Episode 1 MasterChef: The Professionals: Michel's Classics

Only an elite group of chefs holds two Michelin stars.

Michel Roux Jr is one of them.

One lamb, two fish gone.

THEY CHEER

He has given us a taste of how to create the great classics.

Tonight is the masterclass.

I was destined to be a chef.

My mother went into labour whilst helping my father do the cooking.

I was almost born in a kitchen.

It wasn't just my father doing the cooking at home,

my mother is a fantastic chef in her own right.

My understanding of the classics really stems from my childhood.

This classic is a pate de poisson, a fish pate or fish terrine.

We are used to seeing on menus terrines

and pates made out of pork or liver,

but this one is made out of fish, actually out of whiting and of sole.

You can use most fish to make a fish terrine,

but best not to use an oily fish such as mackerel or sardine,

because the oil will mean that the fish pate isn't holding properly, it'll split.

First job is to prepare our fish.

So we have a very big Dover sole here,

which I am going to take the fillets off.

Next step - to make the mousse.

So I've got my whiting fillets. I need three egg whites,

and we're going to puree that up.

It's very important not to over-blend this,

because otherwise you're going to heat up the fish

and may even cook it, so it's just to a puree.

Now...comes the hard work.

There are not many restaurants that put fish terrines on the menu

because the simple fact that it is so labour-intensive.

I think it's a skill that's dying out.

Now that all the fish has been passed through the sieve,

we're going to make the mousse.

The cream is going to give it texture and it'll make it nice and light.

A touch more cream and we're there.

In French, the measure "a touch more cream" is about half a litre.

That is the right consistency.

Very smooth, but it's got that elastic hold to it.

So the proteins are still working.

So now I'm going to divide the mousse in two

and I'm going to keep one half white,

and the other one I'm going to make green.

So, I'm going to be colouring the mousse with some chlorophyll,

some natural, green food colouring.

I'm using curly parsley and watercress.

I'm going to add a little bit of water to this,

just enough to moisten it, and then blitz it up, puree it up.

So, we've now got our green water.

The idea is to bring it up to about 86 degrees

and the chlorophyll will naturally rise to the top

and you need to catch it then.

This is a skill I learned with my father and uncle.

And I doubt very much

if there are any chefs out there, or very few chefs, that still do this.

It's so much easier just to buy a bottle of green food colouring,

but this is natural and it has wonderful, wonderful flavour.

Very carefully...

ladling it out and getting it to drain.

As you can see, it's lovely and smooth, dry,

full of flavour.

And that's going to give that lovely, vibrant green colour to the mousse.

Now there's a good layer of butter on this terrine,

and we're going to line it with spinach.

And we're just going to dip it into boiling water.

First of all to make it more pliable,

and secondly, it retains its colour.

The aim is to have the terrine completely lined with this spinach

and that there are no gaps.

That's it, a beautifully-lined terrine.

Finally, we just need to cover it with the spinach

and make sure it is totally encased.

We cover it with foil

and pour some hot water into the roasting dish

to start the cooking process, and it goes into the oven.

Medium heat, not too hot.

If it's too hot, the mousse is going to puff up like a souffle

and then collapse.

So it needs to cook slowly and gently for about two hours,

and then put in the fridge to set for about six to eight hours.

Because otherwise you would never be able to cut it.

That's nice.

That's lovely. The mousse is really smooth.

The roulade is there, different colours.

Very nice.

There you have it. Pate de poisson. Fish terrine.

An absolutely glorious dish, one that just screams out "eat me!"

A lot of hard work, but a true reward.

This dish is a Oeuf Froid Careme.

It's a Roux classic.

An artichoke heart filled with smoked salmon, a perfect poached egg,

covered with another slice of smoked salmon

but I'm also serving it with freshly-made blinis.

This recipe was created by Antoine Careme himself,

a famous chef of the 1800s.

I love cooking it, but above all, I love eating it.

The first job, most important, is to make the blinis.

The yeast needs time to rise and to work its magic.

So we need milk, just warm.

If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast. And a little bit of flour.

Put this here in a warm place to rise for about 20 minutes.

Turning vegetables is about giving a beautiful shape to the vegetable

and in this instance, artichokes - I want a nice round artichoke heart.

Remove a few of the exterior leaves

to make it easier to turn.

We then...

peel off or turn the hard exterior

to reveal a beautiful heart.

