Currently Deliciously Yorkshire’s champion, she is a keen advocate of local events that includes the Great Yorkshire Show, the York Food Fair and the Foodies Festival. Her demos highlight regional produce and she also has extensive experience in judging various awards and competitions, as well as competing in contests along the way. At Hotelympia this year she took the bronze award in the British Chef Federation Chef of the Year challenge.

She fits into her heavy schedule time to be a chef lecturer at Leeds City College and run her own consultancy. She has also been a Craft Guild member for the past five years.

But her experience has been a global one. In the UK it has varied from working at The Dorchester in London under Anton Mosimann, to being head chef at the Coniston Hall Hotel in Skipton, North Yorkshire, the Congham Hall Hotel & Restaurant in Grimston, Norfolk, and the Wood Hall Hotel in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, to name just a few.

She has gained experience from working at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney and the Hayman Island Resort in North Queensland, Australia, as well as spells in Germany and Switzerland.

Other special achievements include being a guest at Buckingham Palace at a reception for young achievers and several appearances on Sky TV. She is also responsible for writing the Wild Cooks Blog www.thewildcooks.co.uk that highlights her passion for foraging the finest and plentiful free food from the region’s countryside and using it to create recipes.

How long have you worked in Yorkshire, and what’s a typical working scenario?
I’ve lived in Yorkshire virtually all my life and worked in lots of Yorkshire hotels and restaurants. It’s good to come home to your roots. I’ve worked at Rudding Park for nine years. I started off as head chef in the Clocktower Restaurant and then I was promoted to executive chef of four main catering areas – the restaurant, banqueting kitchen, golf club kitchen and the holiday park pub. I did that for six years.

I’ve now had my own consultancy for almost a year and visit various hotels and restaurants. I work with Deliciously Yorkshire and do seminars with them on how to put Yorkshire on their menus as well as give cookery demos. I also work with Love Food Hate Waste, which gives tips on reducing waste, and I’m involved in a roadshow called Love Cooking.

Is it easier being a chef consultant?
It’s quite high powered but I have had a change of direction with teaching and starting my own business. Rudding Park was very supportive and asked me to be its chef consultant.

As a small business, it’s very varied the things I do. I’m working at Rudding Park; Deliciously Yorkshire is a big thing for me and is very different. My work enables me to go all over the place. For example I’m working with a wine bar in the middle of Leeds looking at their menus. I always had quite a varied background before Rudding Park when I travelled with my job and saw different catering outlets and a varied range of food.

Does any job stand out more than others?
The Dorchester. That was my training ground and set my standards from day one – initially with Anton Mosimann and then Willie Elsner. But there are different places for different reasons.

The Dorchester for the training and standards, Switzerland for a great time away from Britain. Germany was a wonderful place and I made lots of good friends. Going to Australia was very different again. The fruit, veg and fish there were incredible. Kiwi fruit bigger than you can get here.

The local heroes passion – was this your idea? How important is it to get the message across about Yorkshire’s finest?
We set the ball rolling – Rudding Park’s managing director Peter Banks and myself worked with our ops manager Nuno César de Sá. My part was to meet the suppliers and get the best quality produce on the menu. Not just from Yorkshire but wider ranging. It has to be the best product. For example we try and get locally farmed veg for our menus ... Pickering watercress and Yorkshire tomatoes, although the latter has such a short season.

For chefs, Yorkshire has the lot. We have a great coastline – great fish, lobster and Whitby crab. Then we have the Dales – fantastic beef and lamb, and then the moors for great game. On the lower lands we have amazing asparagus and rapeseed oil. Rudding Park lamb comes from a tiny village, honey comes from bees all round Harrogate. One of the things we are looking at more now is wild food.

As a chef you have to keep learning. One of the best things recently was doing a stint at the Noma restaurant in Copenhagen. It is using foraging massively. It’s great to forage for food here and follow in the footsteps of chefs such as Simon Rogan of L’Enclume.

You have to keep looking for the next thing, and foraging is a good example – in the next six months there will be more of it. Local ingredients – things like the Great British menu are important. More people are using farm shops. Deliciously Yorkshire did a comparison with a supermarket and a farm shop and in many cases the prices were lower. The great thing at Rudding Park is the fact that they are so open to new ideas from working together with food heroes and foraging for food.

