- I'm Darren McGrady, the Royal Chef.
Former chef to the Queen, Princess Diana,
Prince William, and Prince Harry.
And today I'm gonna be making a framboise St. George.
Framboise means raspberries in French
and St. George because St. George
is the patron Saint of England.
So I'm going to start doing the dish
as we used to prepare it
for the Order of the Garter at Windsor Castle.
And for that, I'm trying to build a flag to start with.
The flag is the flag of St. George
and you can see here, that that is the red cross.
King Edward III, in 1348,
started the Order of the Night of the Garter.
The Order of the Garter takes place
the second Monday of June every year
and the Queen has 24 nights,
and they have a precession from St. George's chapel
where they've done a service
and they go up the hill to Windsor Castle.
Then it's this amazing lunch, the Garter lunch,
in the Waterloo chamber at Windsor Castle.
The framboise St. George, the raspberry marquis,
is actually served all the way through the year,
all the way through the season,
especially at Balmoral castle
where they grow the most amazing berries.
Balmoral castle has the most amazing gardens
and one of the things they grow there is incredible berries,
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, red currents,
amazing berries and I think the Scottish raspberries
are probably the best in the world, I really do.
The flavor, the taste, the way they're so dry,
and hold so well and because they were so good
whenever the Queen and the royal family were there
they'd eat the berries from the garden
all through the summer.
The Queen's at Balmoral for eight weeks
and she would just enjoy with her guests
that royal produce and she can order (speaking French)
and caviar and things like that any time she wants.
But for her to be able to have berries from her garden
and then serve them to her guests,
I think that's something special.
I think that actually means something to her.
I remember being at Balmoral and it was afternoon,
I'd been out walking, and I looked over at the gardens
and I saw people picking berries and I thought,
"That's interesting."
I walked across there and I saw the Queen
and Princess Margaret picking berries.
And I couldn't believe it.
The Queen picking berries in the raspberry cages.
Later on that day, they were on the table
and the Queen said,
"Will you make a dessert
with the raspberries that we picked tonight?"
For her, it must have been so much fun
and so much pleasure to share with all her family
and the guests that her and Princess Margaret
had picked the berries for dinner tonight.
It's already coming together, you can see the cross.
All we need now is the filling to put in the center.
We'll mix a little of the raspberry puree
with the cream and some sugar and that will go in the base,
and then we'll put some whip cream around the top
just to create that flag.
It wasn't just really the berries that, you know,
the Queen loved having at the table
and sharing with family and friends,
it was everything off the estate really.
The venison, the grass, the partridge, the pheasant,
or even the salmon from the River Dee,
they were there for eight weeks in Balmoral
and if they could eat the venison,
if they could eat the salmon,
if they could have all those berries, that was fine.
We'd go a week where the Queen was having
strawberries and raspberries every night and she loved it.
But if you send strawberries up to the Queen in January,
it's like off with your head, off to the tower.
You know, I don't want them out of season.
When they're in season and they're gorgeous
and they're beautiful and they're freshly picked
at Balmoral or whether it's the apples at Sandringham
or the peaches at Windsor,
that's what was important to the Queen.
I mean the Queen was really into sort of local produce,
local foods, you know, before it even became popular.
Next, we're going to whip the cream
so that we can fold in some of the raspberries.
(soothing piano music)
Now with the rest of the cream,
I'm going to add some raspberry puree in there
along with some sugar and then start to make the four.
I said for long enough
about how much the Queen loves chocolate,
she does, she loves those chocolate desserts.
Another of her favorites,
were the peaches that were grown at Windsor Castle.
Beautiful white peaches, and so full of flavor
and so full of juice.
Even when the Queen was at Balmoral Castle,
some 800 miles away,
she'd have the peaches sent up to Balmoral Castle
on a weekend, just so that she could enjoy them
and we'd make peach melba
and peach ice creams and sorbets.
And they just go on their own as a dessert dish.
