What happens when a wannabe rock star turns his hand to cooking? In the case of Martin Blunos, you wind up winning Michelin stars and forging a very successful career as one of Britain’s most talented and recognisable chefs. “My dad was convinced that if I went into food, I’d always have a job. ‘We all need to eat,’ was what he used to say, and, there you go. I could have gone into the shipping industry instead, and look what happened there,” says Blunos.
Blunos’s interest in food started at an early age. With Eastern European parents, his diet was very different to what his friends at school were eating. “I was brought up differently to the beans and toast brigade,” Blunos explains. “We would have things like pig tail soup and gherkins with black bread after school. I’d talk to my friends about it – who were having the likes of egg and mash – and they would look at me like I came from another planet. But that got me into the food thing, being exposed to so many different tastes. Nowadays, it’s very different. We live in such a multi-cultural society that every town has specialist shops selling things that were hard to get your hands on 20 years ago.”
These days Blunos favours a ‘less is more’ approach to his cooking. “When I had my second restaurant in Bath, it was very formal, and that was what people wanted at the time,” he says. “But now, people are more in tune with what they want from their food, and as I get older I think that people want food to be simple, beautiful. Why would I want to cover a beautiful piece of meat in a really heavy sauce, or chop it all up and turn it into a mousse? I’d rather concentrate on making a nice sauce that goes with it, rather than bastardise food. But with that comes other challenges – because it’s so simple, you have nothing to hide behind and if it doesn’t deliver on taste or technique then the client can shoot you down.
“I opened the show by saying, ‘I’m going to use this product that you seem to like a lot up here and it’s made by monks, so if you drink it, it will get you closer to God’. Then I produced the bottle of Buckfast and the place erupted”
“If you change something completely and turn it into a mousse or a froth or a foam, then rather than fusion it becomes confusion and the customer doesn’t really understand what’s going on. But if you put a nice piece of meat down with an amazing sauce and a few leaves, it’s pretty perfect.” Blunos has adopted this philosophy on his latest venture as Culinary Director of the Blunos Sea Grill at Seaham Hall in County Durham, where there is a simple focus on the food, rather than on any fad.
“Five or six years ago, balsamic vinegar was the ingredient to use, and everybody was really into it. And a bit before that was the sundried tomato, which people couldn’t get enough of. We were all using these things way too much, which causes them to fall out of favour. Now, it’s all about chemicals, foams and hot jellies, which doesn’t really do it for me. But I do think the next trend will be simplicity.”
Blunos has put together a menu that lives and breathes this simplicity to help turn around Seaham Hall’s fortunes. “About a year ago, the place was on its arse,” says Blunos. “A new owner has come in and has invested a lot of money, care and attention on elevating this place to five-star standard, and it now really looks the part, and there are still more improvements to come early next year.”
As a Culinary Director, you would expect Blunos to experiment with different foods and flavour combinations. But what you might not expect – and this may depend on where you come from – is for a Michelin-starred chef to use Buckfast as a key ingredient in his cooking (in Scotland it has an unwelcome association with anti-social drinking among young people). But leave any preconceptions at the door with this one; tasting really is believing.
So how did this unlikely union come about? “I was cooking at the Ideal Home show in Glasgow, where people aren’t just looking for a cooking lesson, they’re looking for a bit of entertainment,” Blunos says. “I come from the West Country and Buckfast is made in Buckfastleigh in Devon, which isn’t a million miles away from where I come from. Knowing the reputation Buckfast has in the north, I thought it would be good fun to use it in a pork dish I was cooking.
“I opened the show by saying, ‘I’m going to use this product that you seem to like a lot up here and it’s made by monks, so if you drink it, it will get you closer to God.’ Then I produced the bottle of Buckfast and the place erupted. It was great. I had definitely struck a chord.”
What followed was a lot of positive publicity for the brand. “The Scottish Sun picked up on it and the reaction at the show was incredible. That prompted me to strike up a relationship with Buckfast.”
