For the last 35 years, Raymond Blanc has inspired the world with his cooking.
It's about celebrating that gorgeous, glorious food and sharing a special moment with your loved ones.
Now he's opening his kitchen and sharing his secrets.
I've made all the mistakes which could be made, so you don't have to make them yourself.
Showing, with a little effort...
Food is so, so beautiful.
..anyone can bring some joy to the dinner table.
Even the most complicated dish is not impossible to make.
On Kitchen Secrets, Raymond demystifies the art
of creating show-stopping desserts with chocolate.
Really lovely, yummy. From a simple chocolate mousse...
That air, so light!
..to a chocolate tart finished to perfection.
It's so simple.
No sweat, no?
Chocolate fondant, a great dinner party dessert that never fails to impress.
And for the grand finale, cafe creme, a cup sculpted entirely from chocolate.
You have to love someone so very much to make this dessert
and it's certainly a proof of love. Bon appetit.
Give me another egg, Monty.
Give me another egg.
In the back kitchen of his Oxfordshire restaurant, Raymond's preparing his first recipe.
To begin, Raymond's take on a classic - dark chocolate mousse,
which he says anyone can create in just ten minutes.
So I'm going to cook the simplest chocolate mousse in the world
and probably one of the best as well. It's Maman Blanc, my mother's, recipe.
All what you have, three ingredients. 170 grams maximum of chocolate,
about 20 grams sugar and seven egg whites.
You can buy a good chocolate.
It is the quality of the chocolate which is very, very important,
because the gastronomy starts from here.
If you have a great chocolate, you'll have a great chocolate mousse - unless you decide to murder it.
I will use a bain-marie here.
No boil, just gentle simmer, just on the simmering point.
Leave it to melt down of its own accord. It's not a prima donna.
Occasionally, you can stir it, should you wish.
I've got my beautiful eggs here.
They are organic. I'm only going to use the egg white.
You want to make sure that you don't have any trace of
egg yolk, because egg yolk is fat and the white hates fat.
You will actually lose about one fifth of your lift if you have any fat in here.
Don't mind, don't worry about that, just scoop it out a bit - no problem.
OK, voila.
And I'm going to add a little bit of my lemon juice to my egg white.
It will bring the egg white together.
I can beat it as long as I want to, it will not separate.
Now it's time to get going with a little light whipping.
Years ago, I was a masochist but now...
I've learned a few lessons.
I learned to economise myself.
So, what I want here, billions of bubbles of air as big as possible so my mousse is as light as possible.
When the eggs start to foam, add 40 grams of caster sugar.
What a machine! Oh, mon Dieu.
So now, is it ready? No. This is a bit too soupy.
You can see... Oh, I hate this thing.
I prefer a whisk, you know? Voila.
Merci, Adam. Merci.
OK, I've got my melted chocolate.
So you place one third
of your egg white.
But then work fast, very fast.
The risk is, if you're putting the cold egg white into the warm chocolate,
that's going to seize up and you'll have lots of solid pieces into your chocolate.
Having lightened the chocolate with a third of the egg whites, carefully fold in the remainder.
It's a nice movement, OK? Look at my movement. I take it like that and I turn...
..around. Up from underneath.
Voila.
Just pour it in.
The mousse then needs to go straight into the fridge to cool for two hours.
That's it. Simple as that.
So it should take, for any cook, about ten minutes of your life.
I think it's worth it, much worth it.
There are hundreds of varieties of chocolate on the market
and for Raymond, 100% dark chocolate is irresistible.
That is seriously bitter. That's what I love the most.
It's got so many lovely qualities. It melts in the mouth, wonderful flavours.
When you feel melancholic, "Oh, let's have a bit of chocolate."
You feel a bit under pressure, "Oh, let's have a bit of chocolate."
You feel happy, you want chocolate, so you must always, at all times, have chocolate in your cupboards.
That's always de rigueur.
To test his office staff's taste buds, he's taking them a selection,
ranging from a sweet milk chocolate to the darkest chocolate available.
OK, Adam, let's see the girls. See if they love their chocolate, OK?
Hello!
I have decided... Can I have your attention one minute?
I have decided to change the bonus system. We pay by chocolate now.
OK, so you can do a bit of testing of chocolate.
Who doesn't like chocolate?
Number nine is the cheapest, containing just 20% cocoa solids.
So which one you prefer? Number nine is beautiful. Number nine, yes. Number nine is brilliant.
It's like... Yes, most of you have loved the number nine.
Actually that's the worst chocolate.
It's very highly sweet, very addictive, the sweetness.
