Breakfast in BurgundyA Hungry Irishman in the Belly of France
Raymond Blake has admitted to being “fascinated by flavor and how it is created.” Breakfast in Burgundy contains tales from the kitchen, and the answer to the question that begins each day, “What’s for dinner?” will be given ample coverage. The hunt for the best jambon persillé will be related in detail. The same diligence is applied to the search for the best comté cheese, for there’s comté and there’s comté—once nibbled, never forgotten.
Laced with compelling writing about French food and its ways, Breakfast in Burgundy is part travel memoir, part foodie detective story, part love song to Raymond’s adopted home. This book tells the story of the Blakes’ decision to buy a house in Burgundy. Raymond describes the moments of despair—such as the water leak that cost a fortune—and the fantastic times too.
Blake has admitted to being “fascinated by flavor and how it is created.” Breakfast in Burgundy contains tales from the kitchen, and the answer to the question that begins each day, “What’s for dinner?” will be given ample coverage. The hunt for the best jambon persillé will be related in detail. The same diligence is applied to the search for the best comté cheese, for there’s comté and there’s comté—once nibbled, never forgotten.
Yet to be perfected by Blake is Chicken Gaston Gérard, said to have been first cooked in Dijon in 1930 for the celebrated gourmet Curnonsky by the mayor’s wife. A neighboring winemaker’s wife prepared it for Blake, as he watched over her shoulder. Breakfast in Burgundy documents these results and more.
Included are tips on how best to prepare, cook, and serve the various goodies, as well as the story behind the wines—some of the most sought after in the world—that complement the foods, telling of people and place, who made the wine and where it is from, without recourse to tedious technical detail or dry-as-tinder tasting notes.
Raymond Blake is a writer and the wine editor of Food & Wine magazine in Ireland. He is the author of In Black and White: A History of Rowing at Trinity College Dublin. This is his first book that taps into his abiding love of France.
“An Under the Tuscan Sun set in fabled Burgundy, Irish wine writer Raymond Blake’s lyrical, and personal, memoir of falling tangle-footedly in love with a grape (Pinot Noir), and then a region where it reaches its apotheosis, to a ramshackle cottage that he and his wife impetuously purchase to embrace their seeming cockamamie dream of residing there, is as heartbreaking and funny and emotionally honest as any Pinotphile’s wallet-emptying odyssey for that singular levitational moment when a truly great Burgundy takes him through the whole fairy tale three-act narrative to sensorial sublimity and, finally, vinous redemption.”
– Rex Pickett, author of Sideways
“‘A hungry Irishman in the belly of France’—what self-respecting female foodie wouldn’t be hooked by that line? Blake’s book romps along with pace and energy and provides a giggle on every page; it’s about the food, sure, but the travel snarl-ups, home-reno dramas, and his conversations with wistful winemakers were highlights for me. Loved it!”
– Yvonne Lorkin, wine writer
“A charming and witty read that delightfully evokes the Burgundian countryside, its food, wines, and its people; a book that made me want to immediately return to this wine-lover’s jewel of France.”
– Chris de Burgh, singer-songwriter
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