The Bocuse d'Or
A biennial festival of cooking intensity
In an article I read when I lived in New York City in the early noughts, the famous American chef Thomas Keller, of The French Laundry and Per Se fame, described the Bocuse d’Or as “the pinnacle of the art of cooking”. I’d never forgotten this so when I moved to France I made it a priority to investigate what it was all about! Founded by the great Lyonnais chef Paul Bocuse, it’s a biennial cooking competition held in conjunction with SIRHA (the Salon International de la Restoration, de l’Hotellerie et de l’Alimentation if anyone’s asking), a food service and hospitality event held in Lyon at Euroexpo, the massive expo complex on the outskirts of the city. Open to hospitality professionals only, it attracts a motley crew of bakers and patissieres, baristas and butchers, cheese artisans, champagne and caviar producers, packaging experts and Feng shui display gurus. Need a new idea for the feve in your gallette du roi next year? There are stands dedicated to little enamel figurines! There are displays of machines created to make 1000 baguettes at a time and a stall with the woven baskets to place them in! If you are looking to bottle 150 jars of freshly pressed juice, there is an embarrassment of choice of bottling machines. It’s all quite overwhelming to someone who does it all on her own, a la petite echelle!
La Bocuse d’Or is not the only competition held over the four intense days of the SIRHA. If you are into life on the sweet side, check out the World Pastry Cup, a three part competition of sugar pulling, chocolate moulding and ice sculpture (Japan won). Baristas and butchers have a competition and this year I hear that the knives were out, figuratively speaking, at the World Burger Competition (three categories - Traditional Burger, Plant Based Burger & Sweet Mini Burger) because of a controversial French win, une vraie scandale! Personally I think that the ‘sweet mini burger’ is the vraie scandale! But that isn’t what this post is all about. The only reason I go to SIRHA, despite all the distraction, is for the big daddy (more on this later) competition, the 100 metres sprint of cooking, the Bocuse d’Or.
Ticket arranged, travel booked, I made my way, for not the first time, to Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. The modest ambition of Paul Bocuse, in creating the competion, was to promote innovation in food whilst preserving the traditions of French cuisine. And also bring chefs out of their kitchens behind closed doors, into the spotlight and onto centre stage …
Back in 1987, chef Jacky Freon was the inaugural winner, representing … drum roll, France. The rules have changed many times over the years, now it’s all about platters and the most extreme form of French cooking! For those that are wondering what this means, it’s cooking everything to within an inch of its life. Vegetables are shaped, blanched, soudvided with butter, napped and adorned with herbs that have in turn been gingerly picked and cut and brushed to give them shine. Meats are trimmed, browned, stuffed, wrapped, seasoned and baked. In this world, knife skill is everything, tweezers are your best friend and black food handling gloves de rigeur. Nothing is left to chance, chefs enter into a training regime much like an elite athlete, practicing day and night over months and months. Many take a year off to hone their skills! Rumour has it that this year’s winner even built a replica of the somewhat constrictive kitchen he would be competing in, to ensure the economy of every gesture and movement. It’s a thing. I didn't really know what to expect, but what I found blew my mind!
It’s not Masterchef, it's not Top Chef and it’s a whole lot more intense than cooking with your family at Christmas (and we all know how that can be). It’s a cacophony of noise and patriotism and energy and emotion, like nothing I have ever seen. I’m Australian, I understand sports fervour, I get it. But this is cooking! Here were 24 dedicated teams chosen from an original 72 competing countries, with supporters in the stands, chanting, waving flags, screaming and crying and beating drums! Was this meant to help you keep that mouse light and fluffy? Would this assist you with making the clearest of consommés? Would letting off yet another confetti pipe help with the intense concentration required to balance a delicate garnish? If Paul Bocuse wanted spotlight and centre stage, this is definitely what he got but I think he may have underestimated the Eurovision style fervour of the fans!
And the fervour was real. The brief this year, decided many months prior to the competition, was to produce a platter and a plate with strict content and theme: the plate course had to include celery and celeriac, stone bass and lobster. The rules also state that there must be a lobster sabayon, the celeriac must be cut into two identical pieces but that the celery stalk could be presented according to the “candidates wishes “. Ohh the freedom!
