I once had the pleasure of meeting Raymond Blanc. It was at a press jolly at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and I have two overriding memories.
The first is that although, like everyone else you meet off the tele, he was smaller in the flesh, he had a much bigger personality (indeed, so passionate was he about food that he spat as he spoke - a tad disconcerting when you're trying to eat your lunch). The second is that the meal was surprisingly (and disappointingly) bland until we got to the dessert, which if memory serves me correctly was a gorgeous chocolate pistachio soufflé.
So it was with mixed expectations that I tuned into Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets (8.30pm, BBC2, 16 February). The premise of the Michelin-starred chef's first proper cookery show for 13 years (The Restaurant doesn't count because he doesn't cook in it) is quite clever.
Instead of treading the well-worn path of teaching people the basics, Blanc is overtly targeting the middle-class dinner party brigade folk who like to dish up food that's a little showier than the standard Jamie Oliver or Hairy Biker fare and who have been under-serviced of late (Blumenthal's stuff you can gawp at but it's not for attempting at home).
Kicking off the series with a tribute to all things chocolatey, Blanc admitted that some of the recipes were trickier than others, but said he'd "made all the mistakes so you don't have to". Mmm. Let's just say, you might not have to, but you will.
Things started straightforwardly enough with a chocolate mousse. But by the second dessert I was already getting lost. Every recipe seemed to involve chocolate being melted into a pan of hot cream or milk. One blurred into another in a chocolatey Groundhog Day sort of way. It was disorientating. By the time we'd got to the last recipe a fiendishly difficult concoction called cafe creme (a cup sculpted from chocolate filled with a mousse and coffee sabayon) I was adrift in a sea of chocolatey confusion.
"Et voila," said Blanc for the nth time as he presented the dish to a trainee chef to taste. He gave it eight of 10 (earning a raised eyebrow). It was a fair mark for the programme too, if you like chocolate and fancy yourself in the kitchen.
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The first is that although, like everyone else you meet off the tele, he was smaller in the flesh, he had a much bigger personality (indeed, so passionate was he about food that he spat as he spoke - a tad disconcerting when you're trying to eat your lunch). The second is that the meal was surprisingly (and disappointingly) bland until we got to the dessert, which if memory serves me correctly was a gorgeous chocolate pistachio soufflé.
So it was with mixed expectations that I tuned into Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets (8.30pm, BBC2, 16 February). The premise of the Michelin-starred chef's first proper cookery show for 13 years (The Restaurant doesn't count because he doesn't cook in it) is quite clever.
Instead of treading the well-worn path of teaching people the basics, Blanc is overtly targeting the middle-class dinner party brigade folk who like to dish up food that's a little showier than the standard Jamie Oliver or Hairy Biker fare and who have been under-serviced of late (Blumenthal's stuff you can gawp at but it's not for attempting at home).
Kicking off the series with a tribute to all things chocolatey, Blanc admitted that some of the recipes were trickier than others, but said he'd "made all the mistakes so you don't have to". Mmm. Let's just say, you might not have to, but you will.
Things started straightforwardly enough with a chocolate mousse. But by the second dessert I was already getting lost. Every recipe seemed to involve chocolate being melted into a pan of hot cream or milk. One blurred into another in a chocolatey Groundhog Day sort of way. It was disorientating. By the time we'd got to the last recipe a fiendishly difficult concoction called cafe creme (a cup sculpted from chocolate filled with a mousse and coffee sabayon) I was adrift in a sea of chocolatey confusion.
"Et voila," said Blanc for the nth time as he presented the dish to a trainee chef to taste. He gave it eight of 10 (earning a raised eyebrow). It was a fair mark for the programme too, if you like chocolate and fancy yourself in the kitchen.
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