在英國盡展所長的法國大廚Jean-Christophe Novelli "女人不煮我來煮" 此博文包含图片 (2016-04-06 11:35:24

'British women can't cook' LUCY CAVENDISH, EVENING STANDARD Wednesday 13 April 2005 轉載自: http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/restaurants/british-women-cant-cook-7249316.html 在英國盡展所長的法國大廚Jean-Christophe  Novelli "女人不煮我來煮"

 Jean-Christophe Novelli poses for a charity calendar There is no doubt that 55-year-old (2016) Jean-Christophe Novelli is an amazingly good-looking man, what with his floppy hair and Frenchfilm-star matinée- idol受女性觀眾歡迎的男演員 appeal. But he is a strange fish. When I first meet him, he seems unengaged. Maybe it's because he is so busy this and checking out that: the new series of Hell's Kitchen, which he is taking over from Gordon Ramsay, his new restaurant, Novelli in the City, running Auberge du Lac, in Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, or his cookery school in Spain. I have heard that he can be extremely flirtatious輕佻的 . behaving in such a way as to suggest a playful sexual attraction to someone.： 「she was beautiful and very flirtatious」。 But today he looks uninterested, sitting in the corner of the restaurant Rasoi in Chelsea, run by his old friend Vineet Bhatia. He looks as though he's sucking lemons when he looks at the menu. So I ask him about Bhatia. "I lerrrve (love) Vineet," he says, perking up活跃起来. It turns out just about every chef in the UK is Novelli's old friend. He tells me later, in his heavily accented Franglais macaronic mixture of the French (français) and English(anglais) languages.[1], that he "lerves" Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White and even Gary Rhodes, with whom he is about to star in Hell's Kitchen 2. "'Ell's Kitchen," he says, playing with a prawn masala. "What a wonderful idea! Do you know something?" He touches my arm. "I was asked to do it first! Me, not 'im! But I said no. I was not ready. It was a big job and maybe I was - oh, what was I?" He bangs his forehead with his palm. "I was stoopeed! I was rash. I was building up my new projects. But no one believes me. It was me who sugested 'im. Me!" The "'im" in question is, of course, Gordon Ramsay. "I lerrrve Gordon Ramsay," says Novelli. "We 'ave been friends for a long time. I thought he was amazing to do 'Ell's Kitchen. It was so 'ard, just 'im on 'is own. I couldn't 'ave done it but now I am very excited. What a privilege to be on television and to cook!" The show's format has changed from the original. Now, instead of celebrities, the culinary students will be members of the public, separated into two teams: one headed by Novelli, the other by Rhodes. So, is he as fiery 燃燒著的 and foul-mouthed as Ramsay? "No, I'm not," he says. "But, like all chefs, I am demanding. I am moody. Some days I am 'appy as a lark. Other days I feel very black." What puts him in these moods? "Everything, nothing," he says. Does he think Gary Rhodes is moody? "No, I don't," he says. "I think he will be a balance. I like 'im. I like the way he cooks. We like to use the same ingredients." Such as what? "Offal. We both like using offal." There is, of course, one major drawback, and that's the problem with his accent. It's so impregnable堅不可摧的 and Inspector Clouseau-ish that, when he is talking about offal, which he pronounces as " erffle", it takes me a while to catch on. And when we get to how amazingly focused he is - "I have always been fercosed," he says - we have a complete communication breakdown. "Do I think people will 'ave a problem with my accent?" he says, raising one of those dark, arched eyebrows. "No! Everyone understands me." But, given the fact that they obviously don't - the waiter also looks mystified when Novelli orders "ze rize wiz ze hegs" - why does he think the producers have singled him out? Novelli looks suspicious. "Why shouldn't they ask me? I'm a good chef. I can do 15 different versions of an omelette. An omelette! And I am so passionate." Yes, well, and it may be precisely for this reason that he's been selected. "Oh," he says, laughing finally. "You mean for the ladies! I lerrrve ladies. I lerrrve dream of English ladies. I'd never marry someone French. They are so, so difficult, French women. They are all full of ... they want this and they want that ... and they don't eat. They wave their forks near their lips and that's it. But women here love to eat. Mind you, they are terrible cooks, terrible. In fact, British women can't cook." "Yes they can," I say rather hotly, as I count myself as a perfectly good cook. Who does he think spends their lives producing endless amounts of meals for their children? "That is not cooking!" he says. "That's just putting whatever things Jamie talks about in the oven. My mother, who lives in France and who is old, lerves (To delight in another's existence beyond what can be expressed with a mundane word like love). Jamie. She calls him James. Anyway, it's