Who's Who Eat Out of Pierre Herme's Hand As He Reveals Secret of Best-Selling Macaroon

This is the report that appeared in Mail Today (Page 8) on Sunday, March 9.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

DELEGATES TO THE India Today Conclave 2014 started Day Two with a sweet surprise from the man who rewrote the flavour DNA of the macaroon and turned it into a global sensation. A packed house got not only a peek into the mild-mannered Pierre Herme's universe of tastes and pleasures, but also generous helpings of the confection that's been singularly responsible for his global fame.

Herme built his reputation on the Ispahan, his best-selling macaroon that marries the never-before-combined flavours of fresh raspberry, canned litchi and rose petal buttercream. It is a monument to his ability to create new taste profiles and he demystified the process at the session chaired by the acclaimed food writer Rashmi Uday Singh.

Pierre Herme wowed the high-powered turnout
on the second day of the India Today Conclave
2014 on Saturday, March 8, with his globally
renowned macaroons, flown in from Paris

"An idea comes to me from an image or a product, or a conversation I have with someone, or something that I have read," he said as our teeth sank into a Celeste, a marriage of passion fruit, rhubarb and strawberry, and another made with Peruvian dark chocolate from the village of Asprobo in Morropon province, and yet another that combined the seductive powers of milk chocolate and passion fruit.

Even Deepika Padukone, looking svelte as always in a white dress, couldn't resist the temptation of having one. She walked into her conversation with Koel Purie Rinchet, which followed Herme's session, eating one of the macaroons that had won the heart of the who's who gathered in the hall.

It was on a visit to Bulgaria in 1987, when he was a pastry chef with the French fine food merchant Fauchon, that the macaroon maestro hit upon the idea that evolved into Ispahan. He was struck by the use of rose in Bulgarian cuisine, so he returned and created a cake called Paradise with fresh raspberries and rose petal butter cream.

Paradise did not become the global rage till he added litchi in 1997 and it was then that Herme developed the macaroon with the new formula. Today, as many as 40 different products from Herme's empire have the three ingredients in different proportions.

"I have in mind the taste and texture, which I translate into a drawing with a precise recipe at the bottom," Herme continued, reminding one of the creative process of Satyajit Ray, who used to sketch every scene before shooting it.

At any given time in his Paris laboratory, 30 to 40 new products are developed, tasted and tested, for Herme, like a haute couturier, makes "high-end customised products" exclusively for individual clients who get to savour flavour combinations that are never repeated again. Unsurprisingly, Pierre Herme, the brand, is on the Comite Colbet, an exclusive club of French luxury labels.

"My ideas and inspirations come from everywhere," Herme said. On a recent visit to Hong Kong, for instance, he discovered the Eight Treasures Tea, whose remarkable flavours are most likely to find their way into his future creations.

Rashmi Uday Singh, who surprised the audience by mentioning how Herme had developed a keen interest in Valmiki's Ramayana, asked the 'Picasso of Pastry' if India was going to inspire him to create a new flavour. Herme, who first came to India a couple of years ago on a holiday, chose not to answer the question. Maybe there's something cooking in his laboratory that he doesn't yet wish to reveal to the world.

India Today Conclave to Showcase the Pastry Chef Who Made Macaroons A Global Gourmet Phenomenon

A part of this article has been drawn from the curtain-raiser I wrote for the Mail Today dated March 7, 2012.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IN THE 13-year history of the India Today Conclave, the only chef who has had anything to do with the country's definitive festival of ideas is a self-effacing man named Rajesh Wadhwa, who presides over the kitchens of the Taj Palace, New Delhi, and ensures that each gala dinner is more memorable than the one before.

A little later today, for the first time in the history of the India Today Conclave and its many copycats, a chef is going to take the centre-stage. France's most celebrated pastry chef and the god of macaroons, Pierre Herme, will showcase his world of flavours, first at a solo session and then at high tea, where the delegates will get to sample the confection that has the world from London to Qatar, Dubai and Tokyo eating out of his hand.

Pierre Herme is the youngest
man ever to be named France's
Pastry Chef of the Year. Picture
Copyright: Jean Louis Bloch Laine

Herme, who's on his first visit to India, is being presented by the Embassy of France. The Ambassador of France, Francois Richier, a master of nuclear diplomacy in the mould of our own Rakesh Sood, the Prime Minister's Special Envoy on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, was worried that Herme's macaroons may sideline weightier matters such as nuclear power and the space programme.

It may happen, though, that the Picasso of Pastry, which is how Vogue magazine has described the patissier, wakes up the delegates and get them into the mood to discuss the eclectic range of subjects lined up for Conclave's Day Two -- from psephology to robotics, terror to space exploration, cinema to sanitation, and finally, Salman Khan on 'Being Human'. France is the Conclave's partner country -- and you can't imagine it without good food and wine. Hence Herme.

The youngest person to be named France's Pastry Chef of the Year, and the only member of his profession to be inducted into the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the French equivalent of a knighthood, Herme is best-known for his unusual macaroons, his most famous creation being the one with olive oil and vanilla.

Christophe Gillino, a world-travelled Frenchman and Executive Chef of The Leela Palace New Delhi, underlined the importance of Herme when he said that the extraordinarily talented pastry chef was responsible for turning around the fortunes of two old French gourmet institutions -- Fauchon and Laduree. Then he went on to create an international chain of gourmet patisseries. Herme will interact with the city's pastry chefs and gourmet bloggers at Le Cirque, The Leela Palace New Delhi's signature restaurant, on Monday, March 10.

Heir to four generations of an Alsatian bakery and pastry-making tradition, Herme is not a stranger to generous accolades. Paris Match magazine has called Herme the "magician with tastes", The New York Times hailed him as "The Kitchen Emperor" and The Guardian described him as "The King of Modern Pâtisserie".

Herme, 52, started apprenticing with the pastry-making legend, Gaston Lenotre, when he was 14, and then went on to revolutionise his craft with his original philosophy of taste, sensations and pleasure. He was the one, for instance, who promoted the idea of the use of sugar as salt -- "as a seasoning to heighten other shades of flavour".

When Desserts by Pierre Herme was released in 1999, the world therefore wasn't surprised to see him overturning established norms by marrying unusual ingredients, such as black pepper and an optional sliver of habanero in his Warm Chocolate and Banana Tart, or a basil chiffonade as garnishing for his Basmati Rice and Fruits-of-the-Moment Salad.

He is a thinking person's pastry chef and a successful business baron who made the idea of 'Patisserie Haute Couture' an international statement of style, which has powered the growth of his chain of pastry shops from Tokyo in 1998 to France, England, Hong Kong, Qatar and Dubai.

Before he launched his empire of taste, Herme was the pastry chef for 11 years for the French fine food merchant, Fauchon, and in 1997, he was powering the expansion of another French institution, the luxury bakery, Laduree. He brings to New Delhi this vast experience and he will be here to talk about his life's journey with "pleasure as the only guide".