French Leave: Over 100 Irresistible Recipes Book

The life of a Michelin-starred chef is undeniably a stressful one, and no doubt many pause from time to time in the frenzy of the kitchen or the worry of the office to ask themselves if it's really all worth it. John Burton Race, who had clocked up two stars, had such a moment. He saw the business side of a highly successful restaurant taking over and himself losing contact with what had drawn him into cooking in the first place--food and its preparation. Following this epiphany (one might call it a naked-lunch moment, when, as William Burroughs remarked, you really see what's on the end of your fork) he determined to return to his roots, take a sabbatical and write a book about the pleasures of good, simple food. French Leave is the result. French because Race ambitiously decided that France was the best place to conduct his research and accordingly took his entire family (wife, six children and, eventually, Labrador puppy) with him. French leave is both a cookbook and a narrative of the we-survived-a-year-in-rural-France type so popular since that leathery old bellwether Peter Mayle first showed the way. The recipes are excellent--good, plain, traditional French eating, arranged seasonally, with classics such as Cassoulet, Confit of Duck and Daube de Boeuf featuring. There's practically nothing here that you won't find in books stretching all the way back to Elizabeth David and beyond, but it's very useful to have such a collection curated by a skilled and enthusiastic chef. The narrative parts of the book are somewhat mixed: when Race is talking to food producers and cooks of the Aude, his chosen region in the south-west of the country, he is fascinating and clearly enthralled. These are people with a profound love and respect for food, and Race is good at communicating this and demonstrating why quality is important. It's less easy to see why he chose to include so much about his family--quarrels, grumpy love-sick teenagers, school plays and so on--who probably won't thank him. And strangely, there's no mention whatsoever of the television crew, who must have been around quite a lot filming for the accompanying series. --Robin DavidsonRead More