JGV: A Life in 12 Recipes
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
One of the most influential chef-restaurateurs of all time reflects on a career defined by surprising, delicious food.
From his first apprenticeship in France to his Michelin-starred restaurant empire, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s cuisine is inspired by the freshest ingredients, the simplest techniques, and the drive to make the ordinary perfect. It all started at home.
Jean-Georges was born in Alsace in eastern France to a family in the coal business. He spent his childhood watching, mesmerized, as his mother produced elaborate lunches each day at 12:30 p.m. sharp and exquisite dinners at exactly 7:30 p.m. Served rich goose stew and tender roasted local vegetables, Vongerichten’s palate was forever transformed, and such were the origins of his culinary genius.
JGV is an invitation into the kitchen with a master chef. With humor and heart, Jean-Georges looks back on success and failure, sharing stories of cooking with legendary chefs Paul Bocuse and Louis Outhier, traveling in search of new and revelatory flavors, and building menus of his own in New York City, London, Singapore, Sao Paolo, and back in France. Every story is full of wisdom, conveyed with the magnanimity and precision that has made this chef a household name.
Anchoring this remarkable memoir are twelve recipes that have defined Jean-Georges's career: an egg caviar still on his menu forty years after his mentor taught him the simple preparation; shrimp satay with a wine-oyster reduction from his landmark Lafayette restaurant; a pea guacamole that had President Obama tweeting; and more.
Enlivened with his hand-drawn sketches and intimate photographs, JGV is a book for young chefs, as well as anyone who has ever stood at a stove and wondered what might be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A world-famous chef offers a remarkably down-to-earth take on his ascent to the upper echelons of the culinary world in this delightful memoir. Vongerichten (Home Cooking with Jean-Georges) was kicked out of school at age 15 for his lack of work ethic, and later found direction and discipline as an apprentice in the kitchen of a Michelin-starred Alsatian restaurant. Vongerichten writes fondly of the French chefs he worked for, Paul Bocuse and Louis Outhier among them, but it was his introduction to Thai street food that would change the trajectory of his career: his eventual fusing of classic French techniques with Asian ingredients spurred by a negative review in New York magazine in 1986 enshrined his place in modern culinary history. Vongerichten comes across as a nice, humble, and thankful guy, which makes an interlude in which he admits to beating up a dishwasher for taking an extended break during a crucial lunch service while the New York Times restaurant critic was dining at the restaurant especially eye-opening. Readers who dined at Vongerichten's restaurant Jojo during its heyday, meanwhile, will be surprised to learn the secret ingredient in a popular sauce was ketchup. (A recipe for it is included.) Anyone curious about what drives an elite chef will want to pick this up.
