Jonathan Day

Here's a very interesting website, from the Institut National de la Boulangerie Pâtisserie (INBP): "We are an educational organisation for adults, open to artisan bakers and patissiers, non-professionals who wish to learn the trade, and anyone working in the bakery-patisserie sector." They sponsor a range of long and short courses, mostly at their centre in Rouen. See http://www.inbp.com. More relevant to some of the issues raised above is http://www.canelle.com, the "information portal" of INBP which offers a range of professional recipes and a history of French breadmaking. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have an English translation attached. Recipe examples: Traditional bread from a levain Traditional bread made from a "poolish" -- the "poolish" ferments for 15 hours before being used. Rustic levain bread. Just about all of these have a longish rise -- even the "modern" baguette gets two rises of 1.5 hours each. The history, which goes back in some detail from BC 8000 to the present: http://www.cannelle.com/CULTURE/histoirebo...stoirepre.shtml. Among other things, it describes the rise of bread taxes and price controls in 1885, the move toward a short kneading and a long rise in the late 1930s, a period described as "la grande epoque" of French breadmaking. It then describes a move toward industrialisation and shortening of the rising time, followed by a return starting in the 1960s toward slower rises. It confirms that taxes and price controls on bread were completely eliminated in 1986. Well worth reading.

Must...tread...carefully...here... Not sure what you mean by "baguette standards", as if these are somehow maintained at a low level. It also depends on whether you are shopping at bakeries or in supermarkets. But assuming that this means "standards for non-levain bread" or just "standards for bread", then yes, I would say (1) that there is a reasonably high, say 40%, likelihood of a randomly selected baguette having been completely made on premises and having had a slow rise; (2) that it will taste good: crispy crust, flavourful crumb, etc. I don't know the history here. Raymond Calvel seems to have had a lot to do with the improvement of baking standards, and he isn't American. I'll do more research on this. Who is the American guy you're referring to? First, as noted earlier, "baguette" is simply the shape. I often buy sourdough (levain) baguettes, and non-levain boules (round loaves). Second, I generally prefer sourdough breads, as they have more character and complexity. But it's very pleasant to be able to buy different kinds of breads: white, whole-grains, sourdoughs, ordinarily leavened loaves. I would hate to be confined to one sort only. Part of the pleasure of buying bread in France (equally in New York City, or San Francisco) is the variety available. So I would sometimes choose that overnight "very good indeed" bread (baguette shaped or not) over the sourdough (baguette or not). By the way: my guess is that a lot of the "levain bread" made both in the US and in France is actually leavened with a combination of natural sourdough and commercial yeast.

Is there really such a thing as a standard French baguette? To John Whiting's point about regulations and laws designed to control bread manufacture, the only relevant laws I have found (on http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr) referring to bread are LOI n° 44-206 du 22 avril 1944, "RELATIVE AU TRAVAIL DE NUIT DANS LA BOULANGERIE", which permits the prefect of any region to authorise bakery workers to work at night, between 2200 and 0400, "in order to ensure the supply of bread to the people of the region". The workers are entitled to a 25% overtime payment. and Décret n° 93-1074 du 13 septembre 1993, which specifies that "pain maison" can only be used to describe bread that is kneaded, shaped and baked on the premises in which it was sold "pain de tradition française", "pain traditionnel français", "pain traditionnel de France" or equivalent terms, can only be used to describe bread (in any shape) composed exclusively of wheat flour, water, salt and yeast, which can either be commercial yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) or natural levain. These breads can contain up to 2% (by weight of flour) fava bean flour, 0.5% of soya flour, and 0.3% of malted wheat flour. There is also a strict definition of "levain". The Décret also cancels a number of earlier rulings, e.g. about the composition of flour, about taxes on bread, and other financial regulations. There may be other rules -- France is full of rules -- so this may not be complete. But is the price of a "standard baguette" still fixed by law? Many similar laws have been cancelled over the years. Also, Steven, what do you mean by a "quick rise"? One hour? Four? Eight? The baker from which I usually buy bread (including baguettes normales) works through the night. And there is a wide range of quality in baguettes normales, amongst the 30-some bakers in or around the village. The baguette you buy at the local supermarket isn't that tasty -- although these have improved immeasurably. The baguette at one of the better bakeries is very good indeed. So I'm not sure that a blanket statement about the quality of a "standard French baguette" means very much -- in France, at least.

