Cook What You Love: Steve Munkley MBE on What It Really Takes to Win Care Chef of the Year

Eat Your Food as Medicine: Anwar Kajee on Staff Retention, AI Monitoring, and Running Hospitality Across 50 Care Homes

Eat Your Food as Medicine: Anwar Kajee on Staff Retention, AI Monitoring, and Running Hospitality Across 50 Care Homes Anwar Kajee. has spent 30 years in the care sector and 15 of them with Country Courts — watching it grow from 15 homes to 50, each one pushing the standard of environment and food a little higher. In this episode, recorded at a brand-new care home in Somerset on the week it opened, he talks AI infrared monitoring, the retention strategy that keeps chefs past the two-year mark, and why the menu belongs to the residents, not the kitchen. SHOW NOTES This episode was recorded in a brand-new care home in Mere, Somerset — opened in January 2026 after an 18-month build, and still finding its feet when Rob Spence sat down with Anwar Kajee, Hospitality Director at Country Courts. The setting felt appropriate. Country Courts has been on a long arc of growth — from 15 to 20 homes when Anwar joined 15 years ago, and every new building represents a further step in the same direction: quality environments that demand quality food to match. Anwar came to the conversation ready to answer James Brown's question from the previous episode — what is the most innovative introduction to food in the care sector in the last two or three years? His answer was immediate: the AI infrared monitoring system Country Courts has installed across its homes. Not a camera. A thermal sensor that watches over residents through the night, detecting movement, monitoring sleep quality, flagging falls in real time. The data feeds to a central platform that staff and families can access. It's already changing how teams respond, and Anwar sees the next step clearly — using the same technology to track nutritional intake, flagging when a resident's eating patterns shift before a clinical problem develops. Food and tech, quietly converging. The conversation turns to staffing, which Anwar approaches with the directness of someone who has spent long enough in the sector to know where the real losses happen. The two-year mark, he says, is the inflection point: get a chef to two years and you're likely to keep them. The challenge is the first six months — a period of high risk where the wrong induction, the wrong culture, or simply the wrong sense of being seen can send someone back out the door. Country Courts surveys every new employee at six, twelve, and eighteen months. Not as a tick-box exercise, but as a listening mechanism. The induction itself, Anwar is emphatic, must be exceptional: welcoming, clear, and designed to make someone feel they've arrived somewhere worth staying. Chef ownership helps too — at Country Courts, chefs hold their own budget through a declining balance system, negotiating directly with suppliers, building a stake in the outcomes they're managing. That ownership extends to the menu. Resident consultation isn't a formality here — it's the starting point. Menus are built around what residents actually want to eat, reflect a multicultural population whose tastes don't fit a shepherd's pie default, and are plated in the kitchen rather than served from a trolley. The direction of travel is high-end: Anwar wants his homes to feel like quality hotels, and the food to carry that same signal. He quotes Steve Jobs — "eat your food as medicine, or you'll be eating your medicine as food" — and means it practically, not as decoration. Subscribe wherever you listen — and if you're thinking about how food and technology might work together in your setting, this one's a good place to start. A massive thank you to our Sponsors: Unilever Food Solutions [http://ufs.com/care] allmanhall [https://allmanhall.co.uk/] Powered by Paragon Creative Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/6647634e56d2d80012f725da/shows/69c14ab962f6c66afea75b01/www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks

A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks James Brown grew up in Cornwall collecting lobsters from the harbour and running them up to the kitchen. He's since worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, overseen multi-site chains, and is now Group Executive Chef for UK and Ireland at Unilever Food Solutions — travelling to China, New York and Singapore to research global food trends, and judging competitions from Ireland to the NACC Care Chef of the Year. In this episode he talks about what makes care catering harder than any other sector, what separates a great competition entry from an average one, and why if you're on the fence about entering, you should just go for it. SHOW NOTES James Brown started cooking because his mum was at work and he needed money during the school summer holidays in Cornwall. He got the bug, started skipping lessons for shifts, went to catering college, and built a career that took him from a brasserie