Chefs in black

YOU often see them dressed in white, behind the kitchen counter putting food on our plates. So it's almost hard to recognise four of Singapore's most prominent restaurant names out of their chef's jackets and donning snazzy suits as poster boys for the Sarment Icons 2015 Cookbook Calendar.

The calendar features a total of 12 chefs, four of which are from Singapore - Julien Royer of Swissotel The Stamford's JAAN, Frederic Colin of Brasserie Gavroche, Ryan Clift of Tippling Club, and Tetsuya Wakuda of Waku Ghin.

Other chefs included Paul Pairet, Ugo Rinaldo, Jason Oakley and Nicolas Le Bec from Shanghai, as well as Jowett Yu, Olivier Elzer, Roland Schuller and Mango Tsang from Hong Kong.

Of the photoshoot, Chef Clift says: "It was very fun, very cool. We felt a bit special, like a model for the day - instead of wearing our chef's jackets." They were dressed exclusively by Ermenegildo Zegna.

The cookbook calendar, priced at S$48 and available for sale at Brasserie Gavroche, contains 60 recipes from these 12 chefs. This is the second edition; the first was printed last year featuring 12 chefs from Hong Kong.

"The project was initiated because we wanted to make a statement," says Quentin Chiarugi, managing director of wine distributor Sarment Singapore.

"Sommeliers always work with chefs, so we had to find a way to get close to them and show our clients that wine is something that you pair with food. And the best way for that is to get the chefs to become our ambassadors," he explains.

For both Chefs Clift and Royer, the project provided an opportunity to show off some good quality ingredients using what they call "simple recipes".

Describes Chef Royer: "My menu is constantly evolving and changing. So when they asked me for recipes I just used what we were doing at that period of time. But it's always the same idea - it's just working with a product that we think is good, try to do justice to it, and cook it in our own way. Technically speaking, it's very simple, anybody can cook it."

Chef Royer's dishes include a hay-roasted pigeon, beetroot collection, choconuts, and hand-picked scallop 'au natural', while Chef Clift included recipes for his kahoda, razor clams, celeriac crab, and wagyu with umami textures, horseradish burrata.

While some of the specific ingredients might be hard to find in Singapore, Chef Royer says it's possible to substitute them with similar high quality ingredients that are more widely available. For example, since fresh scallops are not commonly sold in supermarkets, he suggests substituting them with frozen Hokkaido scallops from Japan.

"It's going to be frozen scallops so you won't have the same freshness and same result. But there are some that are very good. You can do it with that," he says.

Chef Colin, on the other hand, had a somewhat different idea. He picked the month of December so he could showcase relevant seasonal products such as pike fish and grouse. His recipes include a pate en croute, foie gras and "black diamonds", pike quenelles, "Brittany" lobster and bisque, poularde en demi-deuil and spelt cassoulet, and grouse and duck Pithiviers with autumn roasted fruits.

As for Chef Wakuda, his recipes include his slow-cooked ocean trout with aonori, warm salad of bamboo clam with garlic cream, and marinated shrimp, sea urchin and Oscietra caviar.

While they were more than happy to be under the spotlight and enjoyed their experience with the cookbook calendar, the chefs maintain that there is always a downside to all the active involvement - it keeps them away from the kitchen.

Says Chef Royer: "Of course it's nice to have this kind of exposure... But at the end of the day, you'd better be good at what you do and you'd better be in your kitchen because people are coming for you."

Adds Chef Colin: "My grandfather was a chef some 60 years ago, and at that time when you were a chef you were pretty much like a worker. Now chefs have become like celebrities, but we cannot forget where we come from - we still have to work in a kitchen, and cook for our guests. They are the ones paying the bill at the end."

Poularde en demi-deuil and spelt cassoulet

By Chef Frédéric Colin

Brasserie Gavroche

For the bird

1 poulard, 2-2.5kg

30g fresh truffles

1 onion studded with 2 whole cloves

1 stalk of celery, cut into pieces

1 bouquet garni

125ml dry white wine

2L chicken broth

Salt and pepper

Truffle velouté sauce

100g butter

50g flour

150g crème fraîche

100ml cognac

Creamy spelt cassoulet

250g spelt

1 onion, chopped

100ml white wine

1.5L chicken broth

100g shredded parmesan

100ml heavy cream

Olive oil

Salt and black pepper

Method

Peel the truffle, reserving peel for sauce. Slice truffles into 10 thick slices. Chop remainder with any reserved peel. Lay the bird on its back, drumsticks facing you. Gently slide your fingers under the skin and arrange most of the truffle slices on the breast meat, letting the skin hold them in place. Insert the remaining slices under the skin of the legs, then truss. Put the bird, breast down, in a pot just large enough to hold it. Add the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, and bouquet garni. Pour in the wine and enough chicken broth so that about three-fourths of the bird is immersed. Season. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer gently until tender, about 2 hours, turning the chicken mid way. Skim liquid occasionally. Remove from the cooking liquid, cover loosely with aluminium foil, and keep warm.

Boil the broth until reduced to about 750 ml, approximately 20 to 30 minutes. For the truffle velouté sauce, melt half of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, whisk in the flour, and cook until foaming. Strain in the reduced broth and bring the sauce to a boil, then simmer, whisking constantly until it thickens. Stir in the crème fraiche and bring back to a boil., adding truffle, cognac and then whisk in butter in small pieces.

Rinse the spelt under water. Boil chicken broth. In a large pot, sweat chopped onions with olive oil for 5 minutes. Add the spelt, and sweat for another 4 minutes. Pour the white wine over the spelt and reduce. Add one ladle of broth at a time until spelt is cooked and soft. Add the heavy cream and season with salt and pepper. Remove the strings, and set the chicken on a platter. Spoon a little sauce over the bird and around the base of the dish. Serve the remaining sauce separately. Carve the chicken at the table.