So she loved the berries, she loved the fruit,
she loved the apples from the Sandringham Estate.
We used to make amazing (speaking French)
with the apples from the estate at Sandringham.
You know, often the Queen would just have,
instead of pudding at night,
she'd actually have just a little bowl of berries
with some cream, maybe some cream from Windsor,
from the beautiful dairy cows down there.
So that's the raspberry fold.
Smells so good, those berries and tastes good too.
Now it's time to build our flag.
It's all about not getting the fold into the berries
and making that line of the berries look perfect.
It is for the Queen after all.
It wasn't just the Queen that went down to the gardens
picking berries and with Princess Margaret,
other royals would go down there too.
Especially in the afternoons at the Balmoral,
they'd been out shooting in the morning
and it was before afternoon tea
and they'd go out and enjoy the weather.
Prince Phillip also used to go down there
and he'd picking away at the plums.
He loved the Victoria plums, which are amazing.
As we sort of went through into the fall at Balmoral.
Now it's time for the cream around the top.
One time I was out walking in the afternoon with the chefs
and we saw Prince Phillip picking the plums
and he got a huge basket of them.
And I looked at one of the chefs and said,
"We need to go back early,
I can see we've got lots of jam to make."
We used to make the most amazing plum jam
and then that would last all through the year,
so it would be sent up to the Queen
whether it was at Sandringham, or Windsor, or Balmoral.
We always had that Balmoral jam,
whether it was the plums or the raspberries
or the strawberries, it lasted through the year.
That's our framboise St. George, it looks gorgeous.
Fit for the Queen, fit for the royal Corgis even.
Ah, I'm not sure that the Corgis
actually get to eat dessert.
I know we used to chop the meat and the rabbit
and everything else for them,
but I don't think they got dessert.
Those Corgis, my gosh.
I remember going for a walk along the side of the river
and I saw this lady walking towards me,
and she got a load of dogs with her,
and she a head scarf on and a barber coat,
and I looked again and I thought,
"Oh my gosh, it's the Queen."
As she got closer, the dogs saw me, 12 Corgis,
and they all started barking and then running towards me.
And I just stopped and I thought,
"Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get attacked by the Corgis.
I'm not gonna get to see the Queen after all."
I turned and I went running the other way
and the Queen started laughing.
Can you believe?
The Queen was laughing at me running away from the Corgis.
The worst time I think,
apart from being chased by them at Balmoral,
was probably on the Queen's flight.
When they used to come and lay at your feet,
and you got your nice suit on
'cause you were traveling with the Queen,
and you'd get dog hairs all over you.
You couldn't just scoot them away
because the Queen was just like a few seats ahead
and if they yelped, then you were in trouble.
It wasn't just the royals that picked the berries,
the chefs had too as well.
Especially on barbecue nights,
Prince Phillip would come down to the kitchen
and he'd say, "Ah, there's lot of strawberries in the garden
I noticed this afternoon.
Let's do an (mumbling) to take out the barbecue."
And it was already 5:00, 5:30, it was getting dark.
But for that he meant all the chefs
had to leave what they were doing.
And we jumped on bicycles in our chef whites,
and we'd cycle down in like one big formation
down to the garden.
And we'd go in there, picking at the strawberries,
of course that was fun, we got the ones we wanted,
but then chefs being chefs, we'd start strawberry fighting.
And so the first one would throw the strawberries,
and by the time we all got back to the kitchen,
it looked like we'd just come out of a war scene,
these white chef coats with berries over it.
I know, we shouldn't have done it.
But it was fun.
Imagine being served that once you've done
an Order of the Garter ceremony
and you've just been promoted
and made a Knight by her majesty.
Time to taste.
Where to start?
A little of the fold, a few of the berries.
(soothing piano music)
A little of the whip cream on there as well.
You know, the motto of the Order of the Garter
is Honi soit qui mal y pense, it's Latin
and it means shame on him who thinks evil of it.
Nobody's gonna think evil of this, are they?
(mouse clicking)