Show and tell: FRIMA does the business for The Garden Chef

Compact FRIMA 112T gets around at the South of England Showground

Owned and run by husband and wife team Jeremy and Becky Cook, The Garden Chef is an outside catering company based at the South of England Showground, Ardingly, West Sussex. Covering corporate functions and conferences, dinner dances, weddings, cafes, trailer-based catering, small lunches and dinner parties, numbers can vary from twelve one day to 1000 the next. At the event, The Garden Chef prepares food from scratch using locally-sourced ingredients in the new compact FRIMA VarioCooking Center 112T.

The tabletop 112T has all the multifunction benefits of the FRIMA VarioCooking Center technology – it can boil, grill, fry, low temperature cook and deep-fry, precisely and easily, all in one unit. Measuring just 962mm wide by 800mm deep and 400mm high, it has two 14 litre pans, giving it the same capacity as its larger sibling, the VCC 112. 

“The FRIMA is so perfect for us,” says Jeremy. “It's flexibility and speed have been fantastic for saving time and making the kitchen more efficient. In one pan we can be slow cooking a wonderful beef bourguignon for a farmers’ supper while in the other we can be making a delicate crème anglaise to fill handmade sweet pastry cases for a ladies’ lunch or high tea.”

Organised by the South of England Agriculture Society, the Showground hosts the South of England Show, a countryside celebration with over 70,000 visitors in June, as well as the hugely popular spring and autumn fairs and the fabulous International Antiques Fair, which attracts buyers and vendors from all over the world. For these events The Garden Chef runs cafes throughout the day.

“We start at serving at 6am with full English breakfasts using sausages and free range eggs from a small local farm,” says Becky who does most of the cooking.  “We do it all with the FRIMA - frying the eggs, making fried bread, heating the beans, scrambling eggs and even making omlettes. The quality is such that our breakfasts are becoming legendary.

“We have had to increase our café size to cope with demand and with the FRIMA we are managing the increased business with ease.”

The South of England Showground Facilities include flexible, scalable indoor and outdoor spaces, which is why The Garden Chef wanted their FRIMA to have wheels. The catering is based in two main kitchens - a prepping one downstairs and a cafe kitchen upstairs.

“Previously the upstairs kitchen had very limited facilities with lots of food having to be prepared in the downstairs kitchen, then taken up, now we just pop our FRIMA into the lift and take it upstairs to use. This has proved hugely time saving and made our service much more efficient,” explains Jeremy.

“We’re even going to expand into doing bar snacks with the FRIMA, especially fish and chips with a Harvey's beer batter and our own delicious take on southern fried chicken. It has opened up whole new opportunities for us.”

The Garden Chef specialises in fresh British cookery and has found the FRIMA perfect for “amazing” melt-in- the-mouth casseroles and both sweet and savoury pie fillings.

“I can prep these, hit the overnight cook setting and go home. When I come back in the morning the day’s lunch is there cooked to perfection, amazing! We do a lot of shooting lunches for local estates and steak and ale pies and succulent lamb casseroles are hugely popular. With the FRIMA I can cook a week’s worth in one go.

“It's easy to use, easy to clean and with its precise, accurate temperature controls there are never any burnt pans to scrape. Apple pies and sticky toffee puddings are very popular and homemade custard is a breeze with FRIMA, no more scalded milk,” says Becky.

By making it easy to produce homemade food in large quantities, the FRIMA is helping The Garden Chef realise its ambition to make the South of England Society a real centre of excellence for homemade, locally sourced food.

Before deciding to buy the unit, The Garden Chef tried out the 112T by taking up FRIMA’s offer of a free four week trial.  “The FRIMA’s flexibility allows us to expand and develop the business,” says Jeremy. “Every day we are finding more that it can do. Now we have integrated it into our production we probably couldn't live without it!”

For information and brochures, or to come to a free Cooking Live demonstration, call FRIMA UK on 0845 680 3981, email info@frima-uk.co.uk or visit www.frima-uk.co.uk

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The Garden Chef – Apr-15

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VarioCooking Center is a registered trademark of FRIMA International 

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