By Charlotte Allard

Cooking process

Couples of day before the Michelin stars event for Great Britain and Ireland, get ready for the new release of the Michelin’s guide 2019 available the 5^th October in order to give your taste buds party places!

Meanwhile the results, some amuse-bouche are what are needed to have you own definition of cooking. What does it really mean? Through which steps a cooker must went before understanding a dish?

First, the market place. Discovering the market around your home is essential to be established at one place. In one hand it will updated you on the local activities and in the other hand, the childhood nostalgia resurface from walking past the butcher, baker, fisherman or cheesemaker . Passionate merchants who waked up at dawn to install stands that represent artisanal products mostly. Walk down through aisles full of wide fresh goods. It awakens the senses and memories with smells, contact with seasonal products that remind you when you trim the green beans with your grand-ma or when your dad used to offer you a “chouchou” cone caramelized peanuts during your getaway.

In short professionals will give you advice and pleasure to cook and let you try and discover their products to give the best of you cooker talent!

Second, the recipe. Once you know what you have to cook, you have some good Apps with impressive database full of fantastic innovative and traditional recipes. It’s now up to you to decide the magnitude of your challenge. To eat now because you can’t wait longer to try this beef loin that you just bought or for later to please someone else for instance? Easy or out of you comfort zone? Gastronomic or without any fuss? Selfish or to share your delicious meal over a bottle of wine? (you can also have the bottle by yourself though) Basic and efficient or sophisticated and audacious? Healthy or pure lust? Exotic or local? Familial heritage or from Chef Anne Sophie Pic?

Peel, cut, mix, paned, marinated, fried, wrapped, whipped, boiled, grilled. Anyway, think about the fact that best recipes had been created following a  mistake. Honestly, what would you do if you forgot to put the pastry at the bottom of you apple tart? Be the next tarte tatin creator and let your innovation speak up, don’t kill your vibe if you forgot a step, just find another way to make taste it delicious. Just avoid killing anyone or put fire in your kitchen, the rest is fine I guess.

Finally, the 3^rd: appreciate your masterpiece. Cooking can be a kind of meditation, put music on, open a good bottle of wine, try every steps of the recipe, and add your two cents’. Communicate what you were trying to express. The presentation of your dish is through decoration, smells, the story of it and details. Picture it. Instagram it. To me, the dish is helping a lot to love your creation. Would you drink a Pommard 1989 in a plastic glass? While eating it you can always improve it with spices and dressings. Even if some Chef does not put any salt and pepper on the restaurant table because they think that added something on their art wouldn’t be better, I do think that anybody have his own way to appreciate it.

So what cooking does mean? Go in a local market, find a recipe, follow it and make it yours, dress it, share it and you will know. Bon appétit!