Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann Pierre Koffmann. Pierre Koffmann is an internationally acclaimed chef who has contributed to Britain’s finest cuisine for almost forty years. La Tante Claire, his now legendary restaurant, gave Pierre Koffmann the platform to achieve three Michelin stars. Between 1977 and 2004, La […] Koffmann’s at The Berkeley Hotel. Returning to The Berkeley in 2010 was the start of a new chapter for legendary chef Pierre Koffmann. Koffmann’s marks a new direction for Pierre. Serving light, seasonal dishes and French brasserie favourites, he embraces an informal Gascon style. Local […] Pierre Koffmann Consultancy. Pierre Koffmann Consultancy offers one of the nation’s most revered chefs to advise restauranteurs and hoteliers on best practice. Pierre has worked for the following organisations: Morrisons Pierre Koffmann worked with the M Kitchen team to create his signature dish, […] Pierre Koffmann: Life story. Words by Richard Vines. “Every family ate well in southwest France when I was born in Tarbes, in 1948. But we were working class and not wealthy, so my mother had to make the best of what she could get. It wasn’t fillet steak […] Memories of Gascony. The world’s #1 eTextbook reader for students. VitalSource is the leading provider of online textbooks and course materials. More than 15 million users have used our Bookshelf platform over the past year to improve their learning experience and outcomes. With anytime, anywhere access and built-in tools like highlighters, flashcards, and study groups, it’s easy to see why so many students are going digital with Bookshelf. titles available from more than 1,000 publishers. customer reviews with an average rating of 9.5. digital pages viewed over the past 12 months. institutions using Bookshelf across 241 countries. Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann and Publisher Mitchell Beazley (UK). Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9781845338213, 1845338219. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9781784722234, 1784722235. Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann and Publisher Mitchell Beazley (UK). Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9781845338213, 1845338219. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9781784722234, 1784722235. Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. Pierre Koffmann's traditional French recipes. Traditional cooking in south-west France, where the renowned chef Pierre Koffmann grew up, is not for the faint-hearted. Rose Prince joins him on a nostalgic journey. Pierre Koffmann tells me a story of how, when he was a small child watching chickens roasting on a spit in front of an open fire, his grandfather would assuage the boy’s hunger by cutting a little piece of the greasy trussing string, then giving it to him to suck while he waited. This must be how great chefs are made. There is nothing pretentious in the tale, also told in the French chef’s book Memories of Gascony. It just shows how an early, gratifying memory can define what you become. Koffmann has become what many of his peers and students comfortably call a genius. He has been prominent in Britain since 1977 when he opened his first restaurant in London. Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Tom Aikens, Tom Kitchin, Heston Blumenthal and Marcus Wareing all put Koffmann forward as their main tutor or influence. Many perfected their skills at La Tante Claire, the restaurant Koffmann ran in Chelsea that held three Michelin stars until it moved to Knightsbridge in 1998 (it then held two). Koffmann, 64, closed La Tante Claire in 2003 shortly after the death of his first wife, Annie. After a break he returned, opening the lower-key Koffmann’s at the Berkeley Hotel in 2010. In spite of all the praise heaped on him, Koffmann is modest, even shy of the media that his acolytes revel in. Travelling through the Gers in south- west France, he slots back into his roots discreetly, even though he has not lived here for 40 years. Part of the historic region of Gascony, the Gers is a pretty, hilly area with fairytale castles and pale stone villages – and the birthplace of the soldier D’Artagnan, who inspired Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. ‘I want to show you a market like the ones my grandparents would have known,’ he says, and we drive to Samatan, a town not far from the place where he remembered gnawing on that little piece of juicy string. The covered market in the centre of town rustles with the sound of wings, and there’s clucking from the excited live poultry. More than 100 people have gathered to buy in a way that is obsolete in many French towns: farmers arrive carrying bales of straw and crates of live hens, ducks and guinea fowl. They carefully lay down the tethered birds in the straw. Some have naked necks. ‘That is quite natural,’ Koffmann says. ‘It is the most popular local breed, called Cou-Nu.’ A bell rings and the public invade the area, picking up pairs of chickens to weigh them, nodding in assent at their hefty weight, then paying up to €20 or so. ‘They will take them home and kill them straight away,’ Koffmann says. I ask if they wring the chickens’ necks. ‘No, they are not barbarians!’ he says, amused. ‘They will hold the bird’s head down, insert a knife and allow it to bleed – it is a kinder way.’ He goes on to explain how, even at this moment, the Gascons prepare a dish that helps to make the most of the money they have spent. ‘The blood is collected in a bowl, and chopped shallot and parsley is added. This coagulates and is then cooked like a pancake – we call it sanguette and it’s very good.’ The faint-hearted might not get on well in the Gers. The department where citizens still like to kill their own Sunday roast is also personified by its devotion to rearing duck and producing France’s most controversial speciality, foie gras – the fatted liver from ducks (and occasionally geese) force-fed with maize. You can barely drive a mile without a roadside invitation to visit a duck farm; even the bunting strung across the streets in Samatan is shaped in duck cut-outs. This region takes food to a seriousness and adherence to tradition that generations still appreciate. Maybe their children will become squeamish but now at the market there is no evidence of that, and the many children present seem to enjoy the chicken sale. Memories of Gascony is an extraordinary book, first published in 1990, that grippingly recalls an almost medieval cooking culture. Koffmann was born in the town of Tarbes, close to his maternal grandparents’ village of Saint Puy, which is high in the rolling hills of the Gers. He would visit Mamie and Papa Marcel, as he knew his mother’s parents, Marcel and Camille Cadeillan, at weekends and during school holidays. Their traditional way of life fascinated him, and he sums it up expressively in his memoir: ‘The aroma of wood smoke, the comfortable, pervading smell of animals, the sight of chickens roasting on a spit in front of a log fire, the rituals of harvest, the natural cycles of sowing and reaping, birth and slaughter, are all things which are simple enough, but they are very precious to me, and I would never otherwise have known them. They have become a part of me, and have stayed with me all my life.’ Gorgeous as this lifestyle now sounds, the amount of work undertaken on the farm was not lost on Koffmann. ‘My grandmother would travel in on the local bus, a journey of about 18km, carrying live chickens in baskets – they did not own a car.’ Their income was unpredictable, too. ‘If she sold a lot of chickens, she might buy stuff she needed, like an apron, but otherwise she would not buy anything.’ As it was, Mamie and Papa Marcel reared, grew and crafted almost all they ate and drank. Economy underpinned much of the cooking done by Mamie. ‘Though my grandfather would kill a veal calf once a week, we would rarely eat prime cuts but dishes made from the offal and offcuts. My grandparents sold the most valuable cuts to local butchers. At home we would eat the tail; put the shin in a soup, and the head would be slow-cooked to become tête de veau.’ Once the fat maigrets (duck breasts) and foie gras had been sold (the family produced a small amount of 120 livers per year), the carcase and legs would be preserved as confit (cooked in duck fat) or put in the famous Gascon stew-soup, garbure.
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