Daniel Boulud - Daniel: My French Cuisine

Finally, on May 17, 1993, after dreaming about it since I was a boy and years of hard work and planning, Daniel the restaurant opened for business. What a whirlwind the past twenty years have been! I am thrilled to finally bring you Daniel: My French Cuisine .

This is not an exhaustive and exhausting encyclopedia of French food. Often what we cook at Daniel is completely novel. But more often, it has a direct link to the past. In Daniel , I will share with you three types of cuisine: that of Restaurant Daniel, iconic French classics, and French regional dishes I make at home. At Restaurant Daniel, my amazing brigade and I constantly play with the French recipes of the past, which allows us to move forward and develop our own. We build on prior knowledge using technique as a foundation to develop new ideas, new textures, and new presentations, always with a lighter touch. Some of the recipes from Restaurant Daniel are composed of many parts. I didnt want to keep any details from you by trying to make things simpler. You can decide how inspired you want to be: to make the whole recipe or just the main protein, or perhaps only the vegetable garnish. Its up to you. Besides cooking la carte and creating precise, artistic plates, I enjoy revisiting historic dishes that encompass tradition and celebration with grand and soulful presentations. In the iconic section of this book, I wish to share the foundations of what makes me a French chef.

Do you know that I live twenty feet above the restaurant? Do you know that my office, called the skybox, is a glass-enclosed den overlooking the kitchen? This is my home base, where I still move among the stations cooking, tasting, poking, and on occasion, teaching a young cook a trick I learned when I was seventeen. And as in the old French tradition, I still live above the store, which is why I also included a section on how I cook at home. You may want to try your hand at a few of my personal recipesthe kind of regional dishes I make for my friends and family. Join me on this journey to delicious fun!

I REVEL IN AMERICAS GENERATIONS OF CHEFS AND CUSTOMERS whose vibrant enthusiasm and passion for food support culinary talent. By sharing ideas with the ever-changing pool of emerging young chefs from around the world, I am inspired. These young cooks may not need to practice classic French cuisine anymore, but they use it as their reference. They respect it, and they know its foundations.

My connection to food is human and humble. I am a chef with soul: an American chef with a French soul or a French chef with an American soul. I have both influences in me, and thats what keeps me grounded.

In New York City, where I live, I constantly feel inspired by the bountiful markets and multiethnic culture, but deep down, I have remained quite French. In fact, I come from Lyon first, from France second. If I think back to my roots, I see a boy running around a farm, getting into trouble, helping his father sell vegetables at the market, and plunging his nose into his grandmother Francines pot of succulent soup. Certainly, I didnt grow up around starched white tablecloths. At the Boulud farm the seasons ruled our table: We ate what we grew, when the time was ripe.

With the first money I made at age fourteen, peeling carrots and potatoes in the kitchen of Restaurant Nandron in Lyon, I bought two books: Escoffiers Le Guide Culinaire and Gringoire and Saulniers Le Rpertoire de La Cuisine . They may look like simple books, but they encapsulate what I still consider to be the code of French cuisine. It was the beginning of my now impressive cookbook collection. But trust meat the time I couldnt collect anything; I didnt have a franc to my name!

Nandron, a famous Michelin two-star restaurant named for its chef/owner Grard Nandron, sat almost across from Les Halles, the fabulous covered market where the countrys top ingredients converged daily. Inside you would find fruits, vegetables, fragrant herbs and spices, meats, and fish. But right outside the building, along the surrounding streets, teemed the tripe sellers, the charcutiers, the oyster bars and bouchons. It wasnt Zolas Le Ventre de Paris , but it was close. If we needed a bunch of watercress in the middle of service, I would run there to get one that had been pulled that very morning. From the pretty, blond lady fishmonger (a favorite with all the chefs) to the paunchy butcher and the baggy-eyed baker, these characters lived together, and the cheerful camaraderie they exhibited was very similar to what I try to build with my cooks every day at Daniel.

I remember at fourteen seeing Paul Bocuse leading the pack of great chefs at Les Halles, where he shopped every day, but he also came by the restaurant to have coffee with my boss, his friend Grard Nandron. I looked up to him as a hero. Then one day Nandron and I were driving down along the Sane River on our way back from a catered event, and he asked me:

So, kid, have you ever been to Bocuses Auberge?

I hadnt, of course, so he made a right turn over the bridge and off we went to the famous restaurant, LAuberge du Pont de Collonges. But we werent headed to the dining room; it was in the kitchen that everything happened. I couldnt believe my eyes. Nandrons kitchen was fine, but Bocuses was the Rolls-Royce; silver platters, shiny copper pots, cooks and waiters working like finely tuned machinery everywhere. I sat on the side of a counter taking it all in while the two friends chatted. After a while Bocuse hailed a waiter:

Hey, bring the kid something to drink!

What they put in front of me wasnt milk; it was a huge communard (Beaujolais and cassis liquor). There was no way I could say no, so little by little, I sipped my cocktail, getting drunker by the minute. And when the two elders were done, we drove back to the restaurant, where I tried to finish the dinner service, but everybody noticed how tipsy I was, and they gently sent me home. I slept well that night!

Maybe a year later, Bocuse needed cooks and called Nandron, who sent me as an extra apprentice. I showed up in the morning with sunglasses hanging on my shirt, and bumped into Bocuse in the entrance. Youre from Nandron? he asked. Go back, get a haircut, and we dont need sunglasses here! At Bocuse, everybody had to follow the rules, so I left and got a crew cut!

Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three, I worked my way through some of the best kitchens in France, propelled by my desire to learn and my hunger for new experiences and ingredients. I was always interested in cooking, but also in the entire operation of a restaurant, in how all the different parts (wine, flowers, design, service) interact with each other to create an experience. Then I moved on to Denmark, and then America. I saw Paul Bocuse regularly at events. He took me under his wing, and over the years we developed a close bond. Today I consider him my guiding shepherd, a spiritual father. His son Jrme is one of my best friends, and I am the proud godfather to Petit Paul, Jrmes son. Now were family.