Feedback with Orlando Murrin

Photo by Matt Austin

Feedback with Orlando Murrin

This month we are joined by ex chef and hotelier - now fully fledged crime writer - Orlando Murrin.

Brought up in Jersey he reminisces on his idyllic childhood and despite eating in exotic places all around the world, he always chose the same thing to eat in restaurants. After hanging up his chef's apron he now finds joy in cooking for two (or four if you include his cats!) and no longer has a dining room. Now he has swapped writing recipes for fiction, and his first book, Knife Skills for Beginners is out now. Set in a residential cookery school, it's a murder mystery that will keep you guessing to the end, and you can win a copy in our competition,

What food always reminds you of your childhood?
It sounds a little bit fancy, but Wiener schnitzel. When I was a child, we lived in Jersey – an amazing place to be brought up, all sun, sea, sand and surf. Everyone seemed to have a boat and we would pop off to St Malo for the weekend. My father adored restaurants, so as a family we would eat out a lot, and I was famous for ordering the same thing every time, and that was Wiener schnitzel. He also travelled a lot – he worked for an American company – and we would fly out to join him in exotic places. I was so lucky to be brought up eating exciting food and experiencing hotels and restaurants. I think it’s why later I was drawn to them and became a chef and indeed a hotelier. My mother did make a beautiful trifle so my heart sings when I eat a trifle, which is very rarely and it's never quite as good as my mother’s, of course.

Do you have a current favourite restaurant or type of restaurant?
Well, we've got something a bit special in Exeter now. It’s a fish and chip shop called Krispies and it's known as ‘the home of the battered chip’. They taste just as good as they sound. Otherwise our part of the South West is a bit of a gastronomic gap – we’re a bit too far from London, unlike Bath and Bristol, but not in Cornwall, where everyone goes on holiday. Of course we have Michael Caines at Lympstone Manor, and a branch of the Ivy - and fantastic produce, so you can eat like a king simply by staying home.

Do you like to cook?
I cook every night. Robert my husband would like to sometimes, but he doesn't get much of a look in because I do the planning and shopping. I put the radio on and go into a kind of ‘flow state’, as it's called. First I make the cats their dinner (more of that later), then I start on ours. One thing I love is because it’s just the two of us, it doesn't matter what time we eat, we’re not running to any kind of a schedule. This is such a relief after my years as a chef, when everything had to go out at a particular time, people expecting it to be ready at seven o’clock, eight o'clock or any other o’clock! It’s glorious to cook on your own schedule without that and that's what makes it a real pleasure.

Do you have a signature dish?
Well, something that I'm a dab hand at, not that we have it all the time, is real fish fingers. I've never been an expert fish filleter, but I've learned how to skin a fish and to get it off the bone to make gorgeous dainty fillets, then I egg and breadcrumb them to make fish fingers. I make homemade tartar sauce with lots of nice things in it, including chopped hard-boiled egg, anchovies and tarragon. I’ve also learned finally how to make perfect chips, which has taken an enormous number of years. I first found the secret on an American website, and I've been fine-tuning it since: it involves simmering the chips in vinegar and water till just tender, then drying them and giving them a very light frying in dripping. After that you cool and freeze them, and cook them again from frozen. What a performance - but they’re crisp and crunchy and wonderful.

What do you like most about not cooking professionally any more?
I discovered when I finished working in restaurants that you can do some things for two people, which are a nightmare doing for lots of people. My fish fingers are a good example – egg-and-breadcrumbing for a crowd is terrible. Eggs Benedict is another – unless you’re an octopus.

You prepare the cats’ dinner?
Yes, we have two cats, Maxim and Benjamin, and I make them chicken tartare.  I chop chicken fillets very, very finely, then I give it 10 to 20 seconds in the microwave, which warms it very lightly and takes the rawness off it. It’s the highlight of their day.

What food or ingredient could you not do without?
I adore sweet corn, maybe because my parents were originally Americans. For years I bought it tinned because my mum bought it tinned, but someone told me it's even better frozen. So now I get it frozen and use it in large quantities, I do everything with it, I like it by itself, scalloped corn, corn soufflé, corn muffins, corn fritters. I also love corn on the cob when it’s in season. We have a fantastic farm shop at Topsham called Darts Farm where you can buy it fresh from the field.

