Louis Peyrafitte – Nicole Peyrafitte

Voilà! Live Cooking Videos – while confined

Friday April 24th was the finale our Live Cooking Videos—while confined.
First and foremost THANK YOU to all the viewers, & a very special thank you to all the regulars from literally all around the globe. During these 24 daily livecast rendez-vous, you provided sustained warm & joyful support which gave me a some sense of purpose in these trying times while we are all confined, waiting for the virus to pass.
By now, sadly most of us know someone who has succumbed to the coronavirus, and we are also all watching — or no longer watching in order to stay sane — the ineffective & disgusting political debacle. Even if most of us are safely at home, and in a somehow privileged situation — I sure feel mine is that — we still all go through the emotional roller coaster, so if the show helped make your ride smoother, I am super happy. You need to know that it sure eased mine tremendously, so gratitude to you all for watching & cheering! I really know that I also learned a lot from the whole process.
Do not hesitate to reach out via messenger at any point if you have cooking questions of just want to keep in touch; I would love that!
Meanwhile, stay healthy, take great great care & eat the best you can.
Much much love from the two of us.

P.S: The videos of all 24 videos from the last to the first below & they all have notes & links with useful information. Below the videos more cooking background info.

What do we eat/cook & why?
A few years back for serious health reasons we switched to healthier, low glycemic foods & adopted the 16/8 intermittent fasting method that involves eating only during an 8-hour window & fasting for the remaining 16 hours. So we eat a variety of foods but avoid pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar, processed flour & we favor veggies, legumes, eggs, healthy whole grains, & responsibly raised meat, poultry, & seafood, some fruits…Well, you get the idea & you will discover the details in the videos below. We will keep adding them as we go. Never hesitate to ask questions or request foods recipes you would like to see demonstrated or talked about.

Voilà! Bon Appétit, stay home & healthy!

“Voilà Lunchtime” were daily live-casted on FB & IG from March 24 -April 24 2020 M-F 12:00 EST

A little background:
Once upon a time I was a cook! I never liked the term chef, though I did run kitchens & was called one! I never really missed the restaurant business, but never stopped cooking. In the early years of this blog I posted more recipes & articles on food, I taught cooking & went as far as taping a demo cooking show, and filming several recipes. My aim has always been to empower people in the kitchen, not to impress them. I appreciate sophisticated techniques & truly enjoys highly skilled chefs but I was never into that kind of cooking. My background is in French regional Southwestern food but I have been in the US since 1987 and learned so much about food here. Getting together with Pierre Joris (here producer/dishwasher/husband) in 1989 was crucial for my artistic future but also for my cooking experience: it is through Pierre that I met Diane Rothenberg & Margie Byrd who are my mentors in many ways. Both are great cooks and had open tables for many years. Diane, an anthropologist, tremendously expanded my perspectives on the history of food; Margie taught me many American staples — the best corn bread ever! & then there is my childhood friend Ariane Daguin from d’Artagnan who is an inspiration has been incredibly supportive of my food related performance work. She was an early supporter of La Garbure Transcontinentale/The Bi-Continental Chowder, a performance that included texts, videos, cooking and sharing the result with the audience. Pierre & I went on doing more of these performance & a memorable one was at the Jardin des Cinq Sens et des Formes Premières in Provence; this performance included the making of a Primordial Soup, readings, vidéos, music by Denis Brun and a Karstic-Action Painting. Here are some pix.

But my cooking debut were really early! I was born in Luchon (French Pyrenees) into the 5th generation of a family of hoteliers-restaurateurs (Hotel Poste et Golf) & my very early cooking training started when I was 6 years old with my grand-father chef Joseph Peyrafitte (whose father Louis was also a chef). Later, when I took over the family kitchen, I went to intern at award winning restaurants in France –1982: Restaurant Vanel, Toulouse, 1991: Hotel de France, Auch. Both places had 2 stars at the Michelin Guide — then I got a few awards myself!

