The French Ingredient
Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time; A Memoir
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
The inspiring and delicious memoir of an American woman who had the gall to open a cooking school in Paris—a true story of triumphing over French naysayers and falling in love with a city along the way
“An engaging, multilayered story of a woman navigating innumerable cultural differences to build a life in Paris and create her dream: to establish a French cooking school.”—David Lebovitz, author of My Paris Kitchen
When Jane Bertch was seventeen, her mother took her on a graduation trip to Paris. Thrilled to use her high school French, Jane found her halting attempts greeted with withering condescension by every waiter and shopkeeper she encountered. At the end of the trip, she vowed she would never return.
Yet a decade later she found herself back in Paris, transferred there by the American bank she worked for. She became fluent in the language and excelled in her new position. But she had a different dream: to start a cooking school for foreigners like her, who wanted to take a few classes in French cuisine in a friendly setting, then bring their new skills to their kitchens back home. Predictably, Jane faced the skeptical French—how dare an American banker start a cooking school in Paris?—as well as real-estate nightmares, and a long struggle to find and attract clients.
Thanks to Jane’s perseverance, La Cuisine Paris opened in 2009. Now the school is thriving, welcoming international visitors to come in and knead dough, whisk bechamel, whip meringue, and learn the care, precision, patience, and beauty involved in French cooking.
The French Ingredient is the story of a young female entrepreneur building a life in a city and culture she grew to love. As she established her school, Jane learned how to charm, how to project confidence, and how to give it right back to rude waiters. Having finally made peace with the city she swore to never revisit, she now offers a love letter to France, and a master class in Parisian cooking—and living.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bertch chronicles the ups and downs of running a Parisian culinary school in this saucy debut. Growing up in the Midwest, Bertch learned to cook by observing her grandmother throw meals together without glancing at a recipe. That informal attitude served Bertch well in her personal kitchen, but it clashed with the outlooks she encountered in Paris—first as a wide-eyed teen on a high school trip, then as an adult when her banking job transferred her to a French office. "Paris was tough on me," Bertch admits; her French was rough, and she found locals snobbish. The author gradually curried favor with her banking colleagues, but when she developed an itch to open a tourist-focused French cooking school for people who "wanted more than a trip to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower to remember Paris by," she faced backlash from acquaintances and professionals alike. Still, she got La Cuisine Paris off the ground in 2009, and in the memoir's back half, she recounts the challenges of keeping it open, from real estate snags to the existential threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout, Bertch is tenacious, self-aware company, cognisant enough of her own judgmental tendencies to balance her portrait of nay-saying French nationals. Entrepreneurial readers will find much to admire in this tale of grit and gumption.
