This is the first instalment in a series of weekly blogs, rounding up each heat of Great British Menu 2015.
On Monday the Great British Menu 2015 entered its tenth season. To round off its first decade on our screens, top chefs from around these fair isles are competing to cook at a banquet to mark one hundred years of the Women’s Institute.
The WI in its one hundred years has earned itself a place in many 
communities as a bastion of self-sufficiency, sorority, scones and summer fetes, and in order to honour this legacy the chefs must demonstrate the key values of the WI in their dishes.
We head to Scotland’s ‘wee bit hill’s and glen’s’ to kick off the first round. Fighting for a chance to represent Scotland and to proudly pin the thistle to their whites are Graham Campbell, Jimmy Lee and last year’s Jacqueline (Jak) O'Donnell, who you may remember knocked out double Michelin-starred Stevie McCloughlin but didn’t make it to the final banquet.
Stalking menacingly around the kitchen and judging the contestants is chef Michael Smith, the first Scottish chef to serve a meal at the banquet in 2006. Having been in the same position as the three contestants, the Michelin-starred Smith seems a fitting figure to score dishes and hand out criticism.
The first episode of the Scottish heats kicked off with each chef bringing their own food memories in order to craft their starters. Last year’s Jak dished up her take on soup and a sandwich, creatively titled ‘Soup and a Sandwich.’
She filled her oat and barley bread with potted mutton, which was accompanied by lamb broth served in a percolator. Though, she encountered some problems with the blast chiller, which froze instead of jellifying her lamb stock, meaning a frustrated Michael had to wait.
Jimmy chose to use his own experiences of learning to cook in his dad’s Chinese takeaway, delivering a starter of rice congee with a creamy century quail’s egg and Jerusalem artichoke crisps.
Graham, the most outwardly confident of the bunch, cooked up a savoury twist on the fete table staple the Victoria sponge using brioche and blackberry compote accompanied by a jar of smoked potted rabbit, with Michael calling his dish ‘commendable, brave cooking.’
The fish dishes of episode two also had a familial connection, as Graham wanted to go diving with his father for fresh scallops, but couldn’t due to the weather. Despite the lofty ambitions of the dishes’ title ‘Posh Nosh’ (which had already been tried and tested in his restaurant for a month and a half), the course may as well have been called ‘Fish Dish’ as it was, by Michaels judgement, too simple and straightforward for a banquet. Graham wasn’t the only chef serving scallops, Jimmy attempted to claw back some points by pairing them with langoustines.
He used a variety of ingredients to ensure his ‘Let Me Do The Dishes’ was fit for a banquet. However, this didn’t work in Jimmy’s favour as all of the chefs found the dish too messy and over complicated. Jak spoke of how traditionally the member who brought the salmon to a WI meeting was ‘the lady’ of that meeting, perhaps she hoped to borrow some of that prestige by serving salmon poached with green tea, lime, honey and ginger. 
Jak also further tried to weave the WI into her dish by making her own lemon chutney, perhaps she should have named her dish ‘Chutney and Jeru-salmon’ instead of ‘Pretty Kettle of Fish.’ The nerves of the opening courses seem to have simmered down by day three, paving the way for the chefs to approach their main courses with confidence.
Graham was attempting to take the cake again by baking more savoury cakes, aptly named ‘Not Quite Afternoon Tea’, using venison to make meatloaf carrot cakes, topped with a mashed potato butter cream. If it scored high the first time… don’t fix what isn’t broken right? Also using venison for her ‘Heard at the Gathering’, Jak created a sharing dish. Following WI tradition, she coated the venison leg with a damson jam.
Although Michael was
