Cuisses de grenouille

A little fun canapé aboard finesse while trying to keep classical regional cuisine on the menu, frogs leg lollipops are a great pre dinner nibble with drinks. Frog legs are sautéd in garlic & butter, when cooked the meat is stripped from the bones, seasoned & formed into balls, then breadcrumbed in breadcrumbs that have…

Chocolate sphere

desert for Friday’s gala dinner was a tempered chocolate sphere, one half of which was filled with chocolate, hazelnut & almond praline which was topped with a chocolate caramel mousse, the other half was filled with a sharp apricot gel topped with an apricot mousse, after the two halves were put together the sphere was…

Sous vide egg & Orthinogale

A starter aboard Finesse this week featured Orthinogale, also known as wild asparagus. A sous vide slow cooked hens egg, cooked at 63 degrees for an hour served with Orthinogale, local cured ham crisped in the oven & a hollandaise purée. The egg cooked in its shell in a water bath for an hour is…

Lemon tart

Dessert on the Finesse menu was my modern take on lemon tart, an intense free standing lemon cream like you find in a lemon tart, a gluten free almond biscuit to represent the pastry case, an isomalt sugar glass to replace the glazed top on a traditional lemon tart, lemon fluid gel, fresh raspberries, dehydrated…

White chocolate mousse

A new dessert on the Finesse menu is a white chocolate mousse scented with Darjeeling tea, cinnamon, star anise & vanilla. It is served on a bed of chocolate soil, fresh orange segments, orange scented chocolate ganache made with 66% mexique chocolate, orange sorbet made with fresh orange juice & mint sprigs. The chocolate mousse…

Scallops & Romanesque Broccoli

After many scallop & cauliflower dishes aboard the barges, a variation from the brassica family is scallops with Romanesque broccoli served as a starter aboard the Finesse. Also known as Roman cauliflower, chartreuse in colour it creates a very very smooth pure a little nutty in flavour, it pairs with the same things as cauliflower,…

Foie Gras

At the end of the week on Friday on the Finesse we have a last evening gala dinner, this week the starter was a pressed foie gras & raspberry terrine served with fresh raspberries, raspberry purée & pea shoots. A whole lobe of foie gras is bought to room temperature & then gently deveined, then…

Chocolate delice

A dessert from last nights dinner aboard the Finesse, dark chocolate delice, made with 70% chocolate, served on chocolate soil with fres strawberries, dried strawberry crisps, strawberry & red pepper sorbet, lemon cress.

The Finesse

The Finesse moored in Saint-Jean-de-Losne, our starting point one week & finish the following week. Although in these pictures she looks deceptively small at 38 metres long she is 8 meters longer than her sister boat the Enchante which cruises the Canal du Midi.

First lunch of the season

Our maiden cruise aboard the Finesse & we have just served our first lunch of the season, a beautiful warm day in burgundy, so for the starter we served a tomato salad of green zebree, marmande & crimee noir tomato, oven dried cherry tomato, mozzarella cheese, avocado, salad onion, basil & dressed with basil oil….

Barge Finesse

A few days before our maiden cruise & the Finesse is guest ready. The finesse interior upper deck is an open plan lounge dining area & open kitchen. The Finesse has four ultra deluxe cabins with unsuite bathrooms.

Welcome to my new kitchen

Aboard the Finesse for the first time I have a demonstration kitchen, beautiful kitchen with marbel work tops & all the toys a chef could need. The kitchen is a metre from the dining table in the dining room, so guests can see everything that happens in the kitchen. it also means we can do…