Eugénie Brazier, Bouchons and Terroir of Lyon by Farid Zadi

                  “Those who underestimate the feminine sex where culinary
                    matters are concerned forget their high level of achievement
                    which has earned them the accolade of cordon-bleu. It is
                    impossible to bring more skill and delicacy, more taste and
                    intelligence to the choice and preparation of dishes than women
                    have brought.”

                    Eugene Briffault (1799-1854)

Lyon is the gastronomic heart and soul of France. Part of the culinary heritage of the city are  "les mères lyonnaises", (the mothers of Lyon), female chefs who brought the cooking of the bourgeois to the dining public. 

Eugenie Brazier is often hailed as the first female chef to have six Michelin stars, more simply put she is the first chef period, the next chef  to have two sets of three stars is Alain Ducasse decades laters.

 

Mere  Brazier was born in 1895, she was put to  work at a very young age for a bourgeois family and was quickly recognized for her natural cooking talents.  She began her formal training with Mere Filloux who is considered to be the first celebrity Mere of Lyon. Too many chefs spoil a dish, I can only imagine the situation with two Meres.  The folklore is of two strong willed women butting heads and spatulas or maybe Mere Brazier simply outgrew her mentor.

Chez La Mere Brazier was Chef Eugenie's first restaurant. It was at her second restaurant in the Col de la Luère where Bocuse apparently first learned how to cook.  She also wrote a cookbook Les Secrets de la Mère Brazier.

Paul Bocuse , one of the father's of Nouvelle Cuisine, trained under  Eugenie Brazier. I visited Institut Paul Bocuse a few years ago and I contacted them earlier this year regarding a trip to Japan that Fernand Point supposedly took. They were kind enough to respond after several days of thorough research that they had no record of Point's trip to Japan and that they suspect it never happened. I'm hoping to interview Chef Bocuse as well as many other chefs and food writers for this blog.

My students always ask me about Lyon and working in France. I was born in Lyon and that is where I started my career at places like Le Bouchon aux Vins (Paul Lacombe is another chef I hope to interview) and La Machonnerie , chef Felix's son and I were very good friends. I didn't work much in Lyon, one of the reasons I chose cooking as my trade was so that I could travel. When Mick Micheyl, a resident of Montmerle where I grew up flew into the village one day in a helicopter and said, "Farid, get in I have a job for you at Les Dryades and you'll also have free room and board," I packed my rucksack and left.

Up until about 3 or 4 years ago I used to go back to  Lyon and Paris several times a year, I hope to get back next year. I do have lots of photos from previous visits, but they usually include me holding my daughter, none of food.

My first  job was in a castle that had been converted to a restaurant. The chef had an insane temper and managed to scare or wear out his staff into quitting. For whatever reason he and his wife always treated me very well. I used to ride my bike in the snow to work thinking about all the copper pots I had to polish with lemon and salt. It never felt like work to me, it was more like working  with mom and dad on a farm with a restaurant. I can't stress this enough to people starting out in the business, cooking is a craft, a trade and manual labor. If you don't like working with your hands, you won't enjoy professional cooking. If you think turning potatoes is beneath you and you are an artist in your mind before your time has come I hope you have rich relatives with deep pockets and a good PR agent. OK, I have seen that too, but on very rare occasions.

My subsequent jobs  were at the Machon and Bouchon I mentioned earlier.

Machons have their origins serving workmen, it's derived from franc machon, "free eaters" and is a play on franc-maçon "free masons."

Bouchons are unique to  Lyon, because the menus are terroir based serving simple, hearty, generous country fare made with produce from the region. If Lyon were a pond and you threw a stone in it the expanding ripples would take you to some of the best produce in France. The smaller bouchons especially still serve cuisine de grandmere and the proprietors often look like your friends grandparents or great-grand parents.

The origins of the term Bouchon has been  much debated but it's commonly accepted that it is derived from cork stopper. The old guard and those interested in maintaining traditions got together in 1997 to form L'Association de Défense des Bouchons. They set menu guidelines requiring that certain dishes be prepared and served the 'authentic' way along with wines from the Maconnais and Beaujolais.

