A tasty, filling and quick lunch or supper

Tasty burgers and herby couscous make a delicious, substantial quick lunch or supper. Serves four.

For the burgers
500g minced lamb
1 small onion, peeled and grated
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 tsp ground sumac (optional)
½-1 tsp chilli flakes, depending on how hot you want them
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp flaky sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

For the minty yoghurt dressing
180g thick Greek yoghurt
1 tsp dried mint
1 good pinch salt

For the couscous
250g large-grain couscous
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1½ lemons
2 spring onions, white and pale green part only, trimmed and finely chopped
½ cucumber, cut into small dice
200g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small handful parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 small handful coriander

leaves, finely chopped
10-12 mint leaves, finely chopped
1 tsp ground sumac (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large bowl, and using your hands, mix together all the ingredients for the burgers. Set aside for 10 minutes, to let the flavours to develop, while you prepare the dressing and couscous.

In a small bowl, mix together the ingredients for the minty yoghurt.

Cook the couscous according to the instructions on the packet. While it’s cooking, break off a walnut-sized piece of the burger mixture and fry it in a little oil until cooked. Taste and, if necessary, adjust the seasoning of the remaining raw burger mixture, then form into four 2cm-thick patties.

Warm the oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat. Fry the burgers for four minutes on one side, flip over and cook for two to three minutes on the other side – this will cook them medium-rare.

Drain the couscous. Add the olive oil, lemon juice and zest, and fluff with a fork. Stir in the remaining salad ingredients. Serve with the burgers and dollops of yoghurt.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new book Veg: River Cottage Everyday, is published by Bloomsbury in October at £25. To pre-order a copy for £18 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop, or call 0330 333 6846.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match Lamb and cabernet sauvignon is always a good combo, but when the meat is spiced up as it is here, it’s best to choose a bold, blackcurranty style, such as Claro Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 from Chile’s Central Valley (£5.48, Asda; 13% abv), that will be able to stand up to the strong flavours.

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

A rich, moreish Iraqi-inspired combination of aubergine, egg, bread and all manner of other tasty goodies

Iraqi immigrants to Israel in the early 1950s brought with them the fascinating combination of fried aubergine and hard-boiled egg stuffed into fresh pitta (along with plenty of other big-flavoured ingredients). It sounds weird, but it’s one of the most exciting street foods you could wish to come across. This is a plated version. Zhoug is a wonderful Yemenite green chilli sauce, but to save time, a good commercial savoury chilli sauce will do. Other traditional elements are a sharp mango pickle and a good hummus, so add them, too, if you fancy. Serves four.

2 large aubergines
About 300ml sunflower oil
4 slices rustic white bread, toasted

4 free-range eggs, hard-boiled and cut into 1cm-thick slices
Salt and black pepper

For the tahini sauce
100g tahini paste
80ml water
20ml lemon juice
1 small garlic clove, crushed

For the salad
2 ripe tomatoes, cut into 1cm dice
2 mini cucumbers, cut into 1cm dice
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
1½ tbsp chopped parsley
2 tsp lemon juice
1½ tbsp olive oil

For the zhoug
35g coriander
20g parsley
2 green chillies
½ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground cardamom
⅛ tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp water

Using a vegetable peeler, peel off strips of aubergine skin from top to bottom, so they end up like a zebra, with alternating black-and-white stripes. Cut both aubergines widthways into 2.5cm-thick slices.

Heat the sunflower oil in a wide pan. Carefully – the oil spits – fry the aubergine in batches until nice and dark, turning once, for six to eight minutes; add oil if needed as you cook the batches. When done, the aubergine should be completely tender in the centre. Remove from the pan, leave to drain on kitchen paper, then sprinkle with salt.

To make the zhoug, put all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz to a smooth paste. For the tahini sauce, put the tahini paste, water, lemon juice, garlic and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Mix well, and add a little more water, if needed, so its consistency is slightly runnier than honey. Make the salad by mixing the tomato, cucumber, spring onion, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, place a slice of bread on each plate. Spoon a tablespoon of tahini sauce over each, then arrange overlapping slices of aubergine on top. Drizzle over some more tahini, without completely covering the aubergines. Season each egg slice, and lay on top of the aubergine. Drizzle more tahini on top and spoon over as much zhoug as you like – be careful, it’s hot! Serve the salad on the side; spoon a little on top of each sabih, too, if you like. Store any leftover zhoug in a sealed container in the fridge – it will keep for a week at least.

Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match This is not a dish that would traditionally be drunk with alcohol, so I’d stick to a soft drink such as pomegranate juice or the interesting new Crone’s Apple & Sour Cherry Juice (£3.60, Vintage Roots).

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

Here’s something to get your claws into on a sunny day

You can make this with brown crab, but it’s worth searching out spider. Cook and pick the crab yourself, or get a fishmonger to do it; ask for the shells, too, as they’re great for serving it in, though individual gratin dishes, or one big one, will do. Serves four.

Olive oil
100g finely chopped leek, white part only
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely crushed
10 cherry tomatoes, quartered
80g brown spider crab meat
A pinch of saffron
1 small dried birds’ eye chilli
A splash of brandy
A splash of dry sherry
25ml double cream
150g white spider crab meat
1 tbsp chopped tarragon
Salt and pepper
1 handful fine breadcrumbs
1 tsp finely chopped parsley
1-2 small knobs butter

Heat two tablespoons of oil in a pan, add the leek, garlic and tomato, and cook for a minute or two. Stir in the brown meat, saffron and chilli, add the brandy and burn off the alcohol. Repeat with the sherry, then add the cream. Stir in the white meat, cook for a couple of minutes to combine the flavours, then add the tarragon and season to taste. Spoon into cleaned crab shells or gratin dish(es), sprinkle with breadcrumbs and parsley, dot with butter and grill until bubbling and golden. Serve with a wedge of lemon, crusty rustic bread and a summery salad.

Mitch Tonks is chef/co-patron of The Seahorse and Rockfish, both in Dartmouth, and Rockfish Grill in Bristol. His book, Fish: The Complete Fish and Seafood Companion, is published by Pavilion at £25 To order a copy for £20 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop. His follow-up book will be published next year.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match This rich dish needs a full-bodied white: try the lush Asda Extra Special Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2009 (13% abv), made by Petaluma and brilliantly well priced at £8.67.

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

A gently spiced first course to get your meal off with a bang

Tawa jhinga is a type of griddle cooking carried out on a flat iron disc; it’s known as tak-a-tak in northern India and Pakistan.

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp ajwain seeds (they’re from the lovage family)
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp grated ginger
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
12 large head-on prawns, deveined but shell left on
¼ tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
Salt (optional)
¼ tsp fenugreek leaf powder
¼ tsp garam masala
1 tbsp finely chopped coriander leaves
Mixed cress, to garnish

Heat the oil in a pan, add the ajwain seeds and, when they begin to sizzle, add the onion, chilli and ginger, and sauté until the onion is translucent. Add three-quarters of the tomatoes and cook until reduced to a nice, saucy consistency. Add the prawns, cook until they curl up, then add the powdered chilli, coriander and turmeric, plus a little salt, if using. Cook until prawns are done, stir in the remaining tomatoes, fenugreek and garam masala, and sauté for a minute or two more. Serve sprinkled with coriander and garnished with cress. Serve with chapati.

Atul Kochhar is chef/patron of Benares in London.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match Aromatic wines such as Argentina’s torrontés work really well with gently spiced dishes: try the Alma Andina Torrontés Sauvignon Blanc 2010 (£7.49 as part of a half-case, Laithwaites; 13.5% abv).

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

A light starter to kick off a summer’s meal

Yes, our asparagus season is over (sob!), but even with imported stuff, this is a lovely starter. Serves four.

2 bunches asparagus
Sea salt and black pepper
100ml olive oil, plus a bit extra
25ml red-wine vinegar
½ tsp Dijon mustard
100g goat’s cheese, crumbled
100g fresh peas, blanched
Fresh mint (chop it at the last minute, otherwise it’ll go black)
Grated zest of ½ lemon
1 handful mixed salad leaves
1 tsp pine nuts, toasted

Cut the woody ends off the asparagus spears, season and rub with a little olive oil. Heat a ridged griddle pan (a normal cast-iron frying pan will do, if need be) and griddle the asparagus for three minutes. Transfer to a bowl, add the oil, vinegar and mustard, and mix. Add the remaining ingredients and mix gently, so as not to bruise the leaves. Serve on a large plate, so everyone can help themselves.

Angela Hartnett is chef/patron of Murano, London W1. Her new book, A Taste Of Home, is published by Ebury at £25. To order a copy for £18.49, go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop, or call 0330 333 6846.

