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Maïté, the representative of local cuisine on television, died this Saturday, December 21 at the age of 86. A look back at several classic moments from his career.
Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, known as Maïté, died at the age of 86 this Saturday, December 21. She was a monument of French local gastronomy but also of television where she shone for twenty years in various successful shows. A look back at five key moments of his career.
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Death of Maïté, famous cook who became icon of the small screen, at 86
The cult episode of the ortolan
Maïté is the star of the show “Cuisine des Mousquetaires” where she uses old-fashioned recipes inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ “Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine”. This concept explains why Maïté finds herself tasting an ortolan on television.
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This cousin of the sparrow is a small bird that is rarely found on plates. Now classified as a “protected species”, it is no longer allowed to eat it. This ancestral dish is little known and has fallen into disuse although it was very popular in the Middle Ages and subsequently.
Maïté then explains the entire ceremony for eating an ortolan, which is eaten whole with bones, entrails and brain. She explains why you have to use your napkin to enjoy your ortolan behind, in complete privacy. Without a doubt one of Maïté's most striking moments who “sucks the behind” of this ortolan and ostensibly delights in it.
The wild boar of Maïté
In her village of Rion-des-Landes in the South-West, Maïté runs a restaurant where hunter's banquets are not uncommon. This is why it is absolutely not surprising for her to skin a wild boar in front of thousands of viewers before cutting it up and then cooking it.
“It’s quite an art,” she assures, calmly cutting up a leg of lamb. “If one day you make wild boar, buy it ready-made. It’s, in general, a man’s job!” But she barely sweats as she pierces the thigh with her spit.
Maïté and seafood, not always a love story
Between Maïté who explains how to knock out an eel without succeeding, a fish which escapes in the middle of a recipe, Maïté who cheerfully confuses mussels and oysters or who plunges prawns into Armagnac to kill them, there is no shortage of people of episodes which prove its less proximity to the marine environment.
However, this will never stop him from proposing and brilliantly creating numerous recipes that will inspire many families. And of course, she will also deliver a number of cult lines including the famous “They are drunk, the bitches, the sluts!”, about the prawns that she has just immersed in alcohol.
Cooking duck testicles with Armagnac
For this one, no need to say much more. Maïté, as usual, prepares an original… recipe that she explains with very personal frankness.
Preparing live animals: not a problem
The culinary icon regularly prepares recipes where the animal is presented alive before being cooked. It would probably be pretty unthinkable to see this on television these days. However, it offered many cult moments to the cook.
Peel a beef tongue, scrape the neck of a live chicken before finishing it with a hatchet; or bleed, pluck and cut the breasts of a duck, before preparing “a sanguette” with the fresh blood of the webfoot… This is what Maïté is capable of. All without batting an eyelid.
