Early influences

I have been thinking a lot about my style of cooking ever since the chef asked me what my specialty was. Also, I have been getting more and more requests from friends for me to cook for them. I imagined what I would cook, and the images that came up instantly were of dishes I had not studied in class or observed at work. It dawned on me that all the stuff I have been learning did not translate easily into a home-setting. In conclusion, cooking in a professional kitchen is far removed from cooking in a home kitchen (especially mine!). Of course this has to do with the fact that I have so far been to “super fancy,” as my daughter would say, restaurants, where the food, if not pretentious, is definitely trendy and very sophisticated. For one thing, I would never serve and espuma or foam to my friends. Though I can enjoy it while eating out, I find it grossly overrated. Another ingredient often used in the kitchen which I don’t like at home is gelatin. If they are not folding cream into a dish, they are adding gelatin. So yes, it holds better, it’s shinier, it’s more manageable. I think it’s gross (except for sugar-free strawberry).
So to answer the chef, I told him I liked Asian flavors. The truth of the matter is that I don’t have a specialty per se, and I think this is due to the fact that I get easily bored always want to try new things. This means I have phases. For example I bought matcha, which is intensely flavored, finely ground Japanese green tea. For a few weeks I tried different things with it. Then I bought chestnut flour and tried to cook with that as well.
The food I cook is beyond fusion – I don’t like that term because it conjures a passing trend, whereas what I produce is what I would like to think as more authentic, though it comes from different parts of the world all at once.
As a child in Paris, my most vivid culinary memories can be summed up in two words: Japanese food and Fauchon. Back in the eighties there was no Bon Marche gourmet deli, there was Hediard and Fauchon near the Madeleine, and one of my favorite treats was the marron glace ice cream from Fauchon. I can see myself in my daughter who gushes with pleasure when she bites into something she finds delicious; she has the same taste for good food that I had at her age.
Other than that, I was a big fan of Japanese food. We didn’t eat out much, but when I had my holy communion at age seven or eight, I was given the privilege to pick a restaurant and it had to be at Benkay, the restaurant of the hotel Nikko, a few minutes from where we lived. At the time, the hotel was the epitome of minimalist chic for me (my daughter and I differ on this point – she prefers baroque) and the restaurant with its Japanese chefs at their grills was heaven. No sushi for me there, what I wanted was tempura, light, crisp and airy. Other than that, there was Toraya, a Japanese tea salon where they served the simplest summer delight of thinly shaved ice, green tea syrup and sweet azuki beans. So simple, three ingredients, and so perfect.