This list includes dishes that reflect the spirit of their time or have turned the development of cooking in a new direction.
They can be found modified or carefully reproduced in different restaurants around the globe. The list may seem “disproportionate to French”, but what to do – French cuisine maintained its “monarchical” status in the world until 1980s. And the roots of modern high cuisine grow out of ‘nouvelle cuisine’.
Duck under the press
Frederick Delaire – Tour d’Argent restaurant, Paris, 1890
The press, with which the sauce is made, was not invented by Delaire; it was invented by another Frenchman named Meshenet. What is the merit of Delaire? He was the first to make a show out of food: he took the skeleton of a fried duck, put it in an elegant silver press and started screwing the valve, crushing the bones and squeezing all the remaining juices into a silver sauce. After that, he boiled the squeezed liquid with cognac and madera and watered the resulting sauce with slices of roasted duck breast.
P.S. Now the restaurant is not so popular, but traditions and legends work to this day.
Chicken in a bubble
Fernand Poin – La Pyramide restaurant, Vienne, France, 1920s.
In his book “Ma Gastronomie” Fernando Poin writes that this dish was invented by Marius Vettar from “Café Neuf”, but Poin brought him to the rank of “grand cuisine” (not just high but great cuisine). Half a century before the invention of the immersion thermostat (which is now used to prepare dishes on the technology of su-vide, and initially it was used in laboratories), Poin stuffed the Bresse chicken foie gras and truffles, stuffed it in the pork bladder (pre-soaked in whey from sour cream) and slowly languished in a consomme with the addition of Madera and brandy. From Paul Bocuse to Daniel Bouloux, the best chefs have recreated this dish many times over the course of almost a century. Recently it was also recreated by Daniel Hamm at Eleven Madison Park, replacing chicken with vegetables – the root of celery or asparagus.
P.S. This chicken is still cooked at the Boxwood. It is very tasty and one dish is enough for two.
Drums with potato “scales”.
Paul Bocuse – L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges restaurant, Lyon, France, 1960s
The “scales” of thin slices of young potatoes are carefully lubricated with a whipped egg yolk to hold firmly on the fish fillet. The idea of the dish came to Bokuzu’s mind when he saw at one of the culinary exhibitions a fillet of slightly salted salmon covered with thin slices of cucumber. Freddy Girardet repeated the Bokuzo dish, replacing the zucchini potatoes. Charlie Palmer made a version with scallops and potato chips, and Danielle Bouloux and Gordon Ramsay carefully reproduced the original, without hiding the name of its creator.
P.S. This dish can be cooked at home with a certain skill.
Salmon with sorrel (“half-cheese” salmon)
Jean and Pierre Truagro – La Maison Troisgros Roann”, France, 1962.
Many chefs claim that this very dish put an end to ruthless digestion and overcooking of fish by western chefs for centuries. It is the best illustration and symbol of ‘nouvelle cuisine’ and its principles, as the creators of the ‘new French’ partially inspired by Japanese cuisine. Each component of the dish is cooked for minimal time – from bright pink salmon to blanched sorrel in cream sauce and white wine with light citrus note. Since its creation, the dish was repeatedly reproduced by French chefs and became one of the pillars of modern Lyon’s cuisine.
P.S. Lyon has many tasty restaurants, but for me the most delicious dish in this city is sweet meat. This is the name of the dish made of calf’s goitre.
Mushroom soup “Cappuccino”
Alain Chapelle – “Alain Chapelle” restaurant, Mignon, France, 1970s
Alain Chapelle, a pupil of Fernand Poin, is one of the founding fathers of the “nouvelle cuisine”. His legendary soup is a champignon consommée crowned with foam of whipped mushroom broth, under which (at the bottom of the plate) “hide” the cancer necks. The “chip” is that the foam on the soup is made without adding cream. The replica dishes were made by Eric Reeper (with lobster instead of cancer necks), Massimiliano Alaymo (with cuttlefish) and Thomas Keller with wild mushrooms instead of mushrooms.
Pig legs with morelons
Pierre Coffmann – La Tante Claire restaurant, London, 1977
Pierre Coffman’s pork legs are an exemplary dish of high cuisine, in which the main role is played not by the product, but by the mastery of culinary technology. The legs need to be cleaned of stubble, skinned and removed from them with the utmost care. The prepared meat is stewed in a mixture of port, madera, brandy and white wine, and then stuffed with minced chicken breast, calf’s goitre iron and morel. Then it is stewed until it is ready, and when served it is poured with sauce made of port, Madera, brandy and white wine. When Marco Pierre White opened the restaurant “Harveys”, its menu included the dish as “Stewed Pork Legs “Pierre Coffmann”.
P.S. The famous restaurant Au Pied de cochon in Paris was named after pig’s legs.
Young vegetables gargoyle
BRA – restaurant “BRA”, Laille, France, 1978
For each portion of “Gorgulia” cooks in “Bra” carefully laid petals, slices, chips, twigs and mashed potato 50-60 different vegetables and flowers – from nasturtium to cucumber and potatoes. This creation has set a new standard in culinary aesthetics and inspired cooks around the world for almost half a century.
Baked goat cheese with lettuce
Alice Waters – Chez Panisse restaurant, Berkeley, California, 1980
Alice Waters has turned California cuisine into a full-fledged culinary movement based on rational use of seasonal local products. Thanks to this dish, the Americans “got to know each other” and fell in love with classic French cheese with soft mold and looked at the usual leaf salad in a different way. Soon after the appearance in Shea Paniz, both products appeared in the restaurants’ menus all over the country. The salad became a symbol of Californian cuisine, and American restaurateurs started working closely with farmers. And sometimes they started to start their own small farms at the establishments.
P.S. Our restaurateurs have not yet started their own farms, but they are willingly photographed against the background of cows and put them on Facebook.
Rice “Gold and saffron”
Gualtiero Marchesi – Restaurant Gualtiero Marchesi Milan, 1981
Baroque dishes, which used gold, inspired medieval Milanese chefs to create dishes, at least in color imitating gold. Initially, egg yolks were used for this purpose, then – saffron. 300 years later, inspired by the French “nouvelle cuisine”, Gualtiero Marchesi offered his version of “golden” risotto: he added so much saffron that the rice acquired a bright orange color, and in the center put a thin plate of food gold. He also tried to give the rest of his dishes a kind of work of art.
P.S. The use of gold does not affect the taste of dishes in any way, but the cost is significantly affected.
Canape “Good Mood” with truffle and foie gras
Bernard Paco – L’Ambroisie restaurant, Paris, early 1980s
Bernard Paco is Parisian chef, who cooks in Lyon’s culinary traditions (Lyon is considered cooler than Paris in terms of food). In the early 1980s, Paco came up with a “good mood canapé” in which he tried to convey the “taste of Lyon of the 1960s”. He baked slices of truffle and foie gras under the “lid” of puff pastry (in the style of the Bocuse) and served it on the mashed potato of black truffles. The secret was to combine the crispy air pastry with the creamy texture of the filling, plus the incredible flavor of the dish. A few years later, Daniel Bouloux prepared his variation on the theme of canape – “Scallops Black Tie” (“in a tailcoat”?) in the restaurant Le Cirque with thinner slices of truffle and scallops instead of foie gras.
P.S. Truffles and foie gras are also good separately.