I have cooked this dish many a time for banquets.

I remember one particular banquet I had to turn 1,000 artichokes,

and every one had to be perfect.

This should take about 15 minutes to cook.

So, next, the mayonnaise.

So, Dijon mustard. Egg yolk.

A squeeze of lemon.

Seasoning. And the veg oil.

And I like to add just a drop of chilli, of bite to it.

And, just to make it very rich and special, a spoonful of cream.

Now for the smoked salmon.

For the seasoning, some of the mayonnaise.

But just enough to bind it all together.

And a perfectly chopped chive.

I'm also going to add a little bit of truffle.

This is an extravagance, but it's worthy of the dish.

Careme cooked this dish for royalty.

So it has to be something special.

Now, a little drop of brandy,

just that little bit extra to give a kick, give a bite to this dish.

Next step is to poach the eggs.

The real way is in water with a drop of vinegar.

The shape of the poached egg is very important.

It has to have that lovely rounded edge to it.

The yolk is still runny and the whites has set

and immediately into iced water.

Next job is to add the remaining ingredients to the blinis.

You can tell it's ready, mainly from the smell

and there are a few little bubbles there.

Flour.

We put the egg yolks into the batter mix.

And the egg whites, we are going to whisk up

and fold in the very last second.

That is going to give us a blini that is incredibly light.

There we go.

Now we need to cook them.

It's a matter of seconds.

You can see those beautiful bubbles, which means it's light and airy.

The final step is to finish the artichoke.

For that, we need to remove these leaves here,

which are totally inedible,

to reveal what is the choke, which is not nice to eat.

There we go.

A perfect shape, perfectly cooked.

There we have it, the Oeuf Froid Careme.

A 150 years old recipe.

But still fit for a king.

As a chef, I hate wastage and I do feel very strongly

that every part of the animal should be used

and that's why my next recipe is monkfish liver,

which, sadly, very often is thrown away.

Monkfish liver is extremely versatile.

It's used in an array of different styles of cooking - hot or cold.

The three elements to this dish are a hot pan-seared monkfish liver,

ballantine and a pate.

Fish liver certainly isn't fashionable but in France and Spain,

it is revered, it is a delicacy.

First job is to make the ballantine.

We do that first because it needs to chill down,

otherwise you won't be able to cut it properly.

Remove the sinews and the little veins that run through it.

Add a little bit of nutmeg.

Next step, we're going to shape our ballotines.

Just adding a little piece of string there to make sure it is

really, really tight, because I want the ballotine to hold together.

There we go.

And it should take about eight minutes to cook.

Next step is the monkfish liver pate. We need shallots.

The shallots go into a pan and onto the heat.

Fish liver goes in.

Mmm!

A liver pate that tastes of the sea. Quite, quite extraordinary.

I first came across monkfish liver

when I was working at Alain Chapel in Lyon,

and he used to just pan-fry it

and serve it with a red wine reduction sauce.

And it was truly great. A dish that used to outsell all the others.

But it was a revelation for me, having never seen it before.

Puree it up. Nice and smooth.

That's it.

The monkfish liver pate is quite liquid,

so it needs to go into the blast chiller to set.

With that, we can put the ballotine, which is now cooked.

The ballotine, I'm going to serve with a little leek salad.

Whilst I've got the leek, I'll prepare some juliennes to deep-fry.

If the oil is too hot, the leek will burn before it has time to cook.

So it's nice and green, it's kept its colour, it's nice and crispy.

It looks beautiful.

So now I need to get the chutney ready.

The chutney is the garnish for the liver pate.

Important to get the right balance of sweet, sour and salty.

For the pan-seared monkfish liver,

I want to serve a sweet-and-sour red wine sauce.

We boil that down until it becomes a really sticky sauce consistency.

Our red wine reduction sauce is ready.

It's very important to get it just when it's silky and syrupy.

If you take it any further than this, it'll go bitter.

Final step is to get our little slice of liver, and into the pan.

It should be cooked medium-rare.

Just by feeling it, we can see it's got a spongy texture,

and that's just about done. There.

Now, all that's left is to dress the plate.

And here we have it - my trio of monkfish liver.

Pan-seared...

ballotine...

and a pate.

This dish is riz de veau braise au safran -

"sweetbreads braised in saffron".

This particular recipe is an all-time favourite of mine and my sister.

We loved as kids when Mum was cooking it. It was a real treat.

