Your Place or Mine? Book

Celebrity chefs face a particular problem when they come to publish their recipes (and these days they always do). For they are giving instruction for the creation of dishes which are probably far beyond the technical resources of many of their readers. Most address this problem by toning down the complexity and producing domestic versions of their creations (although the photographs often give the game away). The ineffably glamorous Jean-Christophe Novelli, who runs a highly regarded string of restaurants named after himself, takes a different approach in his flirtatiously titled Your Place or Mine. He presents the dishes (mostly French in origin and grouped into the usual Fish, Poultry, Meat etc.) firstly in a relatively undeveloped, straightforward manner, then subjects it to the creative alchemy through which it is transmuted into a Michelin star winner. A plain Pot au Feu of pork hocks, cabbage and root vegetables becomes, Cinderella-like, a jellied terrine of the same ingredients. This is a fairly simple example: others are technically highly demanding and can tend to the farouche. Could anyone outside an expense-account restaurant seriously consider dressing up a simple little cylinder of tiramisu as a galleon with drawn caramel masts and tuile biscuit sails? But this is a fascinating book, not just for the recipes, valuable in themselves in both their forms, but for the insight it offers in the creative processes of an extravagantly gifted chef. --Robin DavidsonRead More