Fiona Beckett’s drink match This dish is a shoo-in for sauvignon blanc, but try a lightly oaked one for a change, such as the gentle, aromatic Domaine Rives-Blanques Sauvageon 2009 Pays d’Oc (£12.25, Leon Stolarski; £12.99, Cambridge Wine Merchants; 13.5% abv).

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

The ‘nose to tail’ chef is ready to open the St John hotel, an ‘oasis of calm’ with 2am dining and Toblerone in the minibar

Try Fergus Henderson’s recipes from the St John Hotel menu

When is a hotel not a hotel? When it’s built by a pair of restaurateurs who have made their name preaching the joys of offal, the glory of chitterlings, the meaty delights of pig cheeks and lambs’ brains. Possibly. When the dining room stays open until 2am. When the bar never shuts. When there’s Fernet-Branca and Poire William in the minibar, and when the bedrooms come with green rubber floors “because it’ll be like sleeping in a pond – very calming”. Oh yes, there’s not much that’s hotel-like about Fergus Henderson’s and Trevor Gulliver’s new venture. Apart from the fact that it is actually a hotel where you can actually stay, although with just 15 rooms, above what promises to be a world-class restaurant, just one step away from Leicester Square, with the £5.5m cost funded by investors that include art world luminaries such as Tracey Emin, Sadie Cole, Sarah Lucas and Peter Doig, you may have to form an orderly queue.

What marks out the St John Hotel is that it’s not saddled with the usual hotel logic. Gulliver calls it a “hostelry” and Henderson says that “the spirit of the place is ‘yes’.” And it’s already a part of London history, housed in Manzi’s, the fish restaurant on the fringes of Chinatown that had been there forever, until suddenly it wasn’t. Begun in 2007, and arriving a respectable six months behind schedule, it’s the latest adventure for the pair, who nearly two decades ago opened St John, the bare bones restaurant next to London’s Smithfield meat market, founded on the concept of “nose-to-tail” eating. If you’re going to eat meat, Fergus Henderson has always said, it’s only polite to eat the whole animal. The new concept is table-to-bed. “Like Isambard Kingdom Brunel,” he says. “He built the Great Western Railway then arrived in Bristol and saw the Atlantic and thought ‘A ha! I’ll cross that next’ and built the SS Great Britain.” Here, Henderson explains how it happened:

Fergus Henderson: “It all started in Beirut. I went to the wedding of a friend there, and he said, come and do something here in Beirut. It was based in a palace which had been a hotel and I rather saw myself in a white dinner jacket like Humphrey Bogart in Rick’s Cafe: just smoking and watching the scene. That fell through but the seed had been sown and then Trevor spotted that Manzi’s was empty. Now Manzi’s has been a feature in my life since the word go, almost. I remember going there the night I had my wisdom teeth out: I had oysters and lobster soup because I couldn’t chew anything.

“It was a real institution, and it always had a little hotel above. In the 80s if you worked in advertising and the boss asked you to Manzi’s for lunch, you sort of knew that your afternoon was destined to end upstairs. It needed a new start so we gutted the whole building, there were just two walls left, and it’s been fun watching it take shape. It’s looking really cheeky. We’ve got some colour, which is an adventure for me, but I have to say I think it’s worked very well.

“It will be cheeky in a nice way. Cheeky could be saucy, which a hotel should be, but not too saucy, because if you’re alone it could be rather sad. There’s no art on the wall and there are no wooden ducks. Because you’re only there for a few days, why would you need a wooden duck? Or a bedspread where you wonder how many people have put their naked bottoms on it. Our idea which we’ve followed quite closely is Miniature Grand Urban Hut. Because if you go to a grand hotel and you get into any kind of trouble, you know they’ll sort it out and it’ll be OK. And a hut because in the mountains you go into this marvellous space and it saves you from the elements.

“The bathrooms are in the rooms because otherwise, in small hotels, you have those weird cubicles which cut into the room. And also you can’t watch the telly in the bath. There’s a separate room for the toilet, though.

“There aren’t going to be pig trotters in the minibar, no, no, no. But there will be carefully selected spirits with nips to cheer you up like Poire William and Fernet-Branca. And Toblerone. Of course. It hurts your mouth as you bite in, and reminds you that everything’s not perfect. Which is good because sometimes you can feel a bit too smug in a hotel.

“The restaurant will be open till two in the morning. No one else is, which is a good thing. There could be a reason, of course, why restaurants aren’t open till two. Oh well. We may have to work that one out. And the residents’ bar, well, there’s no reason it should ever shut. It is the hotel of my dreams, basically. There’s no point in doing it otherwise.

