Push Ya'Self!

Raymond Blanc has self-deprecatingly diagnosed himself as a ‘micro-idiot’.  Far from seeking professional help he has been spreading it about without regard as to the consequences for our Great British tradition of underwhelming cuisine and hospitality.  Now we have a situation in the UK where chefs are running around obsessing over finding the best local, seasonal and sustainable ingredients for their kitchens and aspiring to produce the finest cuisine on the planet.  How on earth did we end up here?

The story of RB’s exile from France to England - he ventured to suggest a sauce would benefit from less seasoning and was brained with a sauté pan by an incandescent chef who warned him never to return - and his indisputable influence on our food culture, has by now entered the canon of British culinary heritage.  His classic French values of ‘terroir’ and regard for service, coupled with his verve, creativity and a devilish eye for the details, are what keeps LMQS fresh, relevant and very, very busy.  In this 30^th anniversary year, Le Manoir remains the place in Britain for aspiring super-chefs to receive their training and launch incredible careers.

I guess this is why RB sent me to spend a week in his famous kitchen, giving me the opportunity to see how the lovely vegetables we are growing this year in our new Heritage Garden will finish up exalted on some very happy diner’s plate.  Of course the high standards so evident in the gardens are only amplified in the kitchen. It has the feel of a gastronomic super-collider, fizzing with intense energy and emitting knockout aromas like solar flares.

Let loose on Le Manoir pass

Nonetheless I am impressed by the busy hush of the place.  With RB’s progeny numbering Marco Pierre White and John Burton Race, I had been bracing myself for a culinary Armageddon, my imagination overfed on George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’.  Happily, conditions have improved a lot since Orwell's day and later it is hard to believe the brigade are in full service because it is so quiet at the pass. The chefs are in continuous, elegant communication with each other, confirming timings, shuttling for ingredients, considering seasonings and murmuring over recipes. They were working cleanly and methodically, something for me to remember back in the garden! 

Executive Head Chef Gary Jones tells me that during their two and a half years apprenticeships the young chefs never get too comfortable before being posted to a new station.  Just the right amount of pressure is applied to keep them focused, involved and perpetually learning. 

A plaque hung above the kitchen threshold reads:

‘This is Le Manoir

Push Ya’self’

Benoit Blin, Raymond Blanc OBE, Gary Jones

RB and Gary Jones have designed a modern kitchen that accommodates around thirty chefs and a cookery school. It is a large and labyrinthine space and every surface is in constant use. Of course it is well equipped (although tasting spoons seem to dematerialize like odd socks) but this is no grand scale chemistry set. The focus here is on the integrity of the produce.

A vacuum machine, as seen on Masterchef, in which meat and veg are bagged and hermetically sealed in preparation for a gentle sous-vide bath, is perhaps the only piece of unfamiliar kitchen equipment in use. It allows fibres and proteins to relax, then fall apart and for aromatics to impart their sublime flavours.

Duck, vacuum packed with aromatics

I guess I’m a decent home cook - I can boil and scramble an egg - and so I could handle the prepping of veg, meat and seafood under the dubious watch of various Chefs de Partie. However when I was sent to help out with constructing delicate appetisers during evening service my gardener’s hands were infuriatingly locked into turnip pulling mode. Both the delicate micro-green garnishes and my ego suffered some bruising.  

Pastry was altogether another world. So much so that I am still unconvinced it even really exists! Neither can I begin to fathom what sorcery is at work that conjures such perfect and ephemeral wonders as those desserts created by Head Pastry Chef Benoit Blin and his team. 
  

Sadly I must leave that pleasure to our guests.  I’m off to visit our friends at Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library.  I'll report back next week…