The French

RICK STEIN’S new cookbook and accompanying BBC series are love letters to France – that beloved bastion of cheese, bread and wine – and a credit to his 30-year long collaborator and director, David Pritchard.

“My early influences and inspiration came from France,” explains the Padstow-based chef and restaurateur, “and my director David sadly died recently. We both shared a love of all things French, and I think he thought it was time to revisit.

“He could see that France means so much to everybody.”

Rick Stein’s Secret France is the result, and the project saw the 72-year-old set off on a culinary trawl of the country’s best dishes, while deftly tackling some of the more pointed questions around French cuisine and its quality.

“We’ve always had a bit of a conversation over the years about the way French food has declined in people’s estimation,” explains the seafood legend. “(We wanted) to ask, if things have gone wrong, why?”

While making the series, he came to the conclusion that “the sort of things that are going wrong in France are going wrong everywhere”.

Blame first world economies, where people (quite rightly) want to be paid good money for cooking in hot kitchens and working anti-social hours.

“The reality is, to create good dishes that are well thought through and well cooked, you’ve got to pay people for it, and there is the rub, because a lot of people don’t expect to have to pay a lot for food,” says Rick, skewering online meal delivery companies and junk food.