Anyway! forwarding to today: like everyone else we are trying to make the best of this imposed confinement & I always find solace in cooking & eating well. So Pierre & I decided to share the prepping of our simple & healthy home cooking live. We are live both on Facebook & Instagram Monday-Friday from 12 to 12:30 —sometimes a bit longer. Sharing & live-casting our cooking is really in line with our Domopoetic* practice.

* Domopoetics is our collaborative attempt to think, feel & make us respons/able to this/our world & it responsive to us. We do this via our private lives & public actions & performances that meander dialogically between Nicole Peyrafitte’s drawings & videos, voice-, textual & cooking work & Pierre Joris’ poems, translations & essayistic thinking.

Memorabilia:

Sitting next to a chaud-froid de volaille at the hotel Kitchen

Hotel Poste & Golf Bagnères-de-Luchon (here circa 1965)

San-Diego 1990 : Nicole, Pierre Franey, Ariane Daguin

Family Heirloom: Les Pannequets Saint-Louis

Among all the family recipes Les Pannequets Saint-Louis is truly a unique one, et je pèse mes mots — that is: and I weigh my words — yes: unique, a word I almost never use.

My great grandfather Louis, Gabriel, Marcel, Marie, Peyrafitte (1858-1929) created this amazing recipe that we still make for very special occasions like this Christmas day when Pierre, Joseph, Miles and I gathered around our kitchen island for a true family food communion.
Pannequets have been part of the French cuisine repertoire for a long time, though the word derives from the English “pancake”— from the middle English pan +cake —that’s an easy one. The famous French chef, Auguste Escoffier, has several entries for pannequets in the Entremets section of his reference work Le Guide Culinaire. So does Joseph Favre in the Dictionnaire Universel de la Cuisine, mentioning an interesting version of pannequets au gingembre — with ginger. They both specify that it is a Patisserie Anglaise or English pastry. Not surprising at all, in fact, that my Pyrenean ancestors would be acquainted with English desserts. In the 1900’s the French Pyrenees were “invaded” by English tourists, the family hotel in Luchon even changed its name: the Hotel de la Poste became the Hotel Poste & Golf ! My family had sold some land so a golf course could be built for to the increasing (colonial) British clientele. Surfing the net to look for traces of my grandfather Joseph’s stay in England (he was there as a cook between 1902-08), I was quite astounded to find the following entry in “The Gourmet’s Guide to Europe” by Algernon Bastard (probably published around 1903):

Throughout the mountain resorts of the Pyrenees, such as Luchon–Bagnères de Bigorre, Gavarnie, St-Sauveur; Cauterets–Eaux Bonnes, Eaux Chaudes, Oloron, etc., you can always, as was stated previously, rely upon getting an averagely well-served luncheon or dinner, and nothing more — trout and chicken, although excellent, being inevitable. But there is one splendid and notable exception, viz., the Hôtel de France at Argelès-Gazost, kept by Joseph Peyrafitte, known to his intimates as “Papa.” In his way he is as great an artist as the aforementioned Guichard; the main difference between the methods of the two professors being that the latter’s art is influenced by the traditions of the Parisian school, while the former is more of an impressionist, and does not hesitate to introduce local colour with broad effects, — merely a question of taste after all. For this reason you should not fail to pay a visit to Argelès to make the acquaintance of Monsieur Peyrafitte. Ask him to give you a luncheon such as he supplies to the golf club of which Lord Kilmaine is president, and for dinner (being always mindful of the value of local colour) consult him, over a glass of Quinquina and vermouth, as to some of the dishes mentioned earlier in this article. You won’t regret your visit.

