Abduilah Azzubair, Head Chef at the Royal College of Physicians, has won the Silver award in a prestigious national competition. His skills in creating a main course from a mystery selection of ingredients - with a limit of only 30 minutes to cook and present the dish - gave him second place in the annual ‘Copper Skillet’ contest organised by IACC, the International Association of Conference Centres.
The competition invites entries from chefs throughout the British chapter of IACC, whose members include more than 30 of the UK’s leading conference venues. The RCP has a highly successful events activity, regularly hosting meetings, dinners, receptions and many other types of event for organisations from many sectors.
This year’s Copper Skillet competition took place at Ashridge Management centre in Hertfordshire on Saturday 12 February. Azzubair’s place in the final had been secured by his submission of a written three course menu for 40 diners, with detailed costing and preparation plans.
In the final - in which he competed with seven other chefs - Azzubair was allowed just 45 minutes to visualise, describe to the judging panel, and prepare a main course from a ‘surprise’ box of ingredients. He won his award with monkfish wrapped in Parma ham with saffron-scented cannelloni bean and baby spinach jus.
Azzubair, who was born in Larache in Northern Morocco, has worked at the College for twenty years, having previously had experience at Wembley Stadium and a number of leading West End restaurants. “It was an extremely challenging event, but my experience at the RCP of preparing consistently high quality food, often to very tight deadlines, was a great help,” he commented: “It would have been even better to have won Gold, but the judges did say that the standard was so high that any of the contestants could have won the event.”