A minor clarification: in French, baguette, strictly speaking, refers only to the shape of the bread. Harry Potter, in the French version of the stories, wields une baguette magique, a magic wand. So you can have a baguette made from white flour and commercial yeast, from other flours, or from a levain (sourdough). One chain of bakeries, le petrin Ribeirou, specialises in this levain bread -- they make baguettes as well as other shapes. There has been a renaissance in breadmaking in France over the last decade, with a lot more public interest in bread quality, pains au levain and the like. To ignore that is as silly as to ignore the industrialising decline that preceded it. I have no doubt that the best breads available in the US rival the best available in France, so the New York / Paris competition may be a tough one. To me it seems far more difficult to find good or great bread in small towns in the US than in towns and villages of corresponding size and economic activity in France...but I have not verified this claim in any systematic way.

Or as I was repeatedly told during my 2 years living in Edinburgh: "Ne'er cast a clout till May is out" (i.e., don't stop wearing your coat until the beginning of June).

Cigale, Gourdon is mostly a tourist town -- it seems to have little life of its own. There are some interesting shops, but a lot of the stuff on sale is of poor quality. When we first went there, many years ago, I bought a vinaigrier (earthenware jug with a spigot, for turning wine into vinegar) which I proudly brought home to London. It made some delicious vinegar; unfortunately, the glaze was so porous that the vinegar soon leaked all over our counter. The shop owner declined responsibility but put me in touch with the manufacturer, who said that this product was never intended for anything but decoration. That, for me, characterises Gourdon. But the views are truly splendid. The chateau (visits are guided, and operate to a schedule) is lovely, and you can spend some pleasant hours wandering the gardens. Some of the products on sale are of high quality. So it's worth a visit. You can stop, enroute, at the Moulin de la Brague, in Opio, for olives, olive oil and tapenade. Le Nid d'Aigle, when we were there, had simple food -- magret de canard, for example. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't different to anything you'd find anywhere in the region. The "perched" tables are for a maximum of three, I believe. Looking at their website it appears that they have gone upscale: usually but not always bad news in a restaurant of this sort. So it could be good -- hope you'll visit and let us know!

What do you think Adria means by that? I know of painters who'd like to die in their studios and musicians who'd like to die onstage. Everyone has to die somewhere. So why not in the kitchen? I suspect he was referring to the grind of turning out 30-course meals, night after night, in an environment when no course is particularly familiar to anyone in the kitchen, since every course has been invented anew.

