MobyP

I believe the dinner reservations are 1 month in advance - and they're extremely unlikely to give you a reservation as a tourist unless you've been there a few times before and they know you, or unless you have a Parisian local make the booking. Lunch reservations on Saturday's are do-able though.

Not really. I think it's a way for Ducasse to annotate his recipes to pass them around his various restaurants - and of course for training purposes. I'm just the sort of home cook who takes the occasional pleasure from trying something a little more involved.

It was... good. But not great. I repeated the process with some veal shoulder as there are so many recipes that include veal jus. And last night I enhanced my chicken jus for a roast with about half a cup of the veal jus - and it was outstanding. By far the most interesting, complex and flavourful jus I've ever made. This time I really focussed not only on the browning process, but also the point of reduction where all the water/liquid evaporates, and the residue begins to fry in the fat, increasing the 'caramelisation' of the components (but making sure nothing burnt, obviously). 2 issues raised. I found that the end result had an almost citrus-y tang from the maillard flavours which was too strong. I added some more veal glace (from a former reduced stock) and this balanced out the flavours beautifully. The recipe says to de-glaze and moisten with a 'light veal stock,' but doesn't really give an indication of what that means (i.e. how light?). So, playing with the balance to get the flavour which suits you is important. The second issue is the butter. When the jus is reduced and cooled, there's an enormous amount of butter fat and solids residue which floats to the surface, despite me straining the jus several times. It's too much. I realised that it's relatively simple to add butter notes later, but difficult to take them away. So - I cut off the butter (the cold stock is roughly the texture of soft rubber, making this a simple operation), and mounted the jus with a little cold fresh butter just before serving. In the future, I'm going to lessen the butter from the operation, and skim it once the stock is added rather than keep it through the whole process.

Found a picture in a book on Michelin of Mado Point (his wife) in Japan with Bocuse in 1968.

Adam - you're killing me. Thank you. Don't stop.

Thanks for that - and interesting as Rodger's training came through the Troisgros lads of that same era. Given the large amounts of liquid held by meat, I agree that any loss would be negligable. I wonder how, if at all, the early salting affects the texture of the braise.

Did anyone experiment with early or late salting? I think it's Judy Rodgers who recommends salting the night before - even for braises. I wonder if anyone gave this a go.

Disgracefully, the best breakfast in England is probably only available to Hallie and Bapie - in Crouch End. It's at a place called Bannners. Their full English was a thing of pilgrimage and sacrifice and beauty. Fat sausages, fragrant and herbed, bacon moist and delicious, lovely eggs cooked to perfection, all atop to thick-buttered doorsteps of proper toast. I used to drive an hour for the pleasure. Now it's out of my range. Shame, I say!

Heroin and skanky rent boys? Fi - why did you have to mention the Krispy Kremes? My marriage is doomed to end in a blaze of maniacal sugar destruction. Like Sid and Nancy, but sweeter.

Thanks Boris. Pedro - Thanks. Yeah, I guessed. I'm entertained by the odd quirks in translation, much of which seems to have been done over-quickly.

Dicovered typo Number 2: Under the recipe for Brown Veal Stock: "1 Quarts Red Wine (2L)" Now - would this be 2 quarts red wine (which would be @2L), or 1 quart (@1L)??? Edit to add - And he uses salt in his stock! 2 grams of "coarse grey salt" per litre. Never seen that before. 2nd Edit - Sorry, this is too good pass up. His chicken Jus calls for "farm-raised chicken," and I just have to ask - as opposed to what? Wild chickens of the plains? Flippered-chickens from the great lakes?

My new hero.

In the French edition, there's no mention of butter in the jus d'agneau. And after a quick scan through many pages, I couldn't find a recipe where a sauce based on jus was mounted with butter. ???? ← No, but I think there are sauces to which jus is added which you later mount with butter - which is what I did for lunch. I combined the reduced wine/maillard meat juices with the jus from the day before to make the sauce. It was a family style meal, and I needed a greater quantity of liquid than the first jus gave me. (i.e. I wasn't plating the food, but sending it out in platters, and a sauce boat). As to the other point - yes. For some reason, the lamb jus is the only one in the GL which doesn't use butter - compared to the other jus recipes it's quite austere. Then I looked at his jus recipe in the Flavors of France book, which does contain butter (1/2 a pound to every 4.5 pounds of meat - although I didn't use that much), not to mention carrots, celery etc. So - I averaged out the two recipes to my own taste. Why do you think the GL refrains from butter in the Lamb jus? I'm not sure. But I wanted to see how the flavour would be affected.

I think as a document of French haute cuisine over the last 20 years, it might be irreplaceable. Not that it's definitive in the least. It's a book for advanced cooks, or chefs though. Not really for the home market, there's too much information missing. And it seems that you can buy a copy on Amazon for less than I paid.