We could smell this bubbling away as we came back from school.

It was really the most glorious occasion.

Even now, I still request my mum to cook this dish for us,

because it is so special and it means so much.

It's going back down memory lane,

and those flavours and senses are so warm.

First step is to take the sweetbreads and to blanch them.

So, put them into cold water, squeeze of lemon juice, seasoning,

and bring it up to a simmer for about seven minutes.

I'm going to serve the sweetbreads with some fresh pasta.

So here we have it.

You can see it's stretchy, make it into a lovely ball,

wrap in clingfilm

and put in the fridge for about ten to 15 minutes just to rest.

My mother's cooking was steeped in the classics -

in French, great, traditional food,

and that's where I learnt the basics of French cuisine.

Now we need to braise the sweetbreads

and make the beautiful saffron sauce to go with it.

I've given them a crunchy exterior, and they're soft and tender inside.

Once we've got this lovely golden colour,

we take them out of the pan

and we're going to make the sauce in the same pan.

Shallots and carrots.

And a little bit of fresh butter.

Once the shallots and carrots have sweated down so they've gone soft,

we add a very generous pinch of saffron.

This beautiful, fragrant and very, very expensive spice.

Deglaze. Generous amount of this sweet white wine.

So that's now a lovely golden colour.

The saffron has done its job and coloured the base of the sauce.

And I like to leave all that in the sauce. And Mum used to as well.

It wasn't fancy, we didn't used to press the sauce through a fine sieve.

This is homely cooking, but with expensive ingredients, for a treat.

We need to add a little bit of chicken stock to this.

That has to be reduced down again and that intensifies the flavours,

and then at the end, just a dash of cream.

The sauce is simmering away, and now,

put sweetbreads back in there just to braise in that sauce

and get them nice and coated in the rich, creamy saffron.

Mm, gosh, that smells good.

The pasta dough has rested now, so we're going to roll it out.

Lovely. That's nice.

There we have it.

It's so easy with the machine,

but I remember Mum doing it all by hand, including the cutting.

That's going to go into boiling water.

For the garnish, I'm going to be using some baby turnips

and some green and yellow courgettes.

I hope my mum would approve, because she only used to give us pasta.

I think a few vegetables with this will maybe enhance this dish.

Sweetbreads are piping hot,

the sauce has gone down to a lovely consistency.

At home, it was put in a big bowl with the steaming pasta and sauce,

and that was it.

I'm going to make it look a little bit more sophisticated than that.

I'm sure Mum wouldn't mind.

I'm salivating just dressing this up. Mmm!

And there we have it.

Braised sweetbreads, just like my mum used to make.

This is such a simple recipe - beignets a la creme.

These fritters are basically a cream that have been deep-fried.

So they have a crispy exterior

and a lovely, unctuous, creamy, soft centre.

We see beignets and fritters in all the great patisseries in France,

especially up in the mountains on the ski-slopes.

They're a wonderful treat to come back to.

But only the best ones, and not greasy and heavy,

and only the best ones, I think, have got that soft, creamy centre.

First job to do is the creme patissiere

because that needs time not only to cook, but to set.

So first off, the milk on to boil with your choice of flavouring.

For me, I love the flavour of vanilla.

Next step, a classic creme patissiere.

Egg yolks and a whole egg.

Mixed with sugar then the flour.

We're then going to put the milk on top of this.

The boiling milk.

It's very important that this has got to boil

and you must mix it thoroughly,

otherwise it will never get to the right consistency.

That's what we're looking for.

It's a very thick creme patissiere,

so now we have to work very quickly before it sets.

This must go into a blast chiller so as to set before we cut it.

Next step, the tempura batter.

Flour, cornflour and a little bit of baking powder

just to give it that extra lift.

This tempura batter is what's going to encase our cream

and give it that lovely, crisp exterior.

Now, we have to hope that our cream has set on time.

This is set. It's cold, it should come out quite easily.

We want to cut them into the shapes before the cream melts.

Now we need to deep-fry them.

We want them to be nice and crispy on the outside,

and a touch of colour but not too much.

They should only take a matter of 30 seconds to a minute, and no more.

That's crispy.

Mmm, perfect. There we go.

Here we have it, beignets a la creme. Cream fritters.

Beautiful and refined.

The classics are there for a reason,

because they've stood the test of time.

They are beautiful. They are the essence of gastronomy.

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