Roasted artichoke aioli, a recipe for you.

Something for roast chicken, grilled fish or cold poached lobster and a chef who looked like a serial killer

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Today’s recipe- Roasted artichoke aioli

A bunch of chives will tell you most of what you need to know about a cook’s skills. Artichokes as well.

Most of us have certain jobs we give new cooks as a way of gauging their confidence with ingredients. There are many simple tasks that test the skill-set of chefs and will give you a good idea of how someone handles ingredients, different preparations and cooking methods.

Chives finely sliced for instance.

You might think that’s not a real test of a chef’s skills and technique, but you’d be wrong. I’ve seen many terrible things done to bunches of chives over the years and finely slicing them is a skill, no matter what anyone may tell you. There’s even an IG page dedicated to it.

Sliced is the first test. Not chopped or squashed. The second is how fine exactly is fine?

Sliced all the same size is a good start, the gauge of as close to one millimetre as possible is best. Accuracy is key here. Less than a millimetre is better, but they need to be all the same. And then I should also add that there should be no bruising either. And none crushed and no off-cuts please. That will also give me an indication of how sharp you keep your knives. If your knife isn’t sharp enough then don’t attempt it. Most Chefs have a chive knife. Or at least I hope they do.

I do.

The artichoke is another good example of a test of skill. You’ll see knife work, accuracy, attention to detail, speed and general organisation. Is the peel all over the floor? Are they using lemons? Is the choke neatly taken out? Did they use a teaspoon? Are they all looking roughly the same? Are they the correct shape with not too much taken off? Or did they just say bollocks to it all and slash off four points and be done with it?

Everything you need to know in a skills test will be apparent within the first minute or so. A cook can come to you with an impressive background, but if the guy looks like he just fell out of bed or had slept in a hedge, then it’s usually a non-starter for me.

I once had a French chap apply for a job, and I shit you not, he couldn’t put his apron on properly. Or his jacket as I remember. I mean seriously.

He had a football shirt untucked under his chef’s jacket and had rolled his apron up so it looked like a belt. I explained how we wore our uniforms and how I expected the chefs to present themselves, and asked him to go and smarten up a little, but he came back looking worse than the first time. Perhaps he had someone to help him get dressed at home or was it just that he was a scruffy bastard? We went through this a few more times as I remember, with me getting more irritated as the minutes went by, and Paul my long-suffering Sous Chef, nearly reduced to tears.