and grill by the harbour through Michelin-starred kitchens, high-volume casual dining groups, and eventually a role at Restaurant Associates overseeing Citibank's UK and Ireland operations for Compass. Then a new baby, a move to the countryside, and an opportunity at Unilever Food Solutions that finally made sense of everything he'd done before. In this episode, host Rob Spence asks James what it's actually like to come into the care sector fresh — with no preconceptions but also no knowledge. His answer is honest and generous. He expected it to be simpler. What he found was that the demands placed on a care chef are phenomenally harder than anything he'd imagined: dietary requirements, modified textures, dysphagia diets, choking hazards, shrinking appetites, the need to pack calories into every mouthful. Chefs often working alone. And all of that alongside producing food that's genuinely delicious, culturally relevant, and increasingly reflective of a multicultural resident population that's starting to want authentic regional curries, not just shepherd's pie. It's that complexity, he says, that makes the Care Chef of the Year stand out as a competition. These chefs have to think about whether a dish can be purified without losing its identity, whether the provenance and sustainability of an ingredient holds up, whether the flavour will land for someone whose taste buds have diminished with age. And they think about all of that instinctively — it's ingrained. James finds himself learning as a judge every time. His judging advice to anyone entering is borrowed from fashion: a dish isn't finished when there's nothing more to add, it's finished when there's nothing left to take away. Everything on the plate must earn its place. And his encouragement to anyone sitting on the fence is simple — you're not really competing against anyone else. If you go in with a view to competing with yourself, you can't lose. You'll come out more organised, sharper under pressure, and part of a community that will stay with you. Subscribe wherever you listen — and if you're still umming and ahhing about entering the Care Chef of the Year, consider this your nudge. To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/ [https://www.thenacc.co.uk/] A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year: Unilever Food Solutions [http://ufs.com/care] Lockhart Catering Equipment [https://www.lockhart.co.uk] Rational [https://www.rational-online.com/en_gb/home/] Procurement for Care [https://www.procurementforcare.co.uk/] The Worshipful Company of Cooks [https://www.cooks.org.uk/] Powered by Paragon Creative Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/6647634e56d2d80012f725da/shows/69c14ab962f6c66afea75b01/www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Simple, Well-Cooked Food Will Never Go Wrong: Marcus Appleton on Waste, Sustainability, and What the Judges Are Really Looking At

Simple, Well-Cooked Food Will Never Go Wrong: Marcus Appleton on Waste, Sustainability, and What the Judges Are Really Looking At Most judges are watching the plate. Marcus Appleton is watching the bin. As waste management and sustainability judge for the NACC Care Chef of the Year — and a man who spent 37 years in the armed forces before becoming Deputy CEO of a 280-room hotel for veterans — Marcus brings a perspective on competition cookery that no one else in the building shares. In this episode he talks bins, budgets, seasonality, and why simple well-cooked food will beat a saffron-laced showstopper every time. SHOW NOTES Marcus Appleton joined the armed forces at school intending to stay a couple of years. Thirty-seven years later he left — having trained as a chef, moved into procurement and performance management, and eventually run the Union Jack Club in London, a 280-room hotel for veterans and serving members. He turned sixty around the time COVID arrived, stepped back from the role, and turned his attention to the Worshipful Company of Cooks, one of the City of London's oldest livery companies, whose roots go back to 1482 and whose mission — supporting the craft, developing the next generation, looking after those who fall on hard times — maps almost exactly onto what drives Marcus personally. He's now their smallest livery company, 75 members strong, and quietly one of the most active forces for good in the UK culinary world, funding everything from student raised beds in North London colleges to chef's jackets for the crew of HMS Duncan. In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Marcus about his role as the sustainability and waste judge for the Care Chef of the Year — and what emerges is a masterclass in thinking about food differently. Marcus doesn't watch the plate. He lifts the bin lid. He's looking for whether a chef understands the basics well enough to use everything: the fish skin and bones for stock, the vegetable peelings that could be roasted off, the excess that shouldn't exist if the menu was planned properly. He's clear that you