MONITOR:LUDOVIC LANTIER IS quite a shy man. Unusual for a chef perhaps. Less unusual given that his chosen area is pastry, which requires a distinctly different intensity both of thought and action than elsewhere in a professional kitchen. In his case the kitchen of the Ritz-Carlton in Powerscourt.
We are chatting after he has picked up the winning prize for the first Valrhona Patisserie Championship in Ireland. This, it is hoped, will become a regular event. Chef competitions are a fantastic opportunity. They raise people’s game, explore ideas and directions and lead to considered and focused innovation which is something badly needed in many kitchens.
His dish arrived before the judging panel sitting on an oval plate, the clean lines instantly making us sit up and take notice. He had chosen redcurrants as his starting point, one of the most challenging of summer fruits. It collapses into a summer pudding with ease, providing necessary acidity, but untreated, its tartness is a real challenge.
This is what intrigued him. How to harness that tartness and bring its summer freshness alive. To a chef, white plates are blank canvasses, room to tell a story, make a journey and this plate was no exception. Degustation of chocolate and redcurrant may sound like a mouthful, but it was nothing to the melt-in-the-mouth chocolate jelly. This was a dome of deliciousness sitting on top of a sacher biscuit enlivened with redcurrant jelly and chocolate ganache.
Four chocolates were used in the construction of this work: Jivara, Ivoire, Tainori and Alpaco. Jivara is a creamy milk chocolate with an interesting, slightly bitter kick at the end, giving it something of an adult taste. It is mildly acidic with a rounded, roasted flavour. This was matched with Alpaco in the jelly, which is a big chocolate, dark with nutty, roast beef overtones and something of a pint of Guinness in the finish, pleasantly bitter. The Ivoire is a silky white chocolate, and Tainori is bright, with notes of nuts and bread on the finish.
Fruitiness is absent from both chocolates in the jelly, which in this case was undoubtedly by design as in rushed the fruit in the shape of the redcurrant jelly, redcurrant parfait and elegantly crystallised redcurrants. A brush-stroke of ganache lay on the bottom, the sacher biscuit sitting on top of this, and over the dome of chocolate jelly lay a “hat” of chocolate with a hole in the centre to allow the gleaming jelly to peep through – very Philip Treacy.
Ten years ago dark chocolate in Ireland came in a red wrapper and sported the Bournville logo. Today you can pick from not just Valrhona, but also Amadei and Michel Cluizel, along with a host of small companies Irish companies that have started to manufacture their own chocolates, most of them using a base couverture from Bernard Callebaut.
The only shame about this inaugural event was the lack of big-hitters taking part. Indeed, apart from Anthony Kelly from the Riverside Restaurant in Mayo, there wasn’t a single stand-alone restaurant on the list – all were hotels, along with one entry from Café Leon in Dublin. Maybe next time.
harnold@irishtimes.com