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Ercole Moroni

Sharing the Love - by Jessica Houdret - recipe

Chef Orlando shares his love of Caribbean cuisine with the students of London’s Le Cordon Bleu Cookery School.

Orlando Satchell, Executive Chef at the spectacular Ladera Resort in St Lucia, West Indies, is a man with a mission. His aim is to show the world that there is more to Caribbean cooking than 'jerk chicken with rice and peas'- his theme, that success depends on 'cooking with love' and 'cooking for the love of it'. In an impassioned, wide-ranging show of his culinary artistry, laced with warmth, humour and audience participation, at London’s prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cookery school on a cold March evening, both concepts were amply demonstrated.

"You guys are the future," he told his audience of 60 would-be chefs from around the globe, "and I hope you will go away with a better understanding of Caribbean cooking - the real deal, using fresh ingredients and seasonings in place of the ones in packets we're more used to."

Certainly some of the ingredients set out for the demonstration were unfamiliar to his audience. "Christophene, cocoa stick and dasheen are all new to me," said Sonny Akshay, a student nearing the end of his nine-month Cordon Bleu course. "It’s exciting to see ingredients I have not come across before and to look at making the most of them."

Dasheen, as it is known in the Caribbean, a starchy root vegetable widely cultivated in West Africa and many tropical regions under a variety of names, proved an unlikely star of the show. It looks like a cross between a dried coconut and a dirty big potato and according to Orlando is greatly underused. It is also the name - with an extra 'e' for refinement - of Ladera's highly acclaimed Dasheene restaurant.

Cooked cubes were handed round, with the warning that in the raw state it is toxic. It tastes not unlike sweet potato, but less cloyingly sweet and with an interesting, nutty flavour, hinting at artichoke. Chef Orlando's magic touch transformed this unprepossessing tuber into delicate, crispy gaufrettes to complement his fish dishes and a succulent dasheen and sweet potato cake, enriched with coconut oil and plantain crumbs. Christophene, by contrast, (indigenous to Mexico), a pale green globe-shaped squash with a cucumber flavour, becomes tasteless when cooked and is best eaten raw in salads.

However unusual the ingredients, it is the subtle use of seasoning which sets apart the brand of Caribbean cooking practised by Ladera's Executive Chef.

"I'm not here to teach you how to cook, but how to season and flavour foods, "he told his audience, passing round a succession of ingredients from glossy fresh vanilla to moist, vibrant-orange turmeric root. Few, if any, of the ingredients shown, come from plants indigenous to the Caribbean, but all are now grown there.

Of all the components on display, it is Orlando's use of cocoa, originally from South America but now widely grown in St Lucia, that is truly inspired. In the form of grated cocoa stick, a secondary product of cocoa beans after chocolate, it gave all the dishes he presented a pleasing roundness and depth of flavour that is difficult to quantify.

Grated cocoa added an extra dimension to the balsamic dressing cooked up before our eyes in a hiss of fragrant steam and drizzled over his signature dish of Lobster Salad on Watermelon. It was the surprise ingredient in his main course of red snapper, marinated in lime along with Orlando's island seasoning - his own subtle blend of herbs and spices in replacement for the ubiquitous packeted 'jerk' seasoning. Finally, in his dessert, cocoa made an unexpectedly compatible bedfellow for basil in a luxuriously creamy brulee.

Chef Orlando was born in Birmingham of Caribbean parents, but has since worked all over the world and has been 'sharing the love', as he puts it, of cooking, for the last thirty years. He visits New York twice a year and comes to London every two to three months to teach, advise and spread the gospel of 'green cuisine', his own brand of fresh, innovative island cooking based on local ingredients. If the enthusiasm with which his concept of Caribbean cooking was received by the future generation of chefs at Le Cordon Bleu is anything to go by, Chef Orlando's influence is sure to spread far.

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Sharing the Love - by Jessica Houdret - recipe

Chef Orlando shares his love of Caribbean cuisine with the students of London’s Le Cordon Bleu Cookery School.