In 2005, I burned a 200 litre pot of veal stock. The smell crept through the building, down the stairs, out the door and into the street, where a delivery man was heard to say ‘what a lovely, terrible thing.’
I wept for hours. My mentor, Madame Gaspard, then 14 years retired, arrived at dusk with a bottle of brandy and a ladle. We sat in the kitchen, saw the black ruin, and she said, ‘Chef, the stock does not care.’ I have thought about this sentence every day since. The stock does not care. The stock does not remember. The stock is merely water that has seen too much, and so, I confess, am I.
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