Death of Maïté: she was the queen of the kitchen of the Musketeers

She brought traditional South-West cuisine to the forefront to the point of becoming a star of the small screen and still today videos that we share on the internet: the famous cook Maïté, whose real name is Marie-Thérèse Ordonez, s died yesterday at the age of 86, at the end of an incredible journey: that of a “railway musician”, as she liked to define herself, to an undisputed queen of the cathode furnaces.

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VIDEO. Death of Maïté: “sucking the butt” of an ortolan, knocking out an eel, carving up a wild boar… 5 cult moments from the local cook

The story begins in the deep Landes, on June 2, 1938 in Rion-des-Landes, where Marie-Thérèse Badet, daughter of peasants, was born. After leaving school at 14, she became a maid and then an employee at the SNCF, where she announced the arrival of trains to workers working on the tracks using a horn. “I did that for 22 years,” she confided during a portrait for FR3 in 1989, recalling her years at SNCF. “I left from morning until evening with my husband, all day. » A tough job which took her from railway track to railway track, from Ychoux to the gates of Bayonne. This life of work, far from the spotlight, forged his strong character which would make him famous.

From the third half to the FR3 sets

It was in a third half of rugby that Maïté's destiny changed. Volunteer cook for the players of Rion-des-Landes, she treated a hundred guests to her generous dishes when Patrice Bellot, director for FR3 Aquitaine, spotted her in 1983. He was then looking for a character capable of embodying the spirit of the pantagruelian feasts from Alexandre Dumas' “Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine” for a show that would become “La cuisine des Mousquetaires”. The providential meeting propelled Maïté to the forefront of the television scene, in the wake of Raymond Oliver who presented the first television show devoted to cooking, “Art and magic of cooking”, with Catherine Langeais.

Maïté then begins to host the culinary show with Micheline Banzet-Lawton, who plays the neophyte Parisian-Bordeaux resident. The Landaise, who learned cooking by transmission, by observation, by love of good products and simmering recipes, makes the absence of classical training a real strength. The duo was a hit on FR3 Aquitaine and the show quickly found itself on the national airwaves in 1991, where Maïté's banter and accent worked miracles on the ratings.

“First, some Armagnac!” »

“First, some Armagnac!” » This formula, which has become her signature, then resonates like a war cry against the new cuisine that she loathes. “It’s a horror, it’s even shameful,” she declared bluntly in her portrait on FR3. “We see things served on large plates, they don’t even take the precaution of buttering it. It's awful, you take out boxes, you decorate, it makes color, it's red, green, yellow and white, it's very pretty but it has no taste. »

The complete opposite of what she wants to do in her kitchen-TV set decorated with stuffed birds, copper pots and hunting rifles. Behind her work surface cluttered with always fresh products, Maïté presents simple, traditional, popular and… very tasty recipes, for which we never skimp on quantities. More than a million faithful follow this daily Rabelaisian mass where explosive flaming rubs shoulders with cuts of wild boar, where live eels are stunned before the stunned eyes of viewers. And what about tasting ortolans by candlelight? So many sequences that have become cult, which are regularly broadcast in end-of-year blooper shows, are shared from YouTube or the INA website and still inspire comedians. In his sketch show broadcast this Wednesday, Jérôme Commandeur dressed up as Maïté to mock her with tenderness.

International success

From the “Landais burger”, an iconoclastic creation garnished with pan-fried foie gras and duck breast, to traditional recipes for quail stuffed with foie gras and pigeons flambéed with Armagnac, Maïté celebrates – her – cuisine without compromise, rich in flavors and in character. She even reinvents the classics with an audacity that sometimes borders on the absurd, like a “filet of dacquoise” marinated overnight in a bath of Armagnac and kirsch. “The cuisine of the Mousquetaires, for me, is the cuisine of miracles,” she confided in 1993. “I was a worker, a woman like everyone else, even less than everyone else. Nobody paid attention to me…” This humility, this disarming simplicity make her much more than a simple television cook: the incarnation of a France which refuses to see its culinary traditions disappear, a symbol of resistance also faced to gastronomic standardization.

Its success goes far beyond the borders of France. “It’s by satellite, practically all over the world, and it has a certain success. So, I’m proud of it all the same,” she admitted with touching modesty. From Belgium to Canada, via TV5 Monde, his invigorating recipes have won over lovers of authentic and generous cuisine.

Jean-Pierre Coffe and bistronomy

The 1990s also marked the peak of this local cuisine on television. Maïté paved the way for other colorful personalities like Jean-Pierre Coffe, slayer of junk food on Canal +. This period also corresponds to the emergence of the “bistronomic” movement, led by chefs like Yves Camdeborde, who advocated a return to more authentic and accessible cuisine. After “La cuisine des mousquetaires” from 1983 to 1997, we find Maïté in “À table” from 1997 to 1999 where her popularity continues unabated and spills over from TV into publishing. His first three recipe books sold more than 120,000 copies.

Having become a celebrity, Maïté, who will also be a presenter on Sud Radio and an actress in half a dozen feature films and TV films, will make numerous advertisements: for Bonux laundry detergent – ​​where she says a line that has become cult “Y’a pas writes woodcock, here! » – for William Saurin preserves or Rondelé cheese. His singing accent works wonders.

The trials of life

At the beginning of the 2000s, she opened her restaurant, “Chez Maïté” in her hometown, where she put all the dishes she likes on the menu. “I don’t think I have ever eaten duck confit as well made and as succulent as at home,” confided Didier Antoine, president of the Landes restaurateurs, when the restaurant was placed in liquidation by the Dax commercial court in 2015. Maïté was undoubtedly a better cook than manager but above all had to endure the loss of her son Serge in 2013, lost to cancer. The death of her husband Jean-Pierre, known as “Pierrot”, in 2020, had also deeply affected the one who embodied the joy of living on screen.

Her granddaughter Camille, who participated in Objectif Top Chef in 2018, nevertheless testified that her grandmother was “well” and enjoying “her retirement and her family”, even if she no longer wished to respond to interviews or appear on television. Affected by a neurodegenerative disease, Maïté had withdrawn from the spotlight, but not from the hearts of the French, who, at the time of end-of-year festive meals, will long remember the generosity, the talent and the authenticity of the one whose succulent recipes they will, perhaps, try to recreate.