“We’re hoping the clientele will include chefs after work, and the drummer from some orchestra or other. The place has a foodie vibration so hopefully that will put off the people looking for a fast food burger. But then again, everyone’s welcome. I started off working in dodgy members clubs. And I hated that. People not being allowed in. What we do is open our doors and see who comes in.

“The menu is going to be like the hotel, a little oasis of calm, a brow-stroke, you know: good food, good wine, all is well. There’s a GK Chesterton book where a character goes, “Landlord! Some beans and bacon and a bottle of your finest Burgundy!” I like that idea, that you could walk in and say that. And there’ll be lots of buns, of course, perfect for dunking in coffee.

“A kitchen is very like an 18th-century man o’ war, I think. It’s like Master and Commander. I’m not sure what book expresses the hotel, although I do like Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans. He tells the story of a wedding in the main ballroom where these dwarves come out of the cake and then row it across a lake. Which is a million miles from anything we could achieve, but I quite like his ambition. Gosh, yes.” OFM

St John Hotel, 1 Leicester St, London WC2H 7BL, opens on 31 March; rooms from £200 pn; 020 3301 8069; stjohnhotellondon.com

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Meet April Bloomfield, the girl from the Midlands who’s head chef in New York’s hottest restaurants and counts Jay-Z and Bono among her best customers

Try April Bloomfield’s oyster pan roast and other recipes

Is it possible to know you adore someone before you even meet them? I think not, generally. If a girlfriend told me she had the hots for a man on whose face she had never clapped her eyes, let alone planted her lips, I would say: keep calm, dear, and step away from the pinot gris. On the other hand, it occurs to me, this freezing cold morning in New York, that I’m rapidly developing a powerful crush on a young chef called April Bloomfield. This woman is, I am increasingly certain, my idea of heaven. How do I know? It’s her cooking. Believe me when I tell you that her food is extraordinary. I don’t mean extraordinary in a Michelin-starred look-at-these-truffled-potatoes kind of way (though she has two Michelin stars: one for the Spotted Pig in Greenwich, the other for the Breslin, in the Ace Hotel in Midtown). Nor do I mean extraordinary in a Heston Blumenthal this-mackerel-pops-like-Space-Dust kind of way. I mean only that it is extraordinarily delicious. You eat her burgers and her scotch eggs, her sweetbreads and her chowders, and all you can think is that you will never taste their like again anywhere else. It’s a thought that is distinctly misery-inducing, given that I live in London, and she works here, in Manhattan.

I am going to meet Bloomfield tomorrow. Today, I am in the John Dory Oyster Bar, the newest of her three Manhattan restaurants (it, too, is in the Ace Hotel), where I am eating lunch with her business partner, Ken Friedman, a tall, rather haphazard man who used to manage bands including the Smiths and UB40. Friedman has a somewhat wobbly attention span. Last night, for instance, when I was eating my supper in the Breslin, alone, he sought me out, ordered a glass of wine, and told me that he would keep me company (when he arrived I was in the middle of my starter, a superlative salad of pears and candied walnuts). Five minutes later, though, he excused himself – “I just need to talk to someone for one moment” – and never returned. But on one subject his focus is never less than laser beam sharp. Friedman thinks that April Bloomfield is a genius, and he would like the whole world to know it. Which is why he is insisting that I try the entire menu.

And what a menu it is. Sam Sifton, the picky restaurant critic of the New York Times, has said that Bloomfield’s chorizo-stuffed squid is among the best things you can eat in the city and, having tasted it, I cannot think that he could possibly be wrong. Bloomfield stuffs her squid with paella rice which she has first cooked with chorizo, red pepper, onion and saffron. The squid is then seared to give it a crust, and placed on a soft bed of white beans – Bloomfield is “obsessed” with beans – dressed in creme fraiche, and topped with coriander and smoked tomatoes tossed in sherry vinegar, olive oil and palm sugar. It’s incredible – though not, perhaps, quite so punchy and addictive as her toast piled with anchovy paste, or her escarole salad, made of raw hearts and pickled outer leaves, both of which bedazzle with top notes of lemon, anchovy and parmesan. I could go on and on like this. The oysters. The razor clam ceviche. The Nantucket Bay scallops. And its crowning glory? That would have to be her oyster pan roast, a homage to the famous dish served at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. A pan roast is a soup, cooked in an old-fashioned metal contraption; Bloomfield’s version turns oysters, their liquor, cream and tarragon into a nectar so heavenly, you sip it and expect to hear harps, and comes with a thin, crisp slice of toast over which is spread unctuous but golden sea urchin butter in rolling waves (“the sea urchin roe butter is to make the dish more oceanic,” its creator will tell me later, “because cooked oysters don’t really keep that cucumber-y taste”).