You can see the Saone river from my mother's living room in Montmerle, it converges with the Rhone into Lyon. It has been said that the third river in Lyon is Beaujolais. Of course Beaujolais is not an actual river but a wine. The Beaujolais region is one of the most idyllic in France, with rolling hills and extinct volcanoes. The soil is mostly granitic which brings out the qualities of the gamay grape like no other region.

Growing up I thought la fête du Beaujolais was limited to my region. The farmers simply drank it out of carafes, it wasn't even bottled for local consumption. I didn't know until I was a student in Paris that Georges DuBoeuf had marketed a quaint celebration around the world.

Beaujolais Nouveau has often been criticized for two reasons. It is wine meant to be drunk very young, actually that's an understatement, it's meant to be drunk fresh and perhaps bottling it and shipping allover the world is not the best thing. It's also been observed that it takes away the winemakers attention away from producing finer quality wines.

I'll refrain from delving into a deep economic analysis of the region, but I have stated before that the success of Beaujolais Nouveau has allowed other food traditions to survive. When I go back home the children of farmers that my parents bought from are maintaining their family farms.

Lyon is the gastronomic heart and soul of France. Les Meres chefs presented the grand dishes of the wealthy classes to the public with skill and delicacy, they passed on these traditions to the great male chefs.

The Bouchons offer the humble, hearty dishes of the land and the fertile terroir.  It's traditional homecooking, cuisine de grandmere, food from the land.

And of course the produce, some of the best produce in all of France, which I will discuss in subsequent posts.

 

c\ 2005 Farid Zadi

(Please note as stated on the front page of this blog, all content is original and owned by the writers and photographers who contribute to this blog and may not be reproduced in any form without written consent from the respective contributors)

Culture Food Food and Drink Travel

Comments

[Ji-Young Park]

I love the idea too. I know that I'm probably the last generation of Koreans who lived and remembers a certain way of life.

We had chickens in our front yard in Seoul! It's all paved now. We cooked over a single heat source over charcoal.

I can't even believe how densley industrialized the city where I was born has become in the past 30 years since I've been going back. In terms of population it's the largest city in the world.

[Nadia Masri]

I love the cookbook idea! I imagine it would have a large audience, especially given that there is so much current interest in "slow" foods and traditional home kitchens.

[Farid Zadi]

That's a fantastic idea. It can even function as a folkloric history of women in the kitchen in different parts of the world.

[Ed McGaugh]

You know, I have been thinking...we are of such varied and interesting cultural backgrounds...what if we collectively wrote a cookbook and called it something like "Our Grandmother's Table" and everyone contributed a chapter or two written from their own personal experiences? Maybe we could even get it published?

[Farid Zadi]

I would love to go more in depth into "cuisine traditionnelle grand-mère," as well as the significance of female chefs. I suppose my mother's cooking is "cuisine de grandmere. There are some interesting publications in French on the matter as well.

I know that there are other here who will write about their grandmother's kitchens from different parts of the world.

Nadia Masri touched on the subject in post about Lebannon and Ji-Young is starting to with "Three generations of Korean kitchens"

[Ed McGaugh]

Very interesting accounts of "les mères lyonnaises", I enjoyed it very much. I am also very interested in women's contributions to gastronomy and the whole "cuisine traditionnelle grand-mère" movement that has been sweeping through France. This style of cooking really goes hand-in-hand with the whole Slow-Food movement. These recipes have evolved bit-by-bit over countless generations of mothers passing the knowledge down to their daughters. They are often so dialed-in they can not be improved. Many of the best Chefs in France were inspired by their mother's and grandmother's cooking. Bocuse realized this long ago and it has launched him into culinary super-stardom.
Few of the "fine" meals that I have had in France have compared with the home-style meals serve to me by a loving family.

Your coverage of the subject is renewed my interest. Farid, would you (or any of the others) be interested in working together on a more in depth story of "cuisine traditionnelle grand-mère"?