Visiting French Chef

The celebration of the Soirée Beaujolais last Nov. 29, 2008 highlighted the grandeur of French culture and the cuisine of France is considered one the two Greatest Cuisines of the World. To prepare authentic French cuisine, Marco Polo Plaza GM Hans Hauri had to invite a French Chef, Marc Aubry who hails from the Champagne region of France. Chef Marc moved to the Philippines in 1989 and worked at the Prince Albert Rotisserie. In 2003, he opened his own restaurant, Je Suis Gourmand, a French bistro with a casual yet elegant atmosphere

located at Fort Bonifacio.

Necessary gyud to have a French Chef to cook French cuisine specially when the accreditation for a Five-Star Hotel from the Department of Tourism is pending; my friend GM Hans, excuse me, cannot afford to make any mistake to host a major event like this. Never mind if means two food tasting sessions for your favorite food columnist!

Visiting Chef Marc prepared a sumptuous lunch for the press with two appetizers, one soup, three main courses and two desserts and my beloved followers can view these dishes here.

Once upon a time, a really long time ago, I wanted to cook Pâté de Faisan en Croûte (pheasant meat pie in a pastry crust), one of the most glorious creations of French cookery and I found a recipe in Classic French Cooking, TIME-LIFE Books. Problem then was the source of pheasant meat and black truffles. At that time, there were more Philippine Eagles than pheasants in the Philippines! And black truffles were only found in pictures; only analogue, jpgs were yet to be invented. I dreamed na lang about cooking French and I devoted my passion for the other Great Cuisine of the World, Chinese cooking.

The appetizer, Vegetable Ratatouille & Goat Cheese Salad with Zesty Lemon Vinaigrette was popularized in the 2007 animated film Ratatouille. It involved a rat named Rémy who dreams of becoming a chef after reading the book “Anyone Can Cook “written by five-star Chef Anton Gusteau. The aspiring Chef attempts to please a food critic named Anton Ego with a serving of a ratatouille.

The dish itself is a traditional French Provencal stewed vegetable with tomatoes as a key ingredient with onions, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, bay leaf and other herbs. It may be sautéed together or done in a layering approach. The tomatoes and spices are made into a sauce, while the eggplant and other veggies are sautéed separately. It is then layered in a casserole with the sauce and then baked in an oven.

French Chef Michel Guérard invented a “Confit Bayaldi” in 1976 and replaced the rough-cut vegetables in the traditional ratatouille with thinly sliced rounds. In the movie, American Chef Thomas Keller, owner of a restaurant called the French Laundry was the food consultant to the Pixar Film and presented his version of the “bayaldi”. And your Filipino Food Critic truly enjoyed the version of the dish as prepared by Visiting French Chef Marc.

If you had a taste of the main course, Traditional Coq Au Vin with Lyonnaise Potato, you will recall the taste of chicken pork adobo but with a far more luxurious taste because Coq Au Vin means rooster in wine. “Older roosters are traditionally used because they contain a lot of connective tissue which creates a richer broth when cooked”. It has also a taste of pork because the recipe requires the use of lardons (salt pork) and the taste is made more intense with the use of morels (mushroom with very earthly flavors) and one bottle of wine (sometimes brandy is used).

 In France, Chef Marc might have used a French chicken, the Poulet de Bresse; if he was in the USA, pwede blue foot chicken, the American cousin with red comb and white feathers but a steel-blue colored foot. For reasons of availability and better taste, Chef Marc used our native chicken. But the Chef will never use casualties from the cockfighting arena because he knows that these birds have been subjected to all kinds of chemical/hormonal drug abuse.

So much work to make a cuisine authentic and so much preparation to make a hotel accredited as a five-star city hotel. Finally last December 22, 2008, pursuant to the provisions of Executive Order No. 120, the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel Cebu was accredited by the Department of Tourism as Deluxe Class Hotel.

Congratulations!

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