John Williams - The Ritz London: The Cookbook

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O ne morning in 1985, a young man emerged from Londons Green Park tube station. He began to stroll along Piccadilly and, as he passed The Ritz, glanced into the windows of the hotel. How many millions of other people, he wondered, must have done the same?

The man stopped and stood there, intrigued by what he saw on the other side of the glass. It was a sign, neatly inscribed in black ink, and advertising a forthcoming dinner. The feast was special because courses would be served on bone china plates that had recently been rescued from a shipwreck. The Geldermalsen sank in the South China Sea in 1752, and had rested on the seabed for a couple of centuries before divers discovered its treasures.

He tried to imagine the china and the food, but then he was distracted by the hotels guests, all smart and well dressed, coming and going. Ill work at The Ritz one day, he promised himself. He turned and continued along Piccadilly.

I was that man at the window. By then, a chef at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. Id have to wait a couple of decades before joining the brigade at The Ritz, and then not as a chef but as the chef in charge of the chefs.

I am the luckiest man in the world. Im a Geordie from a hard, working-class background, but when this place is in full swing and I walk down the long gallery, past The Palm Court as afternoon tea is served and the pianist plays, and then step into the grandeur of the extraordinarily special restaurant... at that moment I feel as if I am a millionaire.

This book is a collection of recipes for dishes that are served to guests at The Ritz, which opened its doors in the spring of 1906. I have chosen favourites from afternoon tea in The Palm Court, canaps and cocktails in The Rivoli Bar, and specialities from William Kent House, which adjoins the hotel and is where we hold private functions and banquets. However, most of the recipes are from The Restaurants lunchtime and evening menus.

My life is about haute cuisine. It means so much more than fine dining, a phrase I dont like. Haute cuisine defines a style, a certain feeling, sensation and taste. Haute cuisine epitomizes true gastronomy and purity. Cooking at this level is a matter of constant refinement, as you strive to accomplish the very, very best. At The Ritz, our food has to be relevant to the hotel, of course, and it must be classic but evolutionary. I am a great admirer of Auguste Escoffier, who was a consultant chef at The Ritz in its early years. Escoffier was the most forward-thinking chef of all time. People will say he is old-fashioned but most of the food cooked today comes from history, and much of it from Escoffier.

I am the luckiest man in the world I walk down the long gallery, past The Palm Court and then step into the grandeur of the extraordinarily special restaurant at that moment I feel as if I am a millionaire.

Few restaurants are as magnificent as the one at The Ritz and few can boast a history as rich. Kings have visited with their queens (and their mistresses). Prime ministers and presidents have sat beneath these dazzling chandeliers, plotting the future of nations. Across the white linen tables, stars of stage and screen have clinked Champagne flutes and fallen in love.

Fashions have been born here (as have babies, though elsewhere in the hotel). Composers have created songs that eternalize The Ritz. The place has been honoured in books, plays and musicals. Poets and painters have been inspired by its charm and mystique. The Ritz has even added a word to the dictionary: if you are ritzy then you must be stylish, glamorous and sophisticated.

In times of decadence, The Ritz has thrived. In periods of war, it has been bombed and survived. In the heart of Londons West End, The Ritz goes on and on; an ever-beating core of comfort and calm. And in The Restaurant, lives have changed. Mine did: I was offered the role of executive chef over lunch there.

How very different life is now to my early years I grew up in South Shields, on the north-east coast of England, the second oldest of six children. My father, a fisherman, spent 13 days a time at sea; home for a couple of nights and then off again, so really it was Mam who raised us.

I remember playing football on a Sunday morning I was seven or eight. Mam shouted, John! Help me with the potatoes. I dashed into the kitchen and scraped the Jersey Royals. As they boiled, she handed me a bunch of mint. Chop that! I put the chopped mint in a bowl, added vinegar, water, a spoonful of sugar and mixed. Then I put the bowl into the oven, as instructed by my mother. Thats how she made mint sauce and she still has that bowl (its a bit chipped now).

When the potatoes were cooked, I said, Im starving. I was always a hungry lad. Have this, John. She took a plate and spooned onto it four or five steaming hot Jersey Royals. She slathered on butter, which melted and coated them so they were glossy and irresistible. As I tucked in, she smiled and for reassurance said, Do you like that? I did: Oh, I love that, Mam.

Her Sunday lunches were massive a roast with Yorkshire puddings, five different veg and potatoes, and that meant two different types of potatoes, such as creamed and boiled. Plus lashings of gravy! But the cooking of the lunch began with prepping the potatoes. And as I helped, I would be rewarded with those extra potatoes before lunch. Help us with this Help us with that

On Saturdays Id help her with the shopping. Wed go to the greengrocers: wooden crates, floor to head height, of apples and pears, oranges and lemons, French beans, broad beans you name it, he had it. And like all the fruit and veg shops around Britain at that time, he had no refrigerators to hide the aromas of the produce. What you bought went into brown paper bags, and the man sealed each bag by spinning it by the two top corners.

We got strawberries in punnets they were fresh from a farm and, I can tell you, they would never see a refrigerator. Wed set off home, the aroma of warm strawberries seeping through the punnet into the bag and up to our noses. Halfway home, Mam would suddenly stop and step from the sun into the shade beneath a tree and say, John, give us the strawberries. Wed put our shopping bags on the ground. Then from the punnet, which was now wet and crimson with strawberry juice, wed each pick a strawberry, the biggest we could see, and bite into it. Rich, plump and juicy enough to quench the thirst in an instant.

At the pork butchers shop we got Dads black pudding and pigs trotters, or a joint of pork for roasting. Mam would nod toward me as she said to the butcher, Give him thruppence of tripe, please. With his hands the size of bear paws, the butcher would take a small bag and fill it with tripe. Hed then give the tripe a proper dousing of malt vinegar splish, splosh and a shower of salt and pepper. That was my treat for going to the shops. On the way home, Id eat it all up.