Here is the transcript of the interview that Moby described. Spanish and French speech has been omitted or translated. * * * To begin, we want to give you a copy of the article that appeared in eGullet after Robert Brown and Jonathan Day had the pleasure of visiting el Bulli in April of 2003. I'd seen that. It's fantastic (brandishing the article). A well known chef in the avant garde, Grant Achatz of Trio Restaurant in America, said that nobody ever ate at his restaurant because they were hungry Who is that? Grant Achatz was a stagaire at El Bulli. To be honest, everyone has worked at el Bulli at some stage – it could well be that he was. He is the chef at an avant-garde restaurant in America. He said that people don't dine at his restaurant merely to satisfy their hungers. After many years now, if cooking and its function have become separated, cooking and feeding have become separated, does this mean that something entirely new is happening? Gastronomy is a development from "eating because you have to feed" into "eating for pleasure". It is developing all the time; it will continue to develop. It would be very pretentious of us to think that we are the last generation to develop something new. There has always been modern cooking, there has always been an avant garde; the article by Gault Millau that first launched the nouvelle cuisine, back in the 1970s, described things as 'revolutionary' that today would be considered very ordinary. There has perhaps been a change at the customer end, over the last 5 years. People are going out very much to eat. Other things used to be important, but now they are going for the food, to actually experience something new; dining out used to be more a social event. Your clients travel thousands of miles to dine at el Bulli; many travel from all over the world. Are you still amazed at their ability to travel this far. Does their dedication inspire your own? What is your relation with the customer who seeks out your work? I have enormous respect for our customers, given that they are prepared to travel so far. The el Bulli team puts itself under pressure, it isn't the customer who puts us under pressure. We make lots of mistakes – but we don't like to. The issue is who realises our mistakes and who doesn't. It's a very manual, a very artisanal process. We take our work very, very seriously. And yet the ambiance at el Bulli is much less 'serious' than one would find in a French restaurant of comparable stature. Our cooking itself is very serious, our approach is very serious, but obviously the atmosphere in the restaurant is very relaxed, as I like to have it at home. For a restaurant, this is very unusual; the grand restaurants in France are serious in the back and the front. Roses is a different city than Paris; if I had a restaurant in another city, it might be another matter. I find it interesting that in so many of these top-end restaurants there isn't a single room that is really modern; they are grandiose and traditional. Michel Bras is an exception. In your book Secretos de el Bulli you write that you never use fish fumet, fumet de poisson. Are there other products or techniques that you avoid systematically? Fumet de poisson – I like it. But not in my cooking. Why? It's very reduced. It is very strong. So much that it masks everything else. That's my personal taste. I cook the way I like to eat. Even when I make traditional dishes, I cook them the way he likes to eat them. Tastes are very debatable. If you go to the restaurant, you go to eat my cooking. There are classic recipes that are really unbearable, others that are really great. You have written that creativity is not to copy (creatividad es no copiar), a phrase you heard from Jacques Maximin. What other chefs do you look to for ideas, for inspiration? Who is doing work now that interests you? When you say 'creativity is not to copy' you have to ask what is copying? Copying is not being honest. If you are influenced by another cook, another chef, and you explain that you are, that's not copying. In my books you will see influences from other chefs. That isn't a problem. The problem comes when people are not honest about it. The question is really, how many people in any field, whether cooking or anything else, any field, are really creative. It's very difficult to be honest. Who in the gastronomic field is interesting to you right now? Gagnaire, and that generation. Tetsuya. Heston Blumenthal. In general I'm very inspired right now from Asian cooking. It is in Asia that the newest things are happening. So you have visited Heston Blumenthal, you have dined at the Fat Duck? I haven't been to the restaurant, but Heston and I have been working together in the Taller for the last 4 days, and my brother has been to Heston's restaurant. You said that it is difficult to find truly creative spirits in any field. Do you see a connection to the great Spanish creative spirits of the early 20th century, or is the connection outside? Let's say honest, not creative. There are plenty of creative people, but few honest ones. Picasso and Dali weren't honest. Picasso is my favourite artist, but he didn't explain his African inspiration; he was evasive about it – he kept saying, "yes, no, yes, no" when asked about the influence of Africa on his painting. I'm not saying I'm 100% honest. It's very difficult to be completely honest; it's like being a virgin. I see creativity in a much more ordinary light than most people. A lot of creative people think that they are superior human beings. As a point of departure, I don't see things that way at all; in that sense i'm not on the same footing as other creative people. What I'm trying to do is to do something to make myself happy, which I do. I'm not in any way superior to the waiters who serve coffee in the restaurant. I do have a lot to do with the world of creative people, I like being with them, but as lovers not as a marriage relationship. Is it the creative process, or the creative result that is most interesting? The creative process itself is very cold. Taste has nothing to do with it; it doesn't intervene at all. Where tastes and sensitivity start to come into play is when we actually put the dishes together. These are two areas of work that are very different. One can be very good, the other not at all. When you conceive, when you create a new dish, how important is it to begin from some kind of conceptual base. For example, in your book you describe a dish of bone marrow and caviar. Did you instinctively feel that the pairing would succeed? Or did it begin from a higher concept, a chemical concept? (Showing a chart from his book). The development processes are all in there; it's a very complicated process. There's a two day talk on that subject. The combination of bone marrow and caviar, in principle, is impossible. You can't get your head around it. Two kinds of fat; sea and mountains; meat and fish together. There's a new technique there, treating the bone marrow as if it were a foie gras Sautéing it? Yes, a sauté. We first did this in 1992. In the evolution of these techniques we understand that apart from retrospectives, you will stop preparing a dish like the espuma (foam). How do you decide when it is time to stop? To put a dish on the shelf? It's not that we stopped doing it. (drawing a time line and demonstrating when he started to make foams – 1994). By 1997 we had made an awful lot of foams. Too many. What happened? We realised that is one of the most important techniques we had developed. Now there are thousands of people using this technique, making foams. Critics have written extensively about it; there are even bars that making espumas. If you put good things into the siphon, you get good things out; put bad things in, you get bad things out. If you create something like that, it's perfectly normal that you get a saturation point at some stage. The problem doesn't exist in fashion. With the miniskirt, all women go out because the miniskirt has been invented. But they only buy one. You see the entire collection through just one skirt. I realised from 1998 onward that I couldn't do any more foams. I needed a balance between extending this wonderful technique and making something that could actually be eaten. When you invent something like the melon caviar, an amazing technique, instead of just doing one version, you'll do three. It's all about balance. We tried the caviar of ceps when we dined at your restaurant. The caviar of ceps now is 5 times better than it was last year. We've been working on developing it. The question is, do we make caviar this year or next year? Everyone will be talking about it, but it won't be on the menu. That's what el Bulli is about, you don't know what you'll be eating this year or next. We've been linking one year to the last, just a bit. We always do that. Your article (brandishing the article) was written on the 21st of April. It would be completely irrelevant if it were written on the 29th of September. You can write: this is what happened at el Bulli this year, but that's false. It was your meal. By the time you've moved on a few months, 90% of the dishes will be completely different. Given this, how do you feel about the media, and especially the media coverage of El Bulli and your work, in English? What have they done well, what not so well? They have done tremendously well. The early avant-garde people have been really spoilt by the press. But we have to analyse this at a social level. It would be senseless for a critic to write a really destructive article about El Bulli. So many have written enthusiastic articles about us, that any journalist who wants to maintain a reputation as a well-regarded, renowned journalist, to earn your stripes would look strange and out of step. You don't have to like El Bulli, and you are perfectly in your rights not to like it, but given that there are thousands over the past 5 years have written such positive things, it doesn't seem logical that they could be wrong. And many of these critics are very demanding. This is one reason we have been so positively covered in the press. I like the occasional bad review. I could tell you what criticisms should be made of my chefs, though I try to fix any mistakes before dishes leave the kitchen. One criticism that could be levelled at us is that we haven't really reached out to people. The top chefs in the world can help the quality of cuisine prepared in the home, but for the most part we haven't been concerned about home cooking.

