Lin Dickens, Marketing Director shares her Desert Island Dishes with B&I magazine
My eight favourite dishes:Briam is a Corfiot speciality that’s similar to a French Ratatouille. My favourite is made by Thomas and Vasso at O Foros in Old Perithia, Corfu. We have been going to O Foros as a family for over 15 years and Rick Stein even made it here when he filmed Mediterranean Escapes in 2007.
I first had Skye Gyngell’s Tea-smoked salmon with crème fraîche and chilli jam about 7 years ago, and loved it so much I cooked it myself the day after. This is a real treat and particularly fab cooked on my new Kamodo Joe BBQ.
Nobu’s Miso-Marinated Black Cod – I’m a life long vegetarian but our company founders, Wendy Bartlett and David James felt that I should ‘see the light’ and took me to Nobu as a treat and made me eat fish. And I’m glad they did; I have discovered so many new flavours and dishes as a result.
‘Raw Slaw’ with fennel and beetroot – a speciality from Pete Redman, our exec chef. Pete’s dishes inspire me; I always take a few of his recipes on holiday with me and tweet pictures back to him – just so he knows I’m staying ‘on brand’ and living our values!
bartlett mitchell founder, David James, is one of my food heroes! My kids have been brought up on his Southern Fried chicken recipe, marinated for days in buttermilk, whisky and molasses. I don’t eat it but I love seeing the kid’s faces as they tuck in.
My husband’s moules marinière was first cooked for me as we sailed around the Channel Islands in the 1980s. The best bit is mopping up the juices with fresh baguette and of course we never make it if there’s an R in the month!
A family BBQ – we have lots of keen (amateur) and competitive chefs in our family, so don’t be surprised if my cousin Robert turns up with some foraged samphire and cockles and his wife Cathy makes the best ever New Orleans coleslaw – it is the stuff of legend in our family.
The simplest of pleasures is breakfast in bed, preferably Eggs Benedict. My husband discovered this was the way to my heart 25 years ago and it hasn’t changed.
You’re also allowed one luxury. What would it be?
My Mum’s home-made Limoncello – it’s the perfect way to end the day and always reminds me of happy days laughing with my family as we watch the sun setting over the Aegean Sea.
What book would you take with you, knowing you already had a religious text of your choice and the complete works of Shakespeare?
My copy of the Leith’s Vegetarian Bible – the best veggie cookbook ever – fab recipes and fascinating pages to read and mine conveys all the signs of a good cookbook – wrinkled pages, greasy finger marks, covered in food spills and full of memories.
If you were only allowed one of these dishes, which would you choose and why?
A BBQ with my family. Having lived on the coast in the US, ‘grill outs’ as they call them became a way of life and my husband has become a bit of a BBQ aficionado – we even have two different BBQs, though not as many as Francois Gautreaux – our MD. I think he has four but then he is part Texan!
The above appeared in B&I Catering, October 2015. You can download the full article here
Lin Dickens
Marketing Director
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