The story of the odd couple, Ken and April, and how they rose to the very top of New York’s dog-eat-dog restaurant scene is the stuff of legend by now (or if not legend, then at least of long profiles in the New Yorker). Friedman is 52, and grew up in California, where he attended Berkeley until he dropped out to become first a concert promoter, then a manager, and finally a talent scout for Arista. It was during his years in the music business, entertaining his artists at New York’s best restaurants, that he grew passionate about food. Sometimes, observing this passion, his friends would suggest that he open a place of his own. A few of them – Michael Stipe of REM was one – even said they would invest. One day, he finally took them at their word. He had turned 40; he no longer got off on music the way he used to; hell, he had nothing to lose.

In 2003, then, Friedman began his new career. Another of his investors was Mario Batali, chef patron of Babbo and other celebrated joints, and good friend of Gwyneth Paltrow and other foodie stars. It was Batali who spotted Bloomfield’s talent. Well, sort of. It happened like this. One day, Jamie Oliver flew in. Batali, a pal of his, and Friedman, a keen anglophile, took him out for the evening. According to Batali, Oliver was their man. The plan was to put the alcoholic thumb screws on him. Alas, even after a few drinks, Oliver could not be persuaded. He did, though, suggest that they meet a young British sous chef at his old employer, the River Cafe. Her name was April Bloomfield.

Bloomfield flew out to New York, which she had never visited before, for an interview. A little to her surprise, this consisted of a 10-hour marathon during which she and Batali and Friedman ate at some of the city’s best known restaurants, among them the Union Square Cafe, the Carnegie Deli, and Batali’s own Babbo. No doubt Batali was impressed by Bloomfield’s appetite. Mostly, though, it was her war wounds that pleased him: a missing fingernail, scars on her arms. “It means she’ll sacrifice her body,” Batali is supposed to have said. “She’s a star. I can tell.” They offered her the job.

Bloomfield handed in her notice, and moved to the US, where she spent the summer working at Alice Waters’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, to familiarise herself with American ingredients. Then she headed to New York where, in the fullness of time, she and Friedman opened their gastropub, the Spotted Pig. The menu was meaty, and rather British. But the house speciality – cheeky, this – was a burger served one way: rare, on a brioche bun, with roquefort. Did the punters love it? Yes, they did. Pretty soon, the Spotted Pig was rammed: a favoured hang-out of hipsters and celebrities alike. To this day, bagging a table requires the patience of Job. April Bloomfield, a quiet, unassuming girl from Birmingham, had succeeded where the likes of Gordon Ramsay and countless other shouty, macho British chefs had always failed: she had taken Manhattan by storm.

April Bloomfield is small, preternaturally cheerful, and extremely single-minded. This is not to say, however, that she was determined to be a chef right from the start. She was born in Birmingham, in 1974. Her stepfather was an engineer, and her mother, who worked at home, painted china bonbonnieres for the West Midlands enamel firm Halcyon Days. Safe to say that it was not a foodie household. “I grew up with cheese sandwiches,” she says. “And my mum’s steak, which she would fry without any salt; it always came out grey. My nan’s cooking was my favourite: loin of pork with crackling and stuffing. We would eat the leftovers, the pork cold, the stuffing hot. Even today, I love that contrast between hot and cold.”

At 16, April decided to join the police force, a decision based mostly on her love of Cagney & Lacey. It was only when she realised she’d left it too late to apply to the cadet scheme that she changed her plan. Just as her mother was asking her what she planned to do with her life, in walked April’s sister, who was at catering college, in her chef’s whites. Maybe I could give cooking a go, she thought. “But when I walked into college, and saw the kitchens and smelt the spices, I knew I would give it 110%. I was just blown away.”

Her first job was at a Holiday Inn in Birmingham. By this time, her sister was working at Launceston Place in London. “I knew I didn’t want to stay in Birmingham,” April says. “I wanted something more. I asked my chef: ‘Could you give me a few double shifts? I want to know what it’s like to work really hard.’” Apparently, it was rather enjoyable, and six months later, she left, having landed a job at Kensington Place, whose kitchen was then in the hands of Rowley Leigh. She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, “such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient”, with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland. By the time she returned to London. for another stint at KP, and then a job at the Brackenbury, she knew both that she had progressed amazingly, but also that she still had a lot to learn. Where next? “I used to lie in bed thinking about the River Cafe, because I’d watched their TV programme. I remember watching Rose [Gray, the restaurant's co-founder] cooking cavolo nero. She pureed it with the best olive oil and cheese. I went to work the next day and immediately made it.”

