Star chef’s charity challenge

Top London chef Ashley Palmer Watts has taken up Farm Africa’s challenge to visit Kenya and come up with ideas to help the local communities make more of the fish they rely on for survival.

In under 24 hours, Heston’s No 2 will be flying out to Western Kenya to visit Farm Africa’s fish ponds and Aqua Shop network near Lake Victoria.

Born and raised in Dorset, Heston Blumenthal’s brilliant protege and executive chef of Bray’s famous Fat Duck Group is forsaking his fashionable ‘Hestelries’ for a mud hut village where he will put his skills to work for his hosts of the Luo tribe.

Rural kitchens in the area are basic – stone fire-places, charcoal stoves and soot-covered pans blackened by cooking on open flames – a far cry from the cheffy sheen of Ashley’s London workplace.

“I’m excited about visiting Farm Africa’s fish farming enterprise – but I’ve no idea what to expect so feel a bit nervous. Cooking with the community will mean going right back to basics – no fridges, no water on tap and certainly no hot and cold running sous chefs!   I imagine it will be fascinating to observe the approach to taste and flavour, considering the limitations,” says the young gastro star.

Originally from Maiden Newton in Dorset, Ashley Palmer Watts’s passion for cooking was sparked by his love of the Dorset countryside and its treasury of seasonal produce. His career began at the age of 13 with an after-school washing up job in a local restaurant. After leaving school, he began learning his craft at Le Petit Canard whilst spending his free time visiting and getting to know suppliers and producers.

The Luo diet is based around the freshwater tilapia fish, which people eat with ‘ugali’, a polenta-like porridge made with cornmeal – rather than with Heston’s iconic snails or the nettles Ashley himself serves in porridge at the top Knightsbridge eatery ‘Dinner by Heston Blumenthal’ where he is head chef.

In Western Kenya, some 60% of families depend on fish for food and income but overfishing and pollution in Lake Victoria have depleted stocks, causing prices to rocket, and hitting people hard.

The answer has been to create fishponds, digging them out by hand. Around Kisumu, Farm Africa is helping local fish farmers to excavate ponds, stock them, and improve the quality and quantity of the tilapia their ponds produce.

Escorted by Susan Otieno, the Aqua Shops network co-ordinator,  Ashley will meet fish farmers like Johnstone Odipo whose annual income has soared from 2,000 to 70,000 Kenyan shillings thanks to Farm Africa’s network of ‘Aqua Shops’ supplying training and affordable high quality feed and young fish. The chef will also meet the first woman to have started an Aqua Shop.

With a watchful eye on the local hippos and crocs, Ashley will visit Lake Victoria to see fish being landed and to see for himself the context and impact of dwindling shoals on the livelihood of the region.

During his trip, Ashley will stay in a village as guest in the home of Joyce Kadenge and her family in the Mumias area of the western province.

As part of the skillsharing,  Ashley will act as sous-chef for the village women cooking up both everyday and celebration meals. Getting to grips with the challenges they face, he will gain insight into their daily routine of fire tending, and the harvesting, preparation, processing, storage, cooking and serving of food.

“Cooks love to learn from one another and I’m no exception.  I can’t wait to see how they do things, and hopefully swap my trade secrets.  I know I will learn a lot.  It’s going to be a huge privilege to stay in the community, getting a close look at the impact Farm Africa has made to improve life for these farmers and their families” said Ashley.

The chef plans to harvest fish with Farm Africa pond owners and buy fruit and vegetables in the local market before taking charge of a meal himself and applying his ‘Hestauranteur’ twist to traditional Kenyan cooking a few miles from the Equator.

He will then work with the community on trying to identify new ways of preserving and processing fish so that its food or market value can be increased and ‘shelf life’ extended.

It’s half a world away from ‘Dinner’, where Ashley puts a quirky modern twist on historic British dishes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pineapples roast on spits and the menu includes fired mussels, meat fruit, cockle ketchup, powdered duck breasts, ‘ragoo of pigs ears’, snails, roast marrowbone, and nettle porridge.
“The visit by Ashley Palmer Watts is part of Farm Africa’s effort to work ever more closely with partners in the food and restaurant sectors with whom the charity shares the ambition to end hunger in Africa. Last autumn, ten of the most senior figures in the UK food industry climbed Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro for Farm Africa. It marked the start of partnerships on which many joint initiatives that Farm Africa is planning can be based. This trip by Ashley is an exciting start ” said the charity’s chief executive Nigel Harris.

Find out how your company can support Farm Africa like Ashley.

To follow Ashley’s Kenya blog and trip diary, click here.