way. Each has developed a signature style that reflects both their personality and their place in that history. Each of them wears the hat. But what, if anything, does the chef’s hat signify? It is is commonly held that the 100 pleats of the toque blanche represent the notion that the master chef could cook an egg at least one hundred ways. That may be so, though it is unlikely that any chef would now be called upon to prove this statement. Carême had to. His great patron, the French diplomat and gourmand Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, once set him a task: to create a whole year’s worth of menus, without repetition, and using only seasonal produce. Carême of course succeeded, and it was perhaps this experience more than any other that set him on the path to greatness. Escoffier compiled a list of more than 7,000 recipes over the course of his lifetime, and in doing so set the path for cooking even into the twenty-first century.
A CHEF’S SIGNATURE Each of the chefs in this book has chosen that same path. Yet each has arrived at a slightly different place; though all wear the same hat their signatures are all distinct, unique. Gordon Ramsay’s signature, for example, now lies more in his fame and his empire building than in his cooking. So if you should dine at his flagship restaurant on Royal Hospital Road, currently the only three-star establishment in London, you can order his signature dish, the cappuccino of white beans, knowing that the man himself has played no physical part in its creation. Pierre Gagnaire, when asked what his signature dish is, replies, “My signature lies in the attention to details.” Ferran Adrià on the other hand changes his menu so regularly that it makes defining a signature dish all but impossible. “One of elBulli’s rules is not to know what you are going to dine on,” he says, virtually making change itself his signature.
And in Sydney, Tetsuya’s restaurant goes through an average of almost a hundred Tasmanian ocean trout every week in order to satisfy the demands of the customers who would no doubt be sorely disappointed if they found that his signature dish was not on the menu that night.
THE PATH TO THE PLATE “If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things, to eat,” wrote Fernand Point, the first and arguably the greatest of Escoffier’s children, “the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.” In essence, this is what great chefs do. The hat they wear represents many things: passion, excellence, commitment, care. In fact Escoffier himself wrote that “In cooking, care is half the battle.” Yet it is passion that above all else separates the great from the good. Talent helps. Willpower is essential, for the path to greatness is long and hard. And the value of a great teacher cannot be underestimated. But it is passion that we see on the plate, and passion that we celebrate here in this book.
Above: Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935). A restaurateur and culinary writer as well as a chef, he popularised and updated traditional French cooking methods.
ESCOFFIER’S CHILDREN
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