A friend worked at the River Cafe, so Bloomfield called her, and said she wanted to move. “They told me to come in, and I loved it from the moment I tasted the food. It was this pasta… I had to peel these walnuts. I’d never seen a wet walnut. My fingers were burning, but I was so happy. We made a sauce from the walnuts, some bread, the water I’d blanched them in, some pesto and some spicy oil. Tossed it into some tagliatelle. When I tasted it, my palate moved to a higher consciousness. I actually thought: what have I been doing for the last 10 years? I was so worried I wasn’t good enough to get a job there.”

We are talking in the back of a car, on our way back from visiting a farm in the Catskills. One of the legacies of her time at the River Cafe is a reverence for ingredients, and April is convinced that, in the long term, the only way she can get her hands on the very best produce is to grow it herself (New York’s top chefs fight ruthlessly for veg at the Green Market in Union Square). So, she is looking to buy a farm: “It’s important for my soul, and for my passion.” Driving the car is Scott Boggins, who was the “culinary farmer” at the French Laundry in California, and now works for April full-time (he will manage the farm once they find the right place). Also, Ken, who is staring hard at his Blackberry (a couple of movie stars are having a party at the Spotted Pig tonight, but they have demanded that staff sign a non-disclosure agreement, and Ken is furious).

Did she and Ken agree right from the start on what kind of food they would serve at the Pig? “Not really. He wanted to do tofu hot dogs. I was very concerned. I sent him an email telling him what I was most passionate about, and I ended it by saying: look, I might not be the right chef for you.” Ken promptly backed off, and has left her alone ever since. He deals only with front of house, leaving April, who is emphatically not a schmoozer, to get on with her work. This suits them both.

Is she as severe as people say? The mythology is that Ken has a secret store of mayonnaise, which he dispenses surreptitiously to customers who want it on their burgers. She laughs. “I did once tell a customer that they couldn’t have a burger without cheese. I’m not severe. I’m just firm. I’ve learned to be OK about it if they want their dressing on the side. But I won’t substitute or add anything; I don’t mix and match. It slows down the kitchen, and it’s not how I want to work.” From the front of the car, comes Ken’s voice. “I know now that mayo on a burger is naff, unless you’re from Montreal or Belgium,” he shouts. Then he goes back to stabbing at his Blackberry.

Last night, I spent the evening in the kitchen at the John Dory watching April during service. She made for an amazing sight: quiet and smiling, but also about as finickety as it is possible for a chef to be. I could watch her clean whelks all day. At one point, dissatisfied with their taste – she is an enthusiastic rather than a merely dutiful taster – she tipped seven plated servings of scallops back in a basin and began seasoning them all over again. Most impressive of all, though, was her relationship with her young, hipster staff. Bloomfield doesn’t bark orders; she makes suggestions. Is her relationship with her chefs as good as it seems? “I think I’m probably a control freak, but if I trust them, it’s collaborative. They’re all hugely talented. I can’t be everywhere, but I’m always in one of my kitchens, and hopefully I’m motivating and inspiring. We want to grow with our chefs. If one of them has an idea, and we can help them, well, I think that would be good.” She is an American citizen now, but she longs to do a restaurant in London; certainly, there will be more restaurants, and thus more openings for her staff, in the future.

Naturally, I put her calm, kindly manner at the pass down to her gender. But she isn’t so sure. Nor does she have a view on whether it is more difficult for women to succeed as chefs. “You just have to work hard; it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. I didn’t come in to this thinking I was a woman in a man’s world, and if I was ever on the receiving end of anything [sexist], I probably just pushed it to the back of my mind and got on with it. The only thing I would say is that when I was offered [a stint on] pastry, I said no. I didn’t want to be stereotyped.”

Our conversation begins to tail off: the gloaming and the sense of anti-climax in the car are doing their work (the farm, all clapboard and rickety outbuildings, wasn’t right for April and Ken; they want a beautiful place, so people can stay and attend cookery classes). But then April perks up. “Why don’t we go to Blue Hill Stone Barns for dinner?” she says. This is an exquisitely swanky restaurant and farm on an old Rockefeller estate just outside New York; its chef Dan Barber is a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement.