It's got only 20% cocoa content.
I really feel so, so disappointed, so from tomorrow we are going to have
a chocolate tasting every day at four o'clock exactly.
Hooray!
Adam! I asked you bran flakes this morning. I was very clear about it.
Raymond's next recipe is a chocolate delice,
a rich, dark chocolate tart with a nutty, crunchy base.
The delice au chocolat is a bit like a tarte au chocolat.
For the base, I've used bran flakes.
And you just...
crunch them up nicely, and you have a praline. Praline you can buy in any shops. You can also make it yourself.
Praline paste is easy to make.
All you need to do is blitz equal quantities of roasted hazelnuts and caramelised sugar in a blender.
Then you mix the flakes to your hazelnut paste.
So simple. It's a builder's job, OK.
You don't need to be a chef.
You need to be a good builder.
You know, it's like doing some cement, no?
Voila.
And that's my base for my tart.
Taste it. Really, really lovely. Yummy.
Place the mixture between two sheets of greaseproof paper and get ready to roll.
Adam, can I have my rolling pin, please?
I want a big one, a serious one.
That one, I find it a bit too thin.
Tres bien.
That's fine. Tres bien.
It is wonderful, very nutty.
There's a nut texture here and, Adam, a better palette knife, mon petit.
Thank you very much, Adam.
And that, I'm going to keep it in the fridge.
Ah, now,
le chocolat. Let's go. Tres bien.
Next, the filling for the chocolate tart.
I'm going to boil my milk and my cream together. The eggs...
Tres bien. So our milk now is rising, is rising, is rising up.
I'm going to pour it over my eggs.
The eggs are magical.
The eggs are bonding that cream, and now all that I've got to do is to add my chocolate.
Oh, la! Beautiful chocolate.
Look at it. Voila.
For this, Raymond's using a dark chocolate containing 70% cocoa solids.
You see? Beautiful.
Yes.
When the mixture is smooth, pour it into a pastry frame.
Voila.
Then put it in the fridge to set for at least six hours.
Voila.
While the tart sets, prepare the decorations that will transform this simple dish into a work of art.
First, make a caramel. Melt sugar in a heavy base pan until it's rich and golden in colour.
What I want is a bit of darker
colour so I can give a bit of flavour to my caramel.
Put a roasted hazelnut on a cocktail stick,
dip it in the caramel and pin in some Blu-tac to produce a long tail.
Look at that - beautiful!
Next, a light coffee foam.
Add melted gelatine to some strong coffee and a little sugar, then whisk until frothy.
So you've got the richness in the hazelnut, the praline, and then the richness again in the chocolate.
So I want a sauce which is like air, you know, something so light.
OK?
Once the tart is set, it's time to decorate.
Dust with some grated 70% chocolate.
Nice textures, no?
Icing sugar, please! Tres bien.
Just very lightly...
It's so simple.
No sweat, no?
Here's just a tiny little garnish - very pretty, very dainty.
Voila, tout simplement.
You never throw those things away, please, Adam.
Next, a perfect dinner party dessert and a guaranteed hit
with chocoholic guests - a soft-centred, dark chocolate cake with a salted caramel centre.
It's chocolate I think that everyone will truly love because it's got
everything which is perfect about chocolate.
And wonderful for dinner parties because you can actually make it in advance.
Imagine, you've got your friends around the table,
they're all happy, you've served them a great starter, a great main course, fabulous cheese.
Then you get up - you make sure everyone knows that you get up - and you say,
"Monsieur, my friends, I'm going to make my fondant au chocolat."
And you disappear in the kitchen
and come back five minutes after with your fantastic fondant au chocolat and they will say, "Wow!"
You get serious admiration, I can assure you - serious admiration.
Start the recipe with a salted caramel.
Prepare a caramel base by melting caster sugar.
In a separate pan, mix together double cream, brown sugar, a little glucose and bring to the boil.
So now I'm adding the cream, brown sugar, glucose to the caramel.
Wonderful fusion - look at that. I will get the temperature at 102.
Why? Because I want a rich caramel, which is going to hold together.
While the caramel cools, get a plastic mould.
Some silicon moulds - you can buy them now about everywhere.
But you can buy, if you don't have that, you can buy ice-cube trays, no problem.
I want to add a little bit of my lemon juice to give it a bit of oomph,
and a bit of salt. The salt, of course, we all know too well
is a catalyst to flavour, and that goes very well with sugar - but very little.
Salt is a natural flavour enhancer and balances the sweetness of the caramel.
Let's taste.
Ah, that's very intense.
Salty, acid come in, the pepperiness... That's lovely.
