Former Great British Menu champion James Cochran delivers five summery dishes, each one zinging with flavour and perfect for serving outside
James Cochran has never been happier. A wildly inventive and ambitious cook, he trained for almost a decadeunder the chef Brett Graham, first at the Ledbury and then the Michelin-starred Harwood Arms. In 2018, on his first appearance, he won the ultimate prize on the BBC’s Great British Menu: the champion of champions. And experience, he thinks, has taught him restraint at his Islington restaurant 12:51. “I used to have 23 dishes on the menu, and it was intense,” says Cochran. “Covid maybe opened my eyes and made me think, ‘I put myself under so much pressure’. Now it’s just a dream.”
There’s good news for the rest of us, too: Cochran has supplied five summer recipes for OFM. Raised in Whitstable, Kent, by a mum from St Vincent and a Scottish dad, he wanted to pick dishes that nodded to his background. But mainly he chose food that would be fun to eat outdoors on a sunny day. “We’ve all been cooped up for so long,” says Cochran. “And I just think they’re great elements that can be taken to the beach, or to the park, or in your back gardenanywhere now we can have friends round. With my style of food, it’s important it packs a lot of flavour and you can look across the board and there’s a lot of punchy flavours going on. there.”
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