Vegetarian food done right with Marco Pierre White | Meet your Maestro | BBC Maestro

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Marco Pierre White shows how vegetarian cooking can be refined, satisfying, and full of flavour. In this video he prepares three dishes: stuffed cabbage, endives with pears, and potato dauphinoise.

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When I think of my early life as a chef, I think of the dishes which I can still see vividly. Those dishes that I was taught to make. One of those dishes which really stands out was a shufasi onen which means a stuffed cabbage in that oldfashioned style. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes focus where you individual leaves and you slowly reconstruct the cabbage layers of cabbage force meat cabbage force meat cabbage force meat cabbage force meat and the leaves get smaller and smaller and smaller. In the end you reconstruct this cabbage and then you serve with fresh tomato sauce. But what I’ve done is I’ve removed all the meat. I replace the meat with buttered cabbage, celerac, and carrots. It’s very simple. We still serve it with a tomato sauce. And what it does have is it enormous presence. It’s like presenting a roast chicken, a roast joint in the middle of the table. So, let’s take a little butter. [Music] [Applause] But in the pan, a little water. [Music] Now we take our cabbage. As you can see, it’s been shredded. It’s about just less than a centimeter. There we are. [Music] White pepper. Question solves. [Music] The reason why I put a little bit of water is just to get it started because once it’s started, the cabbage will release its own water so it starts to cook in its own water. [Music] When you’re stuffing cabbage, always use seavoi. It’s better. But if you just want to cook butter cabbage, seavoi or white cabbage is equally as good. What you can see is the water has almost evaporated away. Once the water’s evaporated away, then it becomes butter cabbage. And then you’ll hear that singing of the sizzle. As you can see, I spread across the pan. A little double cream. Don’t move the pan. Allow the double cream to cook until it’s so thick it starts to split. You’ll see because this becomes the glue. Iron the cabbage with the cream. [Music] Now squeeze 90% of the butter out of our cabbage. There we are. So take our cabbage Allow that to cool. Now we take our muslin. There we go. Our cabbage leaves. What we do with the cabbage leaf is we blanch them in boiling salted water and then we drain them into ice water and then we dry them. We remove the core and then between two cloths we roll them with a rolling pen to break down all the fibers. So there we are, a little seasoning, a little ground white pepper. Right. The crushed cabbage. The diced carrots which have been cooked in butter. The diced cerak once again cooked in butter. There we have it. And take the carriage again. Add the in leaves. Little cabbage. Carrots. Zillerak. Now, press that in. So, the hard leaves. Compact it down. and some of the inner heart. There we have it. Compact it in. So there’s our cabbage. So now what to do? Twist and reshape. It’s about reconstruction. There we are. Okay. Get the string. Twist it. And then so there we have our reconstructed cabbage. When you think very simple cabbage leaves, buttered cabbage, cubes of ciler and carrots cooked slowly in butter and then reconstructed back to the size it was before we started playing with it. But the truth is in that cabbage there are four cabbages within one. Three on the inside, one on the outside. So there’s one more little step before we cook it. It’s very simple. Get the cling film. So make a blanket. Place for 1 hour in the water at about 95 98° C. Don’t boil. The cabbage has now been cooking for 1 hour. So, let’s take out the stove. Use that as a hot plate. Let’s finish the tomato sauce. Okay. Little olive oil. It’s a little butter. [Music] So, there we have it. There’s our sauce. Check the seasoning. Tiny bit of pepper. Okay, this is the big moment. Wow. Even at my age, you always have that little moment of panic. Has it worked? [Music] Paint it with a little bit of butter. [Applause] Little crystal salt. A little minion of pepper and the fresh tomato sauce. And there we have it, the stuffed cabbage. with celerak and carrots and stuffed with butter cabbage and fresh tomato sauce. If I think back to the first year of my career as an apprentice at the Hotel St. George in Harriut, every day there was a minimum of five different potato dishes. But let’s not forget it was the world of Isafier. And every lunch, every dinner, you had to have lots of different potatoes. Pom maris, pom duchess, pom daffan, they’ve all gone. Very rarely do you ever see them, if at all. But the potatoes that have stood the test of time. Pom maxine, pom mana, pom bologonia, graphandas. And this is what we’re going to make today. Gratanovas in that very classical way. When I used to work at the box tree, we never put cheese into the dish. So, some people don’t put cheese in, some people do. I tend to put a little bit on that final top layer. It’s as simple as that. So, we have our cream and our garlic, little white pepper, little salt. Delicious smell. Nutmeg. Sensational. Okay. And again, your choice how much nutmeg you put into your cream. If you don’t like nutmeg, leave it out. Okay. Just give that a stir. So there’s our cream. Now let’s park it for 5 minutes just to infuse. So the potatoes, make sure they’re waxy. Slice lengthwise. Be careful with your fingers. Use the cheek of your thumb. There we are. Just lay them out to remove the excess water. There we are. Again, lengthwise. Always be