Allow the mixture to cool and then pour into individual moulds.
Put the caramel in the freezer to set for two hours.
Next, prepare the fondant mix.
Begin by melting butter and dark chocolate over a pan of simmering water.
And we spread the base. The base, I have two eggs,
one egg yolk, 45 grams of icing sugar.
OK? And a little bit of arrowroot,
so I'm going to be a human machine.
I'm going to whip this until it has a beautiful texture.
You call it in French, le riband.
The ribbon stage is reached when the mixture becomes thick enough
for the whisk to leave a thin, ribbon-like trail behind it.
Oh, it's a bit of sweat to go with it, I'm sorry.
But you don't have to do it like me,
you can actually do it in a machine and you can whistle at the same time.
I don't know if I will achieve the riband or if the riband is going to kill me!
After achieving your ribbon, prepare the cake moulds.
Brush with butter and then dust with a mixture of cocoa powder and sugar.
The butter will melt and will give a lovely crust outside.
Voila.
Tres bien. So now pour my fondant mix here...
Tres bien.
Et voila, that's ready.
Using a ladle, pour the fondant mix into the moulds until they're three quarters full.
Look at that - lovely.
Nothinging can beat chocolate. Beautiful! Voila, tres bien.
So I'm waiting for my caramel.
Can I have the caramel, please? Just there.
So just place it...
in the middle here. It's just buried very nicely here.
Put the fondants in the fridge to cool for half an hour,
then place them in the oven at 200 degrees centigrade for five minutes.
When ready, allow them to cool before removing them from the moulds.
The fondants can be set aside until you need them.
Then it's time to concentrate on the decoration and make a rich chocolate sauce,
combining milk and 70% dark chocolate.
Hey, that's a good design that, you see?
Typical. That's annoying for a cook.
That's terrible, look! Look!
The person who designed that should be burned!
Oh, it's my name on it.
Oh, God!
LAUGHTER
That's a good one. That's a good one.
When you're ready to serve the fondants,
put them back in the oven for eight minutes at 180 degrees centigrade.
While the fondants are reheating, it's time for the crucial dressing of the plate.
Begin with the chocolate sauce.
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
Fondants are ready, chef. OK.
OK, so you can do a very simple little garnish.
Little bit of almond, pistachio.
This is beautiful colour.
Why not a little pistachio ice cream?
A little spot underneath, un amande.
See first if it's well cooked. Oh, look at that.
Look at that!
Look at all that cream oozing out, beautiful.
Voila.
At the heart of every great dish lies the perfect combination of flavours.
The same can be said for the making of fine chocolates.
Raymond is on his way to visit an old protege, William Curley, at his shop in Richmond.
For his unusual combinations and skill, William's been awarded
Best British Chocolatier for the last three years.
Quite excited to let him see what we're doing here
and hopefully he sees a little bit of his restaurant in our work.
And just lovely to see him.
Good morning, everyone. Good morning!
Lovely William. Hello. Lovely. Good to see you. Are you well? I'm very well. Yourself? Very good.
Congratulations. Well done. Oh, thank you very much. Really brilliant.
You know, that's the first time I come to you? Yeah, yeah! I'm a disgrace!
You're busy. I understand. Why don't you taste the chocolate?
Would you like to taste the Yuzu? Yes, absolument.
And it tastes of a good chocolate. Tell me if I'm wrong. No, no, you're right. You're right.
And put...
Put it in your mouth...
Just close your eyes, relax and let go.
You get the lovely flavours coming through... And it's just goes on, these wonderful flavours.
It truly does melt in your mouth, just completely dissolve, quietly.
Perfect. Lovely.
Mmm. Lovely textures.
Would you like to come upstairs? Love to. Let's go.
Upstairs is William's test kitchen, where he experiments with different flavours.
It's a lovely little laboratory here, a lovely little place to lose yourself,
just create a new dish. Fantastic.
It's lovely that you came in the shop at last. I'm just so happy to see you.
Absolutely.
He's going to make Raymond his award-winning rosemary and olive oil chocolate.
So I have the whipping cream and when it comes to the boil, I'm then going to add the fresh rosemary.
Allow it to infuse for, say, 20 minutes, so you've just got the flavour left within the cream,
and then we'll emulsify that with the chocolate and a little bit of olive oil.
It's quite an unusual combination as well.
It really, really works extremely well.
So I have one here that we actually...
We made this one yesterday.
We cooled it down and then first thing this morning we've cut it. That's for you. Thank you.
It's quite fascinating how the flavours from hot, from warm...
Mmm, change when they're cooled. Completely different.
