The path to enlightenment

While many young chefs "fall" into the industry having failed to shine at school, 28-year-old Noel McMeel was destined to be a chef from a tender age. "As a child, I can remember waking up to the aroma of soda bread baking in my mother's kitchen," he recalls. That childhood memory was enough to tempt him into his vocation.

As head chef of the privately owned Beech Hill Country House Hotel, on the outskirts of Londonderry, McMeel presides over the 40-seat Ardmore restaurant. This is a comfortable, unstuffy fine-dining restaurant serving food that is a clever mix of classical Irish cooking and modern, global influences. Overlooking Beech Hill's 32 rolling acres, the restaurant's atmosphere cannot fail to be relaxing.

The Ardmore offers an à la carte menu that changes every six weeks, and a twice-weekly changing set-price dinner menu (£21.95), which offers five starters, five mains and seven desserts. It averages 30 covers a night and the clientele, who are mainly in the locality on business, expect a low-key country house-style service.

Despite the laid-back feeling this operation imparts, McMeel does not take his job lightly. He spends one of his two days off a week teaching NVQ level 3 students at the North West Institute for Further and Higher Education in Derry, and much of his time working with local growers and farmers in order to educate himself and gain a greater control over the produce coming into his kitchen. "I am desperate to develop our local producers," he says. "I want vegetables that taste like they've been grown in my back garden. I want the earth flavour from produce. What better than something that was only picked out of the ground three hours earlier served up on a plate - it all helps to create a perfect dish."

It took McMeel some time to convince producers that if they grew what he wanted, he would guarantee them business. But he now has 45% of his vegetables, such as courgettes, Dunbard standard, British Queens and baby red skin potatoes, grown to order. It broadens McMeel's knowledge of ingredients too.

McMeel has an insatiable appetite for expanding his knowledge. His eagerness to learn has landed him many placements, from Paul Rankin's Roscoff restaurant in Belfast, Jean-Louis Palladin's restaurant at the Watergate Hotel, Washington DC, to the Lenôtre pastry school in Paris, and the Johnston & Wales University in Rhode Island, USA, where he won a scholarship to take a degree in professional culinary arts.

But his biggest coup was gaining a fortnight's work experience at Chez Panisse, Berkeley, near San Francisco, last year. Here he met his idol, chef-patron Alice Waters. "I had always wanted to meet Waters because she inspires me so much," he says. "She started off with a little café and now has one of the most famous restaurants in the world, because instead of expanding she developed quality."

It was while working at Chez Panisse that McMeel discovered the answer to a culinary conundrum that had plagued him for some years. During his five-month stage at Roscoff in 1990, Rankin had suggested that McMeel needed to simplify his food.

It took five years and some 5,000 miles before McMeel was able to understand exactly what Rankin meant. But on day five of his work placement at Chez Panisse, he wrote in his diary: "I know what simplicity is. Simplicity means taking a raw food, understanding it and cooking it very little. You cook food to keep the flavours, for the flavours are all there."

Simplicity is not a word that initially springs to mind when looking at McMeel's food. Many of his dishes appear complex, but in fact tend to be cooked simply.

McMeel's starter of goose and white peach terrine (£5.75), featured in Chef, started life in a different guise. "I was offered goose by a supplier just before Christmas - I put it on the menu, but it didn't sell. So I decided to make a terrine and serve it on the set-price menu. It was so popular I moved it on to the à la carte and now it is one of the best-selling dishes on the menu."

To make the terrine, McMeel marinates goose breast fillets and leg meat in olive oil, carrot, peppercorns, bay leaves, basil, lemon thyme, sea salt and garlic overnight. He then sears the fillets in olive oil, while liquidising the rest of the meat for 40 seconds.

Egg whites and cream are added to the liquidised mixture, which is then layered in the terrine dish with the breast meat and poached white peaches. The dish is then cooked for 20-25 minutes in a bain-marie or until the meat is tender. It is served with a mixed green leaf salad and blackcurrant and lemon dressing.

Monkfish fan

Peppered monkfish steak with a mustard sauce is a good illustration of McMeel's desire for simplicity. The monkfish (McMeel serves two 5oz steaks for a main course portion) is dredged in cracked black pepper and simply sautéd in olive oil for three minutes.

It is served with a mustard sauce made from shallots, Chardonnay, button mushrooms, cream, thyme, chicken stock, Dijon mustard and whole grain mustard. For service, he places it on a bed of mashed potatoes and garnishes it with fried shoestring potatoes or deep-fried carrot.

"I love monkfish," says McMeel. "It's such a versatile, meaty and substantial fish. The black pepper gives the fish a bit of a boost, while the mustard sauce is more of an Irish tradition."

Fish comes from Donegal and as McMeel buys what is fresh from the catch that morning; monkfish tends to appear as a special (£14.95 for a main course). The dish is also presented with a selection of vegetables.

McMeel's orange chocolate towers (£4.95) is without doubt his pride and joy, despite being a dessert that he picked up at New York restaurant Le Cirque while on his sojourn in the USA.

"I like it because it has style and elegance," explains McMeel. "It reminds me of a tall person with good posture."

He makes the tower from piped white and bitter dark chocolate, and once it is rolled and set he fills it with an orange chocolate ganache. The dish is served with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and surrounded by mango and blackcurrant coulis.

Although few restaurant guides have recognised McMeel for his efforts in the kitchen, he has recently been ranked with Roscoff and Shanks restaurant in Bangor in the *Bridgestone Irish Food Guide - the only restaurants in Northern Ireland to be commended by Bridgestone.

The guide states these restaurants "represent a special and unique effort in terms of Irish food and Ireland's food culture". It concludes: "These people are the very best at what they do."

Next week: Chef features recipes from a controversial Northern Irish chef whose cooking embraces Oriental influences