Pastry Chef Mohammed Kessrrwani shows me how make a great French Mille-feuille

The friendly staff at Paul, MGM Muscat

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote my first two blog posts on Paul, Muscat. With Eid rapidly approaching, I  decided to write my third and final post on Paul where Pastry Chef Mohammed Kessrwani shows me how to make the best  Mille-feuille and hope you enjoy reading this one as well.Even better, if you decide to try this out as your very own 'Eid Special.'

Paul is a French chain of bakeries and café restaurants established in 1889 in the city of Croix, in Northern France by Charlemagne Mayot. Today, there are over 500 franchised Paul bakery/café restaurants in many countries worldwide, viz.France, Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom,  among others.This year Paul came to Muscat and has rapidly proved to be a very welcome addition to the range of restaurants present here.

Having a sweet tooth and being fond of baking myself, I'd specially asked to meet the Pastry Chef and that was how I found myself in the kitchens of Paul Muscat at 0730 hours and when I entered, was surprised to see Chef Mohammed Kessrwani already hard at work! 

                                

                           Chef Mohammed Kessrwani is all smiles

Welcoming me and making sure I was wearing a cap to cover my hair, he positioned me where I could watch him clearly and had no objections to being photographed at his work station. My first impression was,'Gosh he looks so young!" ! And that was proved to be right when I learnt that he was 29 and had been working in Pastry for the last 14 years.

I shadowed Chef Mohammed for two days and am delighted with all that I got to see and learn. On the second morning, I was invited by the Chef to watch an exclusive session on how to make a  great Mille-feuille and was then treated to a Demo of the vanilla strawberry version.

The mille-feuille ( "thousand leaves") vanilla custard slice, also known as the 'Napoleon' is a pastry of French origin. Traditionally, a mille-feuille is made up of three layers of puff  pastry(pâte feuilletée), alternating with two layers of pastry cream (crème pâtissière), but sometimes whipped cream or jam are substituted. The top pastry layer is dusted with  confectioner's sugar  and sometimes cocoa, or pulverized seeds (e.g. roasted almonds). Alternately, the top is glazed with icing or fondant in alternating white  (icing) and  brown  (chocolate)  stripes  and combed to get the effect of lines or striations.

The pastry sheets ready to be worked on

Piping the vanilla cream

Since Paul has strict standards, the basic pastry sheets for the Mille-feuille reach the Muscat restaurant as frozen sheets and every morning when he comes in, Chef Mohammed takes out the required quantity and thaws them till they are at the right temperature. After making the vanilla or as the case may be, the chocolate cream, he starts piping it, neatly but very firmly, around the outer edges and works his way inwards, till the entire sheet is neatly covered.

Beautifully set and Chef starts to top with fresh strawberries

Working patiently, Chef Mohammed  covers the entire surface with the beautifully sliced fresh strawberries and then adds a light glaze to the finished product that goes a long way in adding to the appeal. Reminding me that we all eat with our eyes first, he pops the tray into the refrigerator for about 20 mins to give it a chance to set.

Exactly twenty minutes later, the alarm goes off and he gently takes the tray out and neatly slices the set pastry- a Vanilla Strawberry Mille-feuille into 24 portions and voila, a great new batch is ready!


Sometime later, the Mille-feuille make their way to the front of the shop where customers feast their eyes, before placing their orders for their goodies or best of all, sit down for coffee,  chat and a strawberry Mille-feuille with a friend!