The Four Musketeers Disband

The Four Musketeers have finally disbanded after all these years. six to be exact. One of the most amazing teams in food, friendship and comaradery, it will be extremely difficult for any of us to ever relive or attain any where near the force that our combined cooking genius and skill attained.

They say that "self praise is no praise at all," but as usual this saying is quite the crock of the proverbal, working where we did, I can only state, that, " if you don't praise yourself, then ain't no one else going have the decency to do so, especially when you all agree at how fine the cuisine is."

All good things though, do come to an end, and as we all depart for different shores, it is done with a heavy heart. We will all flourish in our new positions, we shall all stay in touch and we will all move on in life, but inside us all, we will undoubtedly all continue to look back at our past 6 years together as one of the fonder memories of our culinary careers.

Another perspective of the Four Musketeers can be read here by our esteemed Executive Chef, Paul Britton's blog (http://paulbritton.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html)

Whims of Fancy - Plated Desserts

For the pastrychef there can be no greater fun than the plated dessert.
Like no time in the past thousand years have we seen such artistry in plated concepts than the past decade thanks to the likes of Heston Blummenthal and Ferran Adria, Pierre Herme and so on. Their philosophies and concepts make us all relook at visions, taste, texture and presentation.
As a close friend, mentor, Executive Chef and fellow food blog enthusiast, Paul Britton stated just yesterday,"I want the picture to reflect the dish, not just be a plate of food".
 Check out his food blog for amazing photos of the savory side of life, truly amazing stuff.   (http://paulbritton.blogspot.com/)

For those of you deciding eventually or not to become pastry chefs, let me tell you what an amazing career it is and secondly tell you that the different types of pastry chefs one can be within a singular trade name is amazing.
There are those who are first and foremost dedicated to training and elevating the trade, they are often career competition entrants or cooking school teachers, lecturers etc.
In the kitchen itself, there are those who work for restaurants and elevate the trade with momentary visions of splendor in the form of Plated desserts. There are Sugar Work specialists, sugar pulled, blown, cast you name it that can work it. There are chocolate specialists, petit four specialists, friandise, petit four sec, sucre, sale, etc etc.
There are you pastry chefs who simply do production in larger factories, pastry chefs for cafes and bistros who do a little of everything and hotel pastry chefs who work the kitchen , the budget and the crew as well.

I have had the pleasure of working almost every level over 30 years. I unashamedely state that I am a production chef. I love the thrill of organising a crew to produce amazing food and love the rush of so many different things being prepared all at the same time. I specialise in multi- tasking , and love it.
In 1980's I started in restaurants making plated desserts, I moved to hotels and eventually became a lecturer and did numerous competitions, Corporate pastry chef, private pastry chef, restaurant, hotel and consultant have all been in the titles on my business cards over the years.

Still to this day I love every aspect of the industry.
Plated desserts though hold a special place in my heart though. I enjoy them and I know they will be enjoyed. 25 years ago I remember putting a piece of rosemary onto a dish as garnish because we had run out of mint. I was summarily reamed out by my Executive Chef for mixing sweet and savoury and for not thinking. Today I adore rosemary in my desserts, perhaps because of that event.

Salted caramel and rosemary tartlet with rosemary and vanilla creme chiboust with a smear of italian meringue

My desserts DO NOT feature the espumas, and the airs, the clouds of aroma and the wafts of hand picked vanilla beans picked on the left side of the highest mountain tops of Kilamanjaro by certified eunics.

Perhaps if I worked in the truly high end restaurants and houses of fine gastronomy they would, but I don't.
As I stated before I am a production pastry chef.
And whilst I know that the airs, gravels and espumas can be done for thousands, I prefer to make simple, taste amazing. Thats the old school in me. I do not suggest that the others aren't fantastic, but I spent years on ships and the majority of what I do now is to try and work out a dish that can be produced in the kitchen foremost and sent to the plating area almost complete. The plating of such dishes should be achievable in under 5 elements. Touch a plate 5 times and times this by 1000 or 2000 plates and you need a lot of hands to complete service. Simple, fast, sexy, is a mantra I subscribe to.
Like I said there are so many different types of pastry chef in the world, and this is me. I like to work nice dishes but make them achievable for thousands in the fastest time frame possible.
We all have our need, space and requirement in this industry, thats what makes Pastry so amazing. We can all do the same trade, have the same skills, yet never work on the same type of projects throughout our career.

