Baking Raymond Blanc: How to Cook Well

If you master the basic cooking techniques,

you can build your confidence, cooking skills and repertoire.

Cooking is so easy once you understand the basics.

And there's no better teacher

than legendary Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc.

I feel like Picasso! Not quite.

He wants to share what he has

learned in his professional kitchen...

What is the Maillard reaction?

Gives flavour, colour and taste to the food.

..to help you achieve incredible results at home.

That's the kind of dish you will remember all of your life.

Raymond will reveal

the secrets behind the simple techniques

at the heart of every dish.

If you go too high, you burn it.

If you go too slow, it goes beige, like English cuisine 40 years ago.

From baking to roasting, poaching to frying, barbecuing and slow-cooking.

Oh, la la. Oh, la la. And I mean, oh, la la.

And all in his own unique way.

HE SINGS IN FRENCH

Raymond Blanc taught himself to cook. Now, he will teach you.

What I promise to give you is a deep understanding

of what's happening in your saucepan, in your oven,

and these techniques will help you become a better cook.

Baking immediately brings to mind cakes, pastries, bread,

but this technique is full of surprises

and can be used for savoury dishes, too - meat, cheese, even seafood.

Baking, simply put, is cooking in an oven with dry heat

and produces extraordinarily tasty results.

Baking is a wonderful science.

And I will show you how dry heat can give beautiful colours

and flavours to so many foods

and I will show you those little miracles now.

This first recipe is a perfect, simple example of how baking works.

A single scallop baked in its own shell,

bathed in a white wine and vegetable jus.

Today, I'm going to bake these beautiful scallops.

It's a dish I borrowed from a great French chef.

It was such a beautiful recipe and, you know what, still today,

it is still beautiful, still modern,

elegant, stylish and light and delicious.

First, remove the scallops from their shells.

Place the membrane in water to wash away residue sand.

So that's going to be my little oven.

I am going to bake my scallops in that little mini-oven.

Before baking commences, make the jus the scallops will cook in.

Sweat shallots, before adding the scallop membrane,

button mushrooms and white wine.

Et voila.

Just cook it for no more than one minute.

You don't want to stew the flavours.

You want them clean, fresh. They must sing, they must be alive.

Strain the contents of the pan, leaving just the liquid.

And you must taste it.

If you knew how delicious

and simple a dish you're making in your own home...

Oh. Clean, lovely.

The white wine is lengthening vertically the flavours.

Your flavours, instead of being flat, are going like that.

It is going mm, mm, mm. All these little things sharpening here.

That's what it is.

The scallops will sit sealed within their shells

on a bed of blanched, sliced vegetables,

sprinkled with chopped chives and chervil.

You've got beautiful scallops here.

Brush the scallops with softened butter, season with salt

and pepper and spoon in the flavoursome jus.

On the side here, up. Voila.

I am creating a little microclimate here.

When I start baking my scallops, all these flavours and colours

and textures will fuse into something quite delicious.

Oh, look at that.

Wrap the shells with puff pastry.

This will seal them, preventing the jus from evaporating

and lightly steaming the scallops.

Place the shells on an aluminium nest, to keep them flat.

# C'est si bon De dormir avec toi. #

HE CHUCKLES When I was little boy of six,

I was not even allowed to sing at church, I was so bad.

And I'm still very bad. C'est la vie.

You can't be good at everything, you know?

Count your blessings, as my mum said.

Brush with beaten egg, to give a rich golden colour.

Those little ovens, these beautiful scallops,

are ready to go in the big one. Here we are.

It has been pre-heated at 200 degrees,

for 11 minutes. Ready to serve.

Serve the shells on a colourful bed of seaweed salad.

Voila. Oh.

Adam, can you please open my other scallops, please?

I feel a bit lazy now. I'm so tired, OK?

-It would be nice, a little bit of help from you sometimes!

-Sometimes?!

HE LAUGHS Just sometimes.

Voila. Et tres bien.

They are wonderful, fantastic flavours.

Very clean.

The juices are coming out of the scallop into the sauce.

