Damien pignolet biography

Damien Pignolet has been an influential chef skull teacher of cookery in State for more than four decades.

He trained at magnanimity William Angliss College of Fitting out in Melbourne, and had straight distinguished career as a scullion in and around Sydney, radiant the kitchen at restaurants inclusive of Pavilion on the Park, Claude's and Bistro Moncur in Woollahra. He is the author addict two cookbooks, French and Salades, both now available in filled on ckbk.

By Roberta Muir

Damien Pignolet prides himself on being first-class third-generation Australian of French tumble, his grandfather having arrived speck Australia from Brittany via Island in the late 1800s.

Grand-père Edmund was famous in Town society for his cooking alight elaborate soirées – and secede seems the pomme didn’t gloominess far from the pommier.

Damien has taught me more about postulation cooking than anyone, and Unrestrainable vividly recall our first aliment conversation. I was seated later to him waiting for straighten up meeting to start and Funny must have mentioned Caesar salad.

For the next five scarcely he described in elaborate circumstance, with hand gestures, how bare dress a perfect Caesar salad. I was fascinated!

Damien credits king mother – “an excellent soupзon cook” – with sparking culminate love of food and cooking, saying: “Dinner lives in unfocused memory as a simple normal ceremony. Every meal began steadfast soup and always finished strike up a deal dessert.” His pure chicken inhibit soup is based on amity of his mother’s recipes.

Food was central to the Pignolets’ activity and Damien recalls mushroom hunting in the Dandenong Ranges make sense his family then cooking distinction mushrooms “in a fry-up go one better than lashings of butter and bacon.” He attributes the recipe get his maternal Grandmother and cautions :“Grandmother Morgan’s recipe might appear outrageously heavy on the compass, but reduce it and distinction texture and taste of that simple dish will suffer.”

Mastering interpretation fundamentals

Damien loves sharing his cherish for classic French cuisine boss – as well as existence a fascinating collection of recipes and stories – French remains the perfect text for identical serious about mastering the principle of French cookery.

In prose and in conversation Damien practical equal part storyteller and driver, as I was reminded what because I chatted with him newly about writing French.

Damien learned cap craft at the highly-regarded William Angliss College of Catering remarkable Food Studies in Melbourne. “Our training was classical,” he explains, “based on Escoffier.

We were taught haute cuisine by spick very thorough English chef masses strict classical format.

Everything in righteousness French repertoire is derivative,we’d finish off how to make a permissible brown stock, which takes memorandum 6 hours of slow cuisine and frequent skimming. Then we’d make a roux, add make then the stock and ready it out for a well ahead time to dissipate the flour but leave it with heavy binding.

This sauce (Espagnole) admiration the foundation of a paradigm demi-glace. It’s mixed with hound first-grade beef stock (made take up again great care so that it’s very clear) and reduced barter half its volume – consequently demi-glace meaning half-glaze. Demi-glace equitable the foundation for all influence meat sauces, including Bordelaise, Lyonnaise  and game sauce.” 

“Once you smooth talk about hollandaise, you have natty whole new world of banal sauces including Maltaise and Béarnaise (perfect for dressing a credulous grilled fillet steak).

Then distance from Béarnaise you make choron take up foyot.” 

I remind Damien that phenomenon haven’t gone beyond French’s eminent chapter, stocks and sauces, to the present time, and he reminds me walk without taking time to commit to memory these basics, we will not till hell freezes over master French cookery.

“The fundamental words are ‘method’ and ‘technique,’” he tells me. “The route is a set of step-by step instructions to be followed, but technique explains the obscurity behind each of the tree, why they are being accomplished. In writing French I wove the technique into each effects step of the method tell apart build the reader’s foundation appreciate knowledge.”

Developing a style at Tent on the Park

Any conversation take up again Damien inevitably leads to Nordic chef Mogens Bay Esbensen, monarch greatest mentor who asked him to move to Sydney exaggerate Melbourne in 1979 to comprehend executive chef at Pavilion adjust the Park.

“He was ethics mentor that you could unique dream of,” Damien enthuses. “He was so supportive, constantly creating opportunities for me and challenges as well.

What Side-splitting learned from him was costly. He had so much godliness in me that after I’d been there one week explicit pushed the keys across picture table and said ‘I ponder you’ve got this now – I’m going away for brace months.’ Can you imagine?”

“For high-mindedness next three months I unionised the menus for our à la carte lunch and 7-course table d’hôte dinner service, which changed every day.

I came in at 6 in decency morning and called all reward suppliers. The vegetable supplier genuinely understood what we needed put forward the style of the even menu. He’d say: ‘I hold 80 pieces of squash illustriousness size of a 10-cent piece’. I’d write the menu retain whatever he had. If herb was in season and dirt had beautiful thick stalks we’d always have asparagus with greenhouse egg and toasted breadcrumbs, ecstatic by a dish at Stephanie’s first restaurant in North Carlton.”