Yves Camdeborde combines cooking and rugby in “Ovalix, a gourmet history of rugby”

Yves Camdeborde is a chef and an emblematic figure of bistronomy, also author of a dozen cooking books. His passions are cooking and oval which have accompanied him almost since his first steps in Béarn. The public discovered it in particular during its participation as a jury of the show Masterchef on TF1 in 2010, for four years.

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With Olivier Margot, editor-in-chief of The Team for 25 years, Yves Camdeborde has just published: Ovalix, a delicious history of rugby at Albin Michel, a declaration of love for this sport which unites them and makes them vibrate for almost always.

franceinfo: The publication ofOvalix fits perfectly with current events with this Rugby World Cup. How is this sport so different, so friendly?

Yves Camdeborde: This sport is a sport of fraternity. I started this sport at the age of seven at the rugby school in the Paloise section and there was a poster in the locker room: “Rugby is the school of life“. It allows people of different body types, especially when we are young… Me, I was very small, puny and I had friends who were little fat people and we were easily pointed out in the playground. recreation… To gain importance when they are on a rugby field, in relation to the collective therefore, it is a form of human integration which was very important for me and which is very important for many young people .

Your first memories go back a long way to Welshman Gareth Edwards. You were six or seven years old and you were a scrum half. And then there was this love for the France team with the player Jérôme Gallion. In college, you even wrote an essay to express that you wanted to have this sport in your life.

It’s a thunderbolt. It’s a way of living, it’s a philosophy, it’s a personal commitment to the collective. It was really, I think, my driving force, my balance.

At 14 you had to choose. Your dad ran a farm, your mother was a butcher. They have committed you to follow a course in the kitchen. At the beginning, you asked yourself a lot of questions and then ultimately, the brigade and the team, that’s what you say in this book, it’s really the same thing. And you realized that in a kitchen, we had a team spirit.

I left home because the family environment was stifling me, saying to myself: I want to live free, I’m going to do something else, so I left for the kitchen world and I quickly realized that in the world of the kitchen, the framework is at least as strict, if not more. But once I understood the framework, I was able to express myself in the collective which was at the center of this framework. And this is what has served me both on the rugby field and in my professional life. Really, the behavior for me has been identical. It’s the whole performance of the training, whether it’s that of a cook or that of a rugby player, at certain moments, you have to know how to express yourself individually for the good of the collective. You have to do the extra gesture, the extra seasoning, the extra cutting, you have to feel things. I think these are two corporations where the sensitivity, the dough and the reflection of the player or the cook is very important.

“Large teams like large kitchen brigades need this collective with the personality and sensitivity of each individual who joins the team.”

Yves Camdeborde

at franceinfo

It is Christian Constant who will mark this.

Yes, I think I had the chance to meet him when I arrived in Paris, at the Ritz hotel. I was a little kid who arrived with straw in his shoes. I was arriving from my countryside and Christian Constant saw a kid who looked like him when he arrived in Paris. He also came from the South-West and played rugby. He saw me sparkling and saw me in love with everything I looked at, everything that was happening, but with zero knowledge and above all, I didn’t have the codes of the big houses. He took me under his wing and accompanied me throughout my career. He still accompanies me today, on a human level, because we remained very close, he became my spiritual father.

In this book, we discover the history of rugby. You have concocted 30 dishes to enjoy these match moments, alone, with 15 people or as a duo. These recipes are very accessible. Is it also a choice to ensure that this cuisine can be shared by as many people as possible?

In Ovalix, I chose 30 historic banquets which accompanied major rugby matches. In every banquet and every banquet menu, I took out a raw material. I did it in a relatively simple way, with products accessible to as many people as possible, products from our daily lives. A recipe that is committed, a recipe that has pep, a recipe that has character.

“The ‘Ovalix’ recipes had to be easy to make, but above all they had to be interesting and spicy!”

Yves Camdeborde

at franceinfo

What brings you to the kitchen?

Cooking is living. I share everything I love and I always share it with the same passion. I have a smile, kindness, a look, affection and it’s true that that fuels me to continue cooking because it’s a job where there is physical and moral investment and it’s not not always easy, but above all it allows me to live because I am proud and happy to do what I do and to share my passion.

Alone, we go faster, but together, we go further. Is this the adage that most symbolizes your journey and your cuisine?

Yes, it symbolizes exactly both, the profession of cooking and the profession of rugby player. Alone, you can be very, very beautiful, but with good company, you can go very, very far.