LAST year, Glasgow chef Jak O’Donnell beat a double Michelin-starred chef to get to the final of BBC TWO cooking contest The Great British Menu - but she lost out on a coveted place at the banquet.

Now she is back, signature pink apron dusted down and sights firmly set on winning the competition for Scotland.

ANN FOTHERINGHAM reports.

THE GREAT British Menu judges were in raptures of joy long before Glasgow chef Jak O’Donnell surrounded them with whisky fumes.

Her spectacular salmon and a sensational soup starter, plus a venison main course and clootie dumpling dessert (including whisky custard and the aforementioned 'angel's share' finishing touch), won her the Scottish heat of the BBC TWO series, which reaches its long-awaited conclusion in a week of programmes starting on October 5.

It’s the second time Jak, who runs The Sisters restaurants in Jordanhill and Kelvingrove, has appeared on the show, which this year celebrates the centenary of the Women’s Institute (known as the Women’s Rural Institute in Scotland).

Jak admits it was nerve-wracking to be in front of the television cameras again.

“I did say after last year that I’d never do it again,” she grins. “It is hard work and it is very stressful. But the WI is so up my street.

“It’s just the perfect brief for me, because my whole focus is on traditional, home-cooked food.

“The lovely ladies in my local group, in Carmunnock, are always asking me along to their meetings and I got a chance to include them in the programme which was great.

“And in the course of filming the programme, I discovered my gran had a link to the Rural in Nerston, near East Kilbride, which I never knew before.”

It was Jak’s gran, Helen Duffy, who inspired her to cook.

“With gran, the hub of the house was the kitchen, where we all sat round the table so everyone was involved,” she says.

“From being allowed to grate carrots for granny’s soup and getting to pluck the chickens that my grandpa brought home, I was in my element.

“All the other grandchildren thought I was mad: they were out playing in the park, and I was in the kitchen.”

Jak is passionate about Scottish food which, she says, she is delighted to showcase on The Great British Menu. Her recipes this year have included poached Scottish salmon, wild roe deer, clootie dumpling and whisky.

“I love Scottish food, and I still love cooking it as much as I did when I first started nearly 20 years ago,” she says, adding with a laugh: “It was obvious in the heats they didn’t get the clootie dumpling.

“But the whole thing for me is about evoking a memory. These are dishes that people remember from their childhoods. Even serving it up on the country rose crockery was designed to trigger those memories.”

Jak is remaining tight-lipped about the result of the competition, but she admits during heats week, she found it tough-going.

“I was up against two young blokes, fit as a fiddle and giving it their all and I admit, come Friday, I was feeling my age,” she smiles, ruefully. “I texted my head chef and my husband and got no sympathy from either – so I just got on with it, and I was so surprised when they announced me as the winner.”

Jak’s dishes are always beautifully presented, with imaginative designs and neat finishing touches, like touches of tartan or old-fashioned crockery cleverly tying into the brief. This, she jokes, is a miracle.

“I am hopeless when it comes to art – I am the most uncreative person in the world,” she laughs. “The kids would come home from school needing to build a solar system or a garage, and I’d just be rubbish at it.”

After her appearance on the last series of The Great British Menu, customers from all over the UK flocked to her Glasgow restaurants to try out the recipes Jak completed on the show.

“It was amazing – one man came all the way from Cornwall, and people came up from London, there was even a couple who had watched the show in Australia who came in when they were visiting Glasgow,” she marvels. “It’s really lovely – again, it’s about how the food has sparked a memory for them.

“Recently I brought a clootie dumpling home, lit the coal fire - just like granny had - dried the dumpling out that night and popped it on an old-fashioned china plate the same as my granny’s."

Jak smiles: "I sat it on an old wooden stool and shared a picture on Twitter. The amount of almost tearful comments I got in reply was amazing: it conjured up memories that meant so much to so many people.”