RIYADH: Robert Stirrup’s culinary journey began in his family home just outside of London. In the bustling kitchen, he would carry out basic tasks to help prepare meals on the weekends, and this sparked a lifelong passion for cooking.  

Now, with more than two decades of experience behind him, including stints at five-star hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants, Stirrup is the director of culinary arts at The Ritz-Carlton Riyadh.  

Here, he discusses his favorite dish and his top tips for amateur chefs. He also shares his recipe for roasted seabass with etuvée of vegetables and herb salad. 

When you started out, what was the most common mistake you made?  

Probably one of the biggest was to keep trying to add flavors. When you’re not really sure of the different flavors and the complexity of ingredients, you keep adding things. Over time, you start to realize what will work with what. One of the big things that one of my chefs taught me, when I was 19 or 20 years old, was to actually smell and eat all the different herbs and understand what the flavors were and what you could actually pair them with. 

What’s your top tip for amateur chefs? 

Planning. If you don’t have a plan for what the dish is going to look like or be presented as, then you miss out on making a list and realizing that a lot can be done in advance. If you do a lot of the things in advance, then at the end you’re just doing the finishing touches of cooking the meat, cooking the fish, finishing the vegetables or reheating the sauces. Then you don’t put all the pressure on yourself at the last minute and panic and make a mess of it. 

What one ingredient can instantly improve any dish? 

Citrus. It can elevate so many different dishes, and there are so many different ways that you can use it. It’s not just a case of using lemon, either. You can use different herbs that have a citrus base. You can use limes. You can use yuzu. There are lots of different ways that you can revitalize a dish or bring back the freshness of a dish by adding citrus. 

What’s the most common mistake that you find in other restaurants?  

I always check how big the menu is. If I see a big menu, I always think that either the food can’t be fresh, or the team can’t be experts at making that many dishes. For me, having a smaller menu means the team is more focused, and the ingredients will be fresher because they'll rotate them properly. I also prefer restaurants that serve a particular style of cuisine, rather than trying to do everything for everyone. Also, I think you can tell a good restaurant before you go in by how busy it is. If a restaurant’s empty, I’m not going there.  

Also, from a service perspective, I always like to ask the team what they would eat. It’s so important to have a well-trained team. And it’s so difficult to find good people. But train the team so that when they’re talking to guests and explaining the menu they’re really confident with it. I went somewhere recently where they presented the dishes and didn’t explain them at all. They just said, ‘Enjoy’ and walked off. And that changed the whole experience — rather than them sharing a bit of their knowledge and their enjoyment of being there and of what they’re serving.  

What’s your favorite cuisine? 

I like the simplicity of Japanese food. You can’t hide behind anything when you’re cooking Japanese food, because it's so simple. It’s the quality of the ingredients that make the dish. 

What’s your go-to dish if you have to cook something quickly at home? 

I tend to just open the fridge and see what’s there. It’s something that always drives my wife mad. I don’t like to do big shopping trips, I prefer to buy ingredients on a regular basis, and then just see what there is. I don’t really think you need to put more than three or four ingredients together to make a dish, especially at home.  

But I think something easy that everyone enjoys is probably pasta. There are so many different dishes that you can do.  

What customer behavior most annoys you? 

I think it’s just being impolite. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s rushing, but the person who is cooking for you or greeting you or serving you? They’re also humans. It’s doesn’t cost anything to have good manners and to be polite to people. And I think you’ll have a much more enjoyable experience and they’ll have a much more enjoyable experience. Even if something’s not going right and you want to talk about it with someone, you can still be polite (about it). People suddenly become very aggressive sometimes, and I think it’s very unfair on the team who are trying their best to cook for you or to serve you. 

What’s your favorite dish to cook and why? 

I like to cook fish. It’s so versatile, whether it is sea bass, cod, snapper… anything really. Find a great piece of fish and some fresh vegetables, put them together and add some different seasoning. I always think it’s a sign of good cook if someone can cook fish well, because it’s very easy to overcook it and get it wrong. And, like I said, the less ingredients, the better.  

As a head chef, what are you like? 

I’m fairly laidback. I’m used to having very big teams; I have nearly 150 people in the team. At my last place, I had nearly 300. So, I’m a team player, an organizer who understands people. I find that to be much more effective than screaming and shouting. Occasionally, yes, you have to raise your voice to make everyone stop and listen, but very rarely. 

