Barry Johnson is head chocolatier at Rococo Chocolates and the captain of the UK Pastry Team who, along with his team mate Nicholas Belorgey and team president Martin Chiffers, recently won the European Pastry Cup and will be going on to compete in next year’s Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie in Lyon.
Can you take us through the day’s events at the European Pastry Cup? The competition was split into two heats, the morning and afternoon and we were drawn in the afternoon heat so in the morning we didn’t get up too early, had a leisurely breakfast and made sure that everything was ready. We spent a little bit of time looking at the morning countries and what they were producing – I could see that it was a very good standard but I knew that ours was of equal, if not slightly better quality if we could hold it together and do what we’d practised. Then it was a bit of a mad rush to get all our equipment in place, then once we were set up we had a bit of a technical issue with the chocolate machine so my timing plan went out of the window basically, because I didn’t have any tempered chocolate for the first 45 minutes of the competition! So I had to think on my feet and change my plan but we were given an extra fifteen minutes and it all worked out well in the end. Why did you go for the theme of The Lion King? London musicals was the theme of the UK Pastry Open and The Lion King was my entry in that. We decided to extend that theme to the European Cup. The Lion King is very colourful and there are hundreds of elements we could use. The theme is a very important part of the competition with high marks awarded for it. We used the “Lyceum” theatre as inspiration for the fruit mousse cake and “The Circle of Life” for the chocolate plated dessert. The Lion King is a musical that’s been all around the world so we knew that it was instantly recognisable to everybody. How did it feel when you found that you’d won and what did you do afterwards? I had a feeling that we’d potentially won, but you don’t want to count your chickens. Then when they announced it, we all just jumped for joy because we knew that we’d put in the hard work and it had paid off. They played the British national anthem and at the end of it I did… shriek I think is the right word! You can see on some of the pictures that Nicholas is almost grimacing at how loud I’m shouting! After all the photos we had to clear away all of our equipment but after that we managed to drink some champagne then we went for a nice meal with the extended team and family with more Prosecco to celebrate! Then it was back home the next day by plane with our team driver, Andrew Blas, who’s the Executive pastry chef from Café Royale, driving the equipment all the way from Geneva to the UK. A massive thank you to him and a big thanks to all our sponsors as well. We couldn’t have funded the UK winning the European Cup without them. When do preparations start for the world Coupe du Monde? We’re all having a couple of weeks R and R to recover. I’m just about to fly out to Grenada to help the Grenada Chocolate Company with their production of our next Gru Grococo bar of chocolate and also to give some training to their chocolatier in the bonbon shop where they produce organic, locally flavoured, dairy-free chocolates. When we get back we need to choose the third member of the team for the world competition which will be ice carving. We have a shortlist of possible candidates who will go through some intense ice carving training over the next eight weeks; then we’ll start to work on the taste elements first. For the world final it’s similar to the European, so a chocolate dessert, a fruit mouse cake, a sugar showpiece, a chocolate showpiece, an ice carving and an ice cream cake. The showpieces are to a maximum of two metres in height which is a lot taller than the European competition. What are your goals for the World competition and who will be your biggest competitors? Being back to back winners of the European cup and scoring the highest marks in all categories just shows how the British Pastry industry is improving. The top seven teams from the last three events on aggregate automatically qualify for the world competition. Tough competitors will definitely be Spain, Italy and Japan. We’d love to win obviously – you always have to aim high – but realistically a top seven placing would be fantastic. Last year we were ninth and that was the highest ever, so to come in the top seven would be great. Of course you have a day job as well while all this is going on; what does your role at Rococo Chocolates involve? I’m the head chocolatier and have been with the company two years now and my role is to run the chocolate production. This involves production of our award winning range of ‘Couture’ chocolates, pralines, Marshmallows and specialities. I’m still in the kitchen on a weekly basis and have a fantastic small team that work with me. We supply our four Rococo shops and also to a select number of five-star hotels and Michelin-star restaurants. As well as day-to-day production I’m also involved in product/recipe development and concept design. In the last two years I’ve also helped to write the Rococo book, ‘Mastering the Art of Chocolate’. I also give regular demonstrations and teach at the chocolate school at our Motcomb Street shop. It’s a very varied job – there’s never a dull moment! You’re right in the middle of this huge journey from the UK Pastry Open to the European Cup to the world finals of the Coupe du Monde; can you sum up what being part of this competition means for you? I still feel a little bit shell shocked by the whole process! I entered the UK Pastry Open to push myself and improve, and there aren’t that many competitions where you get to represent your country in the culinary world. I took that decision knowing it would impact on my life, but it’s such a small industry that every single person in it can make a difference. It’s all about promoting the UK pastry industry. We’re hoping that one day one of the national papers or one of the television companies will want to follow the progress of the team and publicise it even more. That’s the goal of the committee – how can we publicise the UK pastry industry more and get the kind of support the other top countries receive. I, Nicholas, Martin [Chiffers] and the whole committee do this in our own time for the love of Pastry whereas some other countries are paid to compete for the glory of the country.
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