[2009.01.22] Gaston Lenotre 一个糕点神话的终结

Gaston Lenôtre贾斯通.雷诺特

Jan 22nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Gaston-Albert-Célestin Lenôtre, king of patissiers, died on January 8th, aged 88
贾斯通.艾伯特.科尔斯丹.雷诺特，糕点界至尊，1月8日辞世，享年88岁

Lenotre雷诺特

IMAGINE a macaroon, its pink surface smooth and delicate as paper, crushing through into a soft crumb perfumed with rose petals. Or a croissant, crisp as thin caramel on the outside, breaking into slightly gluey, buttery white flakes. Or a dome of the bitterest dark chocolate, giving way to a silky chocolate ganache（注1）, subsiding into a hollow of crème brûlée（注2） infused with aromas of green tea.
想象一片蛋白杏仁饼干，粉色表面光滑均匀，饼身薄如轻纸，轻轻压碎，软软的饼干屑散发着玫瑰花瓣的芳香；想象一块羊角面包，表面涂着薄薄一层焦糖，口感松脆清新，小心切开，雪白的面包片略觉发黏，黄油浓郁；或者想象一抹带着涩涩苦味的黑巧克力，下面是滑滑的巧克力嘉拿士，渐渐托出烧糖卡士达的凹陷，飘逸出绿茶的芬芳。

Gaston Lenôtre thought of such things all the time. They accounted for his radiant, almost constant smile, and his cry of “Allez-y, les enfants!” when encouraging his chefs. And yet he was not just having fun. Pastry-making, he insisted, was a science closely akin to mathematics. It required exact weights, exact times, exact proportions (tant pour tant, in the language of his kitchen-laboratory), focus and iron discipline. Sheer rigueur had put him at the top of France’s pastry tree, beside Carême（注3） and within a whisk-beat of the great Escoffier（注4）.
贾斯通.雷诺特的脑中无时无刻不装着这些。精致的糕点让他的脸上总是洋溢着幸福，让他鼓励自己的厨师们时激情四射：“孩子们，加油干！”他这样做不仅仅是为了取乐；他一直认为，糕点制作与数学极为相似，是一门科学：需要材料精确的称量，时间精确的把握，配方精确比例（用他在厨房实验中的语言，就是tant pour tant），容不得丝毫的含糊，还要有铁一般的原则。靠着这种绝对的严谨，雷诺特站到了法国糕点制作之巅，可同卡勒姆相提并论，就算是伟大的艾斯可菲，也须退位一打蛋器之距。

The elements of his craft seemed simple enough, when laid out on the page:
Three eggs
1 cupful caster sugar
One ½ stick unsalted butter
把他的精妙工艺写在纸上，原料却再简单不过：
鸡蛋3枚
细白砂糖一杯
淡奶油一棒

But in Mr Lenôtre’s world the eggs were laid that morning, fresh out of the straw and kept for half an hour at room temperature. The butter (and cream) came from a dappled and contented cow, grazing under an apple tree in his native Normandy. Egg-yolks were to be beaten until an egg-ribbon, trickled over the pale yellow surface, took five seconds to dissolve. Sponge fingers had to be baked until they were just springy to the touch, and not a moment more. Butter, melted for crêpes, was ready when it gave off a “slightly nutty smell”. And this was all before the tricky stuff, when chocolate was cut into fans with a fine-bladed knife, or the final swirl of mango coulis was licked on with a paintbrush.
但是在雷诺特的世界，鸡蛋要在清早产出，刚刚从稻草堆拾起，还要在室温下放置半小时。制作黄油（和奶油），要回到自己的家乡诺曼底，找到一头在苹果树下吃草、心情愉快的斑点奶牛。搅卵黄之前，卵带必须细细流过它的淡黄色表面，搅拌过后，要掐准五秒钟使之溶解。手指饼干要烘焙到摸起来弹性刚好，立即拿出。做薄烤饼，黄油要熔到散发出“淡淡的坚果香味”才算合适。这些都完成之后还有更微妙的工序：巧克力要用细刃餐刀切成薄片，芒果酱则要用油画笔轻轻舔过。

A dish of rice pudding
大米布丁

Food of all kinds he loved and lavished. At the banquets he organised at the Elysée Palace or Versailles—for he was also, from the 1960s, a caterer in the grand style, happily feeding thousands—peacocks of Parma ham stood on the tables, alongside whole stuffed pigs. His base in Yvelines, a suburb of Paris, was an industrial-sized site incorporating a school where, on any day, 400 working chefs would be retraining in every branch of cookery. But patisserie-boulangerie was his passion. Visiting Paris as a hungry teenager, his chief impression was of bread: “good bread, real bread”.
不管什么样的食物，雷诺特都珍爱有加。从上世纪60年代起，他就开始承办各种隆重的宴会，把爱丽舍和凡尔赛宫的盛宴安排得井井有条，开心地为数以千计的客人提供餐饮；席间的长桌上，帕尔玛火腿熠熠生辉，整只的烤乳猪伴随其旁。雷诺特的工作主要在巴黎市郊的伊夫林进行，那里食品业已具工业规模；其中有一所餐饮学校，每天都有400名在职厨师接受烹饪界各个领域的再次培训。可是，糕点和面包制作一直是雷诺特的最爱。十几岁的时候，他曾经饥肠辘辘走访巴黎，印象最深的莫过于面包：“那是美味的面包，真正的面包。”

