A participant in Cooking Talent for the 2nd year running, Marie Ferragu was thrilled to be back in the environment she first tasted in 2022 and her talent and perseverance were rewarded on 27 November when she prepared a perfectly cooked skate wing with a Breton twist.
Marie Ferragu is not scared of a packed schedule or diary clashes. This young property development project manager had just given birth to her second child (15 months after the first) and moved from Paris to Nantes – with all the unpacking that entails – when she entered Cooking Talent 2023. She did so for the challenge, but also because her first entry in 2022 left her wanting more. “It was a great experience. I was up against two strong competitors. There was a really good rapport between the three of us. I wanted to come back and do it all again.” This year, the cards have been reshuffled. If Marie qualified for the final, she would face two new competitors, with a new theme, chosen by chef Amandine Chaignot: skate wing. Inspiration came quickly.
A surf and turf dish
“I have Breton heritage on both sides of my family, going back several generations. So from the outset, I wanted to base my dish on wonderful ingredients from my region. I had the idea of pairing the skate wing with samphire, cider and lightly smoked andouille de Guémené sausage, making my dish a twist on the surf and turf.” She had a plan. But before we move on to the day of the challenge, let’s take a look back at our chef’s inspirations. For Marie Ferragu, the joy of cooking is inseparable from the joy of receiving. I love cooking for others, innovating, experimenting, surprising people.” She learnt from the best. “Mum liked to cook original recipes. All of our friends loved coming to our house for dinner because she would change up the menu and play with exotic flavours.” The memory of huge Christmas feasts also fueled the passion of a chef who admits to cooking “without any academic grounding, without weighing ingredients, purely on instinct” and does not aspire to go professional: “I think I would enjoy it less if it was my job.”
Onward to victory
On 27 November, the three Cooking Talent finalists were holed up in the Miele Experience Center in Paris for three hours while they prepared their dishes. “I wasn’t particularly stressed, I just wanted to do my best, explains Marie Ferragu. Doing her best involved taming the main ingredient. “I had never cooked a skate wing before. The most tedious and time-consuming task was filleting the raw fish. Other than that, everything went smoothly, calmly, and in very good spirits.” All of this under the watchful eye of Amandine Chaignot, who offered the contestants tips on technique. Then it was the moment of truth; time for the jury to discover, taste and deliberate. “They were three different worlds, three different presentations. I served a ballotine cooked for 5 minutes in a steam oven, another candidate pan fried the skate in butter and the 3rd poached it.” When she saw the beautifully dressed plate of one of her competitors, Marie doubted her chances. Wrongly, as she was named winner of this very special edition. A prize to be proud of… but with strings attached: “I promised that if I won I would recreate the recipe for the whole family at Christmas.” She will also return to Cooking Talent in 2024, this time as a member of the jury.
