confiseur

I would be gratefull for some advice here.... I have been asked to contribute ten recipes such as chocolates, desserts, confectionery etc to an upcoming book. My name and a profile would also be mentioned and the standard would be so that a keen amateur chef would be able to reproduce it. The fee would be $500, this would be for my time and the preparation and presentation of the recipes for photography. There would be no further fee irresepective of how many books are sold. The IP rights would also go over to the publishers so I could not use those recipes. This doesn't seem like a great deal to me but having no experience in this area, am I being naive and should I take the money and run or should I hold out for a bit more, try to claim back the IP rights etc.? Any input gratefully received. Many thanks to everyone who has the time or inclination to reply.

Belle House on Bridge street in Pershore is well worth a visit...only 7 miles from Evesham. Seasonal, local ingredients well prepared without any pretentious fluff. Good value too.

Chop and change ? you cannot be serious lol and as for the 'great comment from an experienced interviewer'the guy who said that must have had zilch experience of the catering industry...please, he's having a laugh at your expense...either that or the guy is putting the 'W' into anchor-man.. As a chef, having 8 different positions ...so long as some career progression is shown... is far, far superior than staying in one place for 16 years. In fact it is positively disadvantageous to stay so long, particularly at the start of your career.

Plenty of 'Asum-grass' around ( Evesham Asparagus to non-yokels )...certainly in the Vale/Bredon area anyway.. Recently had some excellent Birlingham asparagus at the estimable Belle-House restaurant in Pershore...not suprising really, one of Europes leading horticultaral colleges is just up the road from Belle House in Pensham..

I generally cant stand Rayner who is to pomposity what Ferrari is to formula 1...however through gritted teeth I have to agree with him here..

.....well well well, what a suprise...

I am visiting Switzerland in March and will be travelling to Lucerne , Zurich and Berne..I am familiar with the chocolatiers in Luzern and Zurich...Sprungli,Honold, Bachmann, Heini etc but would like to know which are the best chocolatiers/confiseurs and patisseries in Berne?...Who has the best windows regarding Easter displays in the Swiss capital?...I would really appreciate any recommendations...old, new, traditional or modern...whatever...

Didn't it have one star years back but lost it when it was sold over? ...yeah ,believe so about 7 years ago..The chef now is Mary Runciman...Scottish rural chef of the year or some such and with a host of other minor accolades,she said the michelin man had been in a couple of times this year but no other clues. I had another truly excellent dinner there on Tuesday evening, 29th of December and the following evening went to Ondine in Edinburgh which is headed up by Rick Steins old head chef...decent enough but nowhere near in the same league. IMHO if Ms Runciman was in London she would be seen as at least the equal of the ladys Gyngell,Hartnett, Gray and Rogers.

I attended the competition and it was a great show...terrifically high standard all round... As people have commented previously ( and there where also more than a few eyebrows raised at the event) why on earth was the US representative French? I realise that foreign competitors can take part in the trial events, but the representative chosen to represent the country should be the first placed national of that country...as in atheletics or swimming for example...I thought it was very humiliating for the US to have a Frenchman representing them as I am sure there is a great deal of talent in the states..IMHO much better to come last in such an event with your own representative than win with a hired-gun from abroad..

...bit of a no-brainer this...of course Ducasse will get 3*...Great chef but more important than that is that he's French.. Think/hope la Potiniere in Gullane will at last get a star...

Lior... If you read the post I mentioned that this was a superb book...I really fail to see how much more I can recommend it...

Richard, ....dont get hung up on cocoa content, it really is no guarantor of quality... If you try Town and Country in High Wycombe they have just started importing Felchlin Maracaibo 65% into the UK as sole distributors...this is undoubtedly one of the worlds great chocolates, certainly of a higher standard than the overhyped Caraibe and Araguani from Valrhona...better price too..

I hope you meant 'Swiss Confiseur!' ← agggghhh! i mean, some of the recipes ARE crap... : 0 Sorry, cannot agree....tastes change but this is a superb book when you consider it was published in 87...obviously for professionals with a lot of prior knowledge as the concept of 'career changer' is unknown to the Swiss.An apprenticeship in Switzerland is minimum 3 years...not a 3 week course at Callebaut or the french pastry school and a stage means working for at least 6 months with a master chocolatier not 2 weeks at the local deli making cookies and caramels.. Perhaps for that reason alone the profession is more highly regarded there than in the US where I have seen the grim work of so many 'chocolatiers' at various shops, farmers markets,delis etc. When I ask them about them about there career they proudly tell me they where previously in marketing,finance,doctor/nurses or in real estate...sorry guys, but with a few honorable exceptions it really shows...

For me also Claire Clarkes book ( ex. Thomas Keller pastry cook ) was way, way over-rated... I bought it on the back of the publishers claiming her to be one of the top 3 pastrychefs in the world...wrong...very, very wrong.. Its alright but she is nowhere near in the same class as Herme, Bau, Morato,Wybauw, or Siefert etc etc.

