Proud Cornishman, locally born Aiden Blakely-May, is the new Head Chef at Rastella, the Three AA Rosette Restaurant in the luxury Four AA Star Boutique Hotel, Merchants Manor. Rastella is Falmouth’s Highest Awarded Restaurant.
After working in London and quality restaurants across the county, including double rosette awarded Samphire Restaurant in Falmouth, Aiden joined Rastella as sous chef four years ago and has steadily progressed to his new position. With a genuine passion for street food and a fascination for
ancient cooking techniques, he leads a team using ancient techniques in modern ways to produce great food. Examples of this include fermenting home grown Cornish chillis to make sriracha, working the restaurant’s five-year-old yeast for sourdough and making Rastella’s own mirin and soy sauces for pickling and curing meats.
“To some fermenting is the latest thing, the fashionable way of enticing diners always looking for something new – to others it’s one of the oldest cooking methods, that’s just been overlooked for a few hundred years or so,” explains Aiden. “A lot of the food and drink we consume is the result of a fermentation process – we just don’t see that. Mead is perhaps the oldest drink made in Britain by the fermentation process – but so is beer and even sourdough bread. Yoghurt, Salami, cheese – the list is almost endless. Fermentation is hiding in clear view in foods we eat nearly every day. We are just extending its reach a little.”
“The new menu has been created over several months with these new and exciting dishes, but regular guests, don’t worry,” comments Aiden. “We haven’t abandoned the things that Rastella is famous for; meat and just-landed fish cooked over our red-hot grill for example, foraged foods from secret locations only we know. Everything we present is inspired by nature; every day we learn something new.”
Aiden describes his food style as “pared back elegance packed with flavour.”
“I love Cornwall but had to leave to further my career. Now I’m back I want to lift the lid on what Cornish food really means. Offer Cornwall on a plate where not just the star of the dish but every possible element is from our doorstep. A great example of this would be asparagus, with a warm smoked new potato salad dressed with wild flowers – every ingredient for this dish is from one farm. Our sourdough bread is made with a five-year-old starter fed with the fresh harvest of the week and ancient grains grown and milled on a zero-intervention farm 12 miles down the road.
“We work hard combating the effect of seasonality using the dark art of preservation and fermentation to remove the challenges of hyper seasonality. The Cornish harvest is all about feast or famine with some of the crops lasting only a few weeks. We use artisan techniques to preserve the best at its best. Whether this be using koji to create miso from ancient Cornish grain or preserving Cornish citrus to enjoy the season’s best when the cupboard runs bare in the winter. We work with local artisan producers nose to tail to create a sustainable no waste food chain.”
Aiden is keen to promote his ideas and celebrate local produce and new techniques via a series of guest packages in coming months. The first, Somethings Bubbling, is a two-day course at the hotel. Guests will create their own sourdough starter, bake bread using ancient local grains and create their own Lacto ferments and Amazake (a traditional, sweet, low-alcohol Japanese drink). They will also learn about the process and uses of Koji (the mould used for centuries in Japan to make sake) across a broad range of foods. Prices range from £490 for a couple sharing a King Room, two nights dinner bed and breakfast. Includes three course dinner day one, seven course dinner day two plus breakfast. Anyone wanting to join must call or e-mail the hotel to make a reservation. Course is for a maximum of six guests so personal tuition is guaranteed. Each guest will receive recipe cards, take homes such as the Sourdough Starter – and a certificate.
