The French evolution
Chef Rick Stein talks to ELLA WALKER about revisiting France, the problem with salads, and why food is a great equaliser
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.
He argues that people are prepared to pay full-whack for Michelin standard food because fussiness tends to call for money, but “if you want to do simple, plain cooking with very good ingredients, people don’t see why they should have to pay for it. There’s always that suggestion that, ‘Why would I eat something when I go out that I could cook at home?’ Frankly, if I could eat as well when I go out as I can cook at home, I’d be very happy.”
In regard to French fare, he says it isn’t necessarily that dishes have got worse over time, more that “we’ve got better – we’re so used to eating well now”.
“You can’t just go into a small French town now and expect to eat well,” says Rick. “(The food’s) OK but it’s not going to make you euphoric, but that’s partly because we’re all so used to it now, it’s familiarity.”
However, no one can deny the markets are still fantastic.
“Just the apricots! And when you see piles of peaches that smell so wonderful,” buzzes the father-ofthree.
One thing he does have a problem with in France, is “the ubiquitousness of about three or four different salads”.
He begins ticking them off on his fingers... salad nicoise, Caesar... “You see them everywhere! And it’s not that they’re bad, they’re just so boring!” Hence why he’s stuffed the cookbook with new ones, like warm chicken liver, bacon and orange salad, and lentil, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad.
The odd salad must be appealing when you’re being filmed eating non-stop. “I do consume a lot of calories. I find it difficult not to eat what’s put in front of me because it’s a bit rude,” muses Rick.
A veteran traveller, you’d think Rick would never feel out of his depth in a new country. However, in the book he admits the opposite – but notes that finding a morsel to eat is something of a cure. “The moment of slight panic I might feel when walking through a challenging part of a city can be much dispelled by good food.”
Alluding to ‘dodgy’ areas where you can’t help but notice drug deals taking place and arguments spilling over, he says, “I love Marseille, but it is a bit challenging. But when you find a store selling good things to eat, you think, ‘These people might be challenged in certain ways, but they like nice food’.”
It’s an equaliser he explains: “You go to Calcutta and it’s so overwhelming, but then you eat something and you suddenly think, ‘Well, of course’ – it’s obvious isn’t it! We’re all human beings, we all like nice stuff to eat, but you forget that these people living in very difficult situations also like good food.”
Hunting down good food is always his aim. “It’s so wonderful to go somewhere where the cooking is so b **** y good,” he says with feeling. “It makes you remember what restaurants are all about really; meeting your friends, having a lovely chat, having some decent wine and something decent to eat.
“When you have an evening like that, you forgive an awful lot,” he adds. “And when the French are cooking well, they’re cooking very well.”
■ Rick Stein’s Secret France by Rick Stein, photography by James Murphy, is published by BBC Books, priced £26. The TV series continues on Tuesday on BBC2 at 9pm.