Enhanced that with the fish flavour, as well.

As well as all the vegetables. It's done like a little stock.

What shall we drink with that, Adam? A little Muscadet?

You want a little something which is... A little Sauvignon blanc.

Just really fresh, clean, fragrant, vegetal, citrus, no?

-Not a beer, no?

-Beer?

A beer for Adam. Done. Beer! Ca marche!

The technique of baking food is closely related to roasting.

But where roasting uses fat,

baking relies purely on the raw ingredients

and the oven's surrounding heat,

shown in this next impressive recipe -

baked leg of lamb in a salt crust.

What I want to do now is to bake that leg of lamb in a salt

and egg-white crust.

Very beautiful and a great piece of baking.

To start, sear the lamb in a hot pan to add colour and flavour.

Make sure the lamb is at room temperature before it cooks,

to get an even bake.

Voila. Turn it. Voila.

Once seared, leave the lamb to rest for 15 minutes

and prepare the crust, by whipping egg whites with salt for one minute.

Oh, that's a lot of salt, isn't it?

When cooking, it will harden in the dry heat,

creating that lovely crust around my lamb.

That's it.

Thickly spread the salt crust on a baking tray.

Place the lamb in the middle.

Let's go. There's the lamb here.

And then completely cover, so that the steam from the meat

will be trapped within, to stop it drying out.

I'm going to plaster it with my salt and my egg-white mixture.

If you do a roast, the heat is direct.

There's a lot of contraction of the muscles.

Whereas baking, the heat is going to permeate through that crust,

gently, and will change the flavour and texture.

So make sure there is no hole.

If you have a hole,

you lose completely the control of the cooking.

I feel like Picasso! Not quite.

Voila. It's as simple as that.

OK, all you have to do now, bake it in your pre-heated oven

at 180 degrees and you cook it for 50 minutes.

Salt is perfect to create the crust.

It doesn't melt and seasons the meat as it cooks.

The crust serves purely as a cooking aid

and is discarded, once the lamb is ready.

It's beautifully crusted.

There are two stages to the cooking.

The first is baking, then there is the resting time.

The resting is part of the cooking.

The temperature will go up from 40 degrees

to 62, 63 degrees, during the resting time.

So the cooking process, effectively, goes on during the resting time.

Now, let's get the lamb. What I want to do is to really cut it open,

by cutting that part here. Just all around, to liberate...

Voila. Then you lift

and you've got your beautiful leg of lamb,

which has been perfectly baked.

Then, you can... I've never been the best carver, but I will do my best.

Voila, look at that. Look at that.

Look at that colour. It's pink right the way through.

You can see the meat is very moist.

Very luscious. Not tight. Then you've got your sauce.

Serve with a continental salsa verde or a traditional mint sauce.

And then you really have something quite beautiful

and it really shows baking at its best.

It is so tender, juicy. You don't need a knife, just a spoon will do.

So baking can transform savoury ingredients

into impeccably spectacular dishes.

But this next recipe showcases the more traditional notion of baking

deliciously sweet treats.

It is a perfectly risen hot pistachio souffle

with a rich and icy chocolate sorbet centre.

There is some kind of myth about souffles, that they are delicate,

that they are the prima donnas of the baking world.

That they are impossible to succeed.

That if you open the oven door, it will collapse.

If you breathe, it will collapse. No, go on breathing, open the oven doors

and I will show you techniques,

simple techniques, to make your perfect souffle.

Three elements in the souffle - the base, the flavour, the lifting part.

To start, warm milk in a pan.

Add sugar and vanilla puree.

The next step of the base is to create a simple creme patissiere,

which is essentially a creamy custard.

I put my egg yolk, sugar - 50 grams. I've got a whisk here.

I've got 10 grams of flour and I've got 10 grams of arrowroot.

The reason I use arrowroot or cornflour is it's a starch that is much finer.

It makes a creme patissiere which is much silkier.

OK. My milk is boiling. So, you pour it in. A little bit.

OK. And you mix.

Don't put it all - that's where you get the lumps.