So, this is what we do. When we pitch up, it is 5.20pm. The restaurant opens at 5.30pm. We wander in. None of us is dressed for fine dining. April is in a parka, jeans and her beloved Birkenstock clogs, Scott is in his lumberjack gear, Ken is in sneakers as per usual. But April has decided: we are going to have a great treat. While we wait, we sit in the bar and drink cocktails. In her deep leather armchair she says: “I’m so happy.”

We go to our table. By now, April has been recognised; several staff tell her how happy they are to see her. Obviously, we will be having the tasting menu, and no arguments. Dan Barber appears, and shakes her hand ecstatically. It’s as if the pope is visiting the archbishop of Canterbury, or something. Then the food starts arriving: innovative and ravishing. But I can’t take my eyes off April. I’ve always found it peculiar how few chefs seem truly to like eating. April, though, treats every dish with the relish of a child opening an Easter egg. First, she examines it, pondering what tricks are involved in its composition. Then, she tastes it, very carefully. Finally, once she has its measure, she scoffs whatever is left. I wish I had a camera so I could photograph her delicately picking the cheeks from a cod’s head. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she says, over and over. After our feast, we walk to the car, ice crackling, smiling and replete. What did you think? I ask. “Amazing,” she says. I am struck by her Brummie accent. It has emerged at last, released by a good dinner, like a genie from a lamp.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

There’s two approaches – you can become an authority in your field or eat from a large knife pretending you’re a culinary Yoda

So you want to be a TV cookery show judge. That makes sense; few things are as fun as trying a mouthful of food and then breaking the heart of whoever cooked it. The good news is that you’re already perfectly qualified for the job – television has been secretly teaching you the necessary skills all along. Here’s a quick refresher course.

Intimidate

To be a respected cookery show judge, it’s important to be feared. How you make this happen is down to you. One method could be to build up decades of expertise and become one of the most authoritative voices in your field, such as The Great British Menu’s Prue Leith. Another would be to just tie a manky old scarf around your head, eyeball people furiously, eat everything from the end of a needlessly large knife and speak in a series of faux-profound Yodaesque riddles that only succeed in making you sound like a badly concussed Jimmy Savile impersonator. It never did Marco Pierre White any harm, anyway.

Remember The Wizard Of Oz

A surprising number of cookery show judges have achieved greatness by pretending that there’s an even harsher judge just around the corner. MasterChef’s Monica Galetti is perfectly capable of terrifying contestants on her own, what with her constant air of barely contained outrage, but her secret weapon is her boss. Galetti constantly implies that Michel Roux Jr is a furious, fire-breathing monster with a palette so uniquely perfect that even one errant grain of salt would kill him. And then, when the contestants finally meet him and discover that he’s actually quite a nice chap, Roux repeats exactly the same trick by using restaurant critics and other chefs as the unseen Big Bad. The moral here is to exploit the fear of the unknown whenever possible. And also that people are quite stupid.

Exaggerate wildly

A good cookery show judge never thinks that a dish is simply OK – it’s either so amazing that they want to impregnate it behind their wife’s back, or it’s literally inedible. There’s no inbetween. If one of Gordon Ramsay’s American contestants serves up something slightly less than perfect, Ramsay spits it out in front of them like an awful wrinkly toddler. So why not invent a similar insulting reaction of your own? Perhaps nondescript food could make you burst into tears, or cause you to throw down your cutlery in disgust. Maybe you could even wish violent death upon the contestant’s entire family. It’s up to you.

Use all of your senses

Remember: eating isn’t just restricted to the tastebuds. You can judge a dish just as well by looking at it, smelling it and touching it. Give Paul Hollywood from The Great British Bake Off a loaf of bread and he can run a full diagnostic on it – how much salt it contains, how long the dough was left to prove, the temperature of the water used – before it goes anywhere near his mouth. He’s not alone, of course: Gregg Wallace can also expertly critique a dish on sight: a dish has what it takes if it’s a) a pudding of some sort and b) has been cooked by a pretty girl in a low-cut top.

Enjoy your work

In theory, being a cookery show judge should be hellish. You spend all day shut in a room, being fed a never-ending stream of soggy dross served up by a procession of idiots who are there only to be on telly. In fact the judges are actually having a ball. When I dropped in on a Great British Bake Off audition in London last week, Hollywood seemed honestly overjoyed by the quality of food on offer, and Mary Berry kept insisting that she always wakes up in a good mood on audition day. Perhaps that’s the most important quality when it comes to being a cookery show judge: you must love eating as much cake as you possibly can. Who knew? Life sometimes is really tough.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

For a nation that doesn’t know how to eat properly, why are Britons so obsessed with cooking shows and celebrity chefs?

