A YOUNG chef will be taking over the kitchen of a Darwen restaurant for an evening - just three months into the job.

Andrew Armstrong, 22, is devising the menu, ordering ingredients and cooking the food for about 40 diners at MJs restaurant, at the Whitehall Hotel, Ross Street, on July 12.

Andrew has produced a three-course menu and canapes all made from ingredients bought within Lancashire for £15 a head.

He is one of five young chefs taking part in the Lancashire Hot Shots challenge championed by Lancashire and Blackpool Tourist Board.

The board has designated 2008 'Taste Lancashire 08 - The Year of Food and Drink' so are working to promote the profession as a career and showcase the rising stars working Lancashire's hotels and restaurants.

Andrew said: "I'm going to be organising everything. It's going to be my night.

"I'm excited about it and I'm a bit nervous as well.

"The cooking is hard because there's a lot of pressure with it.

"You don't just cook. You have to order the food and clean your fridges as well, and we have got to prepare and write our menus and do the costings."

Restaurants across the county were invited to permit their young chefs to take over their kitchen for a night.

And Andrew, whose favourite celebrity chef is Gary Rhodes, is the first of five to take up the challenge.

His menu includes potted Ribble Valley trout, Morecambe Bay shrimps and roast loin of Bowland lamb.

Accrington-based Andrew trained at Accrington and Rossendale College where he was voted College Student of the Year for two years running.

He was also a finalist in the North West Student of the Year Award 2004 organised by North West Fine Foods.

Before he came to MJs, he worked at the five-star Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire for two-and-a-half years.

He said: "There's a lot of work involved with it but I would definitely recommend it as a career."