The Mind of a Chef (2012) s05e07 Episode Script

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Pablo Picasso famously once said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
" Chef Ludo Lefebvre apprenticed under and learned from some of France's most esteemed chefs.
In this episode, he examines the ties between artists and their education.
And how childlike wonder can, in fact, translate into a career.
Ludo explores whether a chef follows training or intuition.
Enter the Mind of a Chef.
Cooking is not just a recipe, it's instinct.
Don't need to use caviar, fried chicken is cool, too.
My mom will be proud of me.
I was trained in the most difficult kitchen in the world.
Peeling and butcher a pig, open oyster for years and for years and for years.
You follow this line to be a chef.
But you don't realize you need to pass different stage.
It's hard, it's hard.
Cooking, it's hard.
But I love it.
Every day I was back over there and say, "Oui, chef.
" You cannot give up.
I was like 14, 15 and of course when you just start cooking, you just, you know, peeling things.
Do all the dirty jobs.
You work in the morning at 8:00 in the morning and clean these birds.
You just like You want to throw up.
You have like 50 cooks working in the kitchen.
With the speed, and the mise en place, and the sense of emergency.
One piece not good, and you need to start again.
Whew Cooking was very, very, very technical.
You know, you really use your hand, really using the knife.
Big presentation.
I feel like cooking now it become less technical and a bit more simple.
This is a loss of art.
I mean look at this cake I'm doing today.
You know, the chartreuse.
It really focuses on appetizing people with your eyes.
The food was so colorful, the details, the way they build things.
It was almost like an architect designing a building for a city.
Like people say chef who are artists, that time it was really art.
Cooking was an art.
This cake is named after the monks for their drink.
Chartreuse, which actually is my favorite drink digestif.
We do a green, we do yellow.
And I guess the chartreuse before was just a vegetable cake.
And at that time, all the monk were vegetarian.
So I don't know how this cake become with meat.
Why we sear the meat? Because I don't want when the meat is cooking inside the cake to release the blood.
Because if the blood release in the cake, it can affect the look, and the texture of the mousse.
Make sure they're not warm.
If we put them warm it's going to melt the mousse.
Very, very classic, again, a good mousse, chicken mousse.
Now some egg white.
Heavy cream.
Put cayenne, a little spicy.
Beautiful.
Beautiful mousse.
I'm going to cook a little bit of the mousse, just to make sure.
You know, the mousse must be certain texture to glue the veggie.
There's so many steps in this chartreuse cake, and if you're missing one step, everything is going to fall apart.
We want all the vegetables not too al dente, so this is more easy to slice.
Not overcooked, of course, but almost.
Perfect.
Made it.
Made the first step.
Sometimes you think classic recipe is very tacky, but it's not.
All the chef go back to old cookbook.
Cooking is more fun to learn about history.
La Mere Brazier, Auguste Escoffier, Alain Chapel, all the master chef.
Yves Camdeborde is a very, very big collector of old cookbook.
He's my friend, we meet at the Librairie Gourmande, it's a library of cooking book.
Deborah is the owner of the store.
She always finds some amazing cookbook.
I can stay over there all day.
It was a long process to really, really learn all these technique.
But I learn, look now where I am.
You have no idea how many time they show me a way to open oyster, and you're still doing the same mistake.
You need to practice.
If we don't practice, I'm going to lose.
You know, you want it, your next step.
In the beginning I was really focused on just making very simple functional cups and bowls, and plates, and you know, sort of traditional, um, potter's fare.
I wasn't even going with the goal of loosening up or becoming an artist, I was I was just working trying to be a good skilled potter, and afraid of being loose.
As time progresses, you know, the goals change.
Your life changes.
I started to make less of that stuff and more flower vases.
Slowly, the hole got smaller and smaller on the vases.
I was afraid to close the hole because once you close the hole, you're not a functional potter anymore, you're an artist, and that was just too terrifying.
I hung around in that zone for a year or so, and then finally one day, I closed the hole completely.
And it's most of the time not even conscious.
I allowed myself the freedom to to not be afraid of being an artist.
I still make dinnerware just for Ludo.
I like to think of it as a project more as, you know, a single art project rather than making dinnerware.
I mean, you can make a bowl that says nothing and you feel nothing from.
Or you can make a bowl that somehow totally moves you.
When I see something beautiful, it just really make me happy.
When I see all the different texture you're doing on your pottery, vase, I mean everything.
I want to cook, I want to eat, I want to host a dinner.
Make me happy when I come here.
Wow, that's nice.
I worked for a long time with Adam Silverman.
I challenged Adam to make me a beautiful show plate.
I want to bring back - this I call the "art of the table.
" - Yeah, yeah.
Really classic, but a little bit more California like your style.
It really sets the tone, you know, where you are.
This piece it's just so much texture.
You almost feel like you feel like on the moon.
Imagine you sit down.
You have that in front of you, it's really cool.
You say, "Wow, what's going to be happening today," you know what I mean? It's like when you have something in your mouth, and you have something soft or crispy.
It's the same thing.
But just with the eyes.
And we love to give this feeling to the guests with a beautiful show plate.
A plate is a very controlled form, it's a perfect circle.
The form is where the control is.
And then the glazing is where you relinquish control.