Why do we have so many cookery shows? I mean, it’s not as if we’re a nation of gourmets? Business at Greggs is booming. We live off crisps and biscuits. Chicken Cottage is spreading across the British high street like food poisoning. (I am reminded of Mark’s reflection when he succumbs to a KFC in Peep Show: “Here I am, eating food out of a bucket, like a human horse”).

Such culinary delights give lie to the myth – perpetuated by the legions of evangelic, egomaniacal TV cooks – that they are in any way “educating” or inspiring us. And yet the rash of cooking programmes continues unabated.

This week alone sees new series of Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets, Heston’s Mission Impossible, and Jamie’s Dream School. The two burglars who present MasterChef (copyright Jez from Peep Show) are back with us, cackling in their preposterous staccato: “Cooking. Doesn’t get much tougher. Than this !”

You don’t need me to list all the other TV chefs (but I’m going to): Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Delia Smith, Michel Roux Jr, Gary “the vulture” Rhodes, Rick Stein, Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Hairy Bikers, that idiot with the camper van… They’ve all got about as much to do with widening our horizons as Celebrity Come Dine With Me.

The TV chef’s principal ambition is obvious. No, nothing to do with cooking dummy: it’s celebrity; branding. Hence the way their names are mostly in the title. (Hats off to Lorraine Pascale for the optimistically titled Baking Made Easy). This doesn’t happen with, say, sitcoms. You don’t get series called Jack Dee’s Lead Balloon or Steve Coogan’s The Trip.

This is the main point of these shows: tireless self-promotion, OBEs and book sales. Don’t be fooled into thinking anyone is watching these shows and actually MAKING any of the recipes or indeed making anything. (Domino’s profits are soaring.)

The truth is, we’ve always watched the most famous TV chefs for all sorts of things other than their cooking. Gordon “Rambo” Ramsay’s initial appeal was watching him attack people. This has now been replaced by studying his new hair transplant and face-lift, to see how much it makes him look like a human shar pei.

Nigella, as we know, has long been reduced (and simmered) to the status of soft porn for Daily Mail readers more interested in her Twin Peaks-style knitwear and its contents than anything she’s concocting in her faked-up kitchen.

Jamie is meat and drink for fans of The Stereophonics and masochists in awe of Jamie’s wife/pigs/kids with funny names. The only TV cook to actually have a serious impact on the nation’s eating habits since the days of Fanny Craddock was Delia Smith, and she blew her reputation as a serious food lover when she recommended we all start living off canned meat – the nutritional equivalent of Pedigree Chum.

As for the more fancy chefs (like Monsieur Roux and Heston Blumenthal, the Mad Hatter/March Hare), what they make is pure escapism, just showing off: the condiments of envy.

The dishes in the first episode of Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets included: lobster served with new potatoes sprinkled with caviar and splashed with Miro-esque blotches of a sauce that was clearly Not Ketchup. (It turned out to be “cardamom-scented jus”.) Literally a case of “don’t try this at home”.

Like the other famous Big Heads, Raymond has thousands of pounds’ worth of equipment. Like the others, he too likes showing off how he has sought out the very best, organic, locally-produced ingredients – forever setting out to sea to catch their own swordfish or kill lambs raised in their own back garden (field) with their own bare hands.

Blanc uses herbs we don’t have, ingredients we have never heard off, implements we will never have. (He polished off his freshly caught lobster by squashing it in what looks like a deluxe sandwich toaster.) You couldn’t replicate them if you tried. There’s always a step or a detail (something minor like a temperature) that leaves us amateurs marooned – so, like lemmings, we have to buy their books, mostly at Christmas.

Shows like Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets don’t make us more adventurous in the kitchen, they make you less. We are not about to add just one more ingredient by shredding a lime, making our own chickpea flour, or serving squid with three forms of “delicately spiced cauliflower” including a “velvety puree, and caramelised slices”. Who even LIKES cauliflower?

We are more likely to sit watching these extravagant feasts eating toast or microwave TV dinners. So why are there so many? Simple. Cooking programmes, like the chefs that present them, are cheap.

• Jim Shelley is TV Critic of the Daily Mirror

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