When the Great French Chefs Came to LA

Roger Vergé! Paul Bocuse! Masterful mashed potatoes. A trip to Basque Country. And the BEST shrimp.

I’ve been going through old folders, and I came upon this photograph of me interviewing Paul Bocuse in the mid-eighties. (That’s Joachim Splichal on the other side of Chef Bocuse.) What this photograph is doing in the Roger Vergé file, is a mystery to me, because the rest of the folder is all about a week the three-star chef spent in Los Angeles in the early nineties cooking at Champagne, the restaurant run by Patrick Healy and his wife Sophie. Vergé told me that he came “out of friendship for Patrick, who worked with me at the Moulin de Mougins.”

The folder contains my copious notes from the interview. They’re just jottings, half in English, half in French, but if you’re interested reach out and let me know and I’ll post them next week. They have a kind of raw quality that I find fascinating, but they’re totally unedited.

Here are the menus from the meal

And some recipes… Note the relationship of butter to potatoes.

And here is the great chef himself. He was warm, charming, very easy to be with and I’ve always regretted that I never made it to Le Moulin de Mougins.

All the French chefs I interviewed in Los Angeles were stunned by the produce they found.

“There has been a remarkable evolution of produce here,” Vergé told me. “When we came in ‘74 to cook that meal with Bocuse we didn’t trust any of the local products. We brought everything with us. Now you can come with your hands in your pockets. And we did.”

They were stunned by the citrus - and no wonder. If you haven’t tasted the amazing Ojai kishus, pixie tangerines and Page tangerines for sale at tangerineman you’re in for a treat. The Kishus are over, Page tangerines are available now and in another month you’ll be able to order the incredible Pixie tangerines.

Another great local product? The wonderful dates the Bautista family raise in the Coachella Valley. They’re sold out for the season, but put them on your calendar for next September because they are the sweetest, stickiest most fantastic treat, and they go quickly. They are, as the family says, “the perfect date.”

A few days agoI found myself wandering the Columbus Circle Whole Foods supermarket in search of something to cook for dinner.

I looked at the soft shell crabs, but they seemed sad and exhausted. The steamer clams looked tempting, but I decided to peruse the butcher counter before committing. 

And there it was: humanely raised veal from a local farm, glowing up at me. Rosy pink, it looked very seductive.

I've missed veal. I was raised by a Berlin-born man who considered Wiener Schnitzel one of life's major food groups.  But modern veal, which is primarily a by-product of dairy farming, is problematic. Male calves are removed from their mothers soon after birth to keep them from drinking up the profits. They're fed a low iron diet, which keeps the meat white but is so unhealthy that the formula is generally laced with antibiotics. The result is pale, listless meat with no taste; there's no way you can feel good about eating it.

But this looked different. I couldn't resist.

I bought some beautiful pink veal, took it home, and cooked it quickly with lemons and capers.  It was fantastic. My only worry is this: am I ever going to find this glorious veal again?

Veal with Lemon and Capers
1 pound veal scaloppine, cut from the leg
flour
salt 
pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 lemon
1/4 cup chicken stock
squeeze of lemon juice

Put each piece of veal between two pieces of wax paper and pound with a heavy object (I use a rolling pin), until it is very thin.

Spread a good handful of  flour on a plate, add a fair amount of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Dredge each piece of veal in the flour, and put on a plate to dry out a bit.

Cut the ends off the lemon, then slice off the rind. Remove the seeds and cut the naked lemon into eight segments.   

Melt the olive and butter, over high heat, in a large skillet.  Cook the veal, in stages, about 1 minute on each side, and remove to a large platter.

Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock and lemon juice, scraping up the brown bits. Add the lemon pieces and boil down until the lemon has gone soft and the liquid is reduced in half; it should only take a couple of minutes. Turn the heat down, add the veal and capers to the pan, turn to coat the meat, add another tablespoon of butter and stir until the sauce is slightly thickened and serve.

I like to served this on rice, to soak up all that delicious sauce. 

Serves 4

Every year my friends Nancy Silverton, Laurie Ochoa, Alec Lobrano and I put together a dream vacation - and then invite a few more friends to join us. Over the past few years we’ve visited Tuscany, Umbria, Paris, Marseille and Nice, but this fall we’ve put together the trip I’m most excited about.

The Basque region (both in France and Spain), is home to some of the world’s finest - and least known- cuisine. Our odyssey this year takes us to Biarritz, Bordeaux, San Sebastian and Etxebarri.

Want to join us? I can promise that it will be delicious fun. Read details here.

I have had the most astonishingly delicious week, dining all over New York. And despite fantastic meals at Potluck Club, an amazingly innovative dessert tasting at Momoya Soho and dinner at Ci Siamo, the dinner I can’t stop thinking about was Txikito. These crisp head-on shrimp? I could have eaten them forever.