“Product origin and matching
Autumn Symposium – Geneva 2002
In the kitchen, the origin of food products is as important as that of a wine or an AOC cheese. A professional is a prescriber, in other words, he chooses and buys products to work on and resell: it’s an advice to the customer. In my opinion, this is the restaurateur’s first commitment. Of course, there are other points such as welcome, service, etc., but we don’t talk enough about the choice, and therefore the quality of the products and their origins. When it comes to choosing the best products, everyone thinks it’s meat and fish, but it goes right down to vegetables, fruit and spices. All the products used in a recipe are of vital importance! Salt is just as important as the origin of pepper. I could go on at length about the very different pepper flavors that go with some products and not with others.
I’ll give you a few examples, starting with vanilla, because at Lucas Carton, we use a lot of it with my famous lobster. I have two vanillas, one for Brittany lobster, which is “Bourbon de Madagascar” vanilla (accompanied by a Meursault 1999 – Domaine des Comtes Lafon) and a second vanilla for desserts, Tahitian vanilla. The latter is spicier and better suited to my Vanilla Mille-feuille to go with Muscat de Rivesaltes 2000 – Domaine Cazes. In all cases, I need vanillas that aren’t too dry (I’m interested in them at the beginning of the drying process), so that the inside is very soft and they still have flesh.
I have a rather serious story to tell you about foie gras. I asked our foie gras producers to put “Duck fattened on non-GMO corn” on their invoices. I had one producer who couldn’t do it, explaining that he could only do it for six months of the year. Obviously, I gave up and found other suppliers. Can you imagine, winegrowers, how serious the situation is in France today? There are probably foies gras out there that have eaten GMO corn. And to think that foreign foies gras are less controlled. That’s where we’re at! As winegrowers, I know that you are vigilant on this subject. I’m not going to talk to you about farmed fish. In particular, the story of GMO salmon from Canada. The salmon quadrupled in weight in three months compared with non-GMO salmon. But it’s not my role to talk about things that aren’t right, about products that aren’t good. There are so many wonderful ones!
I’d like to tell you about Zeeland oysters from the north of Belgium. In France, we say we have the best products, but I think these flat oysters from Zeeland are prodigious. Of course they’re different, and that’s all to the good. They’re wilder than our belons, less iodized, and if I were a restaurant selling raw products, these would certainly be the ones I’d feature. On the other hand, with Atelier de l’A.I.V., we did tastings of Breton lobster, Canadian lobster and Lescot (Belgian) lobster. During one tasting, our friend Champlain CHAREST brought us lobsters directly from Canada on dates chosen at the best moment. There was no contest: the French lobster was by far the best. The texture was fantastic. What a texture compared to the others! That’s how it comes down to texture – taste is just that.
We’re always talking about Bouchot mussels from Bouzigues. But who’s heard of mussels from Aber in the Charente? Tasting these three mussels is like tasting a Bourgogne, a Beaucastel and a Graves. There are mussel and oyster crues, and since we started researching with a few friends from the A.I.V. team, during which we tasted oysters of all origins over two years to find matches, we realized that from one year to the next, the oysters were very different, corresponding somewhat to the climate of the wines. We all came to the following conclusion: in a very hot year, the oysters were saltier and more full-bodied; in a rainy year, the oysters were better. I’m very proud that Jacques PUISAIS, Gérard CHAVE, Francky BAERT, Franco MARTINETTI, Jean José ABO and Martin CANTEGRIT and I have carried out this research and reached this conclusion.
I’d also like to tell you that in the kitchen, the female is better than the male, that 98% of the time, a cow is superior to beef, a can to duck, that for a “lièvre à la royale”, only the hase is perfectly suitable! When cooked for a long time, male meat becomes stringy, uninteresting and even very difficult to chew. I try to work only with female lobsters. All these details make all the difference in the kitchen, just as each winemaker has his own little secrets and quirks. On all the products, carrots from the sands, onions from the Cévennes, little leeks that come from the Cancale area (like rattes) where the taste of the leek is ennobled to the power of ten thousand. It would be great if scientists could develop a nomenclature for all these crus (vegetables and fruit) so they could tell us, as they do for wine, which product is best suited to which terroir and climate. Explain to us the different reasons why it’s better. For example, every year I suggest quince in autumn, and I notice that sometimes those from Spain are better, and sometimes those from Languedoc. In fact, one year, one region is better, and the other year, it’s another. So, depending on the origin of the quince, I use different Tokaji wines (Tokaji 5 Puttonyos 95 – Oremus, and Tokaji 5 Puttonyos 96 – Royal Tokaji Wine Company).