How did becoming Deliciously Yorkshire champion come about?
I wasn’t expecting it. Previous champions have been Janet Oldroyd, who people here know as the high priestess of rhubarb, and cheese maker Shepherd Purse’s Judith Bell. It was a surprise.

Why do you think there aren’t as many women chefs – what puts them off?
Long hours, 10+ a day, and it’s difficult in the heat sometimes when you are standing working. But to be honest, I think from my teaching experience at Leeds City College, the classes recently have been even. More women are going into catering now than they were when I was at college. Celebrity chefs have helped.

I always ask young trainees who is their favourite chef to get an idea of their imagination. It can really range – a good 50%-60% say Jamie Oliver, and the rest include Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Michel Roux. That’s interesting and in a way has helped our industry.

A lot of women want to know how I got on. I’ve never found any difficulty at all. Guys I’ve worked with when I was younger have looked after me. Because I was one of the team, I was accepted.

There are some fantastic women chefs in Yorkshire and new talent is springing up. You have to be a bit tough, have a laugh and not take things too seriously. There are a few jokes around and you have to take it. When you start the pay is fairly grim but the more experience and the higher up you get, it gets better – if you are determined and never rest on your laurels.

How would you feel if you had celebrity status thrust upon you?
I would love it but it’s hard to get into. But it wouldn’t faze me. I’ve recently done a programme on street market chefs on prime time TV – Channel 5. I was one of them. I’ve also done a pod cast.

What made you go back to college to teach?
It’s something a lot of chefs asked me. But I think in teaching they are very proactive, it’s nice to give something back. It’s a difficult thing to do. It takes up three days of my week but I love the effects. This year one of my chefs has gone to Northcote Manor to work with Lisa Allen; another has got to the final of the Roux scholarship. But it doesn’t have to be a massive wow Michelin star place. Not every student is going to work in a Michelin starred restaurant but for a student to get a job working in a local pub or restaurant in Leeds is fantastic. That gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Last year I taught third years – at the top of their tree – this year I am teaching firsts. It’s interesting to teach some that have never picked up a knife before. They are so raw; to shape them into a good chef will be a great challenge.

You’ve got some great results from competitions. Is this something you want to carry on doing – National Chef of the Year perhaps?
Competitions are worth doing. I was delighted to get to the final of the British Chef Federation Chef of the Year competition and chuffed to get the bronze. It was an incredible experience for me.

To do it you have to practise that dish and get it within an inch of its life perfect. Something like that makes you a better chef – it’s not only the discipline of doing competitions but it’s putting you under that pressure. Nothing else can match that.

I didn’t enter National Chef of the Year this year but I did the Knorr challenge six to seven years ago. But it’s a massive thing to do – you are cooking with your peers.

I also do quite a lot of judging with Deliciously Yorkshire and Yorkshire Life magazine.

Where did you get your inspiration from?
I think on a professional level, Anton Mosimann. He was my biggest inspiration. But in the last 10 years, the food has been inspirational as have been the people I’ve worked with. Through nine years working with the same team, we have really built on our menus and eating out in Yorkshire has opened my eyes to what is out there. It’s about keeping on looking.

What actually triggered you to become a chef?
I wanted to be a physiotherapist when I was 15. Then I went for work experience at a local hotel and loved it. I was due to go on a YTS scheme in a local pub but my career teacher phoned my parents and said I should go to college. Out of 40 places I was lucky to get in.

There is nothing else I would want to do. It has to be something involved with food, or teaching it or running my own business.

Among your interests are dining out, cinema, antiques, reading – do you get enough time to do these?
Certainly dining out. Being a judge for Yorkshire Life is great and I dine out about twice a month. I would rather wait and dine in a good place than dine four or five times in less interesting places. You can learn so much when you do. I also like reading food magazines and recently got into walking.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
I would just like to be healthy and happy, with the business taking off even more, and still be teaching. Who knows, even maybe on TV.

www.ruddingpark.co.uk

Words - Sheila Eggleston