Présentation de l'éditeur
Cusine from New York's four-star seafood restaurant, Le Bernardin, is made accessible to everyone in more than 100 meticulously formulated and carefully tested recipes for all courses, from appetizers through dessert, in this cookbook from Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert and owner Maguy Le Coze.
The food served in Le Bernardin's beautiful dining room is as subtle and refined as any in the world, and because fish and shellfish are often best turned out quickly and simply, the recipes in this book can be reproduced by any home cook.
Maguy Le Coze traces the origins of Le Bernardin's "simplicity" to her late brother, Gilbert, the restaurant's legendary cofounder and first chef. Today, Chef Eric Ripert carries on Gilbert's simplistic tradition with dishes such as Poached Halibut on Marinated Vegetables, Pan-Roasted Grouper with Wild Mushrooms and Artichokes, and Grilled Salmon with Mushroom Vinaigrette. And, of course, there are the desserts for which Le Bernardin is also so well known--from Chocolate Millefeuille to Honeyed Pear and Almond Cream Tarts.
Essential to the experience of dining at Le Bernardin and to the Le Bernardin Cookbook are the dynamic and charming personalities of Maguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert, whose lively dialogue and colorful anecdotes shine from these pages as brightly as the recipes themselves.
Extrait
The Le Bernardin Philosophy
I have a fairly rigid theory about great chefs: If you didn't grow up with food, you will never be one. When I say food, I don't mean Pizza Hut, bologna sandwiches, and Chicken McNuggets. I mean great, home-cooked stuff, food that sets your mouth watering--thick, garlicky stews; mounds of potatoes, steaming hot, mashed with butter and cream; summer fruit tarts warm out of the oven.
This theory might seem harsh, but ask any chef you know about the foods of his (or her) childhood and he'll start rhapsodizing about some secret family recipe or regional delicacy from his hometown. Gilbert, for example, drew on Brittany and the sea for inspiration. Me, I turn to Andorra, that blip of a country wedged between Spain and France where I grew up, a lucky child of two cuisines. I got Spanish from my mother, an excellent cook, who for dinner would pair filet mignon with crepe purses stuffed with porcini mushrooms, stun us with a twenty-five-ingredient salad, and finish with flan in a rich caramel sauce. From my grandmothers, who lived in Nîmes and Nice, I got country Provençal, loads of olives and sun-ripened tomatoes, anchovies and onions. By the time I was five, I had the palate of a gourmet; by the time I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was eat.
What amazes me still is that I turned those taste buds into a profession. I remember my first job, at the four-star Tour d'Argent in Paris. I started on a hot day, and when I was told to make hollandaise sauce, I refused. I couldn't beat so many eggs in such heat. Even though I'd graduated from culinary school, I was clueless about what it meant to be a chef. I learned on the job, starting with Tour d'Argent, where I suffered a two-year-long lesson in discipline. When I moved on to Joel Robuchon, working as a line cook, I learned about the power of amazing ingredients and acquired the right technical skills. Later, with Jean-Louis Palladin, I learned from an artiste how to open my mind and be creative, to express myself.
Everything came together with Gilbert. When we met, Gilbert wanted to get out of the kitchen, to pursue other things, and I wanted to get in, to have a kitchen of my own. Yes, the timing was right, but more important, Gilbert and I made sense together because we shared the same philosophy. "Do whatever you want, just do it in Le Bernardin's style," he'd say, which for me was a code: Understand the products, respect the differences, be disciplined.
I wouldn't do it any other way. In my kitchen, as in Gilbert's, every fish gets treated according to its personality. Salmon, for example, is excelle
