A day in the life of... Arsene Wenger

7.45am - Wenger woke up and headed straight for the shops. He had a few specialist ingredients to get, so didn’t want to give himself too little time to make sure he had all needed. The pineapple, Champagne and chilli was fine, but he had to get some popping candy and leaf gelatine, and didn’t know where exactly he could get them.

8.32am - In the end, he was able to get them from the supermarket, and also got the fromage frais having decided that he’d go all out with the recipe, rather than muck about. He was having people over for dinner, and really wanted to impress them with his cooking. He’d refined his techniques over the last two decades and was prouder of them than ever.

9.15am - At home, Wenger took out his favourite kitchen knife and took the pineapple. He chopped off both the top and the base, allowing the pineapple to rest solidly on the chopping board, and sliced away the skin carefully, to retain as much of the pineapple as he could. He absolutely hated spending money on such vital ingredients, and wouldn’t waste a bit of them if possible.

9.22am - He cut the pineapple into chunks, and tossed them in sugar, in a frying pan, he put them over a high heat and started to caramelise them to bring out their flavour. Once he’d done that, he brushed them off the board and into a food process. Flicking the switch, he watched the chunks become a puree, and he then squeezed the pulp into a sieve, making sure to get as much as the juice out as possible. He added a touch of Champagne and some bought pineapple juice to the bowl, and stuck it in the fridge.

10.00am - Next he had to make the syrup, and took his plain syrup he made earlier in the week, gently brought it to the boil, and added the chilli flakes. They’d stop the enzymes in the pineapple attacking the gelatine.

11.12am - That wasn’t all that had to be done though. It was a complicated dish, and one that took up all of the knowledge that he had built up over the years - in fact, much of the dish was based on ideas he had adopted in the past, and thrown away in favour of delicacy, subtle and technique.

Next, the foam. He put the gelatine sheets into some cold water to soften them. He took the lemon syrup, drained the gelatine and got rid of the water. He placed the sheets in the syrup and stirred them patiently, waiting for the sheets to dissolve. Once done, he left the sheets for five minutes, to cool off a little in the kitchen atmosphere, and then added some fromage frais and milk, whisking as he went, not too much at any one time. He did this over a bowl of ice water, to accelerate the cooling, meaning the gelatine would start to firm up. He then placed it into a fridge to cool thoroughly.

5.05pm - Wenger greeted his guests one by one, giving them some Cremant d’Alsace from his home town, with a yuzu cordial to add some sharpness, as a nod to his time in Japan. All the guests appreciated the aperitif, and were all in agreement that after all their meals with Wenger, that this would finally be the time that he had to get everything right. He’d had so much time to practise that nothing could go wrong this time. Wenger had left them to talk amongst themselves while he finished off the rest of the dinner.

5.45pm - Out came the tall glasses, and he poured in the pineapple soup, with a tiny drop of chilli syrup and the popping candy. The next bit would be the crucial part.

6.30pm - Taking a balloon whisk, he took the fromage frais mixture out of the fridge and, by hand - such was his devotion to technique - he whisked it into a brilliantly and perfectly aerated foam, lighter than an inert gas. He aced it, and spooned onto the pineapple a dollop of the foam, a play on the bubbles in a glass of Champagne, and how they frothed up before settling.

7.02pm - Triumphantly, he brought the glasses out to his guests and handed them out. The guests look puzzled. They tasted it, and said how incredibly balanced and tasty it was. That was, until one of the guests asked, “Arsene, where’s the rest?”