A recipe for success

HMP High Down's Alberto Crisci's culinary skills beat off stiff competition to win the prize at the annual BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards for dishing up fantastic fresh food for 740 prisoners every day. Katherine Savidge went to meet Al to discover his recipe for success.

Tasty pumpkin soup with chive and Gruyere croutons, followed by succulent roast fillet of beef with watercress puree and truffle and brandy sauce, rounded off with delicious chocolate and raspberry bavarois. Not the kind of mouth watering top-notch grub you'd immediately associate with prisons is it? But in the hectic kitchens at Highdown, that's just what prisoners working towards their NVQs are meticulously creating, all under the watchful eye of award-winning Al.

At the same time the trainee chefs are helping to prepare three square meals a day for their fellow 740 prisoners, all for a daily budget of just £1.68 per person. And it is the quality of this food that caught the judge's eye at this year's BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards.

Of the award, Catering Manager Al says: “I was totally shocked to be honest and didn't realise how high profile the awards are. “It was only when I got there and saw famous chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Rick Stein that it sunk in. And I couldn't believe it when I won. “It's great for the Prison Service to win a food award like this that's given for achieving the highest standards, especially because everyone in the team is very passionate about what we do – cooking good food and training the prisoners at the same time.”

The judges commended Al's innovative recipes and use of fresh vegetables, as well as the sheer quality of food produced on such a tight budget. Al said: “Every caterer in every prison tries to do the best they can with the resources they have. “We are lucky here in that our farm manager produces lots of great home-grown vegetables such as courgettes, peppers, aubergines and lettuces that we use in our menus, as well as deliveries of fresh produce from HMP Standford Hill.”

This fresh veg plays a large part in the daily menu for prisoners which includes six choices of evening meal ranging from Italian vegetable risotto, spaghetti Bolognese, chicken salad and smoked herring fillets with lemon butter to beef and potato stew and chicken soup with dumplings. Al says the secret of dishing up such tasty food on a budget is down to planning menus and taking time to prepare the meals.

“The menus we create here are very time consuming. We use fresh, cheap ingredients to make really nice things from scratch, rather than buying food ready made. But it's really labour intensive and so the chefs and prisoners here work really hard to achieve these high standards.” The judges also praised him for his outstanding work with the offenders, which helps them to gain National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in food preparation, cooking and basic hygiene and learn about the importance of healthy eating. It was Al who introduced the opportunity for offenders to complete the NVQ qualification whilst working in the kitchens, tailoring the menus to meet the necessary training needs.

“I am passionate about the NVQ. The prisoners who work in the kitchen take a real pride in what they produce and constantly strive to improve. It's great to watch them develop their skills and their esteem grow when they gain a qualification. It gives them the option to work in catering but also gives them good life skills to cook for themselves or their family.”

And the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, with a number of prisoners successfully securing jobs in the catering industry on their release. The prisoners' NVQ skills are also boosted by the establishment's quarterly ‘gourmet lunches', where prospective employers from the catering industry are invited to come and taste their restaurant-standard food. And with Al's previous catering experience at top London restaurant Mirabelle - famous for its classic French cuisine - he provides plenty of inspiration for the offenders who research and create their own recipes for these events. His dream is that the gourmet lunches will expand into a more permanent arrangement of a high quality restaurant inside the prison - serving staff and invitation-only visitors – which would allow offenders to also gain experience and qualifications in food service. And with prisoners already cooking up dishes such as pan-fried Dover sole on roasted aubergine with tomato and olive tapenade and sautéed guinea foul with winter vegetables and Madeira sauce, who knows what the future could hold for them?