When I posted about my French dinner last week I got lots of nice comments and e-mails, not only about the meal I prepared, but also about plans for a vegan French cookbook. They also asked me to share my thoughts about my old restaurant days when I worked in French restaurants.
The photo above was taken in 1986 (!) in front of Marianne, a then-popular French restaurant in downtown Charleston, S.C. That’s me in the front row (third from the left) — the only one wearing white pants. Assembled with me were many of the top chefs in Charleston at the time. The reason we were all together was to cook a multi-course benefit dinner for a charity fund-raiser — on our only day off.
After working as a cook for several years in Pennsylvania, I move to Charleston in 1983 when I was hired as a chef for a Charleston restaurant. I worked as a chef at a few other restaurants in Charleston during those years, but the only strictly French restaurant was called Amalie. It was an intimate, elegant space down at the Battery looking out onto the Charleston harbor. Those professional years in restaurants gave me the background I needed for my current career, developing recipes from various cuisines for my vegan cookbooks.
As for a French cookbook, the answer is yes. For many years, I’ve been planning to write a “French for Vegans” cookbook. Somehow, other projects always seem to get ahead of it, and so it has remained simmering on the back burner for a long time. With all the interest and enthusiasm I’m hearing from you all, I hope to move on to it after my current project is finished.
In the meantime, my new book, Quick-Fix Vegan will be out very soon and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Work (and recipe testing) is currently going on for the new slow cooker book.
Thanks again to one and all for your interest and your kind comments, notes, and messages. Your appreciation for my work sustains me.
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