There are some lovely villages in the "back country" (arrière-pays), some of them "perched" on cliff faces with heart-stopping views. Gourdon is a good example -- there's a restaurant there called "The Eagle's Nest" (le nid d'aigle) where some of the smaller tables are literally cut into the cliff face, so you feel airborne as you eat. Unfortunately the food is quite ordinary. Peillon, above Nice, is also beautiful. L'Auberge de la Madone has great views and, when I was there a decade ago, very good food. But it may have changed, as restaurants tend to do.

Some other places worth trying in the region: In Mougins, Le Bistrot de Mougins in the old village, for traditional food carefully prepared: daubes, brandade de morue, etc. The village is beautiful, but many of the restaurants, sadly, are mediocre. La Terrasse is sometimes good, and it has great views toward the sea. The Moulin de Mougins is no longer operated by Roger Verge (who in any event was in a bit of decline) so all bets are off there until it has been tried. The new chef is Alain Llorca. In Cagnes sur Mer, Loulou, for superb fish and steaks from the Boucherie Marbeuf in Paris. The fish soup (not a bouillabaisse) is wonderful. If you want bouillabaisse, Bacon in Antibes. Unless you stick to the coast, a car is a necessity in these parts. The train line runs along the coast, but to go inland you are stuck with taxi or bus services. Parking can be a hassle in Nice and traffic queues in Monaco at busy times, but apart from that a car is helpful...not to mention for bringing back wine, olive oil and the like. The Bellet wine region, north of Nice, is well worth a visit. It is small, but some of the producers are very good -- e.g. Clos St Vincent or the somewhat less expensive Collet de Roustan. Again, you'll need a car.

A little tolerance, please. "Shallots" in American gets the accent on the first syllable, in British on the second. "Margarine" often gets the accent on the last syllable over here. "Basil" is never pronounced "bay-sil". And some (very educated) British speakers pronounce "ate" somewhat like "et". eGullet is a global site. That means some of us say "tomayto", others "tomahto". We're the better off for that.

Thanks for the clarification, Jellybean. Surely lard in French doesn't refer to the rendered and clarified pork fat product that comes in blocks, that we call "lard" in English? If I recall correctly, that's saindoux in French. I can imagine Bras using whole or cured pork fat, but not saindoux, which is tasteless. The Italians make lardo -- pork fat cured with herbs, which you eat just as it is, like prosciutto. Well made, it's delicious. But I haven't seen anything like this in French charcuteries, even near the Italian border. Is there a similar French product?

lard in French is not pork fat or "lard" as in English. It's bacon.

