In my family, if there is a death that saddened us this summer, it is much less that of Alain Delon than the disappearance of the famous chef Michel Guérard. While my aunt fondly remembered a lunch at his establishment in Eugénie-les-Bains, my mother swore to make, when the school year began, a lunch composed only of his dishes in order to pay tribute to him. (Am I shamelessly using this column to remind her of her promise? Absolutely not…) So she will take out her copy of the renowned Gourmet cuisine. Thinking about this book, I tell myself that cookbooks are like novels: some are great classics that will stay with us our whole lives.
However, the codes that govern their use and reading seem a bit different to me. You may correct me, but I believe that a cookbook cannot be lent. However, I am not averse to borrowing. The proof: half of my best friend’s library is made up of books that I passed on to her. And while a dog-eared or stained novel can make me hysterical, I find a kind of nobility in the splashes that stain the pages of some of my recipe books. They say as much about the dishes I have made and remade as my ability to repaint my kitchen when I am beating egg whites.
In our house, we have a whole shelf devoted to cookbooks. There is my copy of Cooking is child’s play by Michel Oliver, given to me by my parents when I was little, with its joyful illustrations and its recipe for accordion tomatoes. I found it second-hand My Mill Festival by the starred chef Roger Vergé, which I loved leafing through as a child, not so much for the recipes as for the photos and for Roger Vergé, who seemed very friendly to me with his big moustache.
On the other hand, among my four brothers and sisters, I don’t know who preempted Party recipesthe work of Jean-Michel Lorain. His chocolate cake regularly appears in our family WhatsApp group – “What are the proportions again?” – and his lamb hash with blue cheese is the first dish we made as a family, ten hands. Later, we would become specialists in the apple of the harvesters, taken from the Robuchon’s best and simplest Joel Robuchon.
In addition to these Proustian madeleines, I have, in this library, works that have become my own classics. This is the case of The Encyclopedia of Vegetarian Cuisine by Estérelle Payany or by Blind by Sabrina Ghayour. There are also those books that I read with pleasure without ever having made a recipe, because it requires marjoram or dried lemon that I would have trouble finding at the last minute at the supermarket next door (this message is clearly addressed to chef Ottolenghi). And like any good library, mine has its hell: I believe that Sublime verrines or Tofu, soy and company have never been leafed through by a human hand. Attention those interested!
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