Paul Bocuse, “new cuisine” served on a good old TV

“They are the masters of French cuisine and just like all the other artists we know, painters, composers, writers, whatever, they are entitled to a very just celebrity. » Impeccable mustache, bow tie and hoarse voice, the political journalist and gourmet columnist Jean Ferniot introduced with these words, on April 6, 1976 on TF1, the premiere of the program “La Grande Cocotte”.

Decorated with the Legion of Honor the previous year by President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Paul Bocuse, in a toque and white apron, immediately prepares an impressive salt-crusted chicken. Other tenors of a new generation of chefs, united under the “new cuisine” banner – Michel Guérard, Pierre and Jean Troisgros, Roger Vergé, Alain Senderens or Alain Chapel – will soon accept in turn “deliver their secrets, their recipes, their mysteries”.

The cooks return to television every week after eight years of starvation. The previous and founding program, “Art and magic of cooking”, by Raymond Oliver (at the helm of the Grand Véfour) and Catherine Langeais, was stopped in 1968. No doubt the channels had validated the aspirations of the May . The kitchen “bourgeois” and gastronomic elitism were challenged. The students no longer recognized themselves “housewives” : increasingly active, they saw in this activity a symbol of enslavement. The food industry had taken over, canned food and the first frozen too. In 1973, in the movie Feastby Marco Ferreri, satire of consumerism, the characters fornicate and stuff themselves to death.

In 1982, Bernard Pivot devoted a program of “Apostrophes” to them.

However, at the dawn of the 1970s, a wind of change was blowing in restaurants. Tired of officiating in the shadow of the maîtres d’hôtel, chefs are setting up on their own and unleashing an inspiration that corresponds to the desires of consumers: a more modern, creative, dietetic gastronomy too. Literature has already had its ” new Roman “ and the cinema ” new wave “, the culinary arts want their “new cuisine”. It was theorized in 1973 by journalists Henri Gault and Christian Millau through “ten commandments” whose “You shall not cook too much”, “You will eliminate rich sauces”, “You will be inventive”

1976 is definitely a key year. In addition to the debut of “La Grande Cocotte” on television, Paul Bocuse publishes Market cuisine (Flammarion) and Michel Guérard, The Great Slimming Cuisine (Robert Laffont), which become bestsellers. A symbol of international recognition, Guérard is on the cover of the American magazine Time as a champion of light gastronomy.

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