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Ramblings of a retiree in France
Well-thumbed cookery books – Feb 2023
Once a month I’m going to write a short piece about one of my favourite cookery books from my extensive collection and why I’ve cooked so many recipes from it. Today I’m featuring two from Swiss chef Anton Mosiman whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. More importantly, I have eaten a number of times at his private dining club, The Belfry.
Mosimann was appointed Maitre Chef de Cuisines at London’s Dorchester Hotel in 1975, when he was only 28 years old. His predecessor, Eugène Käufeler, had asked for advice on the appointment from Adelrich Furrer, a Swiss expert on gastronomy. Mosimann had come to Furrer’s attention when he won a gold medal for his cooking, at a competition in Lucerne. When the Dorchester’s restaurant achieved a two star rating in the Michelin Guide it was the first hotel restaurant outside France to do so – quite a coup!
After leaving the Dorchester Mosimann opened a private dining club in a converted Scottish Presbyterian church in Belgravia in 1988.
Mosimann created what he called cuisine naturelle which does without such ingredients as butter, cream and alcohol. The focus is concentrated even more on the flavour of the individual ingredients. The dishes are only lightly cooked. In nouvelle cuisine and also cuisine naturelle, enormous emphasis is put on the presentation of the dishes.
His English television work included Cooking with Mosimann in 1990, and Anton Mosimann – Naturally from 1991 to 1992. I have the books which accompanied both of these programmes. The former included his (in)famous recipe for bread and butter pudding and a recipe called Seafood Rendezvous which I have cooked plenty of times for parties and dinners. In fact both recipes are real crowd pleasers.
Thumbing through the books today, I realise that I still regularly make many of his recipes, or iterations of them, indeed you could say it formed the basis for my cooking.
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I love bread and butter pudding! So good! ❤
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His recipe is very rich but oh so delicious
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Thank you for introducing Mosimann to me. Cuisine naturelle sounds like it’s right up my alley.
I’m looking forward to reading about your other cookbooks.
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Thanks for stopping by and commenting
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I have loads of cookery books lining the walls in our study but nowadays I rarely use them, instead I just look up a recipe on my iPad. In my early days if marriage I learned to cook with Delia Smith and the well thumbed books are still there today!
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I probably have too many!
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I still sweat by Mary Berry.
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Never been a fan which is probably sacrilegious as she’s a national treasure.
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swear by
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