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‘Good taste: A Life of Food and Passion‘ is Ducasse‘s new work in which he shares a lifetime of culinary inspirations and passions that have moved him throughout his career. These memories are connected to a manifesto in which he travels from the past to the future. From his childhood, when he picked mushrooms with his grandfather on a farm in the Landes, to the creation of pioneering schools and restaurants around the world. Now he’s taking off his chef’s suit and passing on his knowledge to the next generation of chefs.
As part of the Philadelphia Chefs Conference, the chef shared with Food & Wine the significance of his book, as well as a number of memorable meals that will forever reside in his ‘taste’ memory.
In the book, the celebrated chef recalls the food of his childhood, when he lived on a farm in the southwest of France. He speaks of them in a poetic and evocative way, alluding to ‘sun-drenched tomatoes’, ‘peas picked and eaten raw’ from his grandmother’s garden, or mushrooms that his family gathered from the surrounding forest. This veneration for fresh produce would be reflected in a gastronomic proposal in which plants take on a certain prominence.
Inspiration also came to Alain from his mother’s cookbooks such as ‘Cuisine et Vins de France, or ‘French Food and Wine’. ‘I remember the first dessert I made was a French chocolate log,’ the chef tells Food & Wine. ‘And I wonder if the recipe could have come out of the magazine.’ That moment would mark precisely the awakening of his career: after making the dessert when he was just 12 years old, the chef conveyed to his mother that he wanted to be a chef.
Travels also stimulated Ducasse’s haute cuisine, from Mediterranean produce to meals in Kyoto, of which he remembers one in particular: a vegan dish cooked by Toshio Tanahashi, the chef known for his plant-based Buddhist cuisine.
Another memorable meal diluted from that culinary journey in search of inspiration was found in New York by chef Michael White. It was ‘an extraordinary veal sandwich made with good bread and perfectly cooked meat. It was like a haute couture veal sandwich, the memory of it has stuck in my mind’.