For those unfamiliar with it, Buckfast is a fortified wine. And what is it that makes it so good to cook with? Blunos says: “What I really like about it is that it’s so fruity. It’s like any wine, when you cook with it the alcohol evaporates, but what you are then left with is the fruit and the spices and the vanilla. It works bloody well, it really, really does!
“As an ingredient it’s also really versatile. You can use it in both sweet and savoury dishes, and as well as being a great ingredient in cooking meat, it also works really well with fish. Sure, you need to moderate it a little bit because of the strength of it and with it having such a powerful flavour, but with a meaty fish it works perfectly,” he says.
Blunos certainly converted us to the merits of cooking with Buckfast after tasting his creations. But other than making really delicious food, what is it that he wants to achieve with his talents? “Life’s too short and I think there’s so much shit going on in the world that you just want to transport people away, so if you can make someone smile, that’s a huge thing. That’s what I want to do with my food, make people smile.”
Buckfast
A fortified wine believed to be of French origin, Buckfast has been made by Benedictine monks in the village of Buckfastleigh in Devon since the late 1800s. It was originally sold as a patent medicine rather than a tonic wine. In the early 1920s, the monks lost the licence to sell wine out of Buckfast Abbey, and the distribution and sale was taken on by a separate company. A new recipe (similar to today’s) made the wine smoother. At 15% ABV in Scotland (14.8% ABV in Ireland), Buckfast contains red wine mixed with vanilla and spices and is matured in the Abbey vats, which gives it a very distinctive, sweet taste.
For starters
- Lemon Sole with Beetroot Pilau and Sea Spinach
Blunos puts around 250 grams of raw beetroot into a food processor to make little grains of beetroot rice. He then sautés a shallot and a clove of garlic with a little butter until they soften. The beetroot is added, followed by a glass of Buckfast and the same quantity of fish stock. The earthiness of the beetroot and the sweetness of the Buckfast complement each other perfectly. A few minutes before the beetroot is ready (it takes around 45 minutes to cook), he poaches the lemon sole and sautés the sea spinach in a little butter. When the fish is cooked, Blunos squeezes a little lemon juice over it. Before serving the beetroot, he removes from the heat, stirs in a knob of butter and seasons. Once the beetroot, spinach and fish are on the plate, he drizzles a little clarified butter over the fish and garnishes with red amaranth. This dish is best served with a glass of white wine.
Main course
- Pulled pork
Blunos starts by making a brine of water, salt, sugar and peppercorns, which he brings to the boil. Then he reduces the heat and adds the aromats – rough-cut carrots, onions, leeks, bay leaves and thyme. Once the brine has cooled, Blunos adds the shoulder of pork and pops it in the fridge for 12 hours. He then washes the meat and adds soy sauce, mustard, tomato ketchup, nam pla, vinegar, honey, coriander seeds, ginger, chilli and garlic, followed by a bottle of Buckfast. He then covers the meat and places it in the oven at 200C for 30 minutes to get the heat into it, before dropping the temperature to 160C for around an hour and 30 minutes. Blunos cooks the pork for a further two hours, uncovered, basting it with the cooking juices every 10 minutes to keep it moist. This pork tastes its best pulled and served on a roll, or as a main dish with salad. Blunos recommends a Velvet Elvis (a Buckfast and Champagne cocktail), to accompany, or chilled Beaujolais.
Dessert
- Knicker Buckie Glory
To a tall glass, Blunos adds some Buckfast jelly and vanilla panna cotta, followed by a compote of cherries cooked in Buckfast with a little sugar. For the next layer, Blunos adds pieces of broken meringue and biscuit, before adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream. He then spoons in more cherry compote, meringue and biscuit, before adding the whipped cream to the middle of the glass. Cherry syrup from the compote is then poured down the inner edge of the glass, and the knicker buckie glory is finished off with cherries and cherry leather – dehydrated cherry puree. Blunos suggests washing it down with a glass of demi-sec Champagne.
