A Chef's Busman's Holiday

Pembrokeshire

We go down to Pembrokeshire for the last two weeks of August and stay on the quayside in Lower Town, Fishguard. We’ve been going for about 25 years, and so have the other families we meet there every year. It’s a thriving community of holidaymakers who have got to know each other over that time, mixed in with a welcoming, exuberant and canny bunch of locals. Bee has had family there for over a hundred years, so feel they have earned the right to be called locals, even though they are not Welsh.

Paella Valenciana

It's where I first tried out a paella Valenciana twelve years ago, in my then, brand new paella pan, which at the time was the biggest pan I had ever seen and cooked enough paella to feed 50 people. Now it’s known as the small paella pan, that’s what 12 years of catering does to you. It didn’t take long to find 50 willing volunteers at the time, and with the finished dish cooked to perfection, it disappeared pretty quickly. I do love a bit of communal, outdoor cooking or ‘Progressive Social Cooking’ as we now brand ourselves.

I love the way everyone who comes to Fishguard contributes something special, Steve comes each year with his family from Herefordshire, towing a huge rigid inflatable boat with two massive outboards on the back the size of a small car. It’s powerful, black and looks like a drug dealer’s boat, he’d be a popular guy in Calais at the moment. He spends a large part of his holiday out on the water, surrounded by everyone’s kids, skiing, ringoing and generally having high larks along the Pembrokeshire coast.

I generally go down with a plethora of recipes for mackerel, lobster and crab which are landed regularly, and in the case of mackerel, you don’t just catch one, you get 50, so they are given away on the quayside with gay abandon. Torched and cured mackerel goes down well pre-dinner, in the sunshine, overlooking the harbour. We put out a long table for about 30 of us most nights, for drinks, nibbles and occasional communal dining.

I have a smaller paella pan which works perfectly over the portable, charcoal BBQ left behind by visitors from years ago. It’s great for pan frying lots of king prawns in garlic, ginger, chilli and coriander. And it’s a great focal point for people to gather around, with a beer and a few stories, trying to guess the ingredients in the next dish being cooked in front to them for supper.

The locals who live on the quayside, and who we have got to know, join in occasionally or slope by enviously if they are not so well known. It’s great to be cooking outdoors, by the sea. I know it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, but I’m a complete addict and can’t help introducing new dishes to intrigue friends with, on our annual excursion to west Wales. It’s a really relaxing break in the middle of a super hectic season, not to be missed.