I’ll give you other examples as they come to mind, as my hectic life has prevented me from organizing this little talk. Recently, at the Salon du Goût in Turin, Franco MARTINETTI invited us to his favorite restaurant for an extraordinary meal of “Italianness”, including perhaps the best soup of my life, tripe very different from ours, but what a treat! But that’s not what I want to talk about, I want to talk about the roast rib of beef from Tuscany, very tender, a different color (the red is not the same as the French red, not as intense) and we drank a Barolo (vintage, grape variety, ageing). In France, with a firmer rib of beef from Normandy, Salers, we would have taken a Bordeaux for example, a little tannic, and we would have found a match. But if we had put this concentrated Bordeaux on this Tuscan beef, there would have been no agreement, and vice-versa, if we had put the Barolo on a French rib, we would have had less pleasure. As with wine, there are historical cores, crustacean terroirs, but I’d like us to think about vegetables too. Because it’s the garnish that makes a dish, in other words, the arrangement of vegetables.
So, there are truffle years, boletus years, and sometimes good years, average years, and so on. This needs to be made clear, because there are cooks and gourmets who don’t pay attention to all these details. We all agree that origin is essential. There are great origins in products. Even if I have to upset Jacques PUISAIS, the best place for wild salmon is the Adour, the Gaves de Pau. In the Loire, a quiet river, salmon flesh is less interesting. Foie gras is made everywhere, and the best is found in the Landes, and I challenge anyone to find me a better one, which is not to say that they’re all good. The best anchovies are from Sète, and at the moment I’m making anchovies for Manzanille, and I’ve noticed that there’s a real difference with anchovies from different sources. We get our herbs from St-Rémy de Provence, which is a bit expensive but, with these herbs, something happens and sometimes, I get some from Michel GUERARD. Belons from Riec, cod from the North, even if, alas, the North Sea is becoming as polluted as elsewhere and we won’t find any more. As you know, langoustine from Guilvinec is the best, and the best Breton lobster comes from Carantec. We also get our mesclun from Nice, and depending on the season, green asparagus from the Durance, Perthuis or Lauris regions of France, from Monsieur Blanc’s near Cavaillon. I’m lucky enough to be able to try them out, and when you compare them blind, you notice extraordinary differences.
Let me tell you about my latest asparagus experiment. Jo GRYN, who may be here, once told me about Maline’s white asparagus, I believe, so I gave it a try. Of course, they were good, but you can also find white asparagus this good in France. What’s astonishing is that green asparagus calls for certain wines, notably those of Nicolas JOLY, sometimes a very dry Vouvray, because there are terroir relationships there. And with white asparagus, we served a Puligny 1er Cru 1998 – Domaine Boillot. Of course, we can find ducks everywhere, but the cross-bred ducks from Vendée, from Challans, have a superiority over all the others.
So a culinary product is like a wine. It’s a terroir, an appropriate product on that terroir and a climate, just like what happens with wines, we, as chefs, experience it with food, but perhaps it’s more difficult. You make a wine once a year, but we receive products every day, and sometimes we have to refuse almost 30% of them. I’d rather be in short supply than have a poor-quality product, because no matter how great the cuisine, we’d only be making something very average. It’s like with technological wines, which have nothing but fruit and don’t make you want to eat. Our Chancellor said this to me some time ago in Lyon about a local wine. We receive products that we don’t want to work with, and therefore don’t want to eat.
At a time when we’re talking about large-scale production, it would be nice if we could be helped to do something about it. I can’t end this little talk without ending with the cigar. It has too many parallels with everything I’ve said, and especially with you, the winegrowers. Cuba, in general, and the Abajo land in particular, is an exceptional terroir for cigars, and when there are mistakes, they come from the work of man. And sometimes on cigar leaves, the fermentation time has been reduced or they’ve been badly rolled. This results in acid cigars that are very difficult to draw. A word of advice, gentlemen: if you have cigars whose fermentation isn’t perfect, keep them in a suitable place for six months and you’ll find that the acidity will diminish. On the other hand, in Santo Domingo, Honduras, where cigars are also made, I’m shocked by what some critics are saying, that they are as good as Havana cigars.
These cigars are always dry, lack body, have primary aromas that are nothing more than pepper without body, and yet are better made than Havana cigars. Cigars show that terroir is essential. It’s like Merlot or Chardonnay planted anywhere!!!! All this demonstrates the importance of origin. This is often overlooked. In fact, few people, even among so-called specialists, critics, gourmets or chefs, realize the importance of origin because of a lack of knowledge. Knowledge leads to taste. Thank you for listening to me and let me go smoke my good Havana.