The Best Cook in Britain?

Typical. Simon Hopkinson was on holiday in Provence when Roast Chicken and Other Stories, the book of recipes he wrote 11 years ago, was recently voted the most useful cookery book of all time, beating the combined output of Delia Smith, Rick Stein, Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and others.

Last week, when the cookbook suddenly began selling more copies than Harry Potter, what was the author doing? He was just doing what Simon does, you know; eating and cooking with friends, poaching and filleting some zander, finishing it off with beurre blanc and wondering to himself: now, why can't I get this in more restaurants? Then he was buying tomatoes in the market, really glorious ones, and thinking, why can't I buy these at home? "They must have weighed about half a kilo each. When you cut them open, they were red all the way through. Perfect. I never cook with fresh tomatoes in London, and no wonder. Why can't we get them?"

While Hopkinson was thus occupied, Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine had lined up a panel of more than 40 leading chefs, restaurateurs and food writers and asked them to consider 100 cookbooks, then choose the most indispensable one of all. Hopkinson's 1994 work, which is separated into chapters by ingredient headings such as Almonds, Duck, Lemons and so forth, was the outright winner. The magazine's editor, William Sitwell, said this week:"Simon Hopkinson won because, ultimately, his recipes really work. He has an amazing ability to write recipes for the home cook that are accessible, practical and sensible, but still challenging enough to be exciting."

Roast Chicken is an entertaining distillation of the knowledge Hopkinson gained from his many years as a professional chef, but what makes it truly exceptional is his culinary sensibility; he has a clear and unpretentious vision about what is and what is not good to eat, and the communication skills to explain this with clarity. If he writes"lower the heat to a mere thread", one knows exactly what he means. And when he wheels out the celebratory roast chicken with bread sauce, best gravy and sausage and bacon rolls, featuring a bird that has been smeared with butter, squeezed with lemon and wet roasted for one and a half hours until its skin is crisp and golden like a St Tropez suntan, one understands why experts and industry insiders rate him as the best cook in Britain.

"I am absolutely thrilled, completely overwhelmed about the book winning this award," says Hopkinson,"but without blowing my trumpet, I always knew it was a good book because it had nice things in it which you couldn't help but want to eat. And as long as the recipes work, I knew it would be a useful book to have."

Goat getting, and other bugbears

In fact, recipes not working are one of the great bugbears in his life, along with sloppiness and culinary stupidity in general, even though he admits to making mistakes,"like everybody". Still, that does not stop him from buying all the newspaper and magazine food supplements every weekend and whipping himself into a frothy lather. Like a musician hearing music by reading it, Hopkinson can tell whether or not a recipe will work just by looking at it - and quite often he does not like what he sees.

"Oh, I tell you what gets my goat. Look at this," he says, pulling out a recipe from a magazine." 'Extracted from peanuts, groundnut oil has a subtle flavour and as such is extremely useful for cooking.' Eh? What is that about? Groundnut oil! You fry with it. You make mayonnaise with it. You just get on with it. There is nothing interesting about groundnut oil at all. You might as well say teaspoons are interesting."

Now he finds a quiche lorraine recipe that calls for it to be baked on a medium heat for 20 minutes. Uh-oh.

"Ah, rubbish! Just not going to work," he says, padding around the kitchen in his shorts and sandals. Now 51, he lives alone, with his two Burmese cats, who eat their meals and drink their water from three pretty brass bowls - actually the prestigious Glenfiddich awards he won for his food writing."I don't use them in a disrespectful way. They are just perfect for the job," he says.

Yet even dining out in restaurants can't give him peace. When Hopkinson was a head chef, his advice to the youngsters working for him was simple and true: cook what you really like to eat. Today, in most restaurants in London and elsewhere, he sees little evidence of this basic dictum and finds most of the dishes on offer are bland and boring, put together to please the egos of the bods in the kitchen, rather than the paying customer out front. It's the same old dishes, he says, over and over again. A sea of bland velout; a daisychain of dishes that the cooks don't want to eat, but have put on the menu just for effect.

