Today I learned how to make vegan Scotch eggs from Lady Gaga's private chef, Tom Burney
We meet executive chef of Invisible Kitchen, Hong Kong’s sustainable catering service, who has caught the eye with his ‘Vegan Vs’ canape challenges that compare meat and non-meat versions
Sustainable cooking may be gaining increasing recognition and becoming a fashionable phrase among many people, but what does it really mean? We caught up with a private chef in Hong Kong to find out more, including how we can make a meat dish vegan and sustainable.
As a chef I’m inquisitive about how ingredients work and how they can be used to best effect
Tom Burney, executive chef and managing director of Invisible Kitchen, based in Chai Wan, is certainly no stranger to this topic, having given many talks to promote sustainability in the gourmet world.
“There is a lack of clear definition, but that is down to the nature of the word ‘sustainable’ as it can be looked at from so many different angles, particularly when talking about seafood,” says Burney, who runs a catering service that has zero waste as its core value.
Certainly finding a common definition of the meaning of sustainability would help consumers understand it better. For example, why is it important? What is the impact of non-sustainable products? Why should I care?
There are so many ways in which sustainability can be defined – it can be defined in terms of fair trade; in terms of preventing damage to the immediate vicinity from fishing (for example, damage caused by bottom-trawling drag nets, or from the careless disposal of waste pollution from fish farms); in terms of preventing damage to the wider world (damage caused, for example, by plastic waste from discarded plastic fishing nets); and the sustainability of particular species (by preventing overfishing).
It means that at Burney’s behest, all the services he offers are performed without the use of plastic items such as cutlery, plates and straws. He first moved from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong in 2010 with his wife – “Laura always wanted to return to Hong Kong and I was happy for a new experience” – having completed four years of training at ski resorts in the French Alps. “I spent my days snowboarding and learning to cook,” he says.
Taking away the dairy and meat [in food] forces the chef to understand the remaining ingredients better, [which leads] to the challenge of creating interesting dishes, flavour combinations and textures without hiding behind meat
“When I arrived in Hong Kong, I started working as a private chef cooking for visiting Hollywood celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue, Keanu Reeves, Chris Hemsworth, Jessie J, and also cooking at dinner party events for Hong Kong clients.