"...I wanted to write a cheerful roundelay of festive meals with which to lose weight - encompassing salads as fresh as the laughter of children, gleaming fish redolent with the aroma of the sea, fragrant fowl reminiscent of the picnics of my childhood, a collection devised for the planning of your own minceur (slimming) feasts..." -- Michel Guerard (from the prologue)

{HISTORY}

Michel Guerard is a French chef who created a new type of French cooking for the health-conscious eater. Like all good, romantic French stories, Michel's culinary awakening started in the 1960's with a woman, a love affair, and his job working in the kitchen of her health spa restaurant located in the south of France.  Romance ruled supreme and eventually marriage, family and a new way of cooking was established.

Then the Michelin stars began lining up as the restaurant garnered more and more attention - first local, then regional, then international. With his food, Michel developed a way to combine traditional French cooking techniques, beautiful presentation and flavorful meals that left out the heavy fats and rich constitutions that most French cooking is traditionally known for. He called his style "the cuisine of slimness" which supported the healthy directives of the spa and bewitched guest's bellies into believing they were sacrificing not a thing. In 1976, he published this cookbook making his recipes and reasonings available to all whom chefs the world over. Written in his delightfully charming and poetic voice you'll be smitten with Michel from page one as he walks you through a new lighter way to look at food both pleasing to the eye and the body.

{SPECIAL FEATURES}

- Covers the following topics: soups, sauces, first courses, salads, fish, meats, poultry, game, vegetables, and desserts

- Special sections include an illustrated list of kitchen tools, a week's worth of spa-style menus for lunch and dinner, and menu suggestions for everyday kitchens

- Illustrated throughout with color photographs and black and white line drawings

- Contains 320 pages and a detailed index

- Interesting recipes include: Stuffed Chicken Drumsticks with Marjoram, Cream Puffs with Coffee Whipped Cream, spinach Puree with Pears, Salmon Scallops with Sorrel Sauce, Braised Veal with Oranges, Lobster Salad with Caviar, Fish Pate with Herbs and Greens and Wild Mushroom Soup

- Some of the ingredients in some of the recipes run towards the more exotic (frog leg's, song thrush, truffles, tongue etc.) which will be fun for the adventurous cook. The editors have also added substitutions for these ingredients too, making them more universal and palatable towards American eating habits and available resources.  

{CONDITION} 

Bright, clean pages,  tight spine and clean boards. No interior marking, spots or stains. The dust jacket has some chippy spots along the edges and some staining on the dust jacket spine. Please see photos.

{SIZE}

Measures 6.75" inches (width) x 9.5" inches (length) x 1.5" inches (depth). 

{WHY IT'S ESPECIALLY MARVELOUS}

Because we are getting reading to shout Happy New Year, and start 2018 with a clean slate, which means its the perfect time to shed our past eating habits and try something new. No one ever talks about the great contribution of good food towards a happy outlook but its the easiest and fastest way to bring joy and contentment into your life. Michel will show how with his words and his techniques and his recipes and then when you finish this book, you can go and visit him in his health spa restaurant in the south of France where all this first began. 

-- 

Michel Guerard's Cuisine Minceur - Translated by Narcisse Chamberlain with Fanny Brennan. Published by William Morrow and Company, NY. 1976. 320 pages. Photos by Didier Blanchat.