Penguin Books Australia

Introduction

Memories of my upbringing and my family always seem to centre around food. I was born and raised in the north of France, in Nantes, one of the largest cities in the country. Nantes is in Brittany, a gorgeous region with its own strong cultural and culinary identity. The area is renowned for beautiful countryside and also for its amazing coastline – my family lived about an hour and a half from the Atlantic and we used to spend our summers by the sea.

Food-wise, we enjoyed the best of both worlds. From the sea, we were blessed with wonderful blue lobster, mussels, langoustine (like scampi), spider crabs, monkfish and oysters called fines de claire, which are famous all over France. From the land there was always the most fantastic seasonal produce available no matter what time of the year – artichokes, reinette apples, chestnuts, cauliflower (a personal favourite), fat juicy strawberries and vraic potatoes, which are fertilised using seaweed. Not to mention the village markets. Wow, these were (and still are simply amazing! Every day a market would pop up in a different town or village and we could buy charcuterie by the weight, local cheeses, cider, honey and other traditional and homemade foods, all super-fresh and of the best quality.

And then there was the bread! The delicious smell of freshly baked bread is one of my strongest food memories. During the week Mum would give my sister and me a coin each and we'd buy ourselves a big, fat, squishy pain au chocolat on the way to school and that was breakfast. But come the weekend, we'd go out with everyone else to buy fresh bread, croissants and brioche from the bakery, then take all those lovely carbs home and have an absolute feast. We could smell the bakery way before we could see it, and that warm, inviting aroma is, to me, the absolute essence of not just my childhood but of France itself.

Most people associate France with romance and perfume, haute cuisine or haute couture. But when I think of France, what springs instantly to my mind are all the excellent, but often simple, dishes and ingredients that people there have access to every day (and that I was lucky enough to be exposed to when I was a boy). My mum was such a talented cook and my recollections of her food, and time spent around the family dining table, are the reason for this book. It's a tribute to my mum.

Mum is from Anjou, a region that borders Brittany. Her dad was a chef and her grandfather a pastry chef, but even with all those professionals in the family it was actually her mum who taught her how to cook. Although she worked full time and pretty much brought my sister and me up on her own, Mum always had made-from-scratch meals on the table for us, seven days a week. She shopped for the entire week on Friday and often, because she loved to entertain, she'd spend the entire weekend cooking so friends and family could come and share her wonderful feasts. It was nothing for her to feed twelve people for Sunday lunch or dinner.

We never ate frozen food (or any other kind of convenience food) at home and it saddens me that today, even in France, the supermarkets are full of 'ready meals' and other products that I detest. The quickest dishes Mum made for us were her composed salads in the summer and superb vegetable-based soups in the winter, and even then, these were thoughtfully put together and not full of leftovers or things out of tins. And Mum never really cooked us separate meals or special foods when we were little, either. We learned to eat what the adults ate from Day One and I honestly believe this is the best way to get children to try everything – including vegetables. It develops their palates. I get annoyed with 'kids' menus' in restaurants as they usually feature junk foods like nuggets – as if children aren't capable of enjoying real food! The only thing I really hated growing up was liver, and I'm sure that's because our babysitter used to serve it to us so well cooked that it was practically cardboard. Actually I don't mind liver now – I've trained myself to eat everything. I honestly believe that when people say they don't like a certain food it's to do with some bad memory or association and they can school themselves out of it. Even with offal . . .

Mum's food, which forms the basis of this book, is traditional and quite rustic but full of flavour.

Everything she made us she cooked with love, and I most adored her winter dishes. These were things like cauliflower soup (see page 56), veal blanquette (see page 120) and tarte tatin (see page 168). I call this food with 'balls' because it had so much of that up-front 'yum factor' and it was very unpretentious. The most important thing was never how it looked, but how it tasted.

For my family, sitting around the table together and filling ourselves with delicious food was a way of life. As we got older, my sister and I would help Mum out with the cooking and setting the table. This taught me early the team aspects associated with catering, and it stood me in good stead later when I became a professional chef. It's great to get kids involved in food preparation at home as I think it really helps develop a respect for food and cooking, plus a love for family mealtimes.

I'd love to say, especially as I come from a family of chefs (even my dad was a chef), that I always wanted to cook, but actually my real ambition when I was young was to join the circus! If you've seen me in action on TV you'll probably realise I love to perform. At home I was always playing the fool and was something of the family (and school!) buffoon. One day when I was a teenager Mum noticed a van pull up in town with 'Circus School' written on the side and enrolled me to learn circus craft. My trainers were a Romany family and they were incredible. There were mum, dad and three young kids and between them they did everything from the trapeze, tightrope walking, acrobatics, clowning and animal taming, to sewing costumes. I studied with them for several years before deciding I should maybe do something a little more practical with my life – so it was then, at fifteen, that I went to work in my dad's restaurant kitchen in Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast. As I left home to work, the first chapter of my life with food ended, and a whole new one began. And this, as they say, is a whole other story (and one I'm planning to tell another time). You'll have to wait!

When I cook now, whether at home, on the road or in the restaurant, what I strive for above everything is to produce food with flavour like Mum's food. I've tried hard to do Mum proud by weaving her special 'flavour factor' throughout the recipes in this book, most of which are from her repertoire. The remainder are the classic French bistro dishes that make the crossover into the home. It's all relatively simple fare and not technically difficult to prepare. Some of the dishes will no doubt be familiar already – I'm not attempting to reinvent any wheels here! Every recipe is included because it's for a dish that makes me happy when I cook and eat it, and because it just tastes great. My hope is that you'll cook these dishes for your family and friends and that you'll think so too.