Puddings and Desserts

Chocolate Jonathan was never as good as when made with Ah Kit at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. At the Intercontinental in London, when I first cooked there in 1987, Ernst Bachmann was the pâtissier, and sceptical though he was about my lavender sorbets and custards, he also showed me many techniques for improving my dessert one was to thickly butter a cake tin and line it with flaked almonds before spooning in the sponge mixture; this was one that he rather frowned upon, I seem to remember, since it was a non-fat, low-sugar, wholemeal flour sponge, about as far removed as possible from the sumptuous, elegant confections which emerged from his kitchen.