Meet“Flashback” (2/6). In culinary terms, the summer season rhymes with outdoor dining and cooking over embers. The opportunity to meet chefs who have been caught in the fire. At the helm of the Meurice Alain Ducasse in Paris, Amaury Bouhours imagined a calf worked in a “naturalistic” version with subtle smoky flavors.
Chef of the Le Meurice Alain Ducasse restaurant since 2020, Amaury Bouhours has worked with the biggest names in the Ducasse houses: Pascal Bardet and Franck Cerutti at Louis XV, in Monaco, Christophe Moret, Christophe Saintagne then Romain Meder at the Plaza Athénée, and Jocelyn Herland at Meurice, to whom he succeeded a few days before the first confinement of 2020.
For this 30-year-old as brilliant as he is overactive, who usually prefers to remain discreet in the media, cooking is above all a matter of emotion and sincerity. “Gastronomy has long sought out “perfect” products, sanitized, even denatured. Today, we cultivate authenticity, we go for raw, honest products. My job is to accompany the product in all its natural beauty, without camouflage. That’s why I try not to touch the rough edges, but on the contrary to highlight them. »
“Fire cooking is the best way to cook, but it’s also the hardest to master. » Amaury Bouhours
For the cook adept at “naturalness”, cooking by fire brings real added value, a “incomparable smoky side”, which makes the specificity of its signature dish, the “silk grain calfskin [veau nourri exclusivement au lait maternel] grilled, lettuce, olive, mint ».
“Some time ago, we went on vacation and we left a rack of veal fat in the fridge. I wanted to see how it was going to develop for two weeks, because it’s not common to mature calves. On our return, there was a lovely smell of sausage in the cold room. » A light marinade which flavors the meat a little more, cooking in a frying pan then finishing on the barbecue sublimates these layers of flavors, completed on the plate by a very vegetable sauce and garnish.
In the kitchens of the gastronomic restaurant at Le Meurice, the flame holds an important place: a Green Egg barbecue and a small Japanese barbecue sit enthroned in the area reserved for cooking, the first more devoted to vegetables and condiments, the second for meats and Pisces. And, when he is not in his palace, Amaury Bouhours cooks on the charcoal at the urban farm in Saint-Denis. “Fire cooking is the best way to cook, says the chef, but it is also the most difficult to master. You can measure the flame and the liveliness of the embers by eye, there is a direct connection with the product and a very manual, artisanal and sensual relationship to cooking. It’s not necessarily in the codes of modern gastronomy, but I love it. »
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