Blanc day

The protagonist of the BBC2 series The Restaurant, owner and chef at the two Michelin- starred Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in the village of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, spends each festive season in France with his family, his mother and his brother, Gerard, a keen huntsman.

One year, Raymond and Gerard had gone hunting with Gerard’s dogs, including the leader of the pack, Phoebus, in search of wild boar. The dogs are trained to find the boar, but not to attack it.

“It was about two weeks before Christmas and I went with my brother, who lives on the edge of a forest. Hunting is his passion. Suddenly Phoebus got the scent,” he explains.

“At first I was really excited and not scared because my brother knows what he is doing.

But sometimes things get out of hand. The dogs normally corner the beast so the huntsman can kill it, but this time the dogs attacked it. Phoebus was taken by the frenzy of the pack and, completely out of character, attacked as well.

“I was about 50 yards away and suddenly the boar caught Phoebus underneath and speared him with his tusk. The boar escaped.

“Actually, it started to run towards me,” Raymond continues. “I stood still in the middle of the field and I must tell you I felt very alone at that point. I did not have a gun; I did not have a horse. As the beast charged towards me looking angry, I was petrified. I prayed and hoped for the best. I thought the boar was about to take its revenge for all its brothers which had been killed.”

He laughs now at the memory of what he did next. He picked up a stone, which would have been useless against the huge creature coming towards him.

The boar charged straight past the petrified Raymond and escaped into the forest. Phoebus was rushed to the vet for treatment for a haemorrhage and has now recovered. But there was no wild boar on the Christmas table that year.

It hasn’t deterred Raymond, 58, from seeking out wild boar, though, and he served it at Christmas last year, he says. The cheek, belly and shoulder can be braised, while the loin and saddle can be roasted.

“Turkey is done too often, but I do like the tradition of it,” he says.

“I like Christmas pudding as well. I always make an English Christmas pudding, which I take to France. And I love the brandy butter.”

Raymond, who was presented with an honorary OBE earlier this year in recognition of his services to the British food industry, has fantastic memories of the gastronomic Christmases he had growing up in Besancon, eastern France.

His new book, A Taste Of My Life, is filled with the mouth-watering delights of his early years, with accompanying recipes. Your tastebuds will be tingling just reading it and his family’s culinary traditions have continued to this day.

“It was heavenly. Society was so family orientated, so close, and food was at the very heart of any form of gathering,”

he says.

“In French families Christmas is a feast of the family. We have a huge gathering, sometimes more than 20 people around a tiny table packed with food.

“Uncles and aunts and cousins would arrive with wine, with gifts, and then Grandmere Blanc would arrive with a big pot of tripe.

Then we would have a typical French meal.

“There were a lot of escargots (snails) that we had collected on the edges of the forest and which my mum had bottled for the feast.”

Between them, the party would wolf down up to 500 Burgundy snails in one sitting. Terrines and pates were next, followed by preserved beans and mushrooms and later the main course, which might be a goose with chestnuts or a large chicken.

“Rarely did we have turkey and if we did it was served with redcurrant jelly.”

Then the tripe would be served. The meat would be accompanied by freshly picked Brussels sprouts, slowly cooked with bacon. A mild, creamy Comte cheese from the fromagerie in the village would be served with salad.

Dessert was often a fruit salad made with local produce that had been bottled the previous summer and autumn and the crowning glory was the buche de Noel, or Christmas log, made by Maman Blanc.

“Lunch always lasted into the evening,” he recalls.

“Even now it’s the same. I always go back to my family in France. Last year we did it at Gerard’s but I had to tie my mother up to stop her from doing the cooking. She’s now 87 but she’s amazing, so active and enjoying life.

“I strapped her into her chair with a scarf to prevent her from cooking, serving or stepping foot in the kitchen. It was useless. She broke free and headed for the cooker.

“She never lets me take over and, not only that, she competes with me. I love to go back to my roots. Food is a strong make-up of our culture.”

Raymond began his career in England as a waiter at the Rose Revived Restaurant, near Witney. He took over one day when the chef was taken ill.

In 1977 he and his then wife Jenny opened their first restaurant, Les Quat’ Saisons in Oxford, and later bought the manor house in Great Milton which has become the creme de la creme of fine dining hotels. He has never looked back.

The energetic chef, who owns the Brasserie Blanc chain of restaurants in the UK, has also just launched his own website, raymondblanc.

com, expressing his own views on a variety of issues that he holds close to his heart and sharing recipes with his fans.

His mother, Maman Blanc, remains a huge influence in his cooking, using fresh, local and seasonal produce.

And it doesn’t take long to realise that she and her son are ardent followers of Oscar Wilde’s famous maxim: “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.”

■ A Taste Of My Life by Raymond Blanc (Bantam, £20).