Langoustines four ways

To understand how Pierre Gagnaire cooks, you have to know where he's coming from. He developed his skills during the white heat of nouvelle cuisine. The movement galvanised chefs to look beyond the limits of traditional, classical, repetitive cooking, but at the same time it opened up the way to thousands of ill-conceived recipes concocted by mediocre chefs, which failed dismally because they were based on blends of taste and texture that didn't work.
That Gagnaire survived the nouvelle cuisine experiment and is acknowledged today as one of the top 10 chefs in the world is because he's kept faith with the lessons of his early career. He has stayed true to the early principles of serving light, clean, powerfully flavoured food, lifted by imaginative personal touches.
At the same time, he has learnt over the years to compose dishes that have a built-in harmony. He instinctively avoids combinations that don't come off - and overdosing on ones that do.
His "langoustines four ways" is actually four miniature masterclasses in one. Each dish has its own balance, stands up in its own right. Served together, they offer customers who eat the dish a guided tour. He's saying: "Langoustines can be like this, or this, or this, or this." Each component gains by its contrast with the others. Yet, overall, there's a theme running through them - a subtle combination of spice mixtures pointing up the shellfish flavour - that brings the whole thing together.
The end product creates a jazzy impact of highly wrought modern haute cuisine. Up close, the separate parts are simple, well within the skills of any chef with a palate.

BOXHEAD: Pierre gagnaire

BOXTEXT: "The secret of my work," claims Pierre Gagnaire, "is that I didn't like cooking when I started. It didn't interest me. I didn't like the brutal atmosphere of the kitchen and I didn't know what I was doing in the job."
He spent the first 10 years of his career working his way up through the system in Paris, Lyons and, briefly, the USA, before returning to work alongside his father, who was chef at the Clos Fleury, near St-Etienne in central France.
In 1980 he opened his own business in the town having discovered, he says, that cooking could be a creative activity whereby a man expresses himself.
The concept of nouvelle cuisine, led by Alain Chapel, the Troisgros brothers and Fredy Girardet, was taking off. Gagnaire rose with its spring tide, earning his first Michelin star within two years and the third at the start of the 1990s. When the international mood turned against the nouvelle fashion, Gagnaire found himself isolated in a provincial industrial town that was going through a recession. His business folded.
Moving to Paris, he opened his new restaurant in the Balzac hotel off the Champs-ElysŽes. Within two years he regained his three-star status.
Over the 30 years he has spent as a chef, his attitude to his craft - or, as he says, "art" - has changed: "First I learnt how to cook. Then I cooked. And now I love cooking."
His reputation hinges on his ability to create dishes with a powerful "wow" factor. "Why do something simple, when you can do it - I won't say in a complicated manner - but in an exuberant way?"
The difference between his early cuisine and current mature style is experience. "My dishes have a twist but they have a solid structure. I'm careful not to lose touch with the public. We're in business; we're not dealing with wild experimentation. There isn't a state subsidy paying us to do research. If we didn't please people, we wouldn't have a clientele."
New ideas that translate into new dishes remain central to both the man and his cuisine. He defines himself as neither a manual nor an intellectual worker. Rather, he's led by an instinct that he has learnt how to control: "I don't want to repeat myself. If I did, I would feel dishonest. It would destroy me."
The "four ways with langoustines", for example, changes around the nucleus of an idea. Its accompanying granitŽ can shift from citrus fruit to an iced tea. The pear coulis has just replaced a peach one. The spiny artichokes are a seasonal embellishment. A dash of lager on the asparagus is a spur-of-the-moment decision.
It's this improvisational approach that attracts so many aspiring younger chefs to him. Chefs such as Pascal Sanchez, Gagnaire's head chef at Sketch, who is learning from his mentor how to add an inventive dimension to his already mature professional skill.
Gagnaire compares his relationship with his protŽgŽ to that of a manager advising a talented football player. "When you're young and skilled you dribble past two, three, four players and ‘Boom!' you're tackled. What I can teach him is when to pass the ball."
Judgement is an ability that doesn't come easily. It's one Gagnaire feels he has at last mastered.