Chris is the head chef at Toklas in London and fell into cooking at the age of 18 when he finished school and started helping out at street food stalls on weekends.
Picking up a side hustle as a KP in his spare time, he gradually became more immersed in kitchen culture, watching YouTube videos to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. After travelling extensively around Southeast Asia, he returned to the UK and quickly landed a job at Erchen Chang’s flagship Bao restaurant in Soho.
Thereafter he ended up at Richmond’s Petersham Nurseries, staying there from the age of 19 to 21 for his formative cooking years. His first Head Chef role was at Townsend restaurant, stepping into the shoes of chef Joe Fox to take creative reign on the menu for the first time in his life. Now settled at the helm of Toklas, Chris serves a mediterranean menu of simple dishes that let the authenticity of the ingredients shine through.
Toklas has cemented its reputation for showcasing the very best of the produce from their longstanding and trusted suppliers, with their affiliation with the Todolí Citrus Fundacio taking centre stage.
This recipe showcases the style of dishes you can expect to find on his menu.
Turbot with Clams, Leeks and Ginger Recipe
Ingredients
2 x 150g turbot portion
200g clams
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
100g ginger roughly chopped
1 bunch of baby leeks or 2 normal leeks if not available 1 bunch of agretti
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley 1 lemon
30g butter
Method
- Sweat the onion, garlic and ginger in a pan with 2 tbsp olive oil.
- Once the onions are soft add 150 ml white wine and reduce by half.
- Add 100ml fish stock and reduce by half again.
- Strain the sauce, being sure to really squeeze out all the liquid from the onions.
- Blanche the baby leeks in boiling salt water for 2-3 minutes (or 3-4 minutes for normal leeks) and set aside to cool.
- Cook the turbot however you like. We tend to grill it at Toklas but this dish works well baked or pan fried too.
- Heat up a saucepan with a lid, adding in the strained sauce and the clams. Once the clams are cooked, remove the lid and add the agretti, parsley, butter and leeks to the pan at the same time.
- Heat everything gently until the leeks are warmed through and the agretti just cooked.
- Reduce the liquid to a slight thicker consistency and finish with a little lemon juice and seasoning to taste.
- Serve by plating the clams and leeks around the fish, spooning the sauce generously over the top.
