Cooking’s not about SHOWING OFF it’s about feeding

He was the hothead of the hob who set the British cookery scene alight. But Marco Pierre White has mellowed, he tells Frances Hardy, and now he’s sharing his knowledge in an inspiring online cookery course

Marco Pierre White is coaxing a pan of golden-yolked eggs to a gentle simmer in a generous puddle of butter. ‘It’s my favourite ingredient,’ he declares. ‘It makes everything more delicious. I cannot imagine a more wonderful death than drowning in butter.’

Today, when so much cooking is brisk, efficient and pared down to a few glum but healthy ingredients (brown rice and kale salad, anyone?), isn’t it wonderful that our greatest chef should be encouraging a little unashamed self-indulgence? Marco, the first chef in Britain and the youngest in the world (at the time) to win three Michelin stars, is demonstrating how to make the perfect Spanish tortilla (topped, for added luxury, with those fried eggs and a shaving of truffle). He does so with such tenderness and attention to detail it amounts to nothing less than love.

He disparages today’s ‘conveyor belt cuisine’, detests miserly portions. ‘So many restaurant menus are written by accountants. I’ve never done a stocktake in my life. I’ve never worked to a gross profit. Cooking is about generosity,’ he says. ‘Chefs today have turned meals into canapé parties. You get knick-knacks on a plate and they’re tepid at best. Food must be served hot, so take the pan to the table. It simplifies everything. I want to inspire, not impress.’

Even the everyday he invests with a kind of magnificence. ‘Potatoes. One of the most delicious and versatile ingredients,’ he announces, in a reverential voice, elevating the humble root vegetable to a status it has not enjoyed since Walter Raleigh. Marco, 58, does not have a battalion of kitchen lackeys. He pares the spuds himself, carefully, methodically, demonstrating every step.

He is imparting his vast knowledge in a cookery course, Delicious Food Cooked Simply, on a new e-learning service from the BBC called Maestro. No fireworks, no histrionics, just a quiet work of genius. And the tortilla is one of many dishes he will be serving up. Anyone can subscribe to Maestro – Daily Mail readers get a discount (see box, below) – and be inspired by the dishes he has perfected.

‘Cooking is not about recipes. It’s a philosophy,’ he says. His lessons are easy to follow because he explains every process with care. ‘Always taste, taste, taste, and season each thing individually,’ he says, combining the ingredients for his tortilla into a glorious mélange which he gently fries. ‘You can’t just walk away and leave her. You have to mother her,’ he explains (he gives all his dishes a female pronoun). ‘You have to invest all your time and understanding into making the perfect tortilla.’

Once it is golden he turns it onto a plate, tucking in the edges as gently as a parent tucks in a child at bedtime. ‘If you burn your fingers, it’s fine. It’s a growing pain. Have confidence with your fingers,’ he says. Now the eggs, not so much fried as poached to buttery perfection, come in. He places them tenderly onto the tortilla, then grates a truffle on top, turning a simple meal into a gastronomic treat.

There are 35 lessons in Marco’s course, designed to take you on a journey – Marco’s own – from 16year-old trainee chef to his three Michelin stars, then beyond to where he is today: a home cook who brings his supreme expertise to the domestic kitchen. He aims to give an understanding of taste and classical flavour combinations and invites us to use all our senses; to fall in love with food and cooking. He shows us how to elevate anchovies on toast to the sublime and lets us cheat with our langoustine cocktail. ‘There’s acceptable mayonnaise and ketchup you can buy. Don’t waste time making what can be bought well.’

He is a man of courtesy and charm, bereft of the braggadocio that made him the enfant terrible of British cuisine. So what happened to the rock’n’roll chef once dubbed Jagger Of The Aga? Where are the boiling rages, the feuds? It was Marco who ripped a trainee’s whites with a carving knife (‘to give him some ventilation’) when he complained it was too hot in the kitchen; Marco who reduced a rookie Gordon Ramsay to a quivering mess of tears (their rocky relationship ended in still-simmering animosity after Gordon hid in undergrowth with a camera crew to ambush Marco’s third wedding).

Yet the trainee with the ventilated whites still works for him today. ‘Never forget,’ says Marco, ‘when a chef screams and swears – he may even throw something – it is not personal, it is service. He has to shout his orders. Perfection only lasts seconds. Food starts to die on the plate when it gets cold. I’m not saying I was a saint, but if I was such a hellraiser how did I have time to win three Michelin stars? I put a tremendous amount of thought and energy into everything I did. I made huge sacrifices. I went to work in the morning when my children were sleeping and came home at night

‘My best times are solitary, i live a private life’

photographed exclusively for weekend by nicky johnston