Doing without Delia: Tales of Triumph and Disaster in a French Kitchen by Michael Booth
You have to give Michael Booth some serious credit for this escapade. Rather than just refusing to use recipe books, he ritualistically burns all those he owns (except one) and moves along with his young family to Paris, a notoriously difficult and inhospitable place in itself to live or even get a flat in, and enrol in the world’s most highly acclaimed, difficult and expensive cookery courses in the world run by some of Europe’s grumpiest men; Le Cordon Bleu.
It’s quite the adventure as you see his progress, his daily stresses, his myths being busted and some of his dreams dismissed, although, as with many books in the travelogue/adventure genre one never knows as a reader how much of the background is kept from you - like just how poor are they really if they can afford to move to an apartment which sounds like it would make Carrie Bradshaw swoon in a heartbeat?
Michael Booth describes in great detail not only his personal motivation for the course itself and place he may go beyond it but also how it unfolds at every step in some detail. From being taught how to wash his hands properly to what it is like working for free, but on very public display in a Three Michelin Starred Paris restaurant. One of the most telling comments for me comes from a chef at this establishment whose view of the production-line nature of such cooking - all beit prepared by highly trained professionals and presented in pristine surroundings - is ‘like McDonalds but with better ingredients’.
Fans of Masterchef - which personally I don’t count myself among due to the overly clinical way that food is judged out of any
kind of context of enjoyment or conviviality, in fact it never seems to deliver anything short of palm-sweating anxiety on the part of the chefs and the viewer if my mum’s excitement about it is anything to go by - are in for a thrill. Our author, a beginner and self-confessed foodie attends long and detailed demonstrations each day from highly experienced chefs, in French, which he then has to replicate in a practical without over-searing his veal or forgetting the baby onion garnish.
For me, as someone who enjoys to cook for friends and family and therefore thinks it should be a source of sensory pleasure, finds the experiences in this book turning his aspirations in a different direction from professional cookery of any kind which they tend to find themselves pointing towards on warm days. I have worked in a kitchen with short, angry, control-freak, foul-mouthed self-professed demigod megalomaniacs who produce amazing food for the customers (and nervous breakdowns for the waiting staff). I had always thought that I’d been too young, too unlucky or that if I were on the other side of the hotplate things would have been different, but the facts presented in this volume suggest my hunch may have been correct.
While it may inspire me to go on a knife-skills course - so I can have more of an excuse to by a set of three cold-hard-nitrogen-forged man blades - it does not instill in me the desire to step away from the cookery books I find so enjoyable, instructive and yes, at times a form of delightful escapism. Neither do I now feel like rising to the Ramsayesquee competitive challenge of professional cooking, catering and all the necessary banging-on about ‘keeping everything simple and locally sourced’ which trend currently dictates.
As a travelogue of sorts though, it is a very enjoyable read with some great comments on the differences between Le Rosbif and The Frogs. The all-too-frequent appearances of recipes he has either learnt on the course improvised himself are nedlessley long and I don’t entirely see the point of them in this book. He introduces the first of many by pointing out the irony of having recipes in a book about throwing away your recipe boks, but that doesn’t stop him producing another one every other chapter. If I wanted to know how to stuff a Goose with thrtee other birds and make a jus from irts own carcasse, I could look at Hugh, Nigel or even Elizabeth David, who have been there many times before the author had picked up his first professional chefs knife.
On the whole, this is a great read and a fascinating insight into the mysterious and predictably snobbish-aggresive world of Le Cordon Bleau which sounds both terrifying and deeply rewarding. So I will take my civilian’s non-chimneyed hat off to Mr Booth for that. Now I’ve read it however, I feel calm, secure, happy and broadly-read in the genre enough that I can put it on the shelf with all my other books containing recipes, which sadly cannot now be said for the book’s slightly bereft author.
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