This week our book was by Tout Loiseau by Bernard Loiseau. Bernard was an amazing chef who led a revolution in french cooking, lightening it away from heavy cream sauces to a new way of lighter cooking. He would deglaze with water rather than more traditional methods. In some circles this led to initial ridicule but over time Bernard’s approach became increasingly adopted. His restaurant Cote D’Or in Saulieu held three Michelin stars and Bernard was terrified he would loose one. The day before the announcement, so overcome with the fear of failure he committed suicide only to be found by his wife Dominique. The following day he had retained his three stars. This sad story is told in an amazing book – The Perfectionist. We ate at the restaurant in 2010 on a driving holiday through France. The food and accommodation was exceptional. Waiting for us in our room alongside some welcoming treats, was a book “Tout Loiseau”, signed by Dominique. She came around all the tables at dinner and we chatted with her and have a photograph of us by the fireplace after dinner. The book as you can probably imagine is in French and doesn’t have any pictures of the food. My role at IBM is leading our generative AI team in UK and Ireland and therefore to help with this week’s book I worked with chat gpt to translate the recipes and come up with a picture of what the cooked food should look like – I’ve included these generated images alongside our photos. Full disclosure – the posts on the cook book shelves are a few years now behind where we are up to so these AI images were pretty early on in the Au journey. First up was
Côte de Porc aux Pommes – Pork Chops with Apples. This was a lovely way of using apples alongside the meat. Now pork and apple is not a revolutionary combo but what was nice here was that the apples were left in large pieces rather than turned into apple sauce. The contrast in textures made the dish! Next up was Pavé de Saumon Sauvage à l’Huile d’Olive – Salmon Fillet with Olive Oil. This was another simple take on salmon with dill and roasted tomatoes. Some nice memories this week and some interesting nods to new technology.