Kathmandu:

There are those who feel that Nouvelle Cuisine, the rage until a few years ago, was the worst thing to have happened to food. For many including Craig Claiborne of The New York Times Food Encyclopedia it was a great innovation. And to prove it Claiborne takes us back 50 years to the exacting rule of Escoffier.

Says Claiborne, “For more than 50 years, traditional French cooking was pantry-locked, book-bound and straitjacketed and all in the name of one man, Auguste Escoffier. Classic or traditional, French cooking was, thanks to him, a prison whether the kitchen existed in Burgundy, Provence, Paris, or in the so-called French kitchens of Manhattan, Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Singapore. The rules had been codified and set down by that one individual, the priest of grand cuisine. Every well-known chef in the Western world and some few in the East were Escoffier’s absolute apostles.

One has nothing against good hearty heavy dish once a winter, and while eating it, one must praise Escoffier. But to do so everyday would be doing a coronary trapeze act without a safety net — think of clogged arteries and other health hazards.

Which is where Messers Bocuse, Verge and Chapel come in. Sure you’ve got to know your Escoffier — there are elements of his art in Nouvelle Cuisine, and above all Escoffier taught us what went with what. But heavy cuisine in a health conscious world had no place. So you went for the Bocuse- Verse- Chapel School of light dining with delicate creations like fresh salmon and sorrel sauce, duck liver with celery roots — things that tasted good and after the Japanese fashion looked absolutely exquisite. Escoffier taught us the basic sauces like the light brown sauce, the meat glaze, the fish mousses and it is from these basics that the Nouvelle Chefs took off.

Says Claiborne, “With the advent of Nouvelle Cuisine, chefs were allowed to be innovative to the limits of their imagination. The Western world might have never known the likes of those magnificent oils and mustards and vinegars that have now become commonplace in fine food shops around the world.

I do not think we would use so abundantly and prize fresh arugula, raddichio, fresh basil and coriander leaves. We have learned to adapt our Western kitchens to the good things of the Orient. We have learned to appreciate fine green salads topped with warm meats, such as roast duck and sautéed goose livers, and I am persuaded these are borrowing from Thailand or other points east have had French chefs learning to travel and broaden their scopes and horizons.

The positive aspects of Nouvelle Cuisine far outweigh the negative ones. I have heard of truffles served with a lime ice, of grapes served with sauerkraut in a red-wine sauce; ravioli stuffed with snails and peaches. I have even printed a recipe for lobster in a savory sauce flavored with vanilla.”

Nouvelle Cuisine has pa-ssed us by leaving behind the influence of food fit to be painted because most dishes are sliced and arran-ged and they are no more cold than traditional food served traditionally. Now we are into Fusion Cuisine, which began from French chefs using Italian spices to Indian chefs in New York using French condiments and European chefs put-ting some Pacific Rim influence into their food including always, of course, a little bit of the past — the unforgettable Nouvelle Cuisine presentation.