Every time I put a chicken, a leg of lamb or a roast in the oven, I use the voice of Daniel Pinard, mixed with that of the parody that Rock and Belles Oreilles made of it in the 1980s, to warn the household: “the critter is in the oven”.
Almost in the tone of a journalist during the Second World War who said “the carrots are cooked” to announce the landing.
It’s this word, “critter”, that makes me laugh and revives my conscience, as I try to achieve vegetarianism. Daniel Pinard used it all the time in his cooking shows, making him laugh in an unforgettable way.
I have not yet mourned the pleasure that a “critter” braised for a long time can bring as a pleasure to the palate, when you love meat, if you have the patience (and respect) to cook it well, as we do. Daniel Pinard learned.
But it was still Daniel Pinard who also made me understand that the greatest happiness in the world is to eat, under the summer sun, a beautiful ripe tomato, crushed on soft bread, drizzled with good oil. olive, and simply seasoned with basil, salt and pepper.
No need to kill too many animals to enjoy, when you are able to have the perfection of fresh, seasonal foods on hand. Food sovereignty starts there, and Daniel Pinard made it a hobby horse until the end.
His first recipe book, prefaced by Josée Blanchette, the famous Pinardises, published by Boréal in 1994, was a huge success in Quebec upon its release. You have no idea. I was then a shared student who ate scrapdepending on his budget and his absolute ignorance of cooking, but everyone in their thirties and over had bought this book as if they had gone from Jehane Benoit – forever irreplaceable – to someone who had traveled enough to explain to us all how to cook the new products that globalization brought to our grocery stores. But without losing the soul of what really makes cooking, from poor families to great chefs, that is to say what grows on the soil where we live. What we feed ourselves with.
The recipe book Pinardises opens with an “ode to the tomato” that I almost remembered as Proust’s madeleine. Daniel Pinard mixes his almost silly recipe today for “Roman bruschetta” with his memory of a Quebec child in Italy who saw a father and his son eating a tomato on bread. “It was the ritual. Looking at his son, Luigi broke the loaf, handed him a nice half, which he took care to sprinkle first with a few drops of oil. Then everyone took a tomato, crushed it on the crust, and then pressed it against the crumb. Everyone salted, peppered and placed a few green leaves flavored with mint and licorice on top. It was, I found out much later, basil. »
I learned many simple things in cooking much too late, but Daniel Pinard, at that moment, made me understand the essentials just with the first chapter of his recipe book, which was not a recipe . And which still makes me salivate today. Despite everything, as Jehane Benoit was explaining to us how to cook an egg, he said to himself that we had to explain the recipe for a “Roman-style bruschetta” of which here are the details as published in the Pinardises in 1994:
– 1 nice loaf of crusty bread, preferably whole wheat
– 125 ml of very fruity olive oil
– 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, peeled, degermed and pressed
– Salt and freshly ground pepper
In the recipe instructions, he writes: “discovering bruschetta means saying goodbye forever to indigestible garlic bread”…
Those who have abused all-you-can-eat bread bars will understand.
Josée di Stasio, very shy and humble in front of the cameras, was revealed in the shows of Daniel Pinard, who knew how to find in her what he really wanted to say and transmit by leaving her the reins of what he had started. She deserves the same praise as Pinard, that’s for sure.
Both of them taught me that good food starts with anything that hasn’t been processed before you cook it yourself. With the evidence of quality at the base of everything. Or resourcefulness with mediocrity.
When the death of Daniel Pinard was announced, I found without too much difficulty in my mess of books Pinardises, recipes and culinary comments. Stained with grease and streaked with knife lacerations when I cut vegetables from the cover of his book to make his recipes. It wasn’t even my copy – since everyone around me had bought his book, I had inevitably inherited a copy.
Recipe books like this don’t really exist anymore, where there were no photos, just a few drawings and a lot of text. I still blame this book today for having inflicted a terrible risotto on my guests for at least ten years, because I did not understand Pinard’s written recipe. Bring liters of rice broth to the desired consistency, before adding butter and parmesan.
A reissue of Pinardises with photos, I think it would still be a big success, and I’m sure I would still discover things there. As long as we don’t cut into the text, which teaches us more about cooking than following a recipe.