Ritz-Carlton chef on teaching kids to cook: ‘It’s a lot of work, but very rewarding’

How did you get into cooking? “I’m from a small village called Bersrod, near Frankfurt, Germany. Everybody in the family always helped with the farming: cutting grass, harvesting rows and rows of potatoes. When my mother was baking, I helped out, peeling the apples for crumble. Every family had their own pigs, and when they were killed, I helped make sausages, so I never had an issue with blood.”

What was your first culinary job? “My uncle and neighbour each had a butcher shop and I was really interested in that and thought it was what I wanted to do. It was my first job, at 14 years old. I apprenticed with a butcher for three years and it helped me later as a chef, as I can make sausages and ham. From an early age, I grew to understand meat texture and colour, how to cut it better. Meat for me is important, as every German loves pork, and local people here love it, too, though [the German] style is very different from that of Hong Kong.

“The butcher I apprenticed with, his son took over and offered catering and I helped him, and he suggested I become a chef. By the age of 16, I was already cooking for wedding banquets for 100 to 150 people. I had old aunties helping me make potatoes and dumplings and so on. Before, a German wedding was extremely classic, with traditional dishes like clear soup with bone marrow dumplings, smoked pork loin, pork schnitzel, braised beef, a vegetable platter with a whole cauliflower, beans, carrots and potatoes.

“With my experience as a butcher, I introduced pork Wellington using puff pastry, potato croquettes in a pear shape and different salads. I did five or six weddings, but friends and relatives kept asking me to cook for their wedding or daughter’s christening. You can’t say no.”

As executive chef, do you like teaching your staff? “I’m lucky. Some people have problems talking to other people. I’m OK with talking in front of people. I like teaching because I am sharing my experience. I teach my guys more classical dishes they may not be familiar with, like lentil stew or how to make a sauce, and let them taste. I like to do it if someone is interested, otherwise it is wasting time. But I like when people taste it and say, ‘Wow, this is good!’”

Tell us about the Ritz-Carlton’s children’s cooking classes. “We have the Ritz-Carlton Junior Masterchef Cooking classes, a series of 12 options, depending on age, and offering a mixture between savoury and sweet dishes, and two classes on healthy eating, vegetarian and vegan. We make dishes like soup, barley risotto and dessert. Our most popular class is Taste of Italy, where kids make pasta sauces: pesto, fresh tomato sauce and carbonara – both classic and Hong Kong style [cream sauce]. The kids don’t know carbonara is the authentic sauce.”