Welcome

This site displays a representative sample of my written and broadcast work. Although I tend to specialise in food, recipes & food-related features, I am happy providing general features & interviews as well as marketing content.

I regularly chair conferences and debates and speak at events.

Please contact me at melissa@bigpictureprojects.com with any enquiries or commissions.

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Feeling the Beat


Editor, Melissa Love, rocks out at the Sussex Academy of Music.

When the time came to choose an instrument to learn at school, I took one look at the gleaming silver flutes lined up on the table and knew I had to have one. It was shiny and pretty and well….not very cool as it turns out. But you don’t think about these things when you are seven. If I had known what a crowd-pleaser it would have been in my teenage years, to pull out a guitar to strum round a campfire or gather my mates round the piano for a sing-song, I might have thought twice. In fact, I might have been a bit more like Rob Biss and Ben Stringer, the founders of Shoreham’s Sussex Music Academy, the centre for musical tuition which has recently celebrated its first birthday.

The Sussex Academy of Music, or SAM for short, is the brainchild of the two friends, whose lifelong passion for music and performing led them to found the academy together in early 2008. With savings scraped together from teaching music and a hefty bank loan, the pair secured a shell of a building at the Riverside Business Centre, overlooking the Shoreham estuary, and set about fitting it out as a dedicated teaching centre and live music recording studio. The centre is stunning, with a suite of fully soundproofed practise rooms, a performance space and state-of-the-art recording facilities. It’s hip too, with hand-painted murals on the walls and the original artwork for Fat Boy Slim’s album covers on loan from celebrity artist, Julie Ann Gilbert.

To be frank, I’m a bit jealous. It’s a far cry from the draughty practice rooms of my childhood and with teachers like Rob and Ben, I’m sure I would have been a bit more attentive. They seem impossibly young to be running such a busy and clearly successful business, but their grasp of entrepreneurial basics is clear. They taught nearly all of the students in their first year of trading and called on their musical mates to help with a lot of the building fit-out. In return, they often give studio time to their early supporters, which has helped forge close links with many professional musicians.

The academy offers such a wide range of courses and tuition from music production to ukulele lessons, and everything in between, that’s it hard to do it justice. It’s such an inspiring environment that I can’t help wondering if it’s not too late for someone like me to learn a new instrument? Luckily, the academy holds regular workshops for students of all ages, one of the most popular being a harmonica workshop where recently the youngest student in the group was six and the oldest sixty.

But, to be honest, I’ve got my eye on something a bit more…well, you’ve guessed it…cool, and when I spy a full electric drumkit in one of the practice rooms, the matter is decided. Fortunately Rob is an expert drum teacher and sits down to show me the basics. Kick drum, high hat, snare, tom-tom, cymbal, another tom-tom…hang on! That’s more drums than I’ve got hands and feet.

Even holding the drumsticks is a surprisingly technical affair and I spend fifteen minutes just learning to strike one drum with one stick in time to the beat. So far so good. Now Rob introduces some foot action. A discreet tap of my right foot on a pedal produces a satisfying boom on the bass drum. Yep, no problem. Now for a bit of high hat, the pair of cymbals which drummers use to tap out a regular top note. Rob has me double-timing a beat with satisfying results.

“Now let’s put it all together,” he says casually, and this is where it starts to fall apart. With each hand and foot doing something different, it’s like trying to pat your head whilst rubbing your tummy, hopping on one leg and reciting the alphabet backwards.

It quickly becomes apparent that I’m not a natural drummer. “Let’s break it down,” he says, kindly glossing over the fact that we haven't actually succeeded in putting it together in the first place. We go through each movement in turn and slowly increase the tempo from embarrassingly slow to something recognisable as a drum beat. To be honest, I’m finding it hard to sustain the rhythm for more than thirty seconds at a time, until Rob plays me a song on the computer. It’s not just any song. It’s Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean – my all-time favourite dance track. And there it is – the drumbeat is the very same drum groove I have been murdering for the past half hour. Before I know what I’m doing, I start to play along with the music, with both hands and feet doing what they’re meant to be doing without any conscious thought on my part.

I still can’t sustain it for any longer than thirty seconds, but at SAM, that’s no problem. Of course there’s no substitute for putting in the hours of practice, but the team clearly recognises my limitations, so I am allowed to have a go on a real drum kit whilst studio manager, Ryan Gorringe, records my efforts for posterity. He shows me how modern technical wizardry can transform even the most average performance (I’m talking to you, Victoria Beckham), which is fortunate because it’s time for me to deliver my blistering drum solo.

I pick up my sticks, shout the immortal words, “One, two, three, four!” and bash away amateurishly to great effect. I’m on a stage, there are coloured flashing lights and people are covering their ears. It’s glorious and in that moment, although I am thirty-seven years old, wearing snowboots and a sensible jumper, I’m finally one of the cool kids.

To find out more about courses, workshops and tuition at the Sussex Academy of Music, visit www.sussexmusic.com or call 0800 7569411.

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Cooking Up a Storm at South Lodge

Can editor, Melissa Love, cut it in the pro kitchen at Sussex’s premier fine dining restaurant?