Just a tiny bit, to dilute it, to mix it nicely.

Now I can add the rest of my milk.

Tres bien.

Thicken the mix over the heat, whisking constantly.

Voila.

A little bit of sugar. 10 grams of the pistachio paste.

Pistachio paste is made by simply blending

-equal measures of toasted pistachios with marzipan.

-Voila.

Now, you do your mix.

That is your base. Quite thick, not runny.

That's so important, because when you bake your souffle,

that will thicken the wall of the egg white I put in,

to make it much more viscous and much more delicious

and much more strong.

Next, egg whites for lift.

Add a squeeze of lemon and whisk.

Slowly, add the sugar and continue whisking

until the egg whites start to stiffen.

I take a third, to lighten the base. Perfect.

Gently fold in the rest of the egg whites.

This will keep in the air that makes the souffle rise as it expands.

Dust pre-buttered ramekins with grated dark chocolate

to prevent the souffle mixture sticking to the dish

and allowing it to rise.

Now, we are ready to fill up our souffles.

And I have a little trick. I am going to entrap chocolate sorbet

inside my souffle.

Place it right in the middle here.

And I find it cleaner. Clean flavours, clean, sharp. Lovely.

Tres bien.

Use your thumbnail to push the mixture away from the side.

This will help the souffle rise straight.

Dust with icing sugar to give a caramelised crust and add texture.

Sinking souffles are notorious,

but this tip will give a perfect rise every time.

At this stage of the recipe,

the souffles can be frozen for a day or two.

When ready to bake,

microwave for five seconds first, to soften the centre.

Imagine the consequences.

You are with your friends.

You've got a lovely party. You stand up

and you tell them and you make sure they listen,

"Gentlemen, ladies, my dear friends, my loved ones,

"I'm going to do my souffles."

And you just walk out.

Then you come back triumphantly ten minutes after

with your perfectly-raised souffles.

What a triumph. Then you get a serious reputation.

Then you just... Voila.

Pre-heat your oven at 180 degrees. It will take exactly 12 minutes.

Placing the ramekins on a pre-heated tray will give them instant heat

and help them rise.

Voila. Bonne chance, les enfants.

By keeping as much air in the egg whites as possible,

perfect results can be achieved every time.

Oh, la la. They are lovely.

A good souffle should be barely cooked in the middle.

Just warm. That's lovely.

That is also a wonderful illustration of baking.

It has got all the magic that you would wish for. It's all there.

The crust, the colouring, the wonderful melting quality

and then the surprise of that perfect sorbet, cooling you down.

Fantastic. You've got it all.

Oh, it was very nice.

The kitchen at Le Manoir has nurtured many chefs

who have created their own great restaurants.

-Tell me why it's lovely?

-Clean.

-Hm?

-Strong.

-Strong.

Pow! Bang! Fire! That means perfect.

Ollie Dabbous is one such talent and his Michelin-starred

Fitzrovia restaurant is famous for its freshly-baked bread.

What I was looking for in this bread was something really earthy,

really rustic. So I have this on minimum speed.

Pretty simple, actually.

A lot of people are probably scared by bread, but they shouldn't be.

There are basic techniques and if you follow them, you can't go wrong.

Bread gives the discerning diner

their first impression of a restaurant,

so it's vital to get it right.

Ollie's bread is packed with a heady collision of flavours,

by adding an assortment of seeds and hazelnuts for bite.

Add the nuts at the end,

so they don't turn to a puree. So that goes in.

Once the seeds and nuts are mixed,

the dough is folded and kept in a basket to prove.

Raymond's proud of his protege and wants to see how

he's flourished since leaving his kitchen.

And he wants to taste Ollie's famous bread.

-Shall we cook, shall we bake?

-So with a hot baking tray here.

And on the bottom, a little bit of cornmeal,

a little bit of flour, as well.

And then just...

-Voila.

-Slightly nervous, doing it in front of you.

-Oh, come on!

-OLLIE LAUGHS

-The bread goes in and...

And no water?

