this week

What a week!

Anton B. Dougall tells Ramona Depares about the myriad fascinations of the catering business

Work starts early, at 7.15 in the morning. That’s very normal in the catering business. And of course, I finish very late as well. One can say that I head a twelve-hour operation seven days a week. Catering involves so many details: you have to prepare the menus, organise the whole evening… and finally it’s back to the office. Then there is the media aspect to take care of. I have a weekly show on RTK and another one on Net TV and these both take a certain amount of planning. I also have a special cookery programme in the pipeline and the filming for that has already started. Yes, it’s a very full day indeed.

I started my cookery education at the Polytechnic then went on to study in Yorkshire and Scotland. I published my first cookery book when I was eighteen and in 1980 started my own business. Today I employ thirty people.
My main business concern is Astoria and we do anything that is related to food, whether it involves publishing or serving dishes. At the moment I am also negotiating the rights of a book. What I normally do is buy the rights to an already existing foreign book and then translate it. The reason why I don’t often do it from scratch is because it is so difficult to photograph food well. But this way, the tough work is already done and I have the photos ready. I’m looking forward to concluding this deal and offering a new set of recipes to the Maltese cooks.

Mind you, the recipes Astoria supplies are endless. I have my own web-site, www.tisjir.com, of which I am extremely proud. The site has a highly popular "Ask Anton" section: cooking is a very individual discipline and sometimes I am asked questions that I’d never have expected in a million years. And of course, there are the recipes. We offer some 1,500 recipes in four different languages and more than 2,400 members have registered. They get a free regular newsletter and even this takes time to prepare. But people like it and it’s not nice to let them down. We like to promote anything that is good and is related to food, and our links section is always kept updated.

A pet project of mine is the food supply system at the Zammit Clapp hospital. I have introduced a very sophisticated method where all the food is prepared at Astoria, plated and then kept chilled at the hospital. Forty minutes before lunch the shelves automatically start heating up the food. How’s that for convenience? The dishes are covered with a special copper band that is connected to a computer. Computers end up everywhere these days, even in the unlikeliest scenarios.

I got the idea when I was travelling and it is definitely a first for Malta. Nothing beats travelling when it comes to creating new ideas. I visit all the exhibitions I can, make new contacts… as with everything, an on-going education is essential in the catering business.

Rather surprisingly for most people, I’m not a gadget man when it comes to the kitchen. I have all the basic equipment and nothing more, I’d much rather focus on the basics. Another surprise is that I never cook at home. For me, cooking is work and if they had to wait for me to serve lunch at home then we’d all starve! Fortunately my wife is an excellent cook.

My latest innovation at the workplace has been ready-made meals. I refuse to call them ‘meals on wheels’ because the term has become associated with elderly people. And the ready-made meals are aimed not just at the elderly, but also at those who work long hours and have no time to cook and others who live alone and don’t find it viable to cook at home. Let’s say the parents are going abroad and leaving a teenager behind: these meals provide the ideal solution. The price is unbelievable, for Lm1.90 you get a three-course meal and the menu is great too. The demand so far is satisfactory. The only problem when it comes to elderly people is that it’s so difficult to convince them to eat someone else’s food when they’ve been used to home-made dishes all their lives.

The Ready to Go meals were my idea. I enjoy identifying niche markets that have not been tapped by other companies. Another example is the sous-vide service, which for the lay person means cooking a dish under pressure and vacuuming it. In short, the perfect solution for very small hotels who can’t afford their own cook but still want to offer a good menu. All you have to do with these dishes is re-heat them in a microwave and they last five months in the freezer. Food is amazingly versatile and I don’t doubt that one day we’ll have dishes that heat up automatically when opened. Actually it already exists, they used the method in the American wars. The down side is that such food is bound to be chock full of chemicals.

Catering is a hard job but then again I love anything that has to do with foods. I buy all the local cookery and food-related books. Thanks to internet I virtually attend most of the conferences. The latest cooking trend in the United Kingdom involves a complete revolution in hospital food, they have some really sophisticated ideas there.

Nowadays a number of my evenings are spent at my Nutmeg restaurant, which has recently relocated to Cresta Quay. We have ninety covers and the place is booked solid on almost all the opening nights. It’s ridiculous how people honestly believe that eating well necessitates beautiful surroundings and a hefty bill at the end of the evening. Believe me this is really not the case at all. The food we offer is a mixed variety and it goes down well with the patrons.