BERNARD FAUCON

FRIENDS AT THE TABLE

Cooking is Bernard Faucon’s second oeuvre. In the past, he used to cook in his cabanon in Apt (Provence), and rue de la Goutte d’Or. He now prepares his meals in Paris. On his trips, he sometimes goes as far as cooking in his hotel room. His guests are always bowled over: Bernard Faucon never takes his lunches and dinners alone, he invents two vegeterian meals per day and concocts new recipes in no time.

Cooking —preparing a meal— has taken the best of my life, even more so than photography. I never fancy complex or extravagant recipes: I’m always in favour of last minute ideas. My cooking is a mother’s cooking exempt from the obsessive tendency to enrich. It is as far as possible from either the cooking of specialists (cunningly fattening, scant and decorative) or the pathetic manias of vegetarians.

Three quarters of an hour before my guests are due to arrive, I bolt into the kitchen, turn the oven and the cooker on. While everything heats up, I open the fridge, improvise and create something new! I’m a partisan of war economy: the less material there is, the more I invent, the best the meal is.

Over the years, I have become bolder and have found a renewed capacity to adapt, which surprises me. Cooking is the only field I master, the only area where I feel that I could brave anyone!

Unfortunately I never write down my recipes, I forget them and when I try to recall a recipe, I don’t always remember the best ones, that is those able to conjure up the spirit and singular pleasure of eating.