The Aperitif Guy

We all have heroes, people we admire and want to emulate, perhaps to impress. Some of them will be distant figures who may have lived generations before us, others will be members of our own family. All of them make us who we are. A few years ago, I gave a series of dinners in celebration of some of my culinary heroes, the final of which marked my admiration for Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of La Physiologie du Goût (the physiology of taste). Unlike the three previous heroes (Elizabeth David, Anton Mosimann and Auguste Escoffier), Brillat-Savarin never left us a single recipe. He produced instead a finely written collection of meditations on the value of good eating, which guide us through an approach to food that is at once careful and exploratory. Modern psychology might recognise in many of his meditations what we would call "mindful" enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. That his master-work has not been out of print in French since its first publication is t...

This time of quarantine has put paid to entertaining, hospitality and social dining for now, so I've been looking back over my archive of menus and the letters I've written over the years about food. It's been a time to remember influential friends and family and to consider how my culinary heroes have changed me. I gave my first formal dinner in the last few weeks of my university career, in a flat overlooking the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. I might cringe a little now at the menu (fish terrine, coq au vin, lime sorbet), but it was rather sophisticated for your average student! The sorbet recipe came from a book I’m still using to this day. A Taste of Excellence (E Lambert Ortiz, 1988) introduced a new wave of young British cooks (including Raymond Blanc) who were just starting to move on from the constraints of Nouvelle Cuisine. (By the way, let nobody mock Nouvelle Cuisine: it taught Brits that food should look good!) When I started work, it was at a large r...