« My library contains almost nothing but cookbooks. For LIVRE OUVERT, I could immediately put my finger on the text that had followed me my entire life. In the field, it’s known as Le Maincent. It’s a sort of big, ugly, dog-eared cookbook, written by Michel Maincent-Morel in the 1990s. |
|
La cuisine de référence : Techniques et préparations de base, fiches techniques de fabrication, Michel MAINCENT-MOREL, 1993, 799 pages. |
|
Le Maincent, which is what everyone calls it, is the book that stayed by my side during my entire training. I’ve had this handbook since attending culinary and hospitality school. It’s been my faithful companion for 15 years. |
|
Honestly, it’s kind of funny because this book explains cooking in a very descriptive way, with poorly lit, unappealing photos and jargon that you only hear in the back of house. But that’s the way it is and we respect that. It’s every cook’s Bible. It lists all the French cooking techniques and teaches you so many things. For example, the verb ‘abricoter’ in French, which means ‘to cover a cake with apricot jam.’ I didn't know what it meant before opening these pages. I still flip through it from time to time. |
|
Mentioning Le Maincent to a chef always elicits a knowing smile: we all know this book. |
|
At first, I started cooking ‘just to see.’ This book contained recipes that I had never heard of and food that I had never tasted, such as endives and cardoons. Flavors that I didn’t know before arriving at that school. |
|
With this book, I experienced moments of happiness, frustration, anger and relief. The recipes for shortcrust pastry and puff pastry are both there. In fact, maybe it’s because I rely a little too much on this book that I still don’t know them by heart. |
|
The reason why this book resonated so deeply with me is because, as a chef, I needed to understand what I was doing. I needed meaning. And I found answers in this book, which reassured me. Because, in this book, the techniques don’t change. And won’t change. |
|
« In a way, I needed to understand these recipes to be able to tell my own story. » |
|
A béarnaise sauce is the way it’s written in this book. It’s the béarnaise sauce. From there, it’s up to me to modernize it and add something different. But that’s another story. » |
|
Lately, at PLUME MGallery x Pour les Femmes • PLUME composed a text that was read … in the elevator to the hotel rooftop for the launch event. Evzer • We dreamed up, fine-tuned and wrote all the texts of the event agency’s new website. Le Bon Marché • Every month, we draw up a dozen or so exclusive formats and texts for La Gazette, and Les Listes d’Exception, the department store’s vertical editorials. Sabre Paris • We composed and structured two landing pages dedicated to the festive holidays. Moustache Bikes • For its 10th anniversary, the brand called on PLUME and Porte-Plume to conceptualize and write its manifesto book. Lacoste • We write all the crocodile brand’s press releases. The latest? EleVen by Venus Williams. BG Ingénieurs Conseils • For the group’s printed magazine, we conducted interviews and wrote up two articles on the theme of transitions. |
|
|
