Quarry Bank Mill chef Claire has real kitchen Styal

For the past 19 months she has been preparing top-notch food for the thousands of National Trust members who visit the historic mill.

Here she shares her top kitchen tips.

The essential ingredient in your kitchen is?

Cornflour. It is an ideal ingredient for thickening most sauces and allows us to provide a greater number of gluten free options to our customers.

First kitchen you worked in?

A family kitchen. I can’t quite remember which one I helped in first as everyone lived closely to one another.

I remember standing on a chair helping my gran and great aunt to bake; making cupcakes and putting the cherries on the top of delicious melting moments.

I remember boiling eggs for breakfast with my granddad.

Six minutes in boiling water and they were just perfect. The white fully set with a nice gooey yolk.

My dad would bring pheasants home that used to hang in our kitchen or he would go fishing for rainbow trout and I would help to gut them with my mum.

Whether it was making Sunday lunch or learning the art of preparing Chinese pork char sui, I always seemed to be involved.

Stood on a chair, mixing ingredients together, tasting things and of course helping out with the washing up. I didn’t escape that!

First professional job?

Working as a commis chef for Sutton Hall in Macclesfield. It was my first professional job when I left catering college and the first time I worked with a large team of chefs with a vast array of local, seasonal, fresh ingredients.

The menu was creative while not straying too far from traditional down-to-earth British dishes. Elements of dishes would hold special importance too.

One example of this would be the fruit cake on the cheeseboard.

It was homemade, thick with booze and fruit (like the type your gran would make at Christmas) and delivered by the same lady and her husband who had made it.

The product was handcrafted, with zero food miles, no packaging and supported a small business. I feel that this job gave me an excellent grounding for working with the National Trust and the trust food policy.

First dish you prepared for service?

Salt fish pate with cucumber, baby capers and a crisp poached egg.

Your signature dish?

Would most likely be one of my vegetarian dishes.

Either the vegetarian Scotch egg with its runny yolk and crispy outer shell served with wholegrain mustard mash and braised red cabbage or the carrot and beetroot tarte tatin with a walnut dressing, rocket salad and pea cream.

The latter is currently on our autumn menu at the Quarry Bank Mill restaurant.

Biggest kitchen disaster?

When attempting to make crème brulees for the first time.

As I hang my head in shame, I will own up to the fact that I didn’t separate the egg whites from the yolks and promptly threw the whole lot in. Not only that but I also didn’t whisk the mixture quickly enough over the bain marie.

Regardless of this I believed at the time that the hot double cream that I needed to add (all four litres of it) would rectify the problem. I poured the whole lot in.

What I aimed for was smooth, golden-coloured custards. What I ended up with was burnt, lumpy, ‘never going to set in a million years’ sugary omelettes in lots of ramekins that I then had to wash.

So the moral of the story is: Read the recipe, read it again and read it one more time just to make sure you are following it correctly!

Favourite chefs?

Raymond Blanc and Joan Roca.

Away from the restaurant your favourite meal is?

A thick homemade soup made from fresh, local, organic ingredients with a big chunk of homemade almond bread.