Dinner Menu:
As you may have noticed my meals have quite a prominent place in this blog. I have been fortunate to have gone to a number of good restaurants in my life and to have cooked quite a few passable meals myself. And yet when I think back to my most memorable meals, they were usually simple but enhanced by their context. Here are my top 5:
- Soupe de dinde avec avocats, oeufs durs et piments
- Pain à l'ail
- Salade verte
- Fromages
As you may have noticed my meals have quite a prominent place in this blog. I have been fortunate to have gone to a number of good restaurants in my life and to have cooked quite a few passable meals myself. And yet when I think back to my most memorable meals, they were usually simple but enhanced by their context. Here are my top 5:
- Fresh bread, goat's cheese, olives and fresh tomatoes in the foothills of the Mont Ventoux in the middle of a hike with my friend Gilles
- Saucisson, avocado and lemon in a shepherd's hut in the Pyrenees with my daughter
- Freshly slaughtered roast pig from the next door neighbor in a village outside Moscow with a bunch of friends invited at the last minute.
- "Daddy's rice dish" at my great aunt's apartment in Paris, where the recipe was given to me by my uncle who had just come back to France after having raised cattle in New Caledonia.
- Black market Caviar from the Caspian sea smuggled back to Paris and eaten by the spoon with Fianna, Sasha and Louis in our apartment in rue d'Antin.
In each of these occasions the intrinsically good food was magnified and enhanced by the setting, circumstances and people who made up the experience. A really good sophisticated meal is enjoyed in the present, for it to last in the future there needs to be an additional ingredient which appeals to other senses and emotions.
This is why discovering an amazing meal in a small simple restaurant in the middle of nowhere will always be a more satisfying experience than dinner in a *** Michelin restaurant (however excellent it may be).
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