Celebrity chef Antony Worrall shares with e+ his take on cooking, Gordon Ramsay and his infamous Snickers pie ...
Antony Worrall Thompson has a new recipe up his sleeve. The ingredients are simple... No fancy trimmings, no elaborate techniques and no exotic elements to garnish the dishes.
In short, this development would make food critic Michael Winner – who once remarked in his weekly column that Thompson's cooking was so heavy that it would have sunk the Titanic before it hit the iceberg – eat his own words.
Simple cooking
"These days, not many have the time or the inclination to cook a meal at home. What they crave the most is their mum's simple yet tasty cooking and so I have decided to go rustic," says celebrity chef Thomspon in an exclusive interview with e+.
During his recent visit to Dubai to inaugurate the Mark Wilkinsons Furniture showrooms, the usually flamboyant Thompson was in a rather pensive mood. Shunning the word celebrity for its elitist connotation, chef Thompson is all set to turn over a new leaf.
"Something as simple as a good stew is hard to come by. My latest cooking methods involve using cheaper cuts of meat and local spices. Nothing too flamboyant," he explains.
Going back to food critic Winner's comments about the excessive fat in his cooking, Thompson defends it as one of his "Mediterranean" phases.
"Every chef goes through it. But now I am on a diet and would recommend healthy eating to all the foodies out there," he says.
Snickers pie
Though it's a bit ironic that he was talking about healthy living between quick drags on his cigarette, Thompson was quick to defend his extremely rich Snicker's pie, which contains 1,250 calories a slice.
"The dessert was meant for a kid's party and ought to have been treated like a one-off treat. I don't see what all the fuss was about. For instance, if you go to a burger joint and order fries and milkshakes you are tucking in more than 2,000 calories!" says Thompson.
About the cigarette, well... Thompson considers it a one-off treat as well. After all, he has taken on the onerous task of joining the health-conscious bandwagon and shedding some weight.
"I play tennis thrice a week now and I have started eating healthy. The only problem is that I am eating a bit too much of the healthy food," he quips.
Where is the middle path?
Though Thompson is smitten by Dubai, he feels a vibrant metropolis such as this plays to extremes. It is full of incredibly fancy up-market restaurants that serve good food and cheap joints that serve decent food. But what about restaurants that serve great food but do not burn a hole into one's pockets, wonders Thompson.
"If I were to open a restaurant in Dubai, it would be affordable and serve great food. That's what is lacking here," says Thompson.
Curb the urge to jump in joy at the thought of great grub at affordable prices though, because Thompson has not worked out the details of his next venture.
"I am still chewing on the idea but the more I think about it the more I like it. Dubai has an incredibly international feel to it and is a great market," he says.
I'm not like Gordon Ramsay
Chefs normally have the reputation of being tough taskmasters and tyrants to work under, but he is none of these, Thompson claims.
"I demand quality. But I am not unreasonable or a tyrant like Ramsay. I don't shout and scream. But because I am so successful; people mistake my aggressiveness for being harsh," he says.
If his aggressiveness can translate into tasty, healthy meals at affordable prices, who's complaining?
Get to know Antony Worrall
- Known fondly as AWT or Wozza, Worrall presented Saturday Kitchen on BBC Food and was a regular guest chef on Ready Steady Cook.
- AWT has his own restaurant, Menage a Trois, in London, notable for only serving starters and puddings.
- He has won the Mouton Rothschild Menu Competition and the Meilleur Ouvrier de Grande Bretagne – the Chef Oscars. More recently, he opened the popular restaurant Notting Grill and Kew Grill.
- Antony has also written several recipe books including Antony's Weekend Cookbook and Real Family Food.
- He is passionate about organic farming and grows many herbs and vegetables for his restaurants.
- In 2003, he showed he was game for a laugh when he appeared on ITV's I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here.
- Between TV appearances and writing columns for various magazines and newspapers, Antony continues to run three grill restaurants in West London, Notting Grill, Kew Grill and Barnes Grill, as well as The Angel Coach Inn in Wiltshire and The Greyhound in Oxon, UK.
