A passion for pastry

01 January 2000
A passion for pastry

While British cooking has generally improved beyond all recognition in recent years, pâtisserie work still has a long way to go, according to William Curley, one of Britain's brightest young pastry chefs.

Consequently, the top pastry jobs in the UK are going to increasingly younger chefs, while in France no one under the age of 35 is likely to be considered for the position of head pastry chef in a top restaurant.

Curley's experience bears this out. At the age of 22, he was appointed chef pÁ¢tissier at Pierre Koffmann's La Tante Claire restaurant, London, and now, at 26, he holds the same position, jointly with Thierry Busset, at Marco Pierre White's newly established venture at the Oak Room in London's Le Méridien hotel. Along the way, he has also worked for Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Great Milton, Oxfordshire.

For a guy who was thrown out of school at 15 for "misbehaving", Curley has certainly come a long way. As well as working under a trio of top chefs over the past four years, he has also won a host of awards and scholarships. After taking first place in the pÁ¢tisserie section of last year's Académie Culinaire de France's annual awards of excellence, he went on to win the 1996 Dessert of the Year, the William Heptinstill Scholarship presented by the Food & Wine Society of Great Britain, and the 1997 Tabasco Challenge, for which he has just enjoyed a two-week study tour to New Orleans.

Such success would have been unthinkable 10 years ago when Curley was pushed into a woodwork class at Glenrothes Technical College. "Although I was a bit of a wide boy and very cheeky, the lads in woodwork were all hard nuts," he says. "I decided it would be preferable to go into the cookery class with the girls."

He knew he had found his real métier, though, when he secured a part-time job at the Rescobie restaurant in Leslie, Fife, as a commis pÁ¢tissier and had an opportunity to produce his first plated dessert. "I felt at home there," he says.

Now Curley is addicted to pastry and has cast aside all his outside interests to concentrate on getting to the top of his career. He works a 15-hour day, six days a week, and accepts that if he is to achieve his ambition of being the number one pastry chef in Britain by his mid-30s, there will be "no gain without pain".

The opportunity to go to L'Espérance arose when he won the William Heptinstill Scholarship. Professor John Huber at Thames Valley College encouraged Curley to go forward for the scholarship, which offered £1,500 to work and gain experience overseas.

Curley joined L'Espérance's pastry department of six chefs, including a chef boulanger, and immediately set to work on the petits fours. "They were all very classic and of the highest quality," says Curley.

The service of desserts at L'Espérance is a major affair. As well as pudding itself - always ordered at the beginning of the meal to allow for an organised service - the guests are served at the same time with petits fours, a pot of sweetmeats and toffees and a selection of cakes, such as lemon madeleines, canelles and caramelised pear cake.

There is always a choice of 12 desserts from a wider repertoire of about 30, each possessing its own "piece of magic". For Curley, the most outstanding dessert was a whole caramelised pineapple studded with dried vanilla pods and served with fromage blanc ice-cream. He has now adapted this dish, which appears on the £75 five-course Á la carte menu at Marco Pierre White - The Oak Room.

Curley is currently working on an apple dessert - also picked up in France - for inclusion on the Oak Room's £29.50 three-course lunch menu. A confit apple gÁªteau, made from layers of thinly sliced Granny Smith apples, is baked in individual moulds coated in a caramel sauce and flavoured with an orange confit.

At L'Espérance, the gÆ'teau is served cold with vanilla ice-cream, but Curley is considering serving it warm, accompanied, perhaps, by a cinnamon or cardamom ice-cream and a tuile biscuit. "A combination of hot and cold together is far better than cold and cold," he says.

Meneau himself was enormously encouraging to Curley throughout his stay, allowing him to take as many photographs as he wished in the pastry department. "He is a very honest and sincere man and reminded me very much of Pierre Koffmann in his approach and attitude," says Curley. "He was there on a regular basis, but his days in the heat of the kitchen are more or less over. He basically tasted and analysed his food and stood by the pass observing his cuisine."

Working for Meneau was invaluable, says Curley: "The quality of food with Marco is just as good, but I came away from L'Espérance with a better base of classical French cooking, upon which I can develop and interpret ideas of my own.

"Working in France is particularly important for a pastry chef as there is more opportunity there to learn about all aspects of pÆ'tisserie work, including boulangerie and viennoiserie."

While Meneau's style is fairly rustic, Curley describes White's cooking as more chic and stylish. There is a choice of 11 desserts on the Oak Room's Á la carte menu, including four signature offerings from White which remain despite a seasonal change to the menu - tarte tatin of pears, pyramide, caramelised apple tart and soufflé Rothschild. A pre-dessert of a crÁ¤me caramel topped with raisins soaked in a caramel syrup is served along with a plateau of petits fours to cover the 15-20-minute waiting time after the dessert order is taken.

After dessert, six different varieties of chocolate, from a total selection of 12, are served with coffee, for an additional £6.

Curley works with Busset in running the five-strong pastry team, with constant input from White in developing new ideas and maintaining standards. For the time being, Curley is happy to remain in his present position, enjoying the buzz and excitement he gets from working a restaurant he describes as "the finest in the country", as well as the opportunity to work with the best-quality ingredients that money can buy.

He says he is continually inspired by working for White: "Marco is not a pastry chef, but he has a good knowledge of pÁ¢tisserie work and helps me by looking at things from a different angle. The accuracy and perfection that he puts into his dishes is amazing."

But Curley knows that in order to achieve his ultimate ambition of being the best, he needs a greater breadth of experience as a pastry chef, developing further his bread-making, viennoiserie, sugar and chocolate skills. And this, he expects, will require him to spend more time in France, and in Switzerland, probably in one or two leading pÁ¢tisserie shops such as Fauchon in Paris.

Curley's ambition is to open his own pastry shop by the time he is 30 - "or rather a string of them, a bit like Marco with restaurants; let's face it, pÁ¢tisserie in this country needs something like that to happen."

In the meantime, he will continue to put 100% effort into his work, only allowing himself the opportunity to see his beloved Dundee United play on a short holiday back in Scotland at Christmas.

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