"Dots made with squeezy bottles and soup plates. Stacking is still around and again that composite thing; lamb and mushrooms. Lamb and lentils. No! I don't understand that at all," he says. What he really likes is traditional and proper food; say, the octopus and borlotti bean salad at the Cipriani, with maybe one of their silky baked pastas to follow. A proper blow out at Le Gavroche or the Waterside Inn. Saturday lunch at Bibendum. Something fortifying at St John. He only has a few favourite places because,"I never want to waste a lunch on somewhere that might not be good."

Not Greedy Enough, Must Try Harder

Elsewhere, the news from the front is not good.

"Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing are all guilty of blandness. You know, I think they don't love eating enough and they don't actually love cooking things enough. That may be harsh and they certainly are all great technicians, but none of them have enough greed about food."

On a visit to the Savoy Grill, now a part of the Ramsay empire with a kitchen headed up by Wareing, Hopkinson was appalled to find"they had put cumin in the mint sauce for the lamb. What is that about? Outrageous!

There is just not enough background knowledge. Doing something different just for the sake of it. My God. Let's just draw a veil over the cumin. Am I getting a bit shouty? I can't help it. Sometimes I feel we have all but lost the grasp of how to cook nicely at all. Sometimes, I think that there is something rotten in the state of the British kitchen."

Hopkinson was born in Bury, Lancashire into a loving, middle-class family. His mother was a grammar school teacher; his father a dentist and they all loved their food."Mum and Dad had good taste. I did learn a lot from them because they both cook. Dad did experimental things, Mum was the queen of puddings and rabbit pie and all that sort of thing."

Young Simon baked and baked and cooked and cooked. All he ever wanted was to be in a kitchen. By the time he was a teenager, his signature dish was a starter of eggs with curried mayonnaise which the family christened Simon's Eggs. He started his apprenticeship at La Normandie restaurant in Lancashire, practically the day he left school, and some of the things he learned there still stand him in good stead today. Flame lobsters with Pernod and cognac, flavour with cayenne pepper, shallot, garlic and parsley. Use butter. Do not be afraid of butter."There's just too much olive oil around now," he complains.

After La Normandie, Hopkinson had his own restaurant in Wales, then was an Egon Ronay inspector for some years and also a private chef before opening a restaurant in south Kensington called Hilaire. This is where everyone began to notice him. Elizabeth David was a regular, and became a friend. Ditto Terence Conran, who enticed Hopkinson away to be the launch chef at Bibendum in the old Michelin building when it opened in 1987.

The years that followed were a bittersweet time for Hopkinson. Everyone loved his food. He was the talk of the town, with customers such as Stephen Fry, Dirk Bogarde and Francis Bacon also becoming friends and customers. However, Hopkinson is a solitary man at heart, and one who increasingly found the pressures of the kitchen difficult to deal with. One Sunday night, towards the end of 1994, shortly after Roast Chicken was first published, he had a"mini-breakdown" during service one Sunday night, which effectively ended his cheffing career.

"I was losing my confidence a bit. I have never been terribly good at thinking I am any good," he says. His favourite time in the kitchen was always during the peace of the mornings, when he would be busy preparing stocks, putting the dishes together. When the customers started arriving, his enjoyment began to deflate. He never enjoyed the pressure of service - ever. Even now, when he has lunch parties at home, he'd much prefer it if he could just cook, then go back into the kitchen.

"At Bibendum, there was a moment when it just all got too much. I broke down, and was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. It was terrible, awful. I did finish service and carried on cooking until New Year's Eve that year. Then I did half the service and sat down in the restaurant and had dinner for the rest of the evening. And that was it for me. I couldn't do it now. I'd be terrified. I'd chop my fingers off or something."

Yet Bibendum's loss has been the domestic cook's gain. Two more books and a series of newspaper columns followed and now Hopkinson is now receiving the respect and accreditation he deserves. In the kitchen of his west London flat, in the street where he has lived for 21 years, Hopkinson uncorks an excellent bottle of wine and slides a quiche lorraine from the oven on to the table. It's perfectly cooked, of course, with a silky and wibbly interior.

At one stage in his career, Hopkinson was perhaps fractured, but perhaps you have to suffer a little in life in order to properly understand what comfort and nourishment is all about. What doesn't kill you makes you a better cook. And Hopkinson is the best.

© jan moir 2007

• This interview was first published in August 2005 © jan moir are you ready to order