Hannah Sloane began her culinary training in 2017 at Darlington College, completing NVQ Levels 2 and 3 over two years while working in a busy café kitchen in her hometown. Once she finished college, she went to work at Rockcliffe Hall in the Orangery restaurant, which gave her a first glimpse into the world of fine dining. After this, she spent a few years in the private dining side of the industry before moving to the Channel Islands, where she worked at Bohemia, her first experience of a Michelin starred kitchen. She returned to the UK and moved back to North Yorkshire, this time working at The Black Swan at Oldstead, where she has been for over two years now.

Becoming a chef

From a young age, Hannah always remembers a cooking show playing on the TV in the background, so her interest in cooking started there. She also enjoyed watching her dad cook dinner every evening and often tried to get involved. After experiencing fine dining, she became more curious and began researching techniques and trends, and her social media feed quickly reflected someone who lives and breathes food.

Culinary goals

Hannah thinks young chefs are very privileged right now due to the sheer amount of culinary career options available. She is keen to stay working in creative, busy restaurants for as long as she can and particularly loves being involved with new dish development and talking with the guests that visit.

Whilst Hannah acknowledges that being a chef can be loud, busy and hot she loves the adrenaline rush when the whole team is working together, and every dish leaves the kitchen looking beautiful and tasting even better. Hannah believes there is no better feeling than that because it confirms all the hard work is worth it.

Becoming a finalist

Hannah was really shocked to find out that she was a part of a competition of this level. It was an amazing feeling and she’s really excited to meet the other competitors and give it her best shot.

This year’s brief

Hannah thinks the ingredients being used from the sponsors this year are great. The quality of all of them is high and it has allowed her to be creative with her menu. She felt completely free to explore her creativity and knows she’s going to be working with some really great produce.

Working at The Black Swan has really helped with Hannah’s inspiration for the menu she put together. They have a fantastic kitchen garden as well as produce from their farm, so when she got the brief, she knew she’d be able to make something really tasty with some of those ingredients.

For her starter, she’ll be utilising some peas and some beautiful micro herbs, as well as some of the stock from the mussels for the base of her sauce to really complement the monkfish and keep everything rich and vibrant for this dish.

With the main course, she wanted to do something a bit different whilst still using every part of the chicken. She’s going to debone and stuff the wings with a mousse made from the leg meat. She’s creating a granola using the chicken skin and using popcorn to cover the breast, then some sweetcorn for garnish, with a pop of colour and pepper from nasturtium foam.

Her dessert will be a strawberry mousse sat on top of a lovage sweet pastry, garnished with fresh lovage and strawberries to complement each other, accompanied by a raw milk ice cream. She feels these are simple flavours that work together beautifully. Winning would be a tremendous honour for Hannah. All she’s ever wanted was to be a chef, so simply taking part is something that she’s really proud of.

Culinary role models

When reflecting on her culinary role models, Hannah would say Delia Smith as she has been a brilliant influence in the industry. For her personal growth as a chef, it would also be her executive chef, Callum Leslie, her head chef Alice Power, and her sous chef George Birtwell.

Continuously learning

Hannah loves seeing new dishes on the menu, from the start of the process to the finish, seeing it being developed to plating it for the first time before going to the customer.

Favourite dish to cook

When cooking at home, Hannah enjoys making a steak with chimichurri with some BBQ broccoli. She enjoys dishes like this for their simplicity and bold flavour. Best advice The best advice Hannah has received so far in her career is: “I can teach you how to cook but I can’t teach you to have a good attitude.”