His first sweet creation, a rice pudding, had been offered to his discerning chef-parents when he was 12. Pocket money came from making batonnets glacés for patrons of the Bernay cinema. There followed a brief apprenticeship at a baker’s in Pont Audemer, sufficient to show him that making étouffe-chrétien brioches and madeleines was not the way forward. Ten years later, in 1947, he bought the shop and filled it with delectables; ten years after that—for it took ten years of practice, he claimed, to make a decent chef—he opened in the rue d’Auteuil in Paris, where the ventilation ducts carefully piped the scent of pains chocolats out into the street.
12岁的时候，雷诺特发明第一道甜点——大米布丁，眼光独到的厨师父母品尝了他的创造。曾经，他为波尔奈影院的顾客制作冰棍，来换取零用钱。接下来，在蓬托德梅尔城中一家面包店，雷诺特开始了为期不长的学徒生涯；也就是这个时候，他透彻地了解到，制作黏奶釉蛋卷和马德琳蛋糕绝非长远之计。10载后的1947年，他买下了这家面包店，把它改造成一座秀色可餐的殿堂。他说，经过十年努力，终于成长为一名优秀的厨师；于是又过了十年，他在巴黎的欧特伊大街上开了自己的面包房：这条街道空气流通，他的巧克力面包香味“荡气回肠”。

Huge fame followed. By 1976 Mr Lenôtre had acquired Le Pré Catalan in the Bois de Boulogne, a restaurant with 12 reception rooms. By this year his brand brought in $162m and had 53 boutiques across the world, where $50 would buy you a Lenôtre box of chocolates with a recipe and an apron, and individual bouchées came cased in Limoges porcelain. Maison Lenôtre was always a family affair, with wives and children helping and his chef-students happily supporting. His 80th birthday party, a grand picnic in the middle of the Champ de Mars（注6）, featured a cake depicting scenes from his life: a ten-metre tower of ganache and meringue decked in blown sugar, spun sugar and royal icing.
雷诺特从此名声大噪。1976年，巴黎布隆森林中的加泰罗牧园——一家12接待室的酒店——已经归为他的名下。此时雷诺特品牌资产已达1.62亿美元，在全球拥有53家精品面包房。精品房里，花50美元就可以买下一套雷诺特盒装巧克力，拿到一张配方和一条围裙，巧克力用里摩出产的瓷器乘放，一口咬下，浓香不绝。雷诺特之家则是家庭聚会上选：妻子孩子在一旁帮忙，他的厨师学生则在一旁开心辅助。雷诺特80大寿，战神广场中央举行的野餐则是规模壮阔。10米高的嘉拿士耸立广场，蛋糖霜上交错点缀着红糖，棉花糖和糖霜酥皮：蛋糕上描述老人一生的历程，在当天格外瞩目。

He was often mentioned in the same breath as his friends Paul Bocuse（注7） and Roger Vergé, as a nouvelle cuisine man（注8）. Certainly lightness（注9） was his watchword. Flour featured as little as possible in his recipes, and sugar was rationed. Whiskings went on to the point of foaming or voluminousness, and the word “gently” featured often, keeping the airiness in. Rivalry whirled round his wildly fashionable, featherlight, multicoloured and multiflavoured macaroons; if Mr Lenôtre was not their inventor, he still named his house Villa Macaron after them. He made square ones, too.
雷诺特被誉为新式烹调师；提到他，人们总是也会想起他的朋友保罗.博古斯和罗杰.佛吉，被誉为创新的厨师。当然，“易于消化”是他的格言。雷诺特德配方中，面粉总是少之又少，糖类也未曾肆意使用。搅拌白用不厌；在保持空气流通的过程中，“轻轻”这一词也出现了不止一次。他的蛋黄杏仁饼干外形时尚、轻如羽毛、五彩缤纷、口味各异，在竞争者看来天花乱坠；就算雷诺特先生未曾发明这些，他还是用“蛋黄杏仁饼屋”给自己的蛋糕房命名。同样，他还制做方形糕点。

