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Title details for 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert - Available

32 Yolks

From My Mother's Table to Working the Line

by Eric Ripert
Veronica Chambers
ebook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hailed by Anthony Bourdain as “heartbreaking, horrifying, poignant, and inspiring,” 32 Yolks is the brave and affecting coming-of-age story about the making of a French chef, from the culinary icon behind the renowned New York City restaurant Le Bernardin.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR
In an industry where celebrity chefs are known as much for their salty talk and quick tempers as their food, Eric Ripert stands out. The winner of four James Beard Awards, co-owner and chef of a world-renowned restaurant, and recipient of countless Michelin stars, Ripert embodies elegance and culinary perfection. But before the accolades, before he even knew how to make a proper hollandaise sauce, Eric Ripert was a lonely young boy in the south of France whose life was falling apart.
Ripert’s parents divorced when he was six, separating him from the father he idolized and replacing him with a cold, bullying stepfather who insisted that Ripert be sent away to boarding school. A few years later, Ripert’s father died on a hiking trip. Through these tough times, the one thing that gave Ripert comfort was food. Told that boys had no place in the kitchen, Ripert would instead watch from the doorway as his mother rolled couscous by hand or his grandmother pressed out the buttery dough for the treat he loved above all others, tarte aux pommes. When an eccentric local chef took him under his wing, an eleven-year-old Ripert realized that food was more than just an escape: It was his calling. That passion would carry him through the drudgery of culinary school and into the high-pressure world of Paris’s most elite restaurants, where Ripert discovered that learning to cook was the easy part—surviving the line was the battle.
Taking us from Eric Ripert’s childhood in the south of France and the mountains of Andorra into the demanding kitchens of such legendary Parisian chefs as Joël Robuchon and Dominique Bouchet, until, at the age of twenty-four, Ripert made his way to the United States, 32 Yolks is the tender and richly told story of how one of our greatest living chefs found himself—and his home—in the kitchen.
Praise for 32 Yolks
“Passionate, poetical . . . What makes 32 Yolks compelling is the honesty and laudable humility Ripert brings to the telling.”—Chicago Tribune
“With a vulnerability and honesty that is breathtaking . . . Ripert takes us into the mind of a boy with thoughts so sweet they will cause you to weep.”—The Wall Street Journal

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 17, 2016

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780679644460
      • File size: 5262 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780679644460
      • File size: 5340 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 4, 2016
      Food enthusiasts who have seen the finesse of Ripert’s delicate plates on television shows and have attempted recipes from Le Bernardin Cookbook will be delighted to meet the man behind the recipes. In this engaging memoir, Ripert shares his life as a young boy in Southern France. Ripert refines his palette and learns to treat food like a gift. He watches his mother set the table with exquisite care even for his daily goûter, or after-school snack. At age 11, after the death of his father, Ripert finds solace and inspiration in the kitchen. Ripert begins to cook in some of the finest kitchens in France, under the thumb of some of the most notorious culinary masters; his apprenticeships involve painful, long hours and no social life. After his obligatory military service, he gets back to the line, discovers a particular love for seafood, and dives into his culinary passions with an unmatched drive. He masters some of the most difficult techniques, and eventually follows his dream to the U.S. With his exacting prose and eye for detail, Ripert has created a wonderful memoir about his early days as a chef.

    • Kirkus

      April 1, 2016
      The acclaimed French chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin delivers a breezy account of his life in France and Andorra before he moved to the United States in his early 20s. Ripert (Avec Eric: A Culinary Journey with Eric Ripert, 2010, etc.) makes it clear that food was always the warm center of his life, and his descriptions of the meals he prepared or devoured will make even the most ascetic reader hungry. As a boy, the author took refuge in a restaurant in his little town, where the chef indulged him with bowls of chocolate mousse or spoonfuls of caviar while his glamorous mother was off running the boutique she owned. Bored with academics, he left high school to go to a no-frills vocational boarding school, where he learned knife skills and "took naturally to the non-negotiable, army-like rules of the brigade system" in a restaurant. After an apprenticeship where he boned pounds of anchovies and peeled dozens of potatoes every day, working from 8:30 in the morning until 11:00 at night, the 17-year-old moved to Paris, where he learned to transform the "32 yolks" of the title into a proper hollandaise sauce and lived in fear of daunting chefs. Ripert worked first for Dominique Bouchet and then for Joel Robuchon, neither of whom cut their underlings any slack. The author keeps his tone light, even as he describes forbidding work environments, constant anxiety, escalating anger, and the pressures of being low on an aggressively male pecking order. His pleasure in good food--whether he's following his grandmother to a town market, where he "swooned at the fragrance of anise, clove, and mint," or preparing lavish restaurant dishes plated with 90 equally spaced dots of sauce--makes for some vicarious gastronomic thrills. It doesn't take a refined palate to savor Ripert's culinary adventures.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      April 15, 2016

      Readers may know Ripert as the meditative host of the PBS series Avec Eric; a fan-favorite judge on Bravo's Top Chef; and the owner of Le Bernardin, a French seafood restaurant in New York. His roots, however, are far from that calm and thoughtful adult. This memoir tells of Ripert's tumultuous childhood in France where a love of excellent food was instilled in him early on. In his preteens, he was taken under the wing of a professional chef. Food and cooking were an escape for Ripert, though the stress of professional kitchens steeped him in almost unmanageable levels of fear and desperation. The militaristic attitude in three-star restaurants, as Ripert describes it, is physically and mentally grueling. Despite the difficulties, Ripert knew cooking was his calling and he likens talented chefs to having the creative genius of composers Wolfgang Mozart and Frederic Chopin. VERDICT Although the loving descriptions of flavors and cooking techniques will make some long for recipes, this narrative sheds light on the carefully controlled chaos behind the scenes at several top restaurants in the 1970s and 1980s. It will appeal to fans of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali's Restaurant Man.--Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley Sch., Fort Worth, TX

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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