Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs: Combining Beautiful Recipes and Photographs with a Memoir
Think of Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs as a delicious combination of cookbook and personal memoir. His work is recognized as some of the best cooking on the West Coast with his restaurant Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, and his grace shows through when he appears in public and on camera. I had the pleasure of meeting him many, many years ago at an event at the Ritz-Carlton when I was a lowly pastry cook just learning the ropes. While he would never remember me, I remember him and his commanding presence.
Think of Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs as a delicious combination of cookbook and personal memoir. His work is recognized as some of the best cooking on the West Coast with his restaurant Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, and his grace shows through when he appears in public and on camera. I had the pleasure of meeting him many, many years ago at an event at the Ritz-Carlton when I was a lowly pastry cook just learning the ropes. While he would never remember me, I remember him and his commanding presence.
- Amazon: Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs
My personal perception of him is that while he is larger than life in culinary circles, he has none of the bombastic flair that so many of the instant chef-celebrities flaunt on television. That may come from experience or his upbringing. Either way, he talks about them both in his latest written work.
Souvenirs begins with a quote from Keller himself, from 2010, and so begins his journey. Keller writes that in all this travels (he’s worked around the world) he has stayed true to both his classical culinary training and his adapting to local ingredients and tastes. I loved reading in the introduction why he chose the different dishes he did in Top Chef Masters, and his learning experiences along the way. I also loved how he writes about his wife, Chantal, his true life partner whom he met when he was an apprentice.
About his culinary philosophy, Keller writes:
The way I was trained, I repeated dishes exactly the way I was taught. As chef of Roger Verge’s Brazilian restaurant, La Cuisine du Soleil, I was happy that I could almost exactly reproduce the very popular St. Pierre (John Dory) with a red pepper coulis from Moulin de Mougins. But it was not well accepted by our guests. That experience opened my eyes. In a foreign country, everything – from the cooks’ knowledge, to sourcing ingredients and equipment, to the tastes of the clientele – was different. I learned that to be successful I had to be flexible and adaptable, to keep my personality and my way of thinking but to shift my position to include new perspectives.
I think that is one of the most important passages in the book because there is a fine line between doing what you want to do and doing what you have been trained to do, and doing something that will please your guests. Which is what chefs, restaurateurs, and hoteliers are all about really; they are in the service industry, food service. The ultimate satisfaction comes when you give your guests pleasure from working with a bit of ingredients in the kitchen.
A lesson he learned during his apprenticeship under Verge, which Keller says he still uses today, was Verge’s attitude – This is what I have; this is what I want to do. How can we make it happen. Another example of adapting a chef’s cuisine to local ingredients.
There are 120 recipes in Souvenirs with 125 gorgeous photographs taken by Eric Wolfinger. The chapters follow his life and experiences: Family Treasures; Mentorship by Three-Star Chefs; Adaptation: When Creative Inspiration Saves the Day; Modern French Cooking Hits American Shores; Pioneer: Seeking Adventure and Finding My Own Path; Love and Partnership; and Holiday Traditions.
The recipes inside the cookbook make it a reference book, too, and run the recipe gamut from simple to exotic: beignets, Kugelhopf, bouillabaisse – braised beef cheeks, grilled squab, rabbit loin. Keller dares the reader to not get the book dirty with frequent use. Which, with recipes as good looking as these, will be hard to do in my home.
Book Information:
- Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs: Stories and Recipes from My Life
- Andrews McMeel Publishing; 2012
- ISBN13: 9781449411428
Disclosure: This book ARC was provided by the publisher, and any opinions are my own.