can serve a maximum of four portions and plate your best three — anything more is wasteful, and anything hidden under a kitchen roll has been found before. But the stories he tells about competitors who came back a second year and met him with "you can check the bins anytime you want, boss" say everything about what the competition is actually for. On seasonality, budget and sustainability, Marcus is equally direct. Saffron in every dish blows your budget and tells him you haven't thought. Out-of-season produce costs more, arrives suboptimal, and shows a lack of imagination. Venison is sustainable and underused. Rabbit is everywhere and nobody buys it. Coffee grounds grow mushrooms at Blenheim Palace. Two care homes last year brought their own home-grown vegetables and herbs to the competition. Things are moving, slowly, in the right direction. His advice to anyone entering: play to your strengths, keep it simple, practice until things go wrong so you know how to fix them, and always build in fudge time. "Simple, well-cooked food will never go wrong," he says. "You can put a little bit of panache on it — but don't put yourself in jeopardy." Subscribe wherever you listen — and maybe have a look in your own bin before you do. To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/ [https://www.thenacc.co.uk/] A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year: Unilever Food Solutions [http://ufs.com/care] Lockhart Catering Equipment [https://www.lockhart.co.uk] Rational [https://www.rational-online.com/en_gb/home/] Procurement for Care [https://www.procurementforcare.co.uk/] The Worshipful Company of Cooks [https://www.cooks.org.uk/] Powered by Paragon Creative Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/6647634e56d2d80012f725da/shows/69c14ab962f6c66afea75b01/www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Food Is So Much More Than the Nutrition It Contains: Alison Smith on Judging Nutrition in a Competition Kitchen

Food Is So Much More Than the Nutrition It Contains: Alison Smith on Judging Nutrition in a Competition Kitchen What does the nutrition judge actually look for when a care chef's dish lands in front of her? In this episode, Rob Spence sits down with Alison Smith, dietitian and nutritional judge for the NACC Care Chef of the Year. Alison pulls back the curtain on the judging process — what gets competitors marked down, what makes a dish genuinely stand out, and why the dessert might be the most nutritionally important element on the plate. SHOW NOTES Alison Smith never set out to be a dietitian. At eleven she wanted to be a vet, and she held onto that plan right up until her A-level grades made it impossible. What followed was a biology degree, a postgraduate diploma in dietetics, and a career spent almost entirely in the community rather than in hospitals — much of it focused on the nutritional needs of older adults living in care homes. It's an area that most dietitians, she admits, would run away from rather than towards. Alison ran towards it. It shows. In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Alison to answer a question she's never been asked before: how do you make nutrition sexy? Her answer gets to the heart of what she believes — that food isn't just fuel, it's memory, comfort, celebration and identity, and that enjoyment is not a guilty indulgence but an essential component of good nutrition. "You can be terribly worthy and eat all the right things, but not enjoy it at all," she says. "Our psychological health is just as important as our physical health." In a care setting, where a resident might eat only a few mouthfuls of main course but clear their dessert, that philosophy has very real consequences for how a chef designs a dish. On the judging side, Alison is refreshingly direct about what she's looking for — and what competitors get wrong. She's not scanning for individual micronutrients; she's looking at the whole picture. Are all the food groups represented? Is the protein actually there — not just assumed to be there? She recounts more than one occasion where a chef has cited vegan cheese as their protein source, only for the packet to reveal almost none. She's also watching for whether chefs are aware of the BDA's Care Home Digest, the first national food-based guidelines for care home caterers, produced jointly with NACC in 2024, and how they've used it. What she finds encouraging is the direction of travel. The old advice — add butter and cream to boost nutrition — is giving way to a more nuanced understanding of nutrient density. Skimmed milk powder, Greek yogurt, eggs, nuts, cheese: ingredients that add multiple nutrients, not just calories. And increasingly, chefs who genuinely think about modified texture — not as an afterthought, but as something that can still be beautiful, still be flavourful, still mean something to the person eating it. Her advice to anyone wavering about entering is to come with an open mind and ask for the feedback. "It's very rare to find people