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Quote by Samantha Verant

“My life in the kitchen began with my grandmother in the village of Champvert in the Tarn-et-Garonne department of southwestern France, the town so small you'd need a magnifying glass to find it on the map. I'd sit on a tall wooden stool, wide-eyed, watching Grand-mère Odette in her navy-blue dress and black ballerina flats, her apron adorned with les coquelicots (wild red poppies), mesmerized by the grace with which she danced around her kitchen, hypnotized by all the wonderful smells- the way the aromas were released from the herbs picked right from her garden as she chopped, becoming stronger as she set them in an olive oiled and buttered pan. She'd dip a spoon in a pot or slice up an onion in two seconds, making it look oh so easy, and for her it was. But my favorite part was when she'd let me taste whatever delight she was cooking up, sweet or savory. I'd close my eyes, lick my lips, and sigh with happiness. Sometimes Grand-mère Odette would blindfold me, and it wasn't long before I could pick out every ingredient by smell. All the other senses came to me, too- sight (glorious plating), taste (the delight of the unknown), touch (the way a cherry felt in my hand), and hearing (the way garlic sizzled in the pan).”

Quote by Samantha Verant

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The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux

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Samantha Verant

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“My passion for cooking grew as my mother taught me how to make her chewy cranberry bread, Dijon mustard vinaigrette, and Nantucket quahog chowder thickened with chopped clams, potatoes, and sweet onions. Then it reached new heights in college when I took a year off to study French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where I learned to master a mean spinach soufflé, make a perfect sauce Bordelaise, and craft authentic shiny chocolate-topped éclairs. When I was hired as the sous-chef at Le Potiron (The Pumpkin), a Parisian restaurant near Les Halles, I used my newfound skills to transform tough cuts of beef into tender stews, improvise with sweetbreads, and bake cakes from memory.”

“Onion soup, the food of the poor, but delicious for all that. Fresh baguettes from the bakers. Madam Gascon's ragout would usually consist of pig's trotters, vegetables, and whatever seasonings she had. Food that was as cheap as it was healthy. But today, there were morsels of beef swimming in a sauce that was thicker than they had tasted in a long while, Then, there was a camembert and a goat cheese and a hard gruyere, all washed down with cheap red wine.”

“Chef explained some of the fresh products they'd use in their prized regional dishes, which we'd soon be cooking too: the smooth Niçoise olives and the lovely fruity oil; bouquets of zucchini flowers, born to become fritters; fresh almonds; more cheeses than there are days in the year; eggs with yolks the color of the Côte d'Azur sun; and, of course, the butteriest of butters. He said there is a seasonality and simplicity at work, which is why French recipes don't change: "A classic is always timely." To think, I went from Bubbe's chicken schmaltz to Mom's low-cal Pam spray, and now this man with a frying pan for a face and a banana for a nose is suddenly telling me it's all about the butter.”

“Catherine de Medici brought her cooks to France when she married, and those cooks brought sherbet and custard and cream puffs, artichokes and onion soup, and the idea of roasting birds with oranges. As well as cooks, she brought embroidery and handkerchiefs, perfumes and lingerie, silverware and glassware and the idea that gathering around a table was something to be done thoughtfully. In essence, she brought being French to France.”

“Haters are your biggest admires. No-one dedicates their lives into knowing every step that you take more than your haters. In fact, the difference between your supporters and your haters is that your supporters are able to sleep at night after learning about your progress, whereas the haters get stressed and miserable from seeing you shine. Nonetheless, stick to your progress.”

“This sweetness scooped like some bright fruit plum peach apricot watermelon perhaps from myself this sweetness It is a whimsical touch, which surprises and troubles me. That this stony and prosaic woman should in her secret moments harbor such thoughts. For she was sealed from us- from everyone- with such fierceness that I had thought her incapable of yielding. I never saw her cry. She rarely smiled, and then only in the kitchen with her palette of flavors at her fingertips, talking to herself (so I thought) in the same toneless mutter, enunciating the names of herbs and spices- cinnamon, thyme, peppermint, coriander, saffron, basil, lovage- running a monotonous commentary. See the tile. Has to be the right heat. Too low, the pancake is soggy. Too high, the butter fries black, smokes, the pancake crisps. I understood because I saw in our kitchen seminars the one way in which I might win a little of her approval, and because every good war needs the occasional amnesty. Country recipes from her native Brittany were her favorites; the buckwheat pancakes we ate with everything, the far breton and kouign amann and galette bretonne that we sold in downriver Angers with our goat's cheeses and our sausage and fruit.”

“My mother had a passion for all fruit except oranges, which she refused to allow in the house. She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit and a recipe- Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake. Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengages that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer. At one time we had over a hundred trees (apples, pears, plums, gages, cherries, quinces), not to mention the raspberry canes and the fields of strawberries, gooseberries, currants- the fruits of which were dried, stored, made into jams and liqueurs and wonderful cartwheel tarts on pâte brisée and crème pâtissière and almond paste. My memories are flavored with their scents, their colors, their names. My mother tended them as if they were her favorite children. Smudge pots against the frost, which we base every spring. And in summer, to keep the birds away, we would tie shapes cut out of silver paper onto the ends of the branches that would shiver and flick-flack in the wind, moose blowers of string drawn tightly across empty tin cans to make eerie bird-frightening sounds, windmills of colored paper that would spin wildly, so that the orchard was a carnival of baubles and shining ribbons and shrieking wires, like a Christmas party in midsummer. And the trees all had names. Belle Yvonne, my mother would say as she passed a gnarled pear tree. Rose d'Aquitane. Beurre du Roe Henry. Her voice at these times was soft, almost monotone. I could not tell whether she was speaking to me or to herself. Conference. Williams. Ghislane de Penthièvre. This sweetness.”