Cookaholics Bulletin Board

JosephWechsberg's book, Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure is a delightful book, extraordinarily well-written, describing food and culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was attracted to the book because of the imaginative title and it was the last chapter that introduced me to Fernand Point, the world famous chef of La Pyramid Restaurant near Lyon, France – what an incredible character and chef. Among many others, Bocuse trained there. Wechsberg relates that Michelin considered creating a 4th star just for this restaurant! The book is available on Kindle for $10.

Because of this book, I discovered Point’s book, Ma Gastronomie. The most recent edition contains an introduction by Thomas Keller in which we learn that Ma Gastronoomie is required reading for anyone working at The French Laundry More wonderful stories of life within La Pyramide and the latter half of the book contain ‘recipes’ that only an advance chef would truly understand or attempt but which any serious cook will delight in reading; I have had to read it with Larousse Gastronomique by my side to understand and appreciate what the recipes entail

Wino,

Sounds like I should look for Blue Trout from the library.

We talked about Point and his cadre at food school, but I never hear them mentioned these days. One thing about the creation of an "American" cuisine is the idea that it is entirely original, it has no need to conform to any particular heritage and that the more outrageous you make it, the more American it is.

I would love to learn about other feature writers that write as well as Wechsberg. The last chapter of Blue Trout... is about Point and is from a 1949 article in the "New Yorker". If you would like to read it in the original format, complete with "New Yorker" comics and ads see this .pdf (it can be slow to load. I think it is brilliant.
http://www.josephwechsberg.com/pdfs/1949/finest_butter_and_lots_of_time.pdf