La Technique

"At that stage, when I was working in the hotel, I asked what book I should read to learn about cooking, and I was given La Technique, which is a classic French textbook with all the old techniques in it. It’s incredibly dated, but I like it because it displays very clearly the steps that go into creating the finished product, with these very old-fashioned black-and-white photographs for every dish. “You’ll also have what was considered at the time part of the canon: how, for example, to build a pigeon out of fruit – mad stuff” The chicken liver pâté recipe is still the one I use. Absolutely brilliant recipes, wonderful sauces. But you’ll also have what was considered at the time part of the canon: how, for example, to build a pigeon out of fruit – mad stuff. Jacques Pépin has these very, very hairy forearms, which are in all the pictures… I cook from it a lot at home, and, again, for me it was the beginning of thinking about the wonderful end product and the steps that went into creating it. I was talking to an old friend who’s a restaurateur the other day, and he was saying that, years and years before I set up Leon, I’d talked about setting up a fast food restaurant. I think the thing that appealed to me about fast food as opposed to running a conventional restaurant was that it’s all about the quality of the food. When the price point is £5 or £6, it is all about the food – not the starched tablecloths, or fancy china. Yes. The thing I didn’t like about the Park Lane place was how much of it wasn’t about the food at all. I remember working New Year’s Eve, when we did a massive 8-course tasting menu – incredibly delicious. But when we peeked round the curtain at midnight, everybody there was completely pissed; they’d wolfed most of it down without even noticing what they were eating. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I like the very direct value link with fast food. It’s more about whether you can do good food at that price than all the other stuff: hosts, getting on the reservation list, the flattering thing."