Bocuse Quotes

Fridays taught me the French philosophy of the leftover, codified (I later discovered) in my Institut Bocuse textbook and older books, such as the 1899 Art of Using Leftovers. There were rules—never store a leftover in a serving dish or a cooking vessel; never store a warm liquid in a closed container without cooling it first; never reuse a preparation made with raw egg; never keep anything for more than three days; and, the most important of all: Never, under any circumstances, use a leftover twice. A leftover has one chance: to be made even better than the original.

We know the names of the greats like divinity students know the names of the apostles: Point, Troisgros, Bocuse, Guerard, Robuchon, and so on  . . . We know their progeny, the ones who came after – who begot whom – and in which kitchens – and we are comforted by knowing the names. It puts our own lives, our own toil, in perspective – it reminds us that we are a part of something, cogs, however tiny, in a great machine whose wheels have been turning for centuries.

Read! Read cookbooks, trade magazines — I recommend Food Arts, Saveur, Restaurant Business magazines. They are useful for staying abreast of industry trends, and for pinching recipes and concepts. Some awareness of the history of your business is useful, too. It allows you to put your own miserable circumstances in perspective when you've examined and appreciated the full sweep of culinary history. Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As is Nicolas Freleng's The Kitchen, David Blum's Flash in the Pan, the Batterberrys' fine account of American restaurant history, On the Town in New York, and Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Read the old masters: Escoffier, Bocuse et al as well as the Young Turks: Keller, Marco-Pierre White, and more recent generations of innovators and craftsmen.

La nouvelle cuisine nació en Lyon, en las cocinas de Paul Bocuse. Esta mariconada posmoderna con el típico sello de la cursilería francesa todavía no había afectado de modo irreparable a las profundas esencias de la cocina vernácula, la afecta a la oreja de cerdo, a las fabes, a la morcilla de cebolla, al rabo de toro, a la olla y a la cuchara.