Paco Torreblanca's pastry book vol.1 Speaking to a lot of pastry chefs the recipes do not'work'...there/my failure?...translation?

Hmmm....methinks in the UK at least the industry needs to wean itself off cheap labour as this is just used as a cover for inefficiency... 20 years working in CH in luxury hotels/restaurants and though unpaid overtime was often expected and worked it was never of the 100 hour week variety so commonplace in London..salarys where also better and restaurant prices were lower, standards far higher too...What chefs in the UK need to realise is that you may be superman but others arent and after, say 15 hours hard graft you are not as effective as somone halfway into a 9 hour shift...mistakes occur and it is a false economy to just keep driving people on.. Somewhat blue-eyed this, as though it should be to do with guest satisfaction your average management/accounting team will beg to differ..At my last position in London ( super- luxury 5 star ) it was made quite clear to me that staff and not food costs were the big issue for management and if I could be 'flexible' with the amount of staff I needed then that would be financially beneficial to me...talking to colleagues I can confirm this is most certainly not an isolated case..

At the risk of contradicting some of the excellent points allready raised..dont swallow all the macho-man bullshit about being screamed and shouted at...it is pathetic,totally unnecessary and contrary to what some may say it does not make you cook better..and as for the 'pressure'...dont make me laugh get things in perspective...your commis splashed a few drops of sauce on the wrong area of your pretty salad?, oh diddums...get a life saddo...an air-traffic controller or a surgeon who performs operations on children with life threatening diseases has forgotton more about pressure than any chef will ever know.. If you cannot teach someone to do things properly and/or the way you want it done without resorting to tantrums then you are the problem not the person you are training...and yes I have worked at the sharp end both in the UK and Europe for 25 years so I do know what I am rattling on about.. The 16 hour days should also be put into the myths and legends category....neccesary?...during the pre-opening/opening phase of a restaurant/hotel unfortunatley yes..afterwards? there having a laugh at your expense.... Expense being the operative word as the Exec. Chef will be on very big bucks indeed and will usually be paid a nice juicy bonus to keep staff costs as low as possible.

Just rereading Lisa's post and it reminded me of last year, taking some wonderful Callebaut 70% chocolate with me to Moab and having two good (non-foodie) friends literally spit it out, saying that it tasted like pure powdered cocoa. .........wonderful Callebaut chocolate?...when I think of wonderful chocolate, Valrhona, Felchlin, El Rey,Amano and Amadei certainly springs to mind but Callebaut ?

World Chocolate Masters 2009 result at the salon: 1. Japan ( the pre-competition favourite justified the predictions ) 2. USA ( whose representative is not actually American but...er....French) 3. Germany ( a strong showing from the excellent German representative ) 7. a solid effort from the UK 15. a suprisingly weak Italy Some superb work done by the great majority of the 19 competitors. I am already looking forward to judging at national selections next year. The WCM event is now pre-eminent among the worlds chocolate competitions.

That's fair enough. Giles Coren is worth reading for his prose, although I may not agree with his conclusions. Then you have people like Michael Winner who aren't foodies (although he eats a lot of food), are not good critics and are not good writers either. I find the tension between "mainstream" food writers and the blogosphere quite interesting. As all the main papers are free online these days I don't tend to distinguish between them, and quality dictates what I read. This article in the Telegraph by Diana Henry the other day made me laugh: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/re...n-beauties.html Why not? I am finding my dining choices increasingly dictated by blog posts and forum posts at places like eGullet rather than mainstream food reviews. ← Quite enjoy reading AA.Gill and Giles Coren....very entertaining...not too fond of JR, I find his pompous-git spiel irritating...or is that just his angle?

Anyone like to nominate a good or even half decent high street out there? Think I would like to put Claygate in Surrey in to open the batting. Far better than the bigger and nearer Cobham, Esher and Weybridge... Pretty impressive imho for an ( albeit wealthy ) village. There is an independent butcher, baker, deli with cafe, fruit and veg shop and an award winning fishmongers and not a satansburys or God forbid a tesco in sight. No cheese shop but hey-ho still pretty good. Can anyone recommend any others?

Hmm....its myths and legends time again folks...cue much hand wringing from hoteliers and restauretures about how they are going to be driven to the wall by paying a few pence more than the minimum wage.. Fact is the catering industry is notoriously padly paid and said restaurant owners are the first to start whining and crying that 'you just cant get the staff'...wonder why lol

a pity he's closed his restaurant ..I did some demonstrations together with him in Cape Town a couple of years ago and he was a genuinly nice bloke...no side to him..never played the princess..hats off to Jamie too who always acknowledges his debt to GC.

Good luck to her David, though with the cost of a lease for a shop in Chelski she is going to need more than just luck. I would hope that someone with such a background would possibly go into teaching as with the notable exception of Westminster College the standard of training for professional pastry chefs in London ranges from grim to awful..

...excellent fishmonger in Claygate too...also, how many villages half an hour from London have got an independent butcher, baker and fishmonger on the high street?