The cook-it-separate approach was my first genuinely French cooking lesson. Vignerons, bottling a wine made of different grape varieties, do something similar and either toss everything in a vat together and ferment the lot (like a “field blend”), or vinify each one separately and blend at the end: a more controlled effort in which you can often taste each grape. And many famous French stews turn out, at least in their traditional recipes, to be minimally stewed. Like a Navarin d’agneau, the spring-lamb-and-vegetable dish named after the navet, turnip, the traditional accompaniment until the advent and acceptance of the potato (circa 1789): The vegetables are cooked while the meat roasts—turnips (if you’re a traditionalist), potatoes (if not), or turnips and potatoes (if you’re both), baby carrots, small onions, and spring peas—and only then combined at the end.
The practice doesn’t seem to have a name, which is a curiosity in a culture that I was about to discover has a name for every tiny ridiculous preparation or tool, or if there is one I haven’t found it yet, although I may have come across the first instance of its being described: in Menon’s La Cuisinière bourgeoise (The Household Cook—the bourgeoise in the title has its eighteenth-century sense, “of the home”). There are many “cuisine bourgeoise” books in France—almost every accomplished chef has written for the layman—but Menon’s was the first. (Menon, probably a pseudonym, also wrote the first “nouvelle cuisine.” There are many nouvelle cuisines as well.) Menon’s Cuisinière bourgeoise describes two ways of making duck and turnips: the cheffy approach, with turnips and other ingredients cooked separately while the duck roasts, and the other, more informal one that involves, once again, the plop, the pot, the lid, and leaving until done. “Voilà la façon de faire le canard aux navets à la Bourgeoise.” (The recipe is not in the book’s first edition, published in 1746, but in the second, in 1759.)
Spoiler alert: Astonishingly, albeit painfully, I would indeed learn to read French and even speak it.
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I made breadcrumbs the Richard way, which were not uniform or powdery (he shook out the dust in a sieve) but jagged and uneven and rough to look at, and then toasted in the oven until deliciously noisy. With a dab of mousse, they adhered to Richard’s “chicken nuggets,” and then, when fried at maximum heat, emerged highly textured on the outside (they snapped when you bit into them), soft in the middle, with a hint of chicken cream in between, and very surprising in the mouth. (I tried the nuggets on my children. They liked them. They also liked the frozen ones from the supermarket. They were not discriminating. What they really liked was ketchup.)
I made tuna burgers the Richard way (tuna burgers at a high-end restaurant? Why not? They were scrumptious). You start with a thick red slab of the fish, dice it, and then mash the cubes vigorously with the back of a wooden spoon against the sides of a bowl. As the cubes break down, you’re effectively whipping them. You add a splash of olive oil. You continue mashing. By now, you’re probably starting to sweat (unless you’re me, and you’re streaming off the tip of your nose). Midway through, you spoon in a vaguely Japanese-y sauce that you’ve made in advance (ginger, shallots, and chives emulsified in a blender with soy sauce) and mash some more. The goal is to break down the tissue so effectively, smooshing it, as to render the fish’s natural fats. They are the binder, what will hold the shape of the burger. It is then cooked rare, and has zingy freshness, with an unapologetic almost-sushilike gingery rawness, and is served in a bun made with olive oil and wild yeast, something like a Mediterranean version of a brioche.
I enjoyed the burgers so much that I always made an extra one just before we broke down the kitchen and kept it warm on the flattop to eat at the bar upstairs along with my customary glass of Pinot Noir.
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I was taught how to make a Richard soufflé that never fails (it uses three different meringues, Italian, Swiss, and French). I prepared savory potato tuiles that have as much snap and texture as a Pringles chip but no fat (they were inserted into Richard’s burgers to give them crunch). Both were among the house secrets, kept in a much-guarded recipe bible, and the fact that Richard was prepared to share them with me was proof that, in his eyes, I was utterly harmless. During my tenure, the kitchen wasn’t making the “mosaic salmon,” regarded by many as Richard’s most accomplished dish, a gravity-defying masterpiece covertly held together by transglutaminase (i.e., meat glue) and known to me from how it figured in the story of a former sous-chef, Arnaud Vantourout, a Belgian who confessed to me that, after he left Citronelle for a grand-sounding position at a famous Brussels restaurant that he asked me not to name, he realized that he had been hired only for Richard’s recipes. “They made me tell them everything”—the Tube Technology, the soufflé, the tuna burger, Richard’s perfectly peeled apples, and the “mosaic salmon.” (“They really wanted the mosaic salmon.”) Then, after the famous Brussels restaurant that Arnaud asked me not to name had exhausted all the good ideas that he’d learned from Michel, they had no use for him. “They threw me away.” (Frankly, I don’t understand why the good-hearted Arnaud was so careful to protect an asshole establishment, and even though the late great New York Times food critic R. W. Apple, Jr., named it among the top ten dining experiences in the world, I, for one, have vowed never to go there.)
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On a Thursday afternoon, just before the dinner service, I learned that none other than Michel Rostang and his brigade had arrived from France and would be showing up in the kitchen in the morning. They would be taking over Citronelle for a weekend of elaborate meals, an annual event, something like a “Paris in D.C.” festival. There was no reason why I should have known about it in advance—I was still finding my way. But the news astonished me: Michel Rostang—the Michel Rostang, the very person that Dan Barber had worked for and urged me to train with as well—would be here, with his executive chef, his sous-chef, his line cooks, everyone. It was my chance. I was excited. I was frightened.
I needed to call Jessica.
In one respect, the timing was positively apposite. I had only recently taken on board that our children needed to attend some kind of preschool in the fall. To be honest, until then, I hadn’t considered, in any kind of specific way, that they needed to be educated. Obviously, I knew that they had to be, eventually, but I hadn’t thought through the logistics. It was the first week of March. I had only just begun trailing at the fish station (following a cook who knows the station so that you can learn the routine). Also I was only now starting to realize how little time I had to find a restaurant in France. Between March and September, I was committed to acquiring whatever basics there were to learn in Richard’s kitchen (if any), and doing a stint somewhere, venue unknown, in Paris: six months. And then, like that, here was Rostang: my opportunity, my passage, my future, my venue.