men who cook the proper food in this country." I imagine he's going to have to try harder to win over the female quotient of the viewers. Then again, it might not be that difficult because, although he comes out with some unintentional clangers失言, he obviously loves women. "Oh yes, I lerrrve women," he says. "They are so honest. I'd much rather have employed women than men. Look at what happened to me! I was ripped off, you see." By whom? He rolls his eyes dramatically. "Everyone! Especially the men who worked for me. I am convinced they took everything from me." At the end of the Nineties, Novelli's life crashed and burned. He had come over to the UK from northern France, from a working-class family - his father laid electronic cables and his mother was a seamstress - as a young man. "I was working as a private chef for the Rothschilds," he says, "and I was supposed to follow them to America but I fell in love with this country." But what did he love about a country that served chips everywhere? "I could just see the potential," he says. "With hard work, I thought anything could happen. I had had nothing much in my life before. I hated school and was put in the remedial class because I was so naughty." Maybe he's always been a bit compulsive an irresistible urge, I say. After all, making all those omelettes, why? "I love things to be perfect." His talent was spotted by Rick Stein, Jonathan Meades, Marco Pierre White and Keith Floyd, who employed him at the Maltsters Arms in Devon. During the mid- to late-Nineties, his empire grew, and included Maison Novelli in Clerkenwell as well as Novelli W8 and Les Saveurs in Mayfair. But, within a few years, it all went belly up. "I was catastrophically in debt," he says. "I was doing it all by myself - financing the business, running it, training people. I was smoking 40 a day and drinking too much. I had grown wild. I was barely able to speak." Eventually, the doors closed on one after another of his restaurants. By 1999, he was left with only Maison Novelli. "It was crazy," he says. "The baliffs were at the front of the restaurant and I was ushering people in and out of the back door." His friend Marco Pierre White offered to bail him out but to no avail. "I lost everything," he says. "Even my marriage." At the time he was married to his second wife, a South African model called Anzelle Visser. "She was a lovely girl," he says. "But I had nothing to offer." He's certainly on the rise now. His restaurants are doing well, he says. But the main thing that has changed his life is his burgeoning relationship with his 19-year-old daughter, Christina, whose mother is his first wife, Tina. "I always saw Christina," he says, "but the relationship with her mother got, er, tricky." It turned out that, eight years after they married, the first Mrs Novelli had an affair. "I was working long hours," says Novelli. They divorced but, when he came to divorce his second wife, it turned out he was never technically divorced from his first wife as he'd never signed the decree absolute. This "forgetfulness" is not surprising. "I was hopeless," he says. "I never looked at anything apart from my business. Do I look like a bigamist!" But it's all turned out well because Christina now works with him when she's not being a musician. Novelli is immensely proud. "She is an angel! A delight! So talented!" What's happening in his love life now? Will there be a third Mrs Novelli? He looks very uncomfortable. "What do you mean by that?" he says. I say he's been linked with a whole host of glamorous women. "Oh, for goodness' sake! I talk to someone at a party and ... it's not sex, you know. But I am looking for love!" he laughs. "I'd like a son. I want him to play football for France or represent England in the Olympics. Either will do. I am French and English, you see." I imagine he is tricky to live with even though he has now swapped the madness of his life in London for a country idyll near Brocket Hall. It's because he's so driven. "I always push myself," he says. "I am proud of that. When my life looked in tattersirregularly torn pieces of cloth did I give up? No. I started up again and I cleaned my life up. Now I will be on television. I've always wanted to do it but in the past it would make me sullen depressed and worried. But I'm not like that now." That doesn't explain why he was so unenthusiastic at the start of our interview. "My 'ead was full of stuff," he says. "I was worrying about that prawn." What was wrong with it? "Nothing. I just wanted to understand the taste of it, the feel of it. Detail is so important, you see." He then kisses me on both cheeks and I realise he can be rather delicious. The public's going to lap him up, I say. "I 'ope so," he says, then he winks and disappears, leaving me feeling rather deflated. 進一歩閲讀https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe_Novelli