RECIPE

Chef Robert’s roasted seabass with etuvée of vegetables and herb salad  

Serves two 

For the seabass 

INGREDIENTS: 2 seabass fillets (180g each); 7g cumin seeds; 5g sumac; 10g dried oregano; 10g sesame seeds; salt and pepper to taste (approx. 5g each)  

INSTRUCTIONS:  

1. Toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan until aromatic. Transfer to a mortar and grind with sumac, oregano, sesame seeds, salt and pepper to make a fine powder. Set aside extra for future use.  

2. Roast the seabass fillets seasoned with the spice blend until cooked through and golden.  

For the etuvée of vegetables: 

INGREDIENTS: 1/2 large fennel bulb or 8 pieces of baby fennel, shaved or finely sliced; 1 carrot or 4 baby carrots, shaved or finely sliced; 4 baby artichokes (optional), shaved or finely sliced; 2 banana shallots, finely sliced; 2 cloves of garlic, crushed; 10 basil leaves; 4 sprigs of thyme; 100ml vegetable stock; juice of 2 lemons; 50ml extra virgin olive oil; salt and pepper to taste  

INSTRUCTIONS: 

1. Sweat the shallots in olive oil until translucent. Add the crushed garlic and cook gently.  

2. Incorporate the carrots and artichokes (if using), then add the remaining olive oil, herbs and vegetable stock.  

3. Cook slowly at medium heat, covered with a lid or cling film, for 10 minutes. Then stir in the lemon juice and adjust the seasoning.  

For the herb salad: 

Combine seasonal salad greens with 2g fresh dill, 2g fresh basil, and 2g fresh sorrel. 

ASSEMBLY: 

Plate the seabass on a bed of the etuvée vegetables. Garnish with green vegetables of your choice, such as asparagus or green beans. Accompany with your fresh herb salad.  

PARIS: Nearly a third of all adults are not doing enough physical activity, posing a growing threat to health across the world, a major study said on Wednesday.
More than 31 percent of adults — 1.8 billion people — did not get the recommended amount of physical exercise in 2022, an increase of five percentage points from 2010, according to a study by the World Health Organization and other researchers.
“Physical inactivity is a silent threat to global health, contributing significantly to the burden of chronic diseases,” said Ruediger Krech, director of the WHO’s health promotion department.
“Unfortunately the world is not going in the right direction,” he told an online press conference.
To be healthy, the WHO recommends all adults spend at least 150 minutes every week doing moderate-intensity physical activity — which can include walking, cycling or even household chores — or at least 75 minutes of more vigorous exercise, such as running or competing in sport.
A combination of the two will also get people over the line.
Not getting this level of exercise increases the risk of people developing heart disease, diabetes, some cancers as well as mental health problems, Krech said.
If current trends continue, adult inactivity levels are projected to rise to 35 percent by 2030, according to the study in The Lancet Global Health.
This would fall far short of the WHO’s goal of reducing physical inactivity by 15 percent by the end of the decade.
Fiona Bull, head of the WHO’s physical activity unit, said the research was “a wake-up call that we’re not doing enough.”

Inactivity rates varied widely between countries. For example, 66 percent of adults do not get enough physical activity in the United Arab Emirates, while the figure was under three percent in Malawi.
There was also a gender gap. Nearly 34 percent of women worldwide do not reach the activity threshold, compared to 29 percent of men.
There are “multiple causes” for activity rates declining overall, including that people are walking less, working at computers more and generally spending more leisure time looking at screens, Bull said.
During a busy few months of world sport which includes the Olympics and the European and Copa America football championships, Krech reminded people that “watching sports does not equal being physically active.”
“Don’t just sit on (your) chairs, get up and be active — every step counts,” he said.
The WHO emphasized that changing individual behavior is not enough, calling on countries to promote physical activity by boosting community sport as well as walking, cycling and public transport.
For the study, billed as the most comprehensive to look at the subject yet, an international team of researchers combined the findings from more than 500 studies involving 5.7 million people across 163 countries and territories.
It was not all bad news.
Almost half of the countries had made progress over the last decade, and 22 are on track to reach the 2030 target — as long as they keep moving in the right direction.