Are you fond of kitchen gadgets?
I love a gadget. I haven't actually chopped an onion for 20 years because I have this amazing device called an Alligator that I tell everyone about. It's a Swedish contraption and it does such a perfect job of chopping an onion into the symmetrical cubes that there's no point in doing it yourself because it does it so much better, and you won’t cry. Everyone should have one.

Did you find it easy turning your hand to writing a novel after writing recipes and cookery books?
No, it was totally different experience. A cookbook is a collection of maybe a hundred recipes, each of which is a miniature challenge, involving logistics, shopping, cooking and writing. These build up to form a complete recipe book.  Writing a novel is the opposite. It’s one huge piece of work, with many different elements interwoven within it. It takes months and months, and you need a lot of self-belief, resilience, and nerves of steel, all the time wondering if anyone’s going to read it. It really stretched me and I found I needed to shut myself away and not be interrupted while I was doing it, though the cats were allowed in to say hello if they wanted to.

And what's the most memorable meal you can remember eating?
Well, Delia did cook me dinner once and it doesn't get any better than that! Recently I've had a couple of fabulous meals. One was at Quo Vadis in London, and everything about it was absolutely perfect, I had Fegato alla Veneziana, which was possibly the most delicious thing I've ever eaten (apart from Delia's pork chops). Another really memorable meal was at William Sitwell’s supper club in Somerset; it’s amazing fun to be eating in a tent in the countryside, with great food and in sizzling company.

Is there something in particular you always keep in the fridge?
Well, there's something I always have in the fridge, which is a block of Parmesan. I used to hand grate it and I hated cutting my knuckles on the grater, but an Italian woman said to me, "Oh, put it in the processor.” So now I process my Parmesan and as I was told this by an Italian woman, I think that's good enough, isn't it? In the freezer, I always have homemade chicken stock, because with those two things you have always got a sublime risotto, haven't you? Whenever I make chicken, I always make chicken stock from the carcass.

Do you entertain?
I don't entertain because I had 10 years of hoteling. Although it was very, very successful, I came out of it a bit scarred and I don’t feel I ever need to entertain again. We don't even have a dining room!

What would be your last supper if anything was available and where would you eat it and who would you be with?

Well, you know, a friend of mine was asked this and we were all very offended that she didn’t mention us. So I would like to make a disclaimer to ALL my dear friends and say how much I love you, and you will be there anyway! Now that I'm a crime writer, I would ALSO like to invite my three favourite writers of psychological suspense, namely Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware and Louise Candlish. I think that you could honestly say that dinner would be a scream: they’d be very, very good company because they know how to tell a good story, and there’d be an element of outrageous melodrama, which would make them very good company. (I have to admit that I don't know any of them well enough to invite them to dinner, but I can still dream, can’t I?) Then of course I would have my husband Robert along with the cats Benjamin and Maxim scampering around attracting all the attention. The place that I'd like to be is somewhere that I never went, but always wish I had, which is Carrier's in Camden Passage in Islington, which was Robert Carrier's restaurant.

There was a Victorian cleric called Sydney Smith who, said that his idea of heaven was eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Now, I don't eat foie gras, but I would like the trumpets please, to ensure an exciting accompaniment to the meal. We’ll start with my twice baked cheese souffle, which is sublime; when I served it in my restaurant someone said it was as better than sex, and that’s good enough for me. Then rump steak - red ruby beef from Piper's Farm, which is the very best and local to me in Devon - with Béarnaise sauce and spinach.  I'd make my own French fries, as I've described. We never normally have desserts, but on this occasion I would adore a raspberry tiramisù, every mouth is a taste of heaven. We’d start off with a white wine, a St-Véran, and then a lavish American red, Au Bon Climat. Afterwards we will all watch Sunset Blvd.

Do you have a special culinary skill we don’t know about?
Yes. I can segment any known citrus just with my eyes shut!

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin is available now. £14.99 Bantam Press

Win a copy of Orlando’s book in our competition, just click here to enter.

Photo by Matt Austin