Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking

Color: the vibrant red, the shades of green. Texture: the crunchy vegetable, the soft sponge of the lobster, the pudding-ness of the panna cotta. And volume: the undeniable three-dimensionality of a lobster barge with a mast and a crow’s nest.

After all, in an orthodoxy, even the smallest deviations are acts of rebellion.

We didn’t cook them as one might at home. We didn’t think of them as one might at home, because we never cooked one bird: We cooked two. In the kitchen, all birds are two birds, white meat and dark meat. One is cooked quickly (the breast); the other needs long and slow (the legs). One tastes of nothing if cooked too long; the other, impossible to c

Never pick up your knife until you know you won’t have to put it down.

It is poached in chicken stock, with black truffles under the skin (the widow in mourning, etc.), until the breasts are almost cooked. The bird is then put in a “roasting pot,” presented to the table, and whisked back to the kitchen for a rushed piece of culinary surgery. First, the breast is removed: sautéed, sauced, plated, and returned to the di

“the bottom of the bottle is for quitters.”