Guest Chef Demonstration with Emmanuel Ryon
Le Cordon Bleu London was joined by Emmanuel Ryon, Chef Owner at Une Glace à Paris, for a cooking demonstration to showcase Parisian-style desserts.
Chef Ryon found his calling early on and earned his pastry chef’s diploma at a young age, after which he went on to a series of enriching internships. His taste for competitions led him to participate in 25 competitions, eventually winning the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title for ice cream and the Pastry World Championship in 1999.
Une Glace à Paris was founded by Sam Yoel in 1955, and ever since, the company has been producing traditional and innovative ice creams and sorbets for its customers, made the ‘Parisian way’, meaning it was low in calories and made with natural ingredients.
Chef Ryon and business partner Olivier Menard opened the Une Glace à Paris branch in the Maris district of Paris in 2015, entirely devoted to ice cream, with 35 unique flavours. Emmanuel explained to guests, “It is really difficult for a dessert shop to find the right place. As you need to be in a busy location with right type of people, who really enjoy desserts.” Making ice cream is particularly pleasing to him because when you eat it, you can taste all its ingredients, which makes it more interesting to play with. You can even find savoury-sweet flavoured ice creams in his shop, including avocado, mushroom, tomato and olive oil flavoured ice cream, which he adds sugar to, as sugar helps to make it the right texture.
For the demonstrations, Chef Emmanuel made two sophisticated and intricate desserts comprised of many layers, flavours and textures. The first being E. Ryon’s Discovery Dessert, that started off with a yuzu almond shortbread based that was created using yuzu extract, butter, icing, whole eggs, ground almond, sifted flour and baking powder. Following the base, a turmeric vanilla panna cotta was created for the second layer and one of the ingredients in this was a leaf gelatine, which he allowed guests to try, which was very sweet in flavour and jelly-like in consistency. For the third layer, Chef Emmanuel made a transparent yuzu jelly which consisted of yuzu essence, caster sugar, water, agar agar, fresh lemon juice and vanilla essence. He boiled these ingredients in a saucepan and allowed it to cool down to 40°C before layering it on top of the turmeric vanilla panna cotta. For the dessert’s final layer, he placed decorative vanilla milk skin sheets and shiso cream together. The shiso cream was made from fresh green shiso, whipped cream, caster sugar, cornflour, butter, milk and leaf gelatine, and this was placed alongside the vanilla milk skin sheets which were made from milk, rice flour and vanilla powder and once made, it was shaped like a petal and painted gold.
The second dessert demonstrated was a chestnut tiramisu dessert plate, which started off with a rolled chocolate biscuit which consisted of whisked egg whites, sugar and cream, then added semolina, salt, peanut oil, cacao powder and baking powder and put the mix on a tray to be put in oven at 180°C. Chef Emmanuel explained he uses peanut oil instead of butter for biscuits as the oil keeps the consistency of the biscuit more soft and tight. Incorporated in the dessert was layers of a crispy cacao, dark chocolate, crunchy chocolate, dark chocolate and Corsiglia chestnut cream. He also made a tiramisu by mixing mascarpone, vanilla liquid and marsala alcohol and whisked it until it became a thin consistency, and added egg yolks, sugar semolina, Italian meringue and whipped cream to the mix before he whisked it again all together and put the mix in the fridge for one hour. If you leave it in the fridge any longer than that, it will explode due to the gas pent up inside the container.
The dessert was ensembled on a soup plate, starting with a layer of the biscuit, then the tiramisu, the crunchy chocolate and the chestnut cream. He then continued the layering in the reverse order, as he put a layer of the crunch chocolate, then the chestnut cream, before layering the tiramisu. Rather than topping the dessert with a layer of biscuit (which was the base), he instead smoothed ice cream on top with sprinkled crunch cocoa.
Once both desserts were ready, guests delighted in the tasters, freshly made and beautifully executed. Chef Emmanuel believes all his desserts should give people an experience to remember as they are intended to impact and create good emotions; from the way it tastes, to the way it makes smells and makes them feel.