In the first of a brand-new series for TASTE, Luke Dale-Roberts talks trend versus tradition and revives the classic sixties mousse.
"I started cooking when nouvelle cuisine hit the streets of London - more delicate dishes with a huge emphasis on presentation – were suddenly all the rage and we were competing to see who could make the best tomato rose in the shortest possible time.
We thought it was the bee’s knees and, to us and many of the punters, it was. But then the inevitable backlash occurred.
The tiny portions, precious arrangements and dangerous liaisons of ingredients that distinguished French cuisine were, suddenly, deemed flash and fiddly.
While perhaps not banished completely, Escoffier’s white-linen haute cuisine was at least tucked under a newspaper or two.
Take the mousse
The epitome of 1960s nouvelle cuisine, the mousse actually emerged on the culinary scene during the 18th century, when chefs to French royalty discovered the frothing power of 
eggs and proceeded to make foams out of everything they could get their hands on.
They assigned these airy, cloud-like concoctions the name 'mousse' from the French for 'lather' or 'foam' and, by the mid-1700s, everybody who was anybody was taking their nourishment in foam form, though not yet sweets (perhaps delayed by the French Revolution, it would be another 100 or so years until dessert mousses began to proliferate).
Branded the height of kitsch in the post-sixties bistromania, mousses have been assigned the same status as polyester tracksuits and garden gnomes.
But, in truth, a mousse is the ultimate expression of French tradition … and, in my view, there’s nothing as timeless as tradition.
Today’s chefs are, for the most part, master jugglers keeping aloft the balls of tradition and innovation, convention and trend, and choosing which works when and where.
This is the beauty of this 'foodie age' – we have the whole spectrum of choice available to us and we choose what’s relevant, practical, responsible and, above all, tasty!"
MASTERING THE MOUSSE
• Egg whites or cream, if used, need to be beaten into a froth (soft peaks), because it is the air bubbles trapped therein that provide a mousse with its distinctive light and airy taste. Take care not to overbeat, as stiff egg whites or cream will be difficult to mix evenly into the other ingredients.
• The egg whites or cream need to be “folded” into the other ingredients rather than stirred. Stirring would burst too many Mastering the mousse of the precious air bubbles, resulting in a flat mousse.
• When chilling your mousse, ensure the dish or mould is covered with wax paper or plastic wrap so that it doesn’t absorb any aromas from other items in your refrigerator.
• For sweet mousses, the sugar needs to be well dissolved. Icing sugar is best because it dissolves quickly.
• Mousses that contain raw egg should be eaten the same day as prepared.
Luke's mousse recipes