I know there are some around, but at the moment I can't find any pictures of his plating. When he uses jus, it looks almost broken - drifts of oil and dark gravy together in the same liquid. It is, as pointed out, the anti-Keller sauce. If you look at the reduced picture of the jus in the saucepan, however, you can see how glossy it is. That's the leftover fat from the butter emulsified into the sauce by the reduction. It split when I let it cool. Ducasse writes in his 'Flavors of France' book that you should remove the solidified butter the next day. He doesn't say what to do with it in the GL. Edsel - yes, I shamefully added the carrots. I wanted to add that caramelized flavour to the jus. I ended up using the juices from the roast lamb (and roast shallots, a head of garlic, and a branch of thyme, deglazing with some white wine, reducing, adding the intense jus from above and a little water, reducing again to sauce consistency, and then mounting with a little butter. Incidentally, I didn't get that broken feel to my jus as Ducasse does, even though I didn't skim the butter off, and I'm not sure why. Also, there are plenty of typos in the book, some really sloppy. In the Veal Jus, at some point, out off nowhere it mentions returning "the duck bones" to the pot. In other words, whoever was putting the book together was cutting and pasting the same paragraphs into different recipes, and then forgetting to make all of the required changes.

Yes - exactly the same. What's interesting is the way the butter affects the flavour. It really fills it out. But because you're boiling the juices around it, you're separating the elements - solids and fats. So it's not the same as mounting at the end.

I only thought to start taking pictures half way through. So, here's the jus on the third reduction (using light chicken stock)... And here it is once reduced and strained. I have a picture of it on a plate, to give you an idea of consistency, but for some reason I'm not able to upload it. So - all the colour comes from the deep browning. There's no wine. The flavour is very full, without being cloying as you get with over-reduced bone stock. I'll certainly be trying this method with other meats.

As several members will no doubt be getting this book, I thought we should start a thread. One of the qualities that distinguishes the cuisine of Ducasse is his uses of Jus, rather than traditional reduced-stock sauces, so I was very glad to see in the Basic recipes chapter at the end, a selection of jus methods. For those familiar with the 'Quick Sauces' of Keller, the method for these is very similar, though uses the central protein rather than the bones or carcass. Also, there's a strong use of butter fats to add to flavour. So, focus the maillard flavours of a protein by sauteing it in fat over very high heat until well browned (and as you won't be eating the meat afterwards, you can encourage a much greater degree of browing than usual); add liquids (water or light stock - though interestingly, not wine), and deglaze. Reduce to a syrupy consistency, continue to cook in the fat (developinjg the flavours), and then add more liquid as before. Repeat this a third time, and you're left with an extremely intense reduced jus to drizzle over plates. This doesn't posess the gelatinous quality of jus with bones, but has a wonderful seductive syrupy-ness. Anyway, as tomorrow I'm cooking lamb, today I brought back a few pounds of lamb shoulder (Herdwick breed), and am following the intructions for the jus. I find this kind of cooking extremely relaxing - the repeptitive nature, the developing flavours over an afternoon. As this is my first recipe from the book, I'll fill you in on how it goes.

The banana, avocado, chocolate and chile ones were fantastic, imo. And generally speaking, ther were far superior to the last lot I had. Jon - they're all yours!

Caw - where you been? Everyone knows that Albert named his son Trois Etoile Michel Lyn Roux. That said...

That looks great RN. Do you have any other pics of FL experiments? [Edit to add: Did you make the brioche as well?]

If you haven't already, maybe you could take this as a challenge to master the basics. Buy Bugialli and Pasta, or Ada Boni's Regional Italian Cuisine. So, some examples (North to South) of store cupboard pasta (as opposed to fresh): Bologna Ragu Pasta e fagioli (a dozen regional variations) Dried porcini, oil, garlic, lemon Lemon, oil, fresh basil and parmagiano Gorgonzola, cream, parmagiano Amaticiana Carbonara Alla Ricotta Napolitan Ragu Putanesca Alle vongole Anchovy, rosemary, tomato Sardines, pangratatto, oil, garlic, lemon Cauliflower, anchovies, garlic, oil, Pasta e carciofi pasta alle melanzane

Has anyone else noticed a drastic downturn in the Herme macarons? Bought one of each for the wife from Paris. Where they are usually light, crisp, and creamy, these were heavy, with stodgy centres, and over-thick crusts. I shan't be returning there in a hurry.

Valentine's Menu Winter root vegetables in a ?cocotte?, tuber melanosporum Duck foie gras « sauté », lemon/blood orange marmalade, aged vinegar Turbot cooked in a ?beurre demi-sel?, braised salsify in a court bouillon Free-range veal/black truffles, fingerling potatoes, glazed carrot blossoms, natural jus Home made raspberry sorbet, vanilla ice cream, coconut merinque, like a classic "vacherin" $ 180.00 (Not including wine, tax and gratuity)

Raj - great first post. Welcome. Glad you de-lurked. An interesting question to look at is the one of trends. I'm not sure about people jumping on band wagons, so much as being creatively inspired or released by certain movements. If you looks at Jazz as an analogy, the kinds of musicians inspired by bebop weren't those taken with Armstrong's Hot Five records. It doesn't save them from being rubbish of course. Bad food is still bad food. But I'm unsure where the 'jumping on the band wagon' idea sprouts from.