Cooking

"Shahrzad: I’ve chosen Cooking: The Quintessential Art, by Hervé This and Pierre Gagnaire. The writing is fantastic and it goes through the philosophy behind cooking and behind every aspect of it – the aesthetics, the development of the taste. When I read it, I had to stop and read passages to my husband, who took it off and read it himself afterwards. Shahrzad: It gives recipes – unusual recipes – but it also features passages from Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Roman philosophers, cooks and writers, so it’s not a straightforward read. It’s enjoyably intellectual. ‘Consider the idea of making a soft or gentle dish. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sweet, though the recipe that follows is sweet. The main thing that becomes clear is that there is an essential difference in cooking between sumptuousness and gentleness.’ Then: ‘In practise it is a vanilla, rum or Sauterne sabayon. A sabayon is either lobster juice or coffee. Both are sumptuous but when they are made with vanilla, rum or Sauterne they become gentle. To make them work you have to turn them away from sumptuousness to a softer register. I serve this in small quantities with mangoes and a salad of fresh herbs like cilantro and fresh tarragon. Yes, this is a dessert.’"