Contender: A cut above the competition

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Young Auckland gourmet butcher Richard Sanders lost his business after being hit by a bus three years ago.

He was heading home to Kaukapakapa in June 2000, when a bus was hit by a car and catapulted across the median barrier.

It smashed into a car in which Mr Sanders was travelling, and then bounced into another vehicle, killing an occupant.

"The last thing I saw as the bus flew towards me was a big sign saying Ritchies - it was like a bullet with my name on it," recalls Mr Sanders.

He suffered multiple fractures and other injuries and was forced to sell the Helensville butchers shop he took over when he was just 21.

He worked as a barman and office assistant during his recovery, but kept honing his meat preparation skills at home.

Now, after easing himself back into part-time work in his trade, he has won the Young Butcher of the Year for 2003.

The Retail Meat Industry Training Organisation award is timely, as he has just begun working full-time again as a butcher.

Although he is not his own boss, he has found an ideal niche at the Huapai butchery of friend Adrian Boyle, who shares his passion for creating weird and wonderful sausages and arrays of other exotic meats.

Now 25, Mr Sanders has set up his own sideline business at the shop, turning hunters' game meats into small goods, trading as the Well-Hung Salami Company and happily working 13-hour days.

Venison, duck, quail and rabbit are fair game for his special salamis, blended with herbs and spices in recipes that he spent endless hours rehearsing at home while waiting for his broken body to mend.

The risque trading name reflects Mr Sanders' wicked humour and gift of the gab, which judges acknowledge helped to put him a cut above the seven other finalists in a competition which started with about 50 regional contestants.

"We were looking for much more than someone who just wants to chop up meat, for someone with a good knowledge of the trade," says training organisation chairman Maarten Loeffen.

"Richard had a very thorough theoretical as well as practical knowledge and he is a good talker, which always helps as a butcher with the customers."

As well as having an hour and a half to turn four types of meat into a host of cuts ranging from budget to gourmet fare, contestants faced a theory exam and an interview before addressing more than 200 guests at a black-tie dinner in Auckland.

Knives flashing before a discerning audience, Mr Sanders knocked out about 15 cuts in the 90 minutes, including two types of continental sausage and chicken breast stuffed with apricot, cream cheese and spicy chorizo sausage.

Mr Boyle shares his sidekick's glee over the title and has a giant silver trophy on prominent display in his shop to prove it, but not for entirely altruistic motives.

"Of course I am very proud of Ritchie, but most of all I am thrilled that it is a big kick against the supermarket guys."

Supermarkets have dominated the contest in recent years, and he says Mr Sanders' success is a victory for small butchers struggling for survival everywhere. "The supermarkets have manipulated the system in the industry, but if you go into one and ask how a piece of meat should be cooked, you are likely to be met with a blank stare."

Although meat industry leaders acknowledge that butchery is not among the most popular trades for young people these days, Mr Sanders says it came naturally to him as the son of a farmer and keen hunter.

"Dad was always coming home with different kinds of carcasses to cut up on mum's kitchen table, and I'd be there bagging up the chops."

He became an apprentice butcher in Helensville after leaving school at 15, but after finishing his training he went to Perth, where he worked night shifts for the British Sausage Company and then for an Italian salami-maker.

Even as an apprentice, he started experimenting with gourmet cuts, to counter moves by health-conscious consumers against fatty meats.

But it was in Australia where he really learned the value of a good, low-fat sausage, and the art of curing meat.

"The Italian guy was making all these fancy sausages - I didn't know what they were all about."

"Gone are the days when butchers could get away with using rubbish cuts for sausage - any sausage now has to be a meal, and not just a cheap meal."

On returning to New Zealand, and impatient to put his skills to the test on the home market, Mr Sanders bought the very shop where he had served his apprenticeship.

"The shop was booming and everything was working out when I was hit by the bus."

Instead of fulfilling his dreams, he found himself out of work and at the end of his partnership with the mother of his two young children.

"I was down at the bottom of the barrel but now I am back in business and looking forward again."

He even has a new fiancee, whom he intends marrying in her native England next year before travelling through Europe, where he hopes to pick up more trade tips during their honeymoon.

She is hardly likely to complain, given his readiness to extend his research and love of fine food to the kitchen at home.

"I do all the cooking, no matter what time I get back from work - I celebrate food and my partner, Stacey, is very happy that I cook."

But if all else fails, he can serenade her on one of his four guitars, on which he keeps his chopping fingers nimble with anything from classical pieces to the Beatles and his own compositions.

* If you know of a worthy Contender - a young, talented New Zealander with great promise - let us know. Email the Herald News Desk , write to Contender, PO Box 32, Auckland, or fax (09) 373-6421.