Fredy Girardet’s recipes: how to cook like legendary chef who mentored some of today’s culinary titans

Swiss chef Fredy Girardet is a revered name in French cuisine. His eponymous restaurant in Crissier, Switzerland, now closed but which earned three Michelin stars, saw many young cooks and appren­tices pass through the swinging doors and go on to become top chefs themselves: Michel Troisgros (of the famous family of chefs and restaurateurs), Gray Kunz, of Hong Kong’s Cafe Gray Deluxe, and Philippe Rochat (who took over the restaurant when Girardet retired).

Girardet is also one of the chefs responsible for what, at the time, was consi­dered radical in French cooking – nouvelle cuisine, which changed the food from rich and heavy to some­thing lighter and more digestible.

This book is the English translation of a volume that was published in French as Les Recettes Originales de Girardet: la Cuisine Spontanée. But to be spontane­ous at a three-star level, you must have the best ingredi­ents, technique and preparation.

In the introduction, food writer Catherine Michel quotes Girardet: “Today’s rightful cuisine is the precise harmony between the produce and its cooking. To know how to cook is rudimentary, the first necessity. But skill in cooking, to produce a fine cuisine, must be applied to products only of the most excellent quality.

“It is the produce itself that tempts me into playing ingredients against each other and to experiment with seasonings, with the use of vegetables, with the quick reductions of cooking juices that are so much more authentic than bravura sauces.