Chefs battle for Dingley Dell BBQ prize
Top chefs from all over the country battled it out last month in the fight to be crowned the winner of the Golden Pig award.
The competition was organised by Dingley Dell Pork and nonprofit organisation A Passion to Inspire, which was founded by chef Murray Chapman as a way to bring education and the hospitality industry closer together.
The barbecue competition, which took place at Young's Brewery pub the Leather Bottle in London, consisted of two teams of six chefs, collectively called the DirtyDozen. One team was led by chef Adam Smith from the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey, and the other by Michelin-starred chef Mark Poynton from Alimentum in Cambridge.
The celebrity judges, which included ex-rugby player Olly Kohn and singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor with her husband Richard Jones from band The Feeling, tasted 12 signature dishes using different cuts of Dingley Dell pork.
Steve Smith from the Freemasons at Wiswell cooked the winning dish: yakitori pig offal with pork scratchings and pickled mandarin, and was declared Grand Pork Chef, while Adam Smith's team, the Long Pigs, were awarded the Golden Pig trophy. Other members of the Long Pigs team were Andrew Nutter from Nutters in Rochdale, Eric Snaith from Titchwell Manor in Norfolk, John Feeney from Griffith Laboratories in Sheffield and Simon Hulstone from the Elephant in Torquay.
Suffolk farmer Mark Hayward and Chapman have put on a number of Dingley Dell Flying Visits over the past three years. The aim is to celebrate the journey of the pig from farm to fork, to raise money for charity and give students a chance to work with top chefs.
At this event, catering students from Llandrillo College, Colchester Institute, East Kent, Farnborough, Milton Keynes and Leeds City College, and Cambridge College worked with the chefs. The event raised money for the Wooden Spoon rugby charity and the Teenage Cancer Trust, chosen because Emily Mackay, a student at East Kent catering college, had been so inspirational on a previous Flying Visit event while undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer. Emily writes a blog at www. cookingandcancer.wordpress.com about her experiences.
