Top Chef discovers Rubens!

The Neaves family were hosts to the celebrity chef James Martin who first appeared on television in 1996.  Over the past 15 years he has been seen in such classics as Ready Steady Cook, Junior Master Chef, The Vanessa Show and most famously BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen.   His latest venture is called Great British Food Revival, a series of 12 programmes that have been comissioned by BBC on classic British foods with each episode being hosted by a different celebrity chef.

James Martin at AR Neaves & Sons

The apple programme is about the potential role for heritage varieties in a modern market place and examines whether their flavours would overcome any reservations with their appearence.  James and the team visited Brogdale, The Rough Old Wives Cider company and AR Neaves & Sons to look at the apple variety Rubens. The visit to Neaves was to look at this modern variety which had heritage parents (both Gala and Elstar’s parents fall into this category) an apple which had good flavour, commercial status and would suit the modern consumer’s palatte.  James took fruit into Faversham town centre to ask the public their opinion, he also took Rubens apples back for studio filming and made an apple charlotte with the fruit. There will be a book to accompany the series which features an additional recipe for Rubens and Rosehip jelly, rich in vitamin C and antioxidants.

Will Dixon was interviewed about working with Supermarkets, modern farming techniques and a grower’s relationship with their customers.  Sarah Calcutt, of Norman Collett Ltd, was interviewed on behalf of Tesco about the demand for British apples, the consumer and retailers response to the UK season and the demand for heritage apples.

The programme will be aired at 9pm with the series starting in early February.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 7:12 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.