Food Fit For A Queen

We discovered what the Queen’s favourite food is and to help celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations this week, we have included a look at food that is fit for a Queen.

Royal chef Darren McGrady cooked for the Queen at Buckingham Palace for 11 years, so he knows a thing or two about Her Majesty's diet, including her likes and dislikes.

“For a main course she loves game, things like Gaelic steak, fillet steak with a mushroom whisky sauce, especially if we did it with venison,” he says. Do have a look at the video below to see the chef preparing it.

Of course, the famous dish, created for the Coronation, is Coronation Chicken. The original dish can be found on this Coronation Luncheon menu from1953 at Le Cordon Bleu. On the menu it is described as Poulet Reine Elizabeth, which translates to Coronation Chicken. It is described as chicken, boned and coated in curry cream sauce, with, one end of each dish, a well-seasoned dressed salad of rice, green peas and pimentos.

The recipe feels a bit dated now – but it has been given a wonderful make-over by Tom Aikens. His Coronation chicken salad recipe is in some ways traditional, in other ways contemporary. In 1952, the combination of Indian flavours and chicken was seen as slightly more exotic than it is now. In Tom’s updated version, apricot jam, sliced almonds and bay leaves all make an appearance and begin with a pre-cooked roast chicken.