Want to cook like a Michelin-starred chef? Marco swears he can teach you

From tasty seafood cocktails to perfect boiled potatoes, the once scary King of the Kitchen reveals his secrets in 35 easy lessons

ICKNAMED the “enfant terrible” of the restaurant business, not so long ago Marco PierreWhite was the sweary monster who took no prisoners in his mission to dominate the world of haute cuisine.

This is the man who made foul-mouthed telly bully Gordon Ramsay look as well mannered as Mary Berry. In fact, a quick burst of White’s volcanic temper once reduced him to a sobbing wreck, quivering in the corner of his kitchen.

Fortunately,White was also a genius at the stove, at 32 the youngest ever chef to be awarded three Michelin stars.

Blessed with the brooding good looks of a matinee idol, he was the rock star of modern British cooking with a love life to match. However, White has finally mellowed, he says. Now, 59, and with three marriages behind him, he has found peace and satisfaction in his new mission – to teach us all how to cook excellent food. It’s a terrific offer – 35 online lessons from the master for £80. And he won’t even swear at you.

White, who hung up his chef’s whites in 1999 when he famously handed back all his Michelin stars, explains: “I used to have an army of chefs around me and all the equipment of a professional kitchen.

“I no longer have either, but what I do have is that three-star understanding and a knowledge of how to bring those flavours into the domestic kitchen.”

The timing could not be better. This is the time of year when we long to reinvent ourselves, thinking: “New Year, new skill”. And more and more of us have found solace in the kitchen in lockdown. But, as White is keen to show, there’s more to home cooking than baking banana bread.

To that end, he is fronting a course on Maestro, a new paid for BBC online service in which stars at the top of their game let us into the secrets of their crafts. Other contributors include Gary Barlow (on songwriting), David Walliams (on writing books for children), and Jed Mercurio (on scripting TV drama).

Over the course of 35 lessons, the chef meticulously lays out his cooking philosophy and demonstrates how to cook exquisite, but blissfully straightforward dishes. The key is that he is not showing us how to make frighteningly elaborate, Michelin-star dishes. It’s all about delicious food, simply cooked.

WHITE, who now has business interests in a string of restaurants and hotels, serves up painless-tofollow takes on such classics as macaroni cheese, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, and seafood cocktail. He even demonstrates new ways of preparing such staples as tomato sauce and boiled potatoes with butter.

The chef, whose Michelin-starred restaurants included Harveys, The Restaurant Marco Pierre White and The Oak Room, says:

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS: Marco is sharing the knowledge he’s picked up over 40 years at gastronomy’s cutting edge

“My style is honest. Eating great food should not only satisfy your stomach, but also warm your heart. Mother Nature is the true artist – we’re just the cooks.

“So I simplify everything, from a boiled potato to a pigeon. Food should never be forced. If you push things in life, you always break them.”

White may have hosted such TV hits as Hell’s Kitchen, The Chopping Block, Masterchef The Professionals and Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars, but he does not see himself as a celebrity chef.

“Can I say? I’m no different to anybody else in any kitchen, no different at all.

“There’s just me, no longer with the 29 chefs around me. But what I do is I bring those little pieces of that three-star world