Young National Chef of The Year 2018 winner Danny Young reflects on the competition and what he has learnt from it

Young National Chef of the Year 2018 winner, Danny Young on Autumn tasting menus, Obsession 19 and the forthcoming Young National Chef of the Year final.Since my last blog, we’ve launched the Autumn Tasting Menu at Northcote. I have worked very closely with Lisa Goodwin-Allen to assist her on creating these dishes and I do think her philosophy on food really does come through on this menu.

As Lisa is always looking for good use of techniques, the best ingredients we can get our hands on, but the main aim is
for it to taste amazing and make sure you can get a perfectly balanced flavour of each of the ingredients named on the dish.

One of the six dishes is Aged Hand Cut Beef with Roasted Celeriac & Smoked Marrowbone. Researching different cuts of beef was interesting as we decided to use Wagyu bavette which you wouldn’t normally use as it is a tartare. Bavette is tougher and more fibrous than some of the more popular cuts, this has been overcome by ageing this cut for three weeks which helps break down these fibres and gives it an amazing aged flavour.

One of my favourite dishes on the new menu is the Jerusalem Artichoke and Black Truffle. It’s a surprise to reveal what is underneath when you eat it. The flavour of artichoke and black truffle are bold but perfectly matched together. As you eat this dish you really do get the flavours of the ingredients mentioned in the description as we do for all our
dishes but for me, this one certainly stands out.

As the game season is just starting, we have added a Red Leg Partridge, Leg Bolognaise, Mushroom & Sweetcorn. It wouldn’t be an autumn menu without the inclusion of a wonderful game dish and we’ve matched it with ingredients that are bang in season. This partridge dish really does showcase the quality of ingredients used within this dish and
really does carry our philosophy on food on a plate.

Now that summer is over, we’re preparing for our Obsession 19 food festival launch and the announcement of the chefs which is always an exciting time for us as a team.

Looking into the next few weeks we’ll be developing the Christmas menus as we try to make Christmas as easy and enjoyable as possible as it is an extremely busy time of the year. It can be stressful for all the team when working Christmas but we make sure we have all things in place so that everybody can enjoy this time of year with their families and friends as well as creating some amazing food for our guests over the busy festive period.

The final of National Young Chef of the Year takes place next week and I’m very much looking forward to seeing who takes the crown this year. I had the chance to meet all the finalists at the beginning of the month at the mentor day at Unilever.

It was nice to see some familiar faces among the competitors as well as some new ones too. As I’ve been in the final three times, I realised that you have to persevere at these types of competitions and learn from the experience that you can take away from this amazing competition and opportunity, also with the experience you'll gain from being involved you get to understand what the judges are looking for which can certainly help you to achieve your goals. I wish all the finalists the best of luck, and I look forward to seeing you all cooking at the Restaurant Show next week.

About Danny Young:

Danny is Young National Chef of the Year 2018 and won the competition at the Restaurant Show at Olympia London in October. Danny is currently sous chef at Northcote in Lancashire. His first experience in fine dining came after he left school when he secured a job working in a Michelin starred kitchen. Danny has come in second place in the Young National Chef of the Year competition for the last two years and was North West Young Chef of the Year in 2014.