Here are yesterdays plated desserts. I wish you could have tasted them !!

Fauborg Pave with Argmanac soaked apricots and apricot, peach, apple, raisin and white vinegar chutney

Spiced chilli chocolate ganache with chocolate fondant, caramel chocolate macaroon, onion ring and chives

Chocolate almond perspective

Caramel Chiffon tartlet with green tea and guava coulis and draped white chocolate lattice

For my friend Jason gavin, the 2011 Plate of ten Chocolates.     Ball of four chocolates(4) (Caramel chocolate mousse, brownie,dark chocolate and glaze) on a carre chocolat with puffed rice(5), three chocolate soils (8)(caramelised white chocolate, chocolate sable and spiced chilli chocolate crush) with a chocolate sauce(9) and grau de cacao tuille(10).

Lychee and Kumaradeen delice with salted white chocolate shards with caramelised white chocolate and acacia honey

Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger....Aaron Maree and Paul Britton....Same Same just different!!

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Albert Einstein

I wish Albert Einstein had been a chef. He would have awakened so much within many of us. Thankfully we can still look to him for guidance. A friend of mine has just joined the blogging world , Paul Britton, (check out his site and his food here http://paulbritton.blogspot.com/ ) we work together and chat together about food most days. 

Our years cooking together has seen both of us change and develop as chefs more completer because of the talks that we have had, many conversations nothing to do with food. Inspiration comes from the discussion not from the physical act of talking. Words, visions, ideas have all been translated into food at some stage, some successfully, some , well, we just don’t photograph. Our time together as chefs has truly been a blessing, some days teachers, some days inspirators some days students ourselves of the words we speak and try to translate into edible works of art.

Recently a mutual friend of ours, James Claire a brilliant Bahrain based writer and another theologian of the coffee hour, (Check his blog out http://thescribe-jamesclaire.blogspot.com) wrote an article about his vision of the Schrodingers Cat theorum. 

I won’t relay the whole concept (best you take a look at Paul’s blog site for that, he does it so eloquently). James wrote of how in essence we are all Schrodinger’s Cat living together on Schrodinger’s Planet to anyone living off site from our home rock. 

Paul expanding on this wrote the following.

“If you put a Chef, or team of chefs , as we always travel in packs, in a concrete room,(Kitchen) with gas, fire, electricity and water , all running at the same time in high volume for hours on end in extreme heat, under the correct circumstances one could look at the Schrodinger theory as a kitchen environment. On paper, looking in, are the chef’s alive or dead. All these elements combined are a recipe for a real life quantum entanglement.

This maybe just a chef’s perspective of over thinking a conversation over coffee, but to create good food many topics are talked about, on many levels that might spark a new creation.”

And that’s exactly the ethos and the intellectual environment in which I adore to cook. Chef’s thinking on many levels, voicing opinions and expressing themselves over coffee, lunch or merely during work hours, which makes another think, expand upon the original context and eventually transform the words, thoughts and creativity into a visual feast. To our friend James, they are but words. His mind flows with them and we love him for the freedoms he enjoys by expressing himself in the published written word (Check James Claire out at his home magazine Bahrain This Month http://www.bahrainthismonth.com/regulars/lastword.php ). My friend Paul can take a conversation about Quantum entanglement and develop it into a scenario about the kitchen and me well, I’m left to develop a dessert from our chats ,  I term it simply Entremet Erwin. (after Erwin Schrodinger of course)

ENTREMET ERWIN

You see, the cake is there, but you know someone is going to eat it soon. You see a picture of it because I made it, but at any moment you have no idea if the cake sits in my refrigerator still or has already been masticated. At anyone moment of viewing this photo the cake is both dead and alive. Until you open my refrigerator you have no idea if it is alive or dead. So it is truly Schrodinger’s cake.

But FYI…no cake has ever lasted long in my fridge…

See ya all again soon. Happy thinking leads to happy cooking !!

Birthday Cake 

Something to go with our coffee

The following pics are just todays work in the kitchen... Bon Appetite folks

Fraise Chocolat-Strawberry Gellee ,chocolate sponge, chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis

Dinner for a friend..Chocolate breton Sable, Chocolate Mousseline, blackberry geleee, Chocolate sponge.