The chosen Roux
Five minutes' silence follows Michel Roux's announcement of the dish to be cooked at this year's staging of the scholarship that bears his family name. The unpunctuated pause results not from respect for Roux himself, although there is no doubting the high esteem in which he is held by the six young chefs (see panel) gathered for the final, but because the dish - timbale de queues d'écrevisses à la nantua (crayfish tails in a nantua sauce), served with whiting quenelles - is a classic Escoffier creation, one that interprets timbale in its original sense as a puff pastry vol-au-vent.
More pertinently, it is a dish which most of them have never cooked, or certainly do not produce on a regular basis.
Speaking moments before the dish's announcement, Michel Roux's nephew, Michel Roux Jnr, chef-proprietor of London's Le Gavroche and a member of the judging panel, predicts the hush with which the dish will be greeted. "There are a lot of things that can go wrong with this recipe," he explains to Caterer, "the pastry, for a start. We are providing the pastry and everybody gets the same quality, obviously, but puff pastry can react in different ways, so it's up to the chef to actually take a piece and cook it beforehand to see how it reacts.
"It's also easy to overcook the crayfish. And cream sauces can be tricky, especially nowadays when everything is emulsified. The quenelle needs to be smooth, not leathery. The recipe's a great challenge."
After the initial hush, questions come thick and fast to Michel Roux Snr and the assembled judges (see panel, page 52). "Do we have to make just one vol-au-vent?" several of the chefs ask. "Yes," is the answer, "and it's up to you to decide how big." "Do you have to follow the recipe exactly?" asks Simon Hulstone, head chef of Cheltenham's Bacchanalian restaurant. "That's a very good question," says Michel Roux Snr. "You don't have to follow the recipe exactly. We're not using it as a bible - we want your own individual flavour."
For one finalist - Leigh Myers, junior sous chef of the Devonshire Arms in Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire - the day is turning out be rather a nightmare. Not only is he carrying a major injury on the index finger of his cutting hand, he is also allergic to shellfish and will not be able to use one of the most important weapons in a chef's armoury - his sense of taste - for fear of triggering a reaction. He was allowed a commis to help him during the cook-off.
Another competitor, Steve Drake - head chef of Drakes on the Pond, Abinger Hammer, Surrey - appears relaxed and unfazed, but he has the advantage of having competed in the two previous scholarship finals.
All too soon the time for getting to grips with the recipe is over. Less than an hour after learning their culinary fate, the six finalists are beavering away at their stations in Claridge's sprawling kitchens. Drake is the coolest of the lot. Adjacent to him, a bemused Warrick Dodds, head chef of Lancashire's Northcote Manor, has clearly had better days.
Three hours, a lot of red faces, sweaty whites and sighs of relief later, the judging gets under way. It quickly becomes apparent that some of the chefs have had trouble in judging the cooking of the pastry - something predicted prior to the competition not only by Michel Roux Jnr but also by his fellow judge, Rick Stein, chef-proprietor of Padstow's renowned Seafood restaurant. "It's going to be tricky to stop the filling from leaking and the pastry from going soggy," he forecast.
Overspicing with cayenne pepper also loses points for one or two competitors, while quenelles are not always of the "tender, firm" consistency that Michel Snr desires. Turning mushrooms to include in the filling (a specified skill in the Escoffier recipe) has also proved problematic for the chefs under the competition's stressful conditions.
However, within minutes of inspecting and tasting the offering of competitor number five (Steve Drake), the judges suspect they have a winner. Not only is it artfully but simply presented, with "loads of flavour", "perfectly cooked pastry" and "light and very, very good quenelles", it also has correctly turned mushrooms and a classically simple accompaniment of buttered spinach (the only free-interpretation part of the day's task).
Final pronouncements are reserved until the last competitor has delivered his dish, but Drake's standards are not bettered, and the unanimous verdict is that he has carried the day. Unfortunately for him, he will not learn of his victory until the evening's formal presentation, two hours later, in Claridge's Ballroom. Before that, he and his fellow competitors have to loiter around trying not to relive the past five hours of their lives.
Quietly confident of having done himself justice, Drake nevertheless has sympathy with the shell-shocked state of some of his collegues. "I remember my first final - it was a nightmare," he says. Myers, much to the raucous amusement of his companions, sums up the day with a heartfelt quip: "Yeah, today was bloody difficult - with two Fs."