who only come once," she says. "Mostly chefs get the bug." The ones who eventually win have usually been through it two or three times — and you can see the difference each time they return. Subscribe wherever you listen — and share with anyone who thinks nutrition is the dull bit of cooking. Alison will change your mind. To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/ [https://www.thenacc.co.uk/] A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year: Unilever Food Solutions [http://ufs.com/care] Lockhart Catering Equipment [https://www.lockhart.co.uk] Rational [https://www.rational-online.com/en_gb/home/] Procurement for Care [https://www.procurementforcare.co.uk/] The Worshipful Company of Cooks [https://www.cooks.org.uk/] Powered by Paragon Creative Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/6647634e56d2d80012f725da/shows/69c14ab962f6c66afea75b01/www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Cook What You Love: Steve Munkley MBE on What It Really Takes to Win Care Chef of the Year

"If a Judge Comes Back for a Second Mouthful, He Liked It: Steve Munkley MBE on Judging, Mentoring, and the Future of Care Catering" What do the judges actually look for — and what sends them walking away after one bite? In this episode, Rob Spence sits down with Steve Munkley MBE, Head Judge of the NACC Care Chef of the Year and Vice President of the Craft Guild of Chefs. Steve shares the inside track on the competition, the common mistakes that cost competitors marks, and why the first fifteen minutes of the final tell him almost everything he needs to know. SHOW NOTES Steve Munkley has been a chef since he was sixteen. He's cooked on the QE2, worked in Switzerland when it was the gastronomic capital of the world, and spent twenty-five years as Head Chef at the five-star Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. Earlier this year, he was awarded an MBE in the King's Honours List — not for the cooking, but for everything he's done around it: founding the Craft Guild Graduate Awards (now in its twenty-fourth year), running apprenticeship programmes, mentoring young chefs, and helping students through the Grand Cuisine Academy's online training platform. His wife says he's busier now than when he was at work. In this episode, host Rob Spence gets Steve talking about what it's like to sit on the other side of the pass. As Head Judge of the NACC Care Chef of the Year, he's candid about the mistakes he sees year after year — under-seasoned food, cold plates, dishes that try too hard — and equally candid about what makes something memorable. "If a judge comes back for a second mouthful, he liked it," he says. "If he only takes one and walks away, you haven't quite hit the back of his palate." He still talks about a Persian curry from the 2025 final, and a plate of food that could have sat in a four-rosette restaurant — both stick in the memory not because he's been reviewing notes, but because the food genuinely landed. What Steve has also brought to the competition is honesty. When he arrived five years ago, entries had dropped. He spent a year watching before making changes — introducing one-to-one feedback sessions after each round, raising the spend allowance, and removing some of the pressure around logistics. The result: entry numbers are back to where they were a decade ago. Competitors, he says, don't mind not winning — as long as they understand why, and leave with something to build on. That philosophy runs through everything he does. His advice to anyone sitting on the fence about entering is straightforward: "If you're not in it, you can't win it. Cook what you're comfortable with, cook what you enjoy, and don't put something on your entry that you're not happy with yourself — because then we won't be happy with it either." Subscribe wherever you listen — and share with a chef who needs to hear this. The National Association of Care Catering (NACC) unites, supports and represents everyone working in and associated with catering in the UK care sector. It is recognised as a respected source of information and opinion for the dynamic and growing area of care catering. For more than 30 years, it has been committed to raising standards of care catering and championing the positive impact nutrition, hydration and mealtimes have on the physical and emotional health and wellbeing of the elderly and vulnerable in care settings. To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/ [https://www.thenacc.co.uk/] A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year: Unilever Food Solutions [http://ufs.com/care] Lockhart Catering Equipment [https://www.lockhart.co.uk] Rational [https://www.rational-online.com/en_gb/home/] Procurement for Care [https://www.procurementforcare.co.uk/] The Worshipful Company of Cooks [https://www.cooks.org.uk/] Powered by Paragon Creative Studios [https://open.acast.com/networks/6647634e56d2d80012f725da/shows/69c14ab962f6c66afea75b01/www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.