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Authors: Marco Pierre White
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inspiring. It’s the sort of thing that made me realize the Box Tree bunch were passionate. Money—what the hell? If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly. And he wasn’t just referring to the dishes when he talked about the desired effect. Malcolm and Colin would spend, spend, spend in their quest to create the desired effect in the dining room. Malcolm might nip out to buy a newspaper and return with a £500 painting. As a lad from Lingfield Mount, I had never seen such extravagance, but this sort of spending taught me that creating a good restaurant requires thinking just as much about what goes on the wall as about what goes on the plate.
They never took inventory and they never did percentages, which would really alarm today’s chefs, who have a knife in one hand and a calculator in the other. Malcolm and Colin would just say, “Three courses with English turbot. That’ll be twenty quid.” Costs were never taken into consideration.
I worked on Hors D’Oeuvres and then was put onto Veg for about three months. Then Michael got me to help doing meat and fish main courses, so that Michael and his number two, Steve, were the front line and I was the backup. I already had the speed, thanks to my spell at the George.
It was while I was at the Box Tree that I discovered a truly inspirational book, Ma Gastronomie , written by the great French chef Fernand Point. It was not so much the recipes but the stories about the man and his philosophy that “perfection is lots of little things done well.” His words did more than simply stick in my mind; they became my philosophy.
Perfection was an important rule of the Box Tree kitchen. At the George food had been mass-produced, a bit rushed, but here I learned that you had to take your time to get everything just right. I realized that I had to stay focused on precisely what I was doing at that moment. Whatever we did, we had to do beautifully. When we made coq au vin, the chicken was marinated the day before cooking; red burgundy, the traditional wine for this dish, was replaced with claret, which is more full-bodied and therefore adds more depth to the final taste; button mushrooms, again a traditional garnish for coq au vin, were swapped for the flavorsome girolles. If an armagnac was used for the lobster sauce, or white wine used for a fish sauce, it was the best armagnac or the best white wine.
If I was cooking green beans, I’d do them in small amounts in separate pans.
----
If you’re cooking green vegetables, you might think it’s acceptable to throw the whole lot into a pan of boiling water. But you’re going to create a problem. The water immediately stops boiling, and now that the water is not so hot, the green pigment, chlorophyll, is killed off and the vegetable loses its brightness. Whereas cooking a small quantity of vegetables will keep the water at a boiling point and the vegetables will end up on the plate looking vibrant—and green.
----
After I’d worked on Meats and Fish, Michael put me in charge of Pastry and I was given a week to learn the craft. A lot of the best chefs have done Pastry, Michel Roux of the Waterside Inn among them. Why is Pastry so important? Because it is all about science, and the knowledge of culinary science is vital. A precise measurement of that ingredient mixed with a certain amount of that ingredient produces this result. It’s chemistry.
I beavered away, practicing dishes like Sorbet Poire Genet, a delicious ball of pear sorbet decorated with a little slice of fanned poached pear, a mint leaf and a drizzle of pear liqueur. It was served in a pearshaped glass bowl, the top of which was removed by the customer to reveal the sorbet inside. The pink grapefruit sorbet was another beauty. If you make pink grapefruit sorbet, it will turn white, so we added a touch of grenadine to give it that pink tinge. The Box Tree menu would change every day and I would build the pudding menu out of about thirty dishes.
If I
They never took inventory and they never did percentages, which would really alarm today’s chefs, who have a knife in one hand and a calculator in the other. Malcolm and Colin would just say, “Three courses with English turbot. That’ll be twenty quid.” Costs were never taken into consideration.
I worked on Hors D’Oeuvres and then was put onto Veg for about three months. Then Michael got me to help doing meat and fish main courses, so that Michael and his number two, Steve, were the front line and I was the backup. I already had the speed, thanks to my spell at the George.
It was while I was at the Box Tree that I discovered a truly inspirational book, Ma Gastronomie , written by the great French chef Fernand Point. It was not so much the recipes but the stories about the man and his philosophy that “perfection is lots of little things done well.” His words did more than simply stick in my mind; they became my philosophy.
Perfection was an important rule of the Box Tree kitchen. At the George food had been mass-produced, a bit rushed, but here I learned that you had to take your time to get everything just right. I realized that I had to stay focused on precisely what I was doing at that moment. Whatever we did, we had to do beautifully. When we made coq au vin, the chicken was marinated the day before cooking; red burgundy, the traditional wine for this dish, was replaced with claret, which is more full-bodied and therefore adds more depth to the final taste; button mushrooms, again a traditional garnish for coq au vin, were swapped for the flavorsome girolles. If an armagnac was used for the lobster sauce, or white wine used for a fish sauce, it was the best armagnac or the best white wine.
If I was cooking green beans, I’d do them in small amounts in separate pans.
----
If you’re cooking green vegetables, you might think it’s acceptable to throw the whole lot into a pan of boiling water. But you’re going to create a problem. The water immediately stops boiling, and now that the water is not so hot, the green pigment, chlorophyll, is killed off and the vegetable loses its brightness. Whereas cooking a small quantity of vegetables will keep the water at a boiling point and the vegetables will end up on the plate looking vibrant—and green.
----
After I’d worked on Meats and Fish, Michael put me in charge of Pastry and I was given a week to learn the craft. A lot of the best chefs have done Pastry, Michel Roux of the Waterside Inn among them. Why is Pastry so important? Because it is all about science, and the knowledge of culinary science is vital. A precise measurement of that ingredient mixed with a certain amount of that ingredient produces this result. It’s chemistry.
I beavered away, practicing dishes like Sorbet Poire Genet, a delicious ball of pear sorbet decorated with a little slice of fanned poached pear, a mint leaf and a drizzle of pear liqueur. It was served in a pearshaped glass bowl, the top of which was removed by the customer to reveal the sorbet inside. The pink grapefruit sorbet was another beauty. If you make pink grapefruit sorbet, it will turn white, so we added a touch of grenadine to give it that pink tinge. The Box Tree menu would change every day and I would build the pudding menu out of about thirty dishes.
If I
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