Yet he was also a Norman and proud of it, the son of a cuisine flowing with butter, cream and cheese. He could never renounce them. Butter featured in his books by the chunk and the double-tablespoon. Cream was unctuously ever-present. He always said he abjured crème patissière as hotly as he did margarine; yet the vanilla cream he devised as a replacement began with three egg yolks, beaten with sugar, and went deliciously downhill from there.
他来自诺曼底，并且以此为傲；他的配方中流淌着黄油、奶油和芝士——与这些绝缘，对他来说绝无可能。打开他的烹饪著作，一块/两匙黄油这样的字眼那么熟悉；奶油这样的原料则无处不在。雷诺特常常说他尽量避免使用卡士达奶油，就像他从来不肯用人造黄油将就；然而他却调和出香草奶昔作为替代：取三枚鸡蛋，加糖搅匀，美妙的味道此时已经扑鼻而来。

In his 80s he kept his generosity, his curiosity and his appetite. The day began with a couple of well-buttered tartines, and in the course of it he might well get a millefeuille ready. At Pont Audemer he had made them three times a day, to be sure they were fresh. They had to be taken from the oven, he advised, when the puff pastry was “just a little more than golden brown”.
年逾耄耋，雷诺特依然慷慨大方，胃口不减，好奇心强。他的一天从均匀抹满黄油的切片面包开始，这过程中，他还可能做好一块油酥千层糕。当时在彭托德梅尔城，雷诺特每天做三批千层糕，以确保其新鲜：他说，油酥面团等到“金黄色后稍稍过一点”，方可烤箱取出。

How fitting, said a chef friend, but how sad, that he died just as he should have been enjoying a fine galette des rois（注9）.
他的一位厨师朋友这样说：在享用国王烘饼的时节辞世，真的再合适不过；可是没能吃到今年的烘饼，又真的好可惜。
Notes：
1.        嘉拿士：用巧克力和奶油制作，其历史要追溯到1850年左右，发源于法国或者瑞士。
2.        烧糖卡士达：是另一种用卡士达做成的法式甜食，其字面意思为“燃烧的奶油”。烧糖卡士达有点像焦糖卡士达，但烧糖卡士达用另一种方式在其外部涂上一层发脆的糖衣。
3.        安东尼•卡勒姆(Antonin Carême )，法国顶级糕饼大师， 他将经典法式Carême甜点带给世界各地喜爱美味的人们， 从此，Carême成为法国人送给世界最甜蜜美丽的礼物。 每一道Carême都坚持选用顶级食材、因而别具风味， 在入口之际，美味了然于心。
4.        Georges Auguste Escoffier 1846.10.28- 1935.2.12) ：法国厨师，餐馆老板，还是一位烹饪作家，以传统烹调见长。在法国的烹饪界和美食界，艾斯可菲是一个传奇，是开创法国现代烹调的重要人物之一。
5.        玛德琳（Madeleine）蛋糕 ：这种贝壳型小饼是法国传统名点，相传是Madeleine女士所创。
6.        战神广场（Champ de Mars）坐落在法国巴黎7区，夹在西北方的埃菲尔铁塔(Tour Eiffel)和东南方的军校（Ecole militaire）之间，现在是一个大公园。战神广场名称来自罗马的战神广场，法文中的Mars正是罗马神学中的战争之神。
7.        保罗.博古斯是博古斯烹饪大赛的发起人，也是当今法式西餐界公认的厨艺泰斗。1926 年生于法国里昂近郊 Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or ，1941 年 至 1958 年间在多所法国厨艺培训学校学习 ，之后服务于数家法国著名餐厅。精湛的厨艺使其自1965年以来，连续 41 年获得米其林三颗星的最高荣誉，多年来，保罗.博古斯一直积极致力于推动法式西餐的发展：开办餐厅、创建餐饮培训学校、撰写烹饪书籍，其功绩不仅得到了业内的一致认可，更获得了法国国家政府特别颁发的“国家荣誉勋章”。
8.        新式烹调：法国一种烹调方法，崇尚简单健康的食品，外观诱人，通常在大盘子里放很少的食物。
9.        国王烘饼是法国1月6日庆祝主显节(Epiphany)的传统甜点。从三位东方贤士前来伯利恒庆祝耶稣诞生日的12月25日开始，会装饰在圣诞树上直到主显节结束为止。通常，在法国，一直到每年的一月六日主显节过后，圣诞节才算是正式结束。自一月第一个星期日开始，法国街头可以看到各种国王烘饼Galette des Rois，人们争相选购，好与亲友一同为圣诞花下完美句点。在法国每年的一月主显节(L’épiphanie)，家家戶戶都要吃La Galette des Rois Frangipane—杏仁奶油千层国王烘饼。与亲友一起分享“国王烘饼Galette des Rois”，是极受重视的法国古老习俗，自十四世纪起就已非常盛行。

 

译者: rhineyuan  http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=16778&extra=page%3D1