Riz au gras is just pilaf, rice cooked in some sort of fat before stock is added. The fat (matière graisse) would most likely be butter or olive oil.

Turnips has long been scandalous for pricing. I can't imagine that their wholesale prices are as high. I find I only use them for the odd item that simply can't be found elsewhere, and only then when it's absolutely essential to what I'm making. Still, having a larger operator whose prices way out of line with quality is not a good thing for Borough Market. It creates a "price umbrella" for the other shops, and encourages exploitative behaviour. That, in turn, will mean that the market attracts undiscriminating tourists more than regular buyers. Perhaps this is what the trustees want, but I doubt that.

I'd love to see this as well -- can I join the queue behind Adrian?

Agree that the Fat Duck is something that won't be found elsewhere in the UK; especially if the European Tour includes Gagnaire, El Bulli and/or Bras, Blumenthal is well worth a visit. St John doesn't really have anything quite like it in the US, either the original or B&W. For cooking that represents the best of "modern British" (i.e. with fewer French overtones than at Aikens, Ramsay or Pied à Terre) he could do worse than Chez Bruce.

When we spoke with Adrià in London, he emphasised the "manual" and "artisanal" nature of what he does at El Bulli. But he also emphasised that he needs other projects in order to fund El Bulli and the "R&D" programme that supports it; the restaurant, he said, barely breaks even, and of course the "Taller" has few revenues, if any. So I wonder whether he isn't trying to live in two worlds, offering an extremely labour-intensive, small-scale, hand-crafted set of products at El Bulli, and a more mass-market, industrialised product through his catering, hotel and other ventures. I agree with Opson about the vital importance of context. You can get edible sushi in a plastic box at Pret-a-Manager (and I do). But this isn't anything like sitting at a superb sushi bar in Kyoto and watching the chef select this piece of fish, the provenance of which he knows in detail, and slice it in this particular way. At El Bulli, I think Adrià tries to do exactly this with ingredients; of course this is impossible in a mass-produced setting. That's why I think describing El Bulli's food as "processed" is inaccurate.

Bottled water, almost anywhere. $/£/€ 5 for a bottle that probably cost $/£/€ 0.5. If every item could earn margins like that, I'd go into the restaurant biz.

Does anyone find the numerical or star ratings useful? Would you be more inclined to go to a restaurant because a critic awarded it 9/10, four stars, or whatever? I use the Michelin star ratings as a broad indicator of the restaurant's reach and ambition, but I have had disappointing meals at three star restos and some superb ones at "bib gourmand" no-star places. How do others use Michelin, Gault Millau, or UK critics' ratings?

The picture that Chef Fowke posted, of a cooked chicken, doesn't show you how it's done. If you scroll to the very end of the thread, you'll see that Darren Vengroff posted some photos of the Fowke truss done on a raw chicken. The truss sounds and looks counterintuitive, but it sure works well. I now prepare all roasting chickens this way, including those done on a spit.

Check out this thread for a great discussion of brining, spatchcocking and the wonderful "Chef Fowke Truss".

One aspect of a French family house that can seem strange to foreigners is that it often has a "public" and a "private" part. If you're invited into the salon, it would be rude or at least unusual to ask for a tour of the house, or visit the kitchen, or take dishes into the kitchen for washing. Those are private parts of the house, not for visitors, and they may not be tidy and ready for others to see without embarrasing the host. The private parts of the house often include the toilet / bathroom -- with some families, at least, a polite visitor would not ask to use the toilet. So you might be well advised to look for public toilets in the market, chateau, etc.

Agree completely with this. So the question may be, what's the best way to communicate that pleasure? Obviously it isn't through the course-by-course deconstructions of dinners that turn up in these pages. For me, the communication has to focus on the food, but it needs to be set in a wider context. The opening of Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food did this beautifully, and she continued in this vein in French Country Cooking: That was in the 1950s, of course, and it was the opening of a cookbook not a restaurant review. But in a few sentences it set a tone and put the subsequent discussion of the food into a frame; a much more useful way into a communication of pleasure than a discussion of washing machines or whatnot.

By the way: "pants" over here generally means "underwear". "Pants" in American is "trousers" or "slacks" in British. (Just in case you were thinking of ringing Gordon Ramsay and asking if you could turn up at the restaurant in nothing but a button up shirt and pants...)