La Ruchotte Farm | Jacky Durand and Fred Ménager

"La Ruchotte" sounds clear, greedy and playful like a ritornello, enough to warm up and sit down at the table.

It emerges at the bend of a desolate path, a large square farm surrounded by hedges and murgers. The place is a small piece of rough and beautiful Burgundian limestone plateau, where you can enjoy the gaze among the budding thickets, the yellowed grass of the moor and the dark cuts. In 2002, Fred Ménager moved there, in the middle of nowhere, with the project of elevating everything he would offer on five hectares on a long table d'hôtes. With his CAP in cooking in hand, he arrived in 1991 in Mionnay, at the home of Alain Chapel, who had died a few months earlier. "He was my role model, he gave a crazy importance to the product. I relearned everything, how to bake, how to make stocks, how to make bisques. That's where I found ma kitchen family. Know-how can be learned, but the product cannot be learned. »

"Let's face it, our first meeting with Frédéric Ménager wasn't a foregone conclusion. From the first step taken in his farm-inn in La Ruchotte, one had sensed a modest being, an adventurer with the tastes of nature over the long term. That's probably why we followed him for eight years before bringing together our meetings in a book where you will find the unpublished words of our exchanges, but also reports for Libération. At Frédéric Ménager, there are no "elements of language", no "media plans". Just confidences with your feet in the ground and your nose above the stove. Eight years is a long time, but it's so precious to see, hear and write. Jacky Durand

Nearly 150 recipes including the famous bourgeois vol au vent and pâté croûte, but also crayfish bisque, poultry ravioli, chicken broth, burnet, black garlic, chicken liver cake, frogs in parsley, emulsified mushroom broth, porcini consommé, pumpkin gratin, herb salad, etc.