Er, because it's a combi oven, we've got it on steam, so it keeps

the outside of the loaf...

Initially, it gives it a moist environment,

so it doesn't harden straightaway, so you can keep expanding.

If you don't have steam at home, just put a little tray,

pour some water, some cold water and more steam.

Semi-shock. Steam comes out and that is OK.

But what is fantastic is a beautiful mystery.

You've got flour, you've got salt, you've got yeast, you've got water.

And yet, you've got only four elements

and then there are thousands of ways to mess it up,

-or do something really beautiful.

-Yeah.

I think it is that, sort of, making something

so evidently more than the sum of its parts.

Just like Raymond's salt-crusted lamb, the real secret is patience

and allowing it to rest.

A lot of people, they are tempted,

when the bread comes out of the oven, to cut into it and eat it.

But it needs at least an hour to rest.

Even though it's cooling, it's still cooking.

Also, it needs to cool on the outside to get that nice crust.

-Voila. The waiter is taking the bread out?

-Yeah.

-Let's go.

So, Ollie, in your bread, I love as much the texture as the flavour.

Because you have everything here.

You've got a beautiful crumb, OK, which is moist.

You've got so much wonderful flavour

and that is the sourness of the dough it's in.

Beautiful. And it's a good crust. I love the crust.

-Ollie. Master baker. Here's to your success.

-Cheers.

Ollie has inspired Raymond to return to his kitchen

and bake some bread of his own. A simple flat bread -

a classic recipe that's existed for thousands of years -

paired with two baked cheeses.

The textures of the crunchy flatbread and creamy melted cheese

complement each other perfectly.

We're doing two dishes, OK, almost at the same time.

One fast bread, or quick bread, and a baked cheese.

To start the flatbread, mix flour and salt,

then add the yeast,

making sure it doesn't come into direct contact with the salt,

as that will stop it fermenting.

Adding sugar will feed the yeast and make it rise.

Make sure that's not salt. OK.

Then pour in olive oil and mix everything together,

gradually adding water.

I'm stretching the gluten, put in with the flour and water.

That means the gluten will give a structure to the bread.

Voila. C'est parfait.

Let's have a look. The yeast is going to give

a miracle here by releasing thousands of pockets of carbon dioxide,

pushing this structure to rise.

The dough will need 30 minutes at room temperature to prove.

During this time, it will double in size.

Oh, the smell. The smell, is wonderful.

I think of brioche.

The yeast. The smell is wonderful. Look at that.

When you do bread, the first rule is you don't come in here

and punch it up. All the flavour and little bubbles of gas would go away.

All the work of the yeast would be wasted.

So then...

Voila. In eight pieces. So four...

Ah, not very good at mathematics!

-Then flatten and roll again.

-That's it. Not too thick.

A little bit of je ne sais quoi.

Just brush it with a little butter. That gives colour.

Colour is appetite. It's about crust, as well.

Add both onion and cumin seeds for a Middle Eastern flavour

and bake for 30 minutes at 200 degrees.

So with my two wonderful cheeses,

one from England - Tamworth.

Make sure it's very ripe. That's the Mont d'Or,

which is my region, my home.

The next stage of the recipe couldn't be simpler.

Take one Tamworth and one Mont d'Or -

any soft cheese can be baked -

and start by scoring both their skins.

To the Tamworth, add rosemary, chilli and sliced garlic.

And to the Mont d'Or, add the garlic

and anything else that takes your fancy.

I've got my special ingredient here.

My first truffles.

Finely slice the truffles and add to the scored cheese.

Great flavours, great fun and great baking, as well.

We are now ready to bake away.

Bonne chance.

When the flatbreads are ready, leave them to one side to cool a little.

So now, they look beautiful.

And look. Look at that. My God, I want to taste it.

I've only been given a small teaspoon like that. It's really bad.

But I found a real instrument!

Oh, look at this cream.

Oh, sublime, delicious, wonderful.

Wonderful flatbread here...

Crunchy.

A little bit of cumin behind. I mean, I'm in heaven.