aware where your fingers are. Okay, as you can see, just dry off the excess water. See? Just turn them over there. And then collect them and drop into your cream. Just submerge them in the cream. There we are. If you imagine if I didn’t remove the excess water from eight potatoes, how much have I diluted my cream? Think about it. So question why you do things. When you make a pom maxim, when you make a pom buler, when you make a gratim, the construction is really important. It’s not about just throwing some potatoes into cream or throwing some potatoes into a pan. Think about the construction and that little bit of investment of time, patience makes all the difference. Okay. delicious. But you’re thinking, you’d say that, but it’s truly delicious. I not dried off all the excess water, it have been diluted down in flavor, and secondly, so would the cream. There’s my dish. Eight potatoes, one potato per portion. So, butter your dish. There we are. Okay. Now take the potatoes and layer them. your cream. Just let that cream flood in and then we start again another layer. Press it down. That’s it into position. Get a little bit more cream. There we go. Just to fill the gaps. The potatoes are going to drink it to the point where they’re intoxicated. And let’s not forget the more you touch food, the more you understand food. If you don’t touch food, how can you build that relationship with her? Think about it again. Start again. So we start to layer the potatoes. Construction is very important. If I think back to my childhood, my favorite toy is Lego. I like constructing things. And then I moved into the world of gastronomy. What did I do? I turned food into Lego. And today, everything I do is an extension of Lego. Construction is so important. Whatever you’re making in life. There we go. [Music] Okay. [Applause] And there we have it, our graffin doffing ws. And just to finish, once again, this is optional, a little Italian hard cheese grated. When I was a boy, I’d mix it with the cream, the seasonings, and just throw it into a butter tray. But this is the difference between a one star graphand and a threestar graphand. If you have dreams and aspirations of bringing three stars in Michelin, then teach yourself about construction. If you want a beastro brasserie, just throw it in, wrap it in the tin in the oven. equally as delicious, but it doesn’t have the construction. It doesn’t have the presentation. There’s something rather beautiful when you cut through with your knife or with your spoon. You see all that cross-section. As I say, that’s the difference of a one style growth I’m talking and a freestyle. Okay, done. 1 hour 20 at 140 for that size. [Music] Okay, so this has been in the oven 1 hour 10 minutes. It needs about another 10 15 minutes. So, what we’ll do, remove the tin and then leave it to go golden. There we are. Leave it to go golden. Smells amazing. Leave it to go golden in the oven. There we are. So, there 15 minutes. And that’s perfect. It’s very gentle. Now what we do leave to rest for approx 1 hour. Little bit of tin foil over to keep the heat in. So what happens is everything is absorbed and the potatoes they become intoxicated with the cream scented with the nutmeg and the garlic and just allow her to rest. So there’s our graphin dolphin ws. As you can see they’ve been left in a fairly hot place. And there we have it. So, what we’re going to do, so they’ve been resting for 1 hour. There we are. And what we do is just And there we have our gratafino. As you see, that hour of resting is very important. Cuz what it does, it just absorbs the cream in and just sets. Allow the starch to do its work. Perfect. Not sloppy, perfect, creamy, delicious, but with texture. I look back over the decades. The one thing I know about myself is that I’m a classicist. I like things that work. And when I first came to London and I worked in Leavos, once a month I treat myself to lunch at the Brass Song Quintan, which was owned by that great food writer, Quinton Crew. But one of the classics there was a salad of pears, blue cheese, and walnuts. Delicious. It works. And that’s why it’s still on all those menus today. It’s lasted the test of time. So I take that inspiration and how can I make a vegetarian dish as a main course not as a salad on pears, blue cheese and walnuts. How can you make it have that sense of occasion? How can you make it substantial? Let me show you. So let’s take the on hole. Little lemon. Rub the lemon onto the onesie so it doesn’t oxidize into the pouch. I call them mondes because I’m from that French world. That’s how the French write it on a menu. In England we call it chory. Then take a little bit of sugar to create that balance because on naturally bitter so that little bit of sugar just gives you that balance. It’s bittersweet. Tiny bit of salt and just a tiny little bit of lemon juice. Okay, there’s our ones. Now the pears. Let’s peel them. And when you peel, think about what you’re doing. Just follow the contour and then follow the line so you retain the shape. I’m using a confidence pair. It’s slightly underripe, which I want. because I’m going to poach it. Most people poach pears in a pan in stock syrup. I much prefer to poach them in the bag in their natural juices. So there’s our pears. And once again, just rub them with the lemon so they stay beautifully white. The last thing you want is a pear brown on you. Some people peel them and throw them into water. I never do that. Just leave that. So now into the bag. Tiny bit of lemon juice. and sugar. Remember, it’s a main cause. And so, sugar becomes our salt. We’re seasoning the pears with sugar. Why? To exaggerate the flavor of the