What'll happen is the surface will bubble, and then when it comes out there should be a whole bunch of texture here, this kind of landscape.
And then I'll grind it down, grind off the top, which opens up these bubbles.
If you're a religious potter you say a little prayer.
The thrill of opening the kiln, I mean you can't really understate how exciting it is.
It's like buying a lottery ticket.
Until you open it, you're always super optimistic that it's going to be amazing.
And then sometimes it's crushingly disappointing.
Part of the attraction for me was the unknown, which is probably similar for you, right? You put a bunch of ingredients together, you think it's going to do something, and then it doesn't, or it does something better.
Yeah, of course.
I don't know if I can do what you do.
Look at kids when they start to eat, they see everything.
It's funny, like the way they analyze things they don't know.
They're going to put it in their mouth how food can be soft, crispy, moist, hot, cold, salty, sweet.
Picasso was saying it take him like four years to paint like Raphael, and the rest of his life to draw like a kid, you know.
When you know your technique, you can start to play with that.
I'm the first one to say that cooking is about fun.
But desole, I'm the most stressful guy on the planet I'm sure.
Mistake happen, whew, we don't get it.
I get it, I get it, I'm going to make it, make it.
I have so much technique in my head.
I'm just thinking too much.
I'm thinking too much, and I know it.
I know what's wrong with me.
I need to erase, erase all these things on the plate.
And just need to let go.
I wish I can really pass this line and just, "Ludo, have fun.
" Have fun.
And I know I still have that in me.
I want to cook simply.
But interesting.
Like create a dish with three ingredients.
Boom, that's it, simple.
That's what I want.
I want to be more natural with the food, like kids.
There is so much, uh, sensations when we use the flame and cook like this.
This is the wild game, the bone, and it just smells so good.
The smell make me very happy.
Pithivier, it's a dish I like to do because of course it tastes amazing.
But also because it's very technical, and I love technique.
And it's fun to do.
So I'm just going to take the breast to add to the stuffing.
So the dish was named after a city in France called Pithivier.
At that time they create a lot of dishes around city history, people, too.
Like a lot of chef create dishes named after a princess or king, you know, or a duchess.
A long time ago, you know, we eat a lot, a lot of wild game.
Sometimes we kill meat and we eat it a week after.
I'm sure it was so gamey, the meat.
The sauce was really to mask the flavor.
You don't taste too much of the flavor of the meat.
It's amazing, the art of sauce.
So I did a lot of pithivier before, but much more sweet pithivier.
I think the last time I was doing like a savory cake like this, it was when I was in my apprenticeship in 1987.
I love pastry.
I went to school for pastry.
I love to build things, especially cake like this.
I'm going to build the pithivier now.
So I'm going to do a little pillow like this first with all the shredded meat and the garnish.
Like a pillow.
So now I'm going to put all my duck breast on top like this.
I'm trying to build this layer, you know.
It's like when you eat a cake.
So now I'm going to slice my foie gras.
It will go like this.
Yeah.
Just a big truffle on top.
So many foie gras and truffle here, guys.
Whoo! Wow.
I don't know exactly what I'm doing, guys.
Trying to do something beautiful, but Not a lot of people do a pithivier like this.
It takes years and patience to learn all of these technique.
You have so many technique here you don't see.
Pastry, searing, braising, building a cake.
I mean, just a lot, you know.
Cooking just so much to learn.
Like I'm 45 years old, I cook for 30 years now, and if somebody ask me, like, "Ludo, you want to be a teacher, you want to teach at school?" Perhaps I will say no.
You cannot learn this lifestyle like this just in two years in school.
You know, it take time, it take time.
I'm shaking, man.
Joe Pytka is a very well-known American director.
First time that you cooked for me, I take one bite, and I went, "Who cooked this? What happened here?" You looked like you were 12 years old.
He's almost like a dad for me.
He just educate me so much about life.
Joe loves classic food.
So, I decide to cook for him some very, very classic dish.
A little stressful, but I really want to show him something perhaps he never tried before.
So, that is a chartreuse cake, okay? I've never had this, never even seen this before.
It's delicious, subtle.
Where did you get the recipe? In the old, old, old cooking book.
Very classic dish, that.
I did not invent, I did not create anything of that.
Just follow recipe.
Not a lot of people cooking like this anymore.
People are not going to understand what is behind this dish.
The history, the art of doing this dish.
People don't suffer enough for their craft anymore.
Just like cuisine, film is made up of a lot of different elements acting, writing, cinematography, music, editing, special effects.
Mm-hmm.
And you have to know all of those things to be a consummate filmmaker and know what you need to solve a problem at a certain time.
I've had people come to work with me who went to film school.
They'd watch movies and talked about the philosophy of the movies, I said, "Can you load the camera?" They know nothing.
I fail so many times, Joe.
Too much butter, not enough butter, machin.
Oh, my God! But thank God I learn my foundation.
Classic is not easy to cook.
It's a lot of technique.
But more I'm getting older, more I like to cook classic.
And the best part is you never get tired of that.
Yeah.
I train in France for 14 years with some of the biggest chef around the world.
They really put me in the right direction to follow this line.
I really, really love to cook, I love this discipline.
I really want to be good in my job.
Cooking is practicing, practicing, practicing.
That's how you judge a good chef, you know.
I decide to play, but I know my classic.