MAXINE GORDON reports on the Pocklington lad who failed his cookery GCSE but went on to become a TV chef
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| TV chef Peter Sidwell |
PETER SIDWELL has his hands full. Not only is he putting the finishing touches to a new cook book, he is opening a new restaurant and has become a father for the second time.
“I’m living on espresso at the moment,” laughs the 35-year-old from Pocklington and star of Channel 4’s cookery series Lakes On A Plate.
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s Lakes not Yorks on a plate, because Peter lives in Cumbria, running a successful foodie empire that includes a restaurant/café; a bakery and cookery school.
He lives in Cockermouth with wife, Emma, a primary teacher also from Pocklington, and their children, Poppy, four and two-month-old Thomas.
Peter’s heart still belongs to York. He loves York Market and when he meets up with his mates they return to their old haunts, Fibbers and the Stone Roses bar.
“I always come to the food festival and have a look around,” he adds.
Peter attended Woldgate school. He is dyslexic and struggled academically, even failing his cookery GCSE. He left at 16 and got a job in a pub.
“I was chopping carrots, buttering bread and making prawn cocktails up in wine glasses,” recalls Peter.
But he soon got the bug and was taken on at the Ambassador Hotel on the Mount. It’s long since given way to swanky flats, but Peter has fond memories of his time there and later at the York Pavilion Hotel.
His next move was to HSBC bank, doing corporate catering, often at its capital base at Canary Wharf. However, the regular commute from York to London became too much.
“I was spending too much time on the East Coast main line and wearing a suit rather than a chef’s jacket,” recalls Peter.
So he and wife Emma took the gamble of their lives; they sold their house in Pocklington, packed a van and drove to the Lakes, where they took the lease on an old clothes shop and using all their savings revamped it into a café and deli.
“We wanted to create the sort of place we would like to spend time in,” explained Peter. They decked it out with leather sofas and the like. “But we never got to sit on them because we were so busy!”
Peter has now sold that business and focussing his energies on his latest outlet, Peter Sidwell @Rheghed, his café at the Rheghed outdoor centre at Penrith.
He is also working on a new TV series, finishing a fourth book about family meals and promoting his latest publication, Simply Good Pasta.
Divided into seasonal sections and based around Peter’s down-to-earth tastes, the emphasis is on taste and speed, as well as using good ingredients, many of them British.
This makes for some unusual combinations, such as Brussels sprouts with cream, garlic and pine nuts, but Peter makes no apologies for breaking down culinary barriers.
“Pasta is so familiar to us. If we are in a rush, we can just hit a bag of pasta and some sauce. I wanted to fuse that with British seasonal ingredients. Italian food is all about simplicity; how maybe two, three, or four ingredients at the most can make a perfect, quick, dish.”
Among the home-grown ingredients he suggests trying with pasta include purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus and even parsnip, with a dash of chilli.
“If you get the opportunity, walk through York Market and just buy what you need each day, the way the Italians do,” advises Peter.
Pasta dinners can be cheap too; especially if you avoid meat and follow some of Peter’s cooking tips.
“Slow cook some onions with garlic then add some Parmesan, and some pasta. It is as cheap as chips; you could feed a family of four for £2 or less.”
Spoken like a true Yorkshireman.
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