pear to that sweetness, but without making it too sweet. So now we’ll sit these. Now the pads. So there we have it. The onde and the pears souveed. Little sugar, little lemon juice in the a little salt. So when you think they’re going to cook in their own juices, you can’t get more natural. So now we poach these in the water for about 35 to 40 minutes. Perfectly cooked. Just as simple as that. The pears and the onion been cooking for 35 minutes. So there we are. As you can see, the color is amazing. Just by feeling and touching, you can see they’re just cooked. But let’s not forget they will continue to cook for the next 5 to 10 minutes in their own heat. There we are. Let’s feel the onde again. Retention of color. There we are. And when you think it’s the most natural way of cooking, they’re cooked in their own juices. And by doing that, number one, you intensify the flavor and all the nutrition within it. If you just throw them into a pan of boiling water or stock, that flavor is diluted. It’s lost. The ones are now cool enough to work with. Let’s open the bag. Take. So, there we have it. So what we do now is we just loosen it and peel the leaves back. Just slowly peel them back. Because they’re being cooked the way they’ve been cooked, the intensity of the scent is extraordinary. So now what we do, we take a little blue cheese. There we are. And then we start to reconstruct the on leaves. If you think about what’s happening when you eat it, the acidity of the blue cheese, the bitterness of the ondef, and then the sweetness of the pear, that wonderful explosion of flavors. Just fold it back. Roll it. There’s something rather beautiful about reconstructing. And the more you work with vegetables, the more you start to understand them. There we are. It’s just one of those classic combinations which the French discovered a century ago. Just roll it back over. It’s worth investing the time. And I must bore you senseless when I say this, but mother nature is without question the true artist. There we are. As you can start to see now, I’m completing it. I’m taking the ondef down to the base. So I get a little bit of cheese with every single mouthful of. There we are. And there we have our stuffed on those leaves. There we are. [Music] Take your fingers in olive oil and just reshape them. There we are. And there we have it. The truth is there’s no technical ability required in the making of this dish. But the sophistication is born out the thought process. It’s the construction. And when you can reconstruct and allow mother nature to be herself, that’s genius. Okay, the pears. There we are. We have our stuffed ones and we have our poached pears. Again, just that little bit of sugar which we treat as seasoning because if you think about pastry in a kitchen, sugar is your salt, it’s your seasoning. So the next stage there we are. So today I’m using olive oil but some days I may use clarified butter. One of the secrets when it comes to cooking is stripping yourself of the blinkers. Let’s not forget I was born in the world of French gastronomy. I was French schooled taught to do things a certain way that freestyle way. They’re the most amazing blinker you’ve ever had. And when you’re young and you become a head chef for the first time, you feel that you have to use all the knowledge that you’ve been given. So you have a habit of overworking things, doing too much. Whereas my love for mother nature grew. Everything was simplified. Allow food to be what it is. All we’re there to do is to make it taste more delicious. It’s as simple as that. And chefs may think they’re artists, and the truth is one or two of them are. Reload BA Pierre Kaufman. And you may ask, what is an artist in the kitchen? Well, let me give you some understanding. A cook who works with his hands is a laborer, a comic. A cook who works with his hands, his brain is a craftsman. a chef to party. But a cook who works with his hands, his brain, his heart is an artist. Is that chef? And that’s what an artist is in the kitchen. So, season with a little salt. A tiny bit of minionette white pepper, but that’s optional. I’m a big fan of white pepper. The next step and the final step is just to roast very gently our on leaves and our pears. Bring the heat in slowly. What we don’t want to do is scorch them. And what we do is just give a tiny bit of color and cook them gently. There we are. Just slowly bring the color in. And again by roasting we remove a percentage of the water content within the onde and the pear. And once again what does that do? It intensifies the flavor. Just be gentle. One of the greatest qualities a cook should possess is patience. Patience, focus, understanding and job in hand. And that’s what makes a good cook. So now we’ll pop these in the oven and let the oven do the work. There we have it. So there we have it. Very simple baked ones with pears. And then one last thing to do, take some walnuts, beautifully ready walnuts, and just shred them. There’s nothing worse than a large nut in your mouth. So there we have it. And then when I tend to cook vegetarian lunches, which is quite often, the vegetables becomes the centerpiece. It becomes the roast chicken. It becomes the roast leg of lamb. It’s got to have that presence. And so I always serve food at the table, never on the plate and then deliver it. And since the inspiration comes from a salad, let’s do a little bit of fresh herb, which just washes the pan at the end. When you think the sweetness of the pear, the spice of the white pepper, the acidity of the Stilton, and then that bittersweet flavor of the undeaf washed down with a bit of parsley and the explosion of delicious walnuts.