Roland Trettl meets Emmanuel Renaut

Roland Trettl in France

The Frenchman, whose culinary expertise is in demand throughout the world and who relaxes by going fishing at 2 o'clock in the morning.

I met Emmanuel Renaut last year in São Paulo - at a food event that was a showpiece for classic French cuisine. Twenty-five highly rated colleagues in the Alain-Ducasse category – amongst them Monsieur Renaut - honoured Brazil with their presence. He was stood out because he speaks excellent English and proved himself to be extraordinarily communicative. If we are talking about cookery, the affable Renaut describes himself as classic French. He puts his international influences down to the extended foreign trips he has undertaken as the director of a cookery school and the semidnars he has given that are in demand throughout the world. Emmanuel Renaut is in my eyes a master of camouflage – of sophisticated disguise. Time and again, his "simple" dishes hide complicated techniques that are not immediately obvious at first glance. Take his polenta ravioli as an example! To make this, he rolls the polenta dough out with incredible precision to a thickness of two millimetres and covers his delicious mushroom ragout with three layers of polenta. Then he cuts it all out so that from the outside it takes on the shape of ravioli. A jus of juniper and poultry is then poured over the whole dish.

As mentioned, the dish looks like ravioli, and only those who know about working with fragile polenta dough will appreciate how much harder this dish is to produce than when using an all-forgiving pasta dough. The proof that Renaut is not only technically masterful but can also work in quite "normal" areas of full flavour is demonstrated in dishes such as his pike dumplings. A sensuous pike filling with plenty of cream and butter in the classic style, teamed with crayfish, covered with a shellfish foam soup and then – a this is a touch of genious – turnips marinated in Campari that then enhance the sweet base tones of pike and shellfish in a harmonious whole. His Chartreuse sabayon is also sensational. Chocolate is spread over a sabayon square and then turned over. The plain side is then sprayed with chocolate using a spray gun, apart from a few "spots" covered with paper. Then drop by drop, Chartreuse liqueur is then added to the white spots. Then Chartreuse sweets are added, crystallised on the outside but liquid on the inside, that Emmanuel has marinated in cornflour with sugar and alcohol treacle.

And here again the hidden technique completely foregoes any artificial chemical ingredients. It is therefore fitting that this man loves being close to nature in the mountains. His favourite hobbies are collecting mushrooms and fishing in the vicinity of Mègeve. He asked me in all seriousness if we should go and do a little fishing at 2 o'clock in the morning. For a few seconds, this was the only time that I wasn't entirely sure that having met in São Paulo was really such a blessing after all.