“When we eat, depending on what we eat, we build our identity”

“From my first memories, I am in the kitchen. Originally from Loir-et-Cher, my parents were very busy. My father was a watchmaker and jeweler, my mother a militant teacher and founder of one of the first Montessori schools in Blois. I started shopping on my own when I started elementary school. I liked going to the grocery store, to the market: to discuss, to choose.

“I have never been able to conceive of cooking without conviviality, without sharing. Eating alone is very difficult for me. “

All the communication around food is already there, in front of the stalls. I also loved cooking, and my (much older) sister and I often took care of the meals, especially at lunchtime when I came home from school. We had an aunt who cooked extremely well, “elegant”, gourmet dishes.

My mother would cook when the family received, and my maternal grandmother would prepare sweets for us: flans, small palates with cream of milk, caramelized semolina cakes … We often went to her home for Sunday lunch, and he There was always a dish in sauce, followed by a good dessert.

A way to mobilize the senses

As a teenager, I was very “beef and fried potatoes”. Then I diversified, I gained confidence, developed my creativity. And I discovered a passion for dishes in sauce, until I wanted to become a cook. But my parents wanted me to go to the Lausanne hotel school, where you had to be very good at languages ​​- which was not my case. So I started to study medicine, then I turned to history and psychology, and I discovered sociology with Jean Duvignaud, a brilliant sociologist of theater and the imaginary.

Every Thursday, I invited my friends over to dinner in my little studio. I have never been able to conceive of the kitchen without conviviality, without sharing. Eating alone is very difficult for me. In the preparations, even what is considered a “thankless task” is, for me, a way to mobilize my senses, but also to be useful, to participate in the group. Cooking is a great way to get together, yourself and with others.

Cooking as a crossbreeding of inventions

The sociology of food is the idea of ​​incorporation. When we eat, depending on what we eat, we build our identity: it’s the famous “tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are”. There are all kinds of representations of the edible, depending on cultures, family habits, societal constructions, up to migratory phenomena which broaden the food repertoire and culinary practices.

The cuisine is a crossbreeding of inventions, a meeting of influences. Thus, poultry in yellow wine and morels has emerged over time as the totemic dish of my family, that everyone loves and that we prepare when we meet. It is the meeting of two regions (Jura, country of origin of my wife, and Touraine, which produces quality poultry), with the sauce to bind together. The sauce is the collective spirit of the dish, the synthesis of all the elements that are cooked in it. Beyond its lipid characteristics, it is a form of generosity! “