SPORTSMAN'S DINNERS

Acclaimed chef Stephen Harris chats about his Michelin-star pub more than a quarter of a century after its opening. By LAUREN TAYLOR

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STEPHEN Harris remembers feeling ill one day and craving the comforting childhood memory of cream of mushroom soup... and being bitterly disappointed with a can from a shop.

"I opened it, the smell was horrendous. I couldn't even eat that," says the Michelin-star chef, who owns The Sportsman near Whitstable, Kent.

"So I felt, 'right, I'm going to improve this recipe and make it as good as my memory.' I fried up some mushrooms, added a bit of soy sauce because that brings out the mushroom flavour I made a stock by putting some milk in a pan, dried cep mushroom, a bit of thyme and a clove of garlic" along with extra raw mushrooms blitzed up, the stock strained into the blender.

"I just got this gorgeous mushroom soup, that exactly matched the memory I had of it as a kid.

"I also made cream of tomato and cream of chicken," adds Stephen 64. "Oh my God it's simple but it's better."

Homemade tomato soup (the best tomatoes he can find, cut, blitzed until liquid, boiled off in a pan to lose a third of the water, salt and sour cream) is Stephen's lunch once a week. "Everybody can do that," he says.

In his latest cookbook, The Sportsman at Home: Flavour-some Recipes for Nostalgic Eating, Stephen is "improving the food you remember" in a way that works for home cooks in their kitchens. Think cullen skink, cottage pie, homemade digestive biscuits and a thousand island sauce this time accompanying baked salmon, rather than the Seventies prawn cocktail.

His acclaimed gastropub has held a Michelin star since 2008, but Stephen is a bit of an anomaly in the culinary world - previously a financial consultant with no formal food training.

At age 37, as a self-taught amateur cook, he quit corporate life to pursue a dream of opening a restaurant.