Memories of Gascony is an award-winning cookbook written by three-Michelin starred chef Pierre Koffmann about the provincial cooking of Gascony, in south-west France. I did read it a couple of years ago, I am really enjoying reading it again and seeing how it fits so well within my Cook Real Food Program cooking classes. I especially love how Pierre’s old Gascon grandparents, like all those of their generation, only ate ‘real food’, food planted according to the phases of the moon, only cooked and ate in season, made everything themselves, preserved their excess produce for wintertime, nothing was wasted.
This morning, this simple way of preserving those divine thin, green, French beans did amuse me. It is so simple but a little time-consuming. I would love our lives to slow up a little, so we too could enjoy such simple pleasures.
It is the marvellous account of how Pierre Koffmann, one of London’s most influential chefs, first learned to love food. I decided to re-read it this January as we are travelling around Gascony in April where I will be visiting a long-standing Instagram friend, Kate Hill, at her cooking school there called Kitchen-at-Camont. Some of you may also remember Kate when she appeared in her kitchen with Rick Stein in his memorable French Odyssey journey along the River Garonne and the Canal du Midi.
Pierre includes recipes and reminiscences from his grandparents’ home in Le Puy, rural Gascony as he tells his story of school holidays spent on the farm cooking at his grandmother’s side, helping his grandfather to harvest and hunt, and learning to treasure seasonality, simplicity and the best ingredients. Remembering how his Grandmother cooked, Pierre formed his more sophisticated restaurant dishes with a focus on flavour, the seasons and simplicity.
These traditional Gascon recipes are still relevant to the food tastes and trends of today and are used in his restaurant, albeit with more sophistication. Such dishes as dandelion salad with bacon and poached egg, grilled chicken with shallots and vinaigrette, and greengages, a variety of plum, in armagnac in Spring; chicken liver pate with capers, Bayonne ham tart with garlic; one of my favourites, oeufs a la neige in Summer; roast hare with mustard and beetroot, salt cod cassoulet and quince jelly in Autumn; and fried eggs with foie gras, potato and bacon pie and tarte aux pruneaux in Winter.
Publisher’s biographical notes: ‘Pierre Koffmann has been at the heart of fine cuisine in Britain for over 40 years. After working as a young chef in Strasbourg and Toulon, Koffmann arrived in London in 1970 to work under Michel and Albert Roux at Le Gavroche. In 1972 he was made the first head chef of the Roux brothers’ new venture, the Waterside Inn at Bray. When Pierre opened La Tante Claire in 1977, it was the start of a residency at the top of the London culinary world that would span four decades. Within six years of opening, La Tante Claire had its third Michelin star, setting new standards for cooking and creating extraordinary dishes from classically simple ingredients, while also serving as an academy for many of today’s culinary superstars. Between them his various protégés, from Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay to Tom Kitchin and Jason Atherton, now boast over 20 Michelin stars in their own right. He retired in 2003, but following a sell-out of his critically hailed pop-up at Selfridges in 2009, he returned to the kitchen once more. His acclaimed, informal restaurant, Koffmann’s at The Berkeley, serves classic provincial French cooking – the food of his grandparents’ farmhouse kitchen.’
