An unfashionable view to some, I know, but I continue to applaud Marie for really trying while keeping her head and her cool. My applause is not without caveats and the choices of dishes are sometimes weird questionnable. She homes in on things which are simply not time efficient or appropriate for the set up. Her plating up definitely needs to stop being pseudo restaurant cheffy. Ditch pretentious techniques. Don’t gallop before you can waddle walk. However, overall, I really give her credit. She’s also introduced some order into the kitchen and I very much get the feeling she rules the roost in her domain.
Even though she wasn’t trying to do that many, attempting to turn potatoes was taking it too far and I’m glad she stopped before she ran out of time for anything else. Seven-sided tournée vegetables is an art and you need to do hundreds and hundreds before it becomes second nature. Lowest rung of the brigade de cuisine ladder in hotel kitchens and restaurants does nothing but turn potatoes, carrots, turnips. For hours. Daily. A (tedious) learning curve!
I’ve no idea what was going on with the artichoke salad. Was the artichoke heart a hidden surprise beneath everything else?
Another time-consuming undertaking was pommes Anna (and it’s stretching it describe the end result as “posh chips”). She did an acre of them for the first part of the cooking process, before cutting into identically-sized pieces before frying. Sadly, I don’t suppose the guests knew, much less appreciated, the work that went into the preparation of that one element. It’s a well-known dish. Steff, the queen of fine dining, appeared to have never seen such a thing before. It doesn’t say much for the places she’s eaten at or, indeed, her alleged voracious appetite for reading cookery books.
I was mystified by Marie using the word roti when describing the “happy accident” (her words) soup as an “Indian flavoured roti spice”. Roti is a flatbread, the flavours and spices are within the meat or vegetables you eat it with. A bit of a niche thing to pick up on, I suppose - roti wrapped around curried potatoes, meat or channa dhal was a staple where I grew up! Potato roti is on my list of Desert Island Dishes.
One thing, Marie, never, ever admit to something being a disaster. Just implement Plan B and say the minimum. Also, a purée of this this, that or the other is very last year.