It's wonderful - with my wine, with my bread. I just miss my friends.

Where are my friends? I'm all alone.

Voila. It's getting there.

You can see how it tastes through the texture. Eh?

So baking is a hugely versatile and sometimes surprising technique.

But it's still best known for cakes.

So a fitting finale is an ambitious, gluten-free,

multi-tiered chocolate extravaganza.

I will do for you a very intriguing piece of baking,

because the baking I'm going to do here is a cake base without flour.

The base is the first stage of this recipe.

Start by whisking egg whites to a soft peak, then add sugar.

Voila. Slowly.

This will give the egg whites volume and stability.

Let's have a look. Yes. I'm going to add now the egg yolk.

Voila. I'll whisk just the top,

just to pre-mix my egg yolk with the egg white.

Voila. So, now, just place your base here.

So then you fold it.

Be very gentle. Come underneath, fold. Underneath, fold. See?

Chocolate powder adds flavour

and the absence of flour makes the cake's base rich and moist.

Look. Oh, beautiful. That is to die for! Just to look at it.

Voila. So now we're ready to bake.

Use a cake ring, as opposed to a tin,

line with grease-proof paper and wrap with aluminium foil.

Pour the mix halfway up the ring.

So my oven is pre-heated. 175 degrees. 15 minutes only.

Leave the cakes to rest for an hour when they come out.

On the top of this flourless cake base,

I am going to build a beautiful chocolate mousse.

Time for the second stage of the recipe.

Melt chocolate in a bain-marie or water bath.

Then whisk egg whites and slowly add sugar.

Voila. I've got my mousse here.

Start by adding only a third of the egg whites to the melted chocolate,

as this will help the ingredients combine.

Then, fold in the rest,

taking care to retain as much air in the mixture as possible,

but working quickly, as the mousse will now be cooling.

And then fold.

Voila. Taste.

Lovely. I'm going to un-mould my cake.

Slice the crust off the top of the cake.

Then place back inside a clean ring and spoon the mousse mixture over.

What you have to do is place the mousse in a fridge

so the mousse firms up, so I can cut it later.

The final stage of baking

and the crowning glory of the cake is the tuile garnish.

To a pan of water add sugar, cocoa powder,

butter and grated dark chocolate.

Finally, add liquid glucose,

which will help control the formation of sugar crystals.

It's a very easy tuile. Absolutely beautiful.

Really, a work of art on its own. It's not me, it's it.

Melt the ingredients together, then take off the heat.

I'm going to cool down my mixture,

which I'm going to place between two sheets of paper.

It is lovely. So easy to make.

And then roll it down.

Voila.

And then, what you do is to undo your paper

and you've got two very fine tuiles.

Place the sheets of paper on trays,

remembering to weigh them down if you're using a fan oven.

They will only need five minutes at 170 degrees,

enough time to take the cake and mousse out of the tin.

Just warm it up. See I try not to burn my plastic here.

Voila. Let's try, let's have a look. Let's lift it up.

Tres bien.

Decorate the cake by drizzling over chocolate melted in a bain-marie.

To really push the boat out, create a chocolate ribbon by pouring

more melted chocolate over a thin sheet of plastic.

Then smooth the mousse,

before wrapping the plastic around the cake.

When you apply the chocolate on the acetate

with a palette knife, make sure it's thick enough.

Not too thick, so it's like a fortress!

Leave to cool for ten minutes in the freezer.

Take the tuile out of the oven. It will harden as it cools.

I'm going to remove the acetate. OK, tres bien.

So move that away here. So, very gently.

It's OK. Now I'm going to add my tuile.

Here we are, we're going to break it up a little bit.

Voila, tres bien. Look at that. It's beautiful.

Voila.

Lovely.

The result - a culinary masterpiece well worth the effort.

So, of course, good taste.

The mousse is so easy.

Egg white, chocolate and a little bit of sugar.

Cooling, fresh, not heavy, not cloying. Lovely.

This one has got no guilt. No guilt.

Just a big smile, a big grin. It's lovely.

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