The Joseph Peyrafitte (1849-1908) mentioned above is Louis’ brother and therefore my grand father Joseph Peyrafitte’s (1891-1973) uncle who was named after him. Louis & Joseph had married two sisters, Marie & Anna Secail. Anna moved to the Hôtel de France in Argelès-Gazost and Louis Peyrafitte came to Hotel de la Poste in Luchon. The marriages had been arranged by one of the Peyrafitte’s brothers who was a priest at the Vatican with one of the Secail brothers — also a priest. All this is documented — and left a magnificent family heirloom that I inherited: “the Chandelier” but that story is for another blog-post. Both brothers had been classically trained cooks so one can easily understand how the inspiration for this recipe came about.

Hotel de la Poste in the late 1890’s

My father, Jean Peyrafitte, doesn’t remember his grandfather’s cooking very much — he was 6 years old when his grandfather Louis died in 1929 — but he vividly remembers his father Joseph Peyrafitte (my grandfather and cooking mentor) making the Pannequet Saint-Louis.
At that time no “grande carte” was available at the restaurant, though there was a menu du jour which changed daily given that the clientele were “pensionnaires” —residents — who would stay for periods of 3 weeks or more. My grandfather would occasionally put the pannequets on the menu but only during low season, as they are incredibly time consuming. The recipe was not written down until the mid 1960’s. At that point my dad decided to promote regional cooking and to upgrade the restaurant to a “grande carte,” hoping to get attention from the Guide Michelin and Parisian food critics. So he created a “grande carte” full of regional dishes like Pistache (mutton & bean stew), Peteram Luchonnais (lamb, veal, and mutton tripe), duck confit, etcetera. My grandfather considered this food low class and believed that lobster and tournedos Rossini was more appropriated.

But my father pointed out that the clients could eat that food anywhere, but not our local specialties. That is when the pannequets Saint-Louis made their way to the dessert menu of the grande carte and were listed as “Les Excellences to be ordered at the beginning of the meal (order for 2 minimum)”.

Now this is the part I remember. In the late 60’ my mother begged my grandfather to write the recipe down. He said he couldn’t as he knew it by instinct. She didn’t get discouraged. She stood by him as he was making them, weighed the ingredients one by one and made a note of it. I must say that without my mother (Renée Peyrafitte) most of the family memory would be gone.

When I called my parents to talk about the Pannequet Saint-Louis recipe I reassure them that I wasn’t going to give the recipe away. Mom said, “don’t worry no one else can make them anyway.” What she meant is that this recipe takes total dedication. When my grandfather grew old, it was she who was entrusted with the task of making them. She tried to teach a few cooks but the result was never satisfactory. One of the reasons is that from making the batter to cooking them requires total and utterly focused attention. And if you don’t do that the best dessert in the world turns into the worst glob!

I must say that since a little girl I watched my grandfather & then my mother making them over and over. My favorite post of observation during “service” was in the corridor where I could survey all the action. As soon as I would hear an order for pannequets being “barked,” I would get into position to assist and taste! I have memorized all the gestures. Unlike the regular crêpes the pannequet doesn’t get flipped (but come and see me do that Sunday at the 36th Annual New Year’s Marathon). Once one millimeter of the batter is poured into a hot and generously buttered cast iron pan, it is let to cook until almost, but not completely, dry. Then the edge of the dough next to the handle is gently detached with a spoon and if cooked perfectly the batter will roll down the pan like a cigarette helped only by little tap in the pan. A perfect pannequet Saint-Louis has a very lightly crisp skin on the outside and custard like consistency on the inside. While the texture melts in your mouth, the rum, almond, lemon & vanilla flavors lead you to gastronomic ecstasy! I don’t know if my great grandfather named the pannequet “Saint”-Louis himself, but I doubt it — it sounds more like one of those mischievous puns my grandfather Joseph Peyrafitte was famous for!

Hotel de la Poste became Hotel Poste & Golf around 1905

Happy New Year, Bona Anada, Bonne Année!
And hope to see you Sunday for poetry and crêpes at the Poetry Project for the 36th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit Reading .

ps: You might enjoy reading these 2 posts about crêpes:
Crêpes History, Recipe + Video:
The Crêpe, the Theorist, the Chef and the Volunteer

Tag: Louis Peyrafitte