COOKING UP A STORM

World-renowned CHEF MARCO PIERRE WHITE believes in simplicity. The maestro who has changed the landscape of the culinary world in innumerable ways talks to Shraddha Kamdar about his inspirations and beliefs, and why ingredients deserve to shine

- Shraddha Kamdar

World-renowned Chef Marco Pierre White tells us that the greatest cooking show he ever saw in his life was never filmed. "I was in Sri Lanka watching four ladies cook - the great-grandmother, the grandmother, the mother and the daughter. I watched them prepare lunch together and that was an unparalleled experience," he elaborates. It's something similar to his own experience, where the love for food was ingrained into him as a young boy growing up in Leeds, while watching his mother, his nonna (grandmother) and his aunts preparing the vegetables to go into the minestrone. "I would watch them harvesting vegetables and I used to get the goat's milk with my brother from the farm on the top of the hill. I used to be exposed to all these ingredients, picking cherries or grapes off the trees and eating them while they were still warm. An extraordinary feeling, that!" he reminisces. Without realising it at the time, he says, he was exposed to the magic of food. "Watching my mother make risotto and pasta, that's where it all started, really."

At the age of 16, he arrived in London with "£7.36, a box of books and a bag of clothes" to begin his classical training as a junior chef under English-French chefs Albert Roux and Michel Roux at their world-famous restaurant Le Gavroche. A few years later, at 24, he became head chef and joint owner of Harveys in London, serving French cuisine. His superlative abilities won him three Michelin stars at age 33 - the first British chef, and the youngest chef at that time, to earn the distinction. Four years later, when he found that he was personally not satisfied with the work he was doing, he announced his retirement from the kitchen, and returned his Michelin stars.