You can keep your X-Factors and your Strictly Come Ice Dancing in the Jungle. In our house, it’s all about Masterchef. Not only do I tune in to every episode, it’s the only reality TV show that I am secretly convinced I can win. I know that I could be the one to reduce shouty John to an awed silence and bring a tear to the eye of dessert-loving Greg, as I unmould the perfect chocolate fondant, the pudding which has seen off many a lesser contestant.

And of course the very best bit, is when the hapless contenders are packed off to a hot, busy professional kitchen where they either thrive or dissolve into a puddle of sweaty despair. So when the call comes to spend the day in the kitchen at Sussex’s premier fine dining venue, The Pass at South Lodge, I’m out the door, apron in hand, quicker than you can say ‘Yes Chef!’

Thinking to get a sneak preview of the task ahead, I secretly ate in the restaurant the night before and, if I am being honest, I have rather intimidated myself. Plate after plate of carefully crafted morsels passed before us and it was proper fiddly high-powered food. Stunningly presented, explosive flavours; in short, I had no idea how any of it was conjured into being and faced with the prospect of trying to cook at this level, quite frankly, I’m a bit nervous.

Head Chef, Matt Gillan, sits me down for a chat before we get started. He’s been at South Lodge for three and a half years and running The Pass kitchen since it opened a year ago. Previously he was cooking in the hotel’s Camelia Restaurant; perfectly turned-out country house-style fine dining – but nowhere near as exciting as masterminding the menus at The Pass, I would imagine.

He explains how he constructs such complex dishes. “First of all, I find the initial ingredient and build the dish around it. It’s always seasonal and usually local and then I start to experiment, making lists of things that will definitely work, things that might work, and things that probably won’t work but might just be genius. We use a few fancy bits of kit - foams guns and pacojets - but we don’t do fancy just for the sake of it.”

Blimey, it all sounds a bit Heston Blumenthal. Matt admits that the groundbreaking cuisine at The Fat Duck has been a big influence. “A visit there earlier in my career really got me thinking and at The Pass, we put a lot of thought into understanding why certain ingredients work well together. Of course we’d love to get a Michelin star one day – who wouldn’t? - but I know our audience and I want people to enjoy their meal and feel it’s great value for money.”

Enough chat. It’s time to get down to some cooking and when Matt pushes me towards a big bowl of miniature carrots I sense I am being put to work where I can do the least damage. I expect Matt to swan off to make some foam or something, but he picks up a peeler and gets stuck in right beside me. It takes just a few minutes to give the tiny carrots a close shave (I should point out that I managed to do about six whilst Matt polished off the rest of the pile) and I am moved up to the meat section. Along with Chef de Partie (or Head of Section) Steven Edwards, there is a line of whole quails waiting for my attention. Steven shows me how to break the legs of the tiny quails with a sickening crunch, peel back their skins and slice off the breast meat with a wickedly sharp knife.

I manage not to disgrace myself and merrily hack my way through six quails as Steven makes short work of the remaining twenty-four. I’m starting to get into my stride now, but what fresh horror is this? A huge tub of live langoustines are put on the counter before me. Aha! They are probably about to be boiled or frozen or despatched in some other non-confrontational but humane way? “No”, says Steven, “That would be cruel. The quickest way to kill them is to sever the spinal cord.” He calmly rips the head off one of them and pushes the tub over to me.

Quite a crowd has gathered now, so not wanting to look like the girlie amateur I secretly am, I grasp a smallish one firmly with both hands and twist its head off. It’s horrible. Not the twisting part – that’s easy – but both bits keep squirming for a few seconds afterwards and embarrassingly, I drop the tail part on the floor and let out a little squeal. Oh dear, but they’re tasty little things and my desire to acquit myself well outweighs my squeamishness and soon Steven and I are companionably beheading the langoustines and lining up their plump bodies ready for the stove.

They will become part of a deconstructed prawn cocktail which currently features on one of the Christmas menus. By now, I’ve realised this isn’t going to be any ordinary prawn cocktail and when it’s time to plate it up, Steven puts no less than nine tiny pans on the hob to prepare the various elements which make up the dish.

It’s time for me to step up to the pass and deliver my plate. Admittedly, it’s Steven who has stirred the various concoctions, cooked the piece of salmon and brought everything together with impeccable timing, but hey, what else are the kitchen brigade for if not to answer the every whim of the master chef. I am ready to fulfil my destiny.

It’s fiddly. I put the beautiful cube of salmon in the wrong place and have to start again. I apply streaks of seafood reduction, shellfish froth and balance a stack of teeny tiny micro leaves on top of the froth-covered salmon cube. And now the moment I’ve been waiting for - Matt hands me the foam gun. From the crowd of chefs gathered around the hot plate, I gather this is the moment they’ve been waiting for too. I am poised, ready to deliver a perfect sphere of prawn-flavoured foam to complete my work of culinary art. I release the trigger and whoosh, a foamy mess the size of a tennis ball erupts onto the plate. Disaster. Humiliatingly, Steven has to replate everything and at this point I admit defeat. He deposits the perfect amount of the dreaded prawn foam and voila, my dish is finished.

I admire it long enough to take a photograph and then scoff the lot. So would Matt pick me if I was a Masterchef nobody? Of he would, he says gallantly, gently ushering me out of his gleaming kitchen. John, Greg, I couldda been a contender….!