An afternoon with Michel Roux Jr.

When I was around eight or nine years old, I invented the world’s first Jaffa Cake sandwich. I can’t remember my thought process at the time, but I enjoyed the main ingredients and presumably thought they could be fused together into something groundbreaking.

Here’s a quick rundown:

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Jaffa Cake Sandwich

Prep time: 2 secs
Cook time: 0 secs
Ingredients: Bread, Jaffa Cakes

Method
1. Place slice of bread on plate

2. Arrange four Jaffa Cakes on bread slice

3. Place second slice on top

4. Slice diagonally, and serve

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My culinary skills have thankfully improved since this early experiment – I’ve mastered broccoli puree and sous vide steak – but I still have a long way to go before I’m spooning celeriac foam over truffle-coated girolles under Greg Wallace’s watchful eyes. 

Luckily for me, I recently had the opportunity to learn some culinary tips and tricks from an absolute master – the legendary Michel Roux Jr. – at a private group Masterclass lesson at the Langham hotel in London, hosted by Samsung.

After a pleasant introduction and signing forms stating that any damage to my fingers would be entirely my own fault, Roux informed us what we’d be cooking – scallops baked in the shell, flavoured with ginger and served with buerre blanc sauce, in addition to some simple sugared choux pastry bites for dessert.

I was nervous. I wasn’t even sure that I knew that scallops came from shells, and my many years of watching MasterChef have taught me that pastry never behaves when you want it to. Nerves aside, watching Roux demonstrate the creation of both dishes, was a delight. 

With fluid, deliberate movements, he set to work. From teasing the scallop open and removing its meat with surgical precision, to mixing up the deliciously delicate choux pastry before piping it out on a tray, it was a real privilege to see a master of their craft work their magic in person.

The tech

Being a Samsung-hosted event, it would be remiss not to mention the actual tech I used to create the dishes. There’s not much I can say about the hobs, other than the fact that this was my first experience using an induction hob, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I’ve always been a strong gas advocate myself. There’s something about using actual flames to cook that just seems natural, and the intensity of flames is an easy, immediate visual indicator of heat. Samsung has found a way to break through the defences of people like me however, thanks to its hob’s virtual flame technology which uses LEDs to project virtual flames onto your pots and pans.

Roux himself changed from gas to induction hobs at his own restaurants. Unlike gas offerings, induction hobs only heat the pots and pans themselves – not the surrounding air – which, for a professional kitchen, means a lot less heat. In addition, Roux no longer has to go around switching gas hobs off after chefs remove pans – they automatically turn off when pots and pans are removed.

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On the oven front, things are a little more interesting. The Sauce kitchen was kitted out with Samsung’s Dual Cook Flex ovens – normal ovens which are horizontally split in half, allowing you to set two different temperatures for the top and bottom – a godsend for multi-dish cooking. 

Another benefit is the fact that smells won’t mix up either – none of the fishy aromas from my scallops tainted the delicate choux pastry bites in the lower level. If you’re cooking something larger like a turkey, you can also remove the divider and use it like a traditional oven.

It’s pretty innovative, as ovens go, and the bi-fold door is fun to play around with too – to the point where you may or may not forget to brush egg wash over your pastry before baking…

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