The platter was described by the organising committee as follows: “The 24 candidates will have 5 hours and 30 minutes to highlight their culinary talent and expertise by working with venison, foie gras, and tea. The main component of this platter theme, back of venison, must be presented in three pieces with three accompaniments. The first garnish will be a venison shoulder and foie gras pie, wrapped in a crispy pastry. The pie must be presented whole on the platter, and the foie gras should be recognizable both in taste and visually when cut. The second warm garnish will be entirely fruit-based and will feature a fruit from the candidate's country. Lastly, the third garnish will be served "on the side." Teams will need to prepare 16 closed, bi-coloured ravioli, served hot, with a clarified venison consommé infused with tea, served in two teapots by the Maîtres d’Hôtel at the jury's table during the tasting”
Seriously? What could go wrong ? I did see one chef drop a tray of garnishes and a collective ooohhh went through the crowd. But she coped like a champ and barely flinched. The remaining garnishes were cut in half and the show went on!
The plate is the first course to be presented to the judges (12 for the fish course, 12 for the meat course), a good four hours and forty minutes into the competition time. The large round platter is carried by two anointed MOFs (meilleur ouvrier de France - think ball boys and girls at the French Open) with great fanfare. Lights flash, the frenzied crowd waves the flag of the presenting country, the heavily bass driven music pounds (think Trump rally) and the judges await for the platter to parade before them, phones at the ready. The platter returns to the kitchen for the competing chefs to plate up the dish, as they would in a restaurant. The judges then taste the dishes and mark accordingly. Repeat for the meat course.
And those platters are quite a story unto themselves! Custom made, many feature a raised centre piece to hold the crowing glory of the dish (think wedding cake?). Embellishments abound, more is more, can we garnish that garnish? Take a look here - they are over the top!
After all the teams have given their most in the kitchen, the judges retire to adjudicate and then it’s the fatal hour, the announcement of the winners. This takes forever and unfortunately I had a train to catch. We ended up streaming it in a cafe at the Lyon station. The poor patrons sitting next to me! I whooped and hollered as though I was there. There aren’t enough fairy tales left in the world but this day gave us one. Gorgeous young French Camille Pigot won the award for the best commis (kitchen assistant to the uninitiated) and, thirty years after his father, chef Paul Marcon won the Bocuse d’Or! There were tears all round, myself included. The French Team had triumphed!
A note on this being the daddy of all cooking competitions? Daddy is the operative word - the competition was a sea of men, an ocean of testosterone! Other than the three Michelin starred Claire Smyth, every judge was male. And the competing chefs and their commis were overwhelmingly men. There has been only one woman to have won the overall prize, Lea Linster from Luxembourg back in 1989. So all the more kudos to Camille Pigot, only one of four women to have ever won the ceramic duck!
Recipe : In honour of the Bocuse d’Or, a receipe from a former silver winner, Yannick Alleno, who won his prize in 1999. You can find many other recipes from past winners, although the site warns that “Most of them are absolutely accessible to (somewhat informed ?) amateur cooks.”!! Goodluck !
Fondant potatoes with Oscietre caviar, shallot-favoured condiments and crispy capers, with farmhouse cream
4 large Agria potatoes
40 g unsalted butter
35 cl white poultry stock
Salt
60 g mini capers
Peanut oil
150 g shallots
100 g butter
½ bunch of parsley
Olive oil
140 g Oscietre caviar
150 g farmhouse cream
Freshly ground pepper
Peel, wash and cut the potatoes into strips 1.5 cm thick, then cut out circles 8 cm in diameter. Using a small, tear-shaped cutter, cut out teardrop shapes from inside the potato. Vacuum-pack the potatoes and teardrops with the butter and white poultry stock, then cook for 20 min at 90°C in a steam oven. Check cooking, and keep hot.
Garnish
In oil heated to 130°C, fry the capers for 3-4 min, then sponge them on absorbent paper. Keep dry. Peel, wash and finely slice the shallots, then fry in foaming butter, stirring constantly for around 20 min, giving them a nice light brown, crispy colour. Remove and sponge on absorbent paper. Keep dry. On a lightly oiled plate covered with plastic wrap, arrange some attractive sprigs of flat parsley. Salt and grease the plate again, then place in the microwave for 2 min. Set aside.
Finish and presentation
Remove the fondant potatoes from the vacuum bag, and place on a sheet with a rack attached to it. Reduce the cooking juice, and let the potatoes become glossy. Distribute the caviar into each of the teardrops. Pipe a line of shallots onto the plates, and arrange the fried capers on top. Place the fondant potatoes in the centre of the plate. Add the potato teardrops and a few sprigs of flat parsley around the edges. Serve accompanied by a sauceboat of farmhouse cream.
Have a great week,
Kathxx