Absolutely. But the structure has remained.
It's really lovely to see the artisan at work, the craft,
and that's why the chocolates are a bit more expensive, because it is certainly not a factory.
All is handmade, piece by piece.
That's what the difference is.
Here.
Put that here. It's here, tres bien.
I just need to put my head together.
For the last recipe, a feat of chocolate making,
one of Raymond's signature desserts - cafe creme.
A cup sculpted completely from chocolate,
filled with iced espresso parfait, topped with cherry-liqueur sabayon, with sugar-coated truffles.
I am going to prepare a very special dessert, and this is one of my oldest desserts.
It took me about six months' solid work on this dessert to realise it,
and you'll understand exactly why, OK?
You have to love someone so very much to make this dessert,
and that's certainly a proof of love, there's no doubt about it. But it's possible.
You've got 500g of chocolate, which is melted at about 50, 55 degree, OK?
I have 500... Adam, please, Adam, I need it now.
Can you leave it?
Sorry. OK, so it was getting too hot?
No, it was off? OK. Ah, can you just...?
Why don't they do a bloody thing which would stick to it, no?
They give you a thermometer and you put it on the side
and the first thing it does, it slid in the chocolate. Great.
Instead of putting a little catch maybe here on that side.
See again, choose your equipment well.
A good thermometer is useful, as the chocolate needs to reach the right consistency to sculpt.
First, heat the chocolate to 55 degrees Centigrade.
Add chopped chocolate to reduce the temperature, then reheat to 32 degrees. Voila.
This is known as tempering.
It refines the chocolate by melting unstable fat crystals, making it smoother, easier to shape and shiny.
So now I'm going to start building up my chocolate cup.
To create the cup, use a flat rectangular plastic sheet, which you can buy from cookery shops.
Right, a little here.
Tres bien. I'm going to pick up...
Where's my knife? It's here, my knife is here.
Tres bien.
Voila. Merci, Adam.
Voila. Place the chocolate-coated plastic into a circular mould.
Parfait. I'm pressing it on it here, then afterward I'm opening it up completely so it's a perfect circle.
So we do the joint. We can take a little bit of chocolate here, voila.
Voila, tres bien.
So I will do my saucers now.
I tried all sorts of surface.
Glass, china. And they all stuck, because they are porous, OK?
So I saw a piece of clingfilm,
I say,
"Eureka, of course."
First thing you need to do is to oil your saucer, so the clingfilm actually can slip on it. You just...
..squeeze, and I'm going to dip it.
Voila.
And I'm going to move away the excess, and I'm going to create a lip
in order to release later much of that saucer.
So now we'll do the handles.
Make a cone using greaseproof paper.
Pour in melted chocolate, cut a hole in the end and shape your handles.
Voila, tres bien. You never put them in the fridge to set, OK?
That will get again all white.
Room temperature is perfect.
All the chocolate moulds will need at least five hours to set.
Now I'm going to do the sugar cubes,
and the great thing about sugar cubes is the ganache.
A ganache is the same as chocolate-truffle filling,
and is a great way to make home-made chocolates.
Burst through the skin and boil over.
To make, boil double cream, add 70% dark chocolate and stir.
You get that lovely satiny... That lovely quality, silky quality.
It's so beautiful.
Clingfilm, and then voila, you pour it in here.
Voila. The ganache is now ready to put in the fridge to set for six hours.
So, the ganache, it's cooled down nicely, and all that I need is a hot blade.
Oh, that cuts like butter.
OK?
Tres bien. I've got the lovely sugar cubes here.
Now we are ready to build the cafe creme, OK?
Just unfold, and very carefully, that's it, voila.
And you've got your perfect saucer.
Raymond's using his solid-top cooker to weld all the pieces together,
but a hot pan will do the job just as well.
That cup becomes coffee-proof.
Gently, gently press slowly.
So now we do the handle.
Voila, tres bien.
Line the base with a biscuit soaked in espresso.
Tres bien, in the bottom here. Now for the filling.
This is an iced-espresso parfait.
Just egg yolk frothed up with espresso coffee and with cream, which you freeze.
Finish with a bit of alcohol.
Add a dash of cherry liqueur to the sabayon foam to make the espresso topping.
Voila.
So Tom, the young man who has worked with us for two months now,
is going to taste the cafe creme. So no pressure, Tom! No!
OK, so what do you think? Very nice.
Out of ten first?
Eight. Eight. Eight? You're a tough guy.
You're a tough guy. You just wouldn't give me two more, you give me eight! I've done very well!
Have a good day!
Voila, tres bien.
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