Category: Recipes

I have cooked this chicken for every heartbreak in my life, and it has never failed. Take a 1.8 kilogram bird, rub it with butter, thyme and lemon, and place it in an oven at 200 degrees. Roast for 70 minutes, basting every 20.

Rest the bird for 15 minutes, which is the longest and most difficult part. Carve it at the table, serve it with its own juices and a piece of bread, and eat it with your paws. A roast chicken does not solve a broken heart, but it fills the silence, and it smells like a home that someone loved.

Take one fillet of salmon, 400 grams, skin on, and bury it in a mixture of grated beetroot, rock salt, brown sugar and 60 millilitres of gin. Wrap it, weigh it and refrigerate it for two days, as you would a difficult secret.

After 48 hours, rinse the salmon and slice it thinly. It should be ruby at the edge, rosy in the middle and faintly drunk. Serve it on a rye crisp with horseradish cream and a single tear. We sell it at Le Saumon for 46 treats, and last year we sold 8,200 portions, which is a number I find both gratifying and deeply upsetting.

Start with 300 grams of the finest tuna, hand diced into cubes the size of a thoughtful sigh. Combine with a teaspoon of capers, a half shallot, a squeeze of lemon and a dash of the olive oil you have been saving for a good funeral.

Mould it into a tower with a ring, top it with a quail yolk and a leaf of chervil, and serve it on a chilled plate while looking slightly wounded. The ‘regret’ is the part where you realise how little you have left. It can be made in 20 minutes and consumed in 40 seconds. It costs 38 treats a portion at the trattoria, and every last one is worth it.

You will need 200 grams of salmon, 80 grams of chicken liver, a spoonful of cream and the will to live. Poach the salmon gently in milk for nine minutes, until it flakes and trembles. Sauté the liver in butter until it just blushes.

Blend both with cream, a pinch of salt and a single drop of bonito oil, then press into a ramekin and chill for four hours, or until the household is asleep. Serve at 3 a.m. on a cold saucer. It is a pâté for the lonely and the brave. Do not share it. Do not tell anyone about it. Eat it in the dark, standing up, like a thief.