Lhe end-of-year celebrations are a highlight of culinary publishing. It’s the season for Christmas logs, chic recipes, but also new gastronomic works, some of which are cluttering the shelves of bookstores. During this period, we find dubious boxes that are totally gimmicky…
But also, fortunately, a collection of new and delicious titles. Compilations of inspired recipes, immersion in the world of chefs or more intimate portraits, the registers are varied. To satisfy a gourmet, here is a selection of the most interesting of the season.
Our selection of 10 gourmet books to slip under the tree
“ADN Ducasse”
At the Plaza Athénée, with the complicity of Romain Meder, Alain Ducasse has turned the tables on palace gastronomy by imagining naturalness, impactful cuisine orchestrated around the fish-cereals-vegetables trilogy, prefiguring the plant-based revolution that has animated the gastronomic scene in recent years. A decade later, he gave way to Jean Imbert. But naturalness continues to vibrate through three of the multi-starred chef’s toques: Emmanuel Pilon, at the Louis XV, the most beautiful restaurant in Monaco, Amaury Bouhours at the Meurice in Paris, and Jean-Philippe Blondet in London at the Dorchester. This dense work, with sublime photos, shows how these three great talents of French cuisine have appropriated this philosophy and perpetuate its visionary spirit. Each person also reveals themselves, through sensitive portraits, interspersing 135 recipes, complex for ordinary people to make, but fascinating to see deciphered in this way.
Alain Ducasse Éditions, 535 p., €69
“Nordine’s kitchen”
At À Mi-Chemin, Nordine Labiadh makes some of the best couscous in Paris. But also fantastic bistro dishes for the traveling soul: mayo eggs with bottarga, beef chuck mloukhia and veal tagine with peas… So many recipes to find throughout these pages, the spirit of which floats somewhere between Tunisia and Corsica, the chef’s heart region.
Solar, 210 p., 34,85 €
“Drink, eat, live”
If Israeli cuisine has been so talked about in recent years around the world, particularly on the gastronomic scene, it is partly thanks to the quartet Assaf Granit, Uri Navon, Dan Yosha and Tomer Lanzman. In Paris alone, they were a hit with Balagan – now Kapara –, Tékès and even the Shabour tornado, an intimate restaurant crowned with a star. We are not talking about London, Berlin or Saint-Barth. In addition to retracing their unique entrepreneurial journey and bringing their spirit to life, this book compiles a number of solar and inhabited recipes.
Hachette Cuisine, 272 p., 60 €
“Correspondence”
Double-starred at Le Coquillage, near Cancale, Hugo Roellinger is one of the most unique French chefs. He has just released this magnificent gastronomic work, somewhere between a river interview, a graphic novel and a report. His culinary universe is revealed page after page, focused on the liquid element, imbued with his terroir. A perfect preparation before going to discover it in real life and above all taste it, in Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes. The experience is well worth the trip!
Edition Sur La Crête, 400 p., €65. Available on the website roellinger-bricourt.com
“Olivier Nasti, hunter cook”
Olivier Nasti is a world reference in hunting cuisine. The chef, who sublimates game in his Chambard de Kaysersberg, has just released this astonishing work. You will know how to cook a chamois shoulder or a deer chuck stew, but it is much more than a series of recipes. We enter his world, we walk with him (superb photos) the trails of the Alsatian region, where he has been operating for a quarter of a century, and we learn as much about the practice of hunting as about the surrounding wildlife and nature. A way, too, of fighting against certain prejudices.
Corn. 288 pp., €60
“Olympe, a free cook”
A book – even a cookbook – that begins with a quote from Francis Ford Coppola can only be a good book. When it continues with the portrait of a woman hooded in a veal ruff, we quickly understand that we are holding a nugget in our hands. This woman in the tripe disguise is Olympe Versini, an emblematic chef who worked for forty years, in her restaurants but also on television. Culinary author Anne Etorre retraces the fabulous destiny of the woman who was one of the pioneers of bistronomy and served, among others, Serge Gainsbourg, Coppola, or Mick Jagger, all without ever boasting about it. The story is punctuated with numerous simple and eminently appetizing recipes, like Olympe’s cooking.
Hachette cuisine, 318 p., 35 €
Culinary encyclopedia of the territories of France
Niçoise ratatouille, Breton bacon potatoes… Regularly, Jean-François Piège entrusts Point its best recipes, from the territories of France. The two-star chef at the Grand Restaurant in Paris has been bringing this culinary heritage to life for years, mastering it and knowing it like no one else. He compiled it into this imposing bible, literally and figuratively. Over the course of the approximately 800 pages that make it up, you will travel through all the regions of France with a napkin around your neck and learn to cook, among other things, Norman barbouille rabbit, Alsatian pflutters or Landes escaoutoun. There’s plenty here to cook a different dish every day, noon and evening, for almost two and a half years!
Hachette Cuisine, 797 p., 80 €
« Aubrac »
Together, the cook Cyril Attrazic and the decorator-illustrator Zoé de Las Cases have written this book which can be enjoyed as much as it is contemplated, a culinary, graphic and poetic wandering on the Aubrac plateau, which saw them grow up . Photos of sumptuous landscapes mingle with recipes that are sometimes traditional (aligot for example), sometimes contemporary, from the world of the two-star chef. The stroll is punctuated by reflections on nature and other quotes from beautiful writers, from George Sand to André Gide via Sylvain Tesson.
Hachette, 256 p., 35 €
“Recipes & Stories”
“The best recipes are those that are shared”: this is the slogan written on the cover of the latest writing by gastronomic journalist François-Régis Gaudry. This is a quote from the famous chef Michel Guérard, who died last August. These recipes that he learned and appreciate, he has been talking about for 15 years on France Inter. He also gives it on social networks. He decided to compile 155 here: some are family (the zucchini with brocciu from Mamyta, his Corsican grandmother; the Martinican okra salad, these vegetables that his wife Alexandra loves), others from chefs in all genres, crossed during his numerous wanderings. A diversity that makes this work special, to keep close to your work surface.
Marabout, 384 p., €35
« Cocktails signatures »
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your health but, to close this selection, it was tempting to propose a toast! Here’s what to do with this superb encyclopedia which traces the history of 200 emblematic cocktails and, of course, details the recipes. You will learn, for example, that Concha, the Mojito of the initiated, is not made with fresh mint but with pomelo juice. The Bellini, the Moscow Mule and the Tequila Sunrise will no longer hold any secrets for you and you can make them in no time, like a multitude of other lesser-known drinks. To your shakers.
Phaidon, 432 p., 34,95 €
