“Practice and learn from others” is Chef Thierry Lerallu’s guiding principle in pursuing his career.
He believes that hardwork will make people disciplined and skillful so they support their passion.
Chef Thierry has been interested in food since he was a child. Born in Normandy, France, he has always shown a great passion for baking and patisserie. He is very talented in the art of pastry. To jump in chef world, Chef Thierry started his career as a baker, patissier, chocolatier, and confiseur.
Normandy is the place where he began to get his first chef experience. He used fresh dairy and apples picked from orchards, making him famous for his fresh cream, milk and cheese products, as well as apples.
Chef Thierry has travelled to many places in the world and worked as a chef in many restaurants.
For all his works, Chef Thierry has been repeatedly recognised as the best apprentice in various specialties; from bakery to patisserie. His skills with baking, sugar and chocolate art had brought him much recognition in the yearly Bernard Loiseau Culinary Festival in Mauritius.
Today, he is a Head Pastry Chef at the Le Cordon Bleu (LCB) in Malaysia. Chef Thierry takes Pierre Hermes and Gaston Ledon as his role models as these chefs made pastry famous.
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Chef Thierry became executive pastry chef at the age of 28 years old. He also has experience in South Korea for 5 years working in a very busy bakery shop. A few years later, he came to Malaysia, and continued to an island near Madagascar. He has been been working as a pastry chef for 10 years. With these experiences, he wanted to change career and enrolled at the LCB programme in Malaysia. He went back to Le Cordon Bleau in Malaysia for the bakery and pastry programme.
One of the reasons Chef Thierry decides to take part in LCB as an instructor is that he wants to share his knowledge and passion with young people.
Further, for him, being a chef is really different to being an instructor. “Chefing is straight forward, you basically run the kitchen. An instructor is different because they have to deliver a product and make sure the student understands. It’s a whole different approach. It makes me happy and satisfied if people can be as good as me. Also, it’s good for the graduates when they are successful,” He said when being interviewed by Indonesia Expat.
Through his career, Chef Thierry admits that his proudest creation has been bead display items and chocolate creation pastries and sweets. He also comments that the difference between European and Asian style pastries is usually Asian style is lighter and more based on rice or tapioka flour compared to European style. Giving an example of Japanese crepes, he remarks that it’s a crepe based on the typical french recipe but with local products.
He also gives his tips for young people whose hobby is making pastry. The most important thing is practice but never forget to get advice from people, search on google, follow recipes, and seek professionals to help you.
Image: Le Cordon Bleu