COTTON PICKING GOOD STOCK

Quality is paramount at ‘Visit Chester & Cheshire’s Large Hotel of the Year 2008’, The Cottons Hotel and Spa. That goes without saying. However, quality ingredients which are simply not versatile or easy to use can prove costly when you cater for everyone from high flying business folk doing lunch to happy couples and their 100 or so guests at a full on wedding banquet. And let’s face it, unnecessary costs are not too popular these days...

Fields of gold
Once upon a time, GP was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Presently, keeping costs low to stay in the game without compromising on quality is the jackpot in foodservice.

The Cottons Hotel and Spa catering operation is well aware of this as it aims to create a sense of occasion, indulgence and theatre without burning a hole in its back pocket.

For example, the hotel’s exquisite Magnolia Restaurant Bar and Lounge, which seats 70, will be serving up a three course St Patrick’s Day dinner on Tuesday 17th March, designed to capture the spirit of the occasion; Colcannon mashed potatoes with black pudding and whisky sauce, Irish lamb stew with soda bread and rich stout cake with chocolate sauce.

The restaurant also has some incentives up its sleeve; during February, customers will receive a voucher for a free glass of 'Pink Fizz' and in March, they get a voucher for complimentary Spring Canapés for the next dining session.

Ingredients where possible are local and seasonal. Breakfast includes muesli and flakes from the honest and tasty Dorset Cereal range and premium quality pork sausages are supplied by Farnsworth in Lancashire, while Menai Welsh Mussels, Bleikers Oak Smoked Salmon, Pendle Hill Lamb and Tuxford and Tebbutt Stilton and fresh fish from New Smithfield Market all feature on a dinner menu of provenance personified.

“We’re committed to using local suppliers as much as possible and to working with them to provide the very best in seasonal produce,” said head chef Adrian Sedden, who has been with The Cotton’s parent company, Shires Hotels, for 12½ years after starting his career in South Africa, where he was also brought up.

The catering operation at The Cottons, minutes from the M6 on Manchester Road in Knutsford, is large and diverse. Alongside Magnolia’s, there two function rooms for 150-180 and three private dining rooms for up to 30 guests. The AA Rosette winning hotel is also in the process of applying to extend the courtyard to make the dining experience even better.

Traditional British fayre is generally the order of the day, whether it is a lunch platter for conference delegates or a weekend function with set menus, the most popular dishes being mussels and smoked salmon for starters and sea bass and steak for mains. “We don’t mess with ingredients or add complication,” said Adrian.

Waste not, want not
Being able to turn its hand to all manner of dining experiences with ultra smooth efficiency and make them profitable, however, is only possible if the overall operation is well serviced.

“At the moment, costs need to be considered more closely as ever,” said Adrian. “One unnecessary cost to our kitchen is the time it takes to prepare stock and from that, soups and white and dark sauces,” said Adrian.

“We need to make these bespoke in the blink of an eye and don’t have time to be roasting bones and the longwinded process behind scratch making stock. It just isn’t effective. Essentially, we need to create dishes with limited wastage and ease.”

Cheshire producer to a UK-wide foodservice market, Essential Cuisine, answered this conundrum with its stock range, painstakingly developed with one thing in mind – offering a superior quality base ingredient without the hassle of creating from scratch, whether the dish of the day is chicken paella, traditional Irish stew or a mouth-watering haddock mornay.

Unlike other products on the market, Essential Cuisine’s range contains just 3-4% naturally occurring fats, with no hydrogenated or ‘hard, nasty fats’, which float as they dissolve. Light Vegetable, Roast Chicken and Cheese stock were recently added to the portfolio of Vegetable, Chicken, Beef, Fish, Lamb, Ham, Turkey and Mushroom.

“We make our French Onion and Beef soup with Essential’s vegetable stock and use the fish stock in our most popular starter, mussels,” said Adrian. “The stocks are consistent and enable us to make our own creations with no requirement for a sauces chef.

“We could be scratch making for up to three days, but with this stock, we can make anything from a couple of dishes to 300 portions in 20 minutes. They are the closest to natural you can get, while other pre-prepared products on the market have bits floating in them, look greasy and don’t have the right consistency. A definite coup for the foodservice industry.”

26/03/2009|