eBains
Link to Insta post here.
I’m quite sure there must be thousands like me who have wondered what a staggeringly talented chef proprietor of a two-Michelin star restaurant gets up to on a Friday when mis en place is fully mised and he has time on his hands before delighting another room full of privileged guests. Chef - Sat Bains himself - obliged with the answer (for at least one of those Fridays) on his Instagram account a few days ago.
For those of you who struggle with pinch-to-zoom or who go pickled onion-eyed trying to view teeny text, here is Sat’s accompanying message.
That cookbook.
Rare? Perhaps.
Iconic? Very many will agree.
That chef? One of the greatest cooks in the world? Much nodding of heads.
So far, so good.
Oh. Sat Bains has secured a copy and is offering it for sale?
With bidding starting at £400.00.
Well, jolly good luck to him. How alarming to hear that one of our very finest British chefs is on his uppers. A sad reflection of the parlous state of hospitality perhaps.
Except.
(Cheoff executes his raised eyebrow and investigates further)
A quick search reveals at least one equivalent hardback is readily available over at the beautifully seductive website of AbeBooks.
And, after less than a couple of hours of distraction with various social media, evening meal prep, and at least one bladder-emptying activity (too much information?), I discover that it is no longer available.
The rest is silence. I cannot give an update on how things went with Sat Bain’s auction. And I don’t really have any evidence that he was trying to replenish depleted funds. He is a mercurial kind of guy who might well have been relaxing between bouts of building his body into a machine fit to live a healthier life and taking snapshots of his team working hard to serve up ‘wondrous things’ in the restaurant.
I’m left flapping around a bit, aren’t I? Which is a state in which I refuse to flap any longer.
So allow me to distract you with something meaty - in a very chocolatey manner - to prevent this post fizzling out in a whimper by giving you some links to further reading, and especially to the iconic recipe which Michel Bras devised.
For a quick introduction to Michel Bras look here.
Find a nicely illustrated account of THAT recipe here on the very informative Michel Bras Cookware Studio.
This will give you a PDF of a developed recipe. Please use your best knowledge of French to translate before cooking!