seen in his working of fish and chips (£6.50) on the Mulberry Tree bar menu. The chips are hand-cut from Estima potatoes, double-fried and served in a basket of newspaper. The cod, supplied locally by Neve's, based in Fleetwood on the Lancashire coast, is top quality and cooked with beer and yeast to give lightness, colour and flavour. Even the tartare sauce is made in the kitchen.
Another pub menu stalwart, Irish stew, is given the same sort of attention to detail. The lamb is slow-braised with vegetables, then chilled overnight and the cooking liquor liquidised to compress the flavours into a sauce. When it is ordered, a selection of turned vegetables is cooked fresh and added to a portion of the braised meat, so that the dish is presented with the flavour of long, slow cooking but with added colour.
Like his colleagues, Haworth and Heathcote, Prescott has been quick to incorporate a traditional Lancashire feel to his menu at the Mulberry Tree. There's a starter of Lancashire pork terrine with home-made piccalilli (£3.70), a main course of slow-braised lamb shank with thyme (£10.50), and a corn-fed breast of chicken with tarragon cream (£9.80).
Prescott is keen to use local produce on his menus (the chicken breast comes from the Lancashire village of Goosnargh) and favours seasonality wherever possible, although he is not a slave to the months of the year. "I don't have a problem with using strawberries as a garnish in winter," he says, "but I wouldn't want to see asparagus with hollandaise sauce on the menu at Christmas. You can't get too precious about seasonality because customers are used to seeing everything all the year round in Tesco and they don't see what's wrong with it."
Nor will Prescott be worried about drawing customers to the Mulberry Tree through the media of television or print. Despite the fact that he has been a high-profile chef for many years, he hasn't been seen leaping about on television cookery shows or putting his name to a cookery book.
"Not interested," he says. "I work in the kitchen. I'll come out if someone asks to talk to me at night, but I feel better in front of my own stove."
New season English asparagus with blood orange hollandaise (sauce maltaise) (serves four)
INGREDIENTS
32 spears of peeled English asparagus
For the sauce:
4 blood oranges
Juice of a lemon
1tbs white wine
1tbs white wine vinegar
4 egg yolks
80ml water
Salt and pepper
200g melted butter
For garnish:
Candied peel
Green leaf salad
METHOD
Remove the zest from the oranges and cut into fine julienne. Blanch in boiling water. Refresh, then cook with a little sugar and water until candied.
Segment the oranges and squeeze any remaining juice out of the orange core. Put the orange and lemon juice, white wine and white wine vinegar into a shallow pan and reduce by two-thirds.
Add the egg yolks and 80ml of water, and then beat the mixture over a low heat until it forms a light, creamy sabayon. Remove from the heat and slowly whisk in the melted butter.
Add the zest and orange segments. The sauce is now ready to serve.
Cook the asparagus in rapidly boiling salted water for two or three minutes.
When cooked, roll in seasoned butter, place on a warm serving plate, spoon the sauce over the asparagus and garnish with candied peel. Serve with a green leaf salad.
Lancashire connections
Mark Prescott's move back to Lancashire is the result of a long-standing friendship that developed into a business partnership. The owner of the Mulberry Tree is Jimmy Moore, whose business interests include the Bold hotel in Southport.
Moore and Prescott first met 20 years ago when Prescott celebrated his 18th birthday in a restaurant that Moore owned at the time. They struck up a friendship that has endured ever since. When Prescott hinted that he was ready for a return to Lancashire, Moore bought the run-down Mulberry Tree site and invested £700,000 in it. Moore admits he would not have done that without Prescott in the Kitchen.
As well as running the kitchen, Prescott is a director of the business and he and his wife live above the pub.
Mark Prescott's career to date
1986: apprentice chef, Chester Grosvenor
1978: commis chef, Royal Garden, London
1981: chef de partie, rose to become joint head chef, Le Gavroche, London
1996: chef-director, White Hart, Norfolk (owner, Michel Roux)
2000: chef-patron, Mulberry Tree, Lancashire
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 1-7 June 2000
