MY LIFE IN FOOD: Raymond Blanc on foraging in the forests as a boy, the one thing he vowed never to eat and his first impressions of a British favourite
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My first food memory is from the age of about four. I’m one of five children from a working-class family in a village called Saône, in eastern France, and we didn’t have much money. I was shopping with my mother and saw the most beautiful Easter egg: big, frosted and filled with coloured eggs. She saw me looking at it but I knew she couldn’t afford it. We then had an Easter egg hunt and I found that very egg. My mother had bought it for me. It was the first great food moment of my life.
![[Comforting poule au pot]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/17/11/93229493-14201295-image-a-4_1734436618447.jpg)
. My mother did all the cooking. I was the apprentice, the young commis, doing the peeling and chopping as well as the killing of rabbits and chickens. Although our garden wasn’t that big, it played a huge part in our diet and could feed the whole family for nine months of the year. Aged six onwards, I worked there, weeding and hoeing, then harvesting and podding tons of beans, while my friends were playing football, having fun.
The cellar at home was the most extraordinary place. It was filled with hundreds of different pots of girolles, beans, beetroots and everything else – all preserved for the winter by my mother. On the floor were layers of fresh beetroot, onions and potatoes, covered in jute. And there was always a big barrel of cheap wine, which would drip. I’d sit at the top of the staircase and gaze at this incredible still life. The smell was quite extraordinary.
We were great hunter-gatherers. Franche-Comté, the region where I grew up, had the biggest forests in Europe. My father gave me a map with all the best places to collect wild mushrooms, asparagus, hazelnuts and berries. We’d leave very early so nobody could follow us. Part of our haul would go to my mother; the rest was sold directly to chefs. They would always give you the best prices. That’s where I learned about the seasons – the very basis of my knowledge – and that’s why I called my first restaurant, in Oxford, Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons.
