«With love, lust and thyme». It is a book for cooking, but also a book to read, written the way one writes only to friends: with love and closeness, with personal thoughts and insights and their consequences for cooking and my life. It would be nice if you take a little time for my long, thick “letter”!
Am I interpreting Voltaire (1694–1778), one of the greatest intellectual authorities in Europe at the time, correctly when I think he meant that those books are the most useful that are written halfway by the reader themselves? Then my book must be one of the most useful! Because it truly only becomes a reliable, enjoyable guide when you – as with a tasty ragout – bring everything together: My thoughts, your insights derived from them, your own experiences, and your imagination.
But the book also cannot be complete because from the first to the last page it lives on spontaneity, which inevitably rules out an overall picture of the beautiful, wide-ranging subject of cooking. However, because the book was written on two levels – on a reflective one and one that can be applied in practice – a picture still emerges, only with a new frame and a different centre.
The reflective section has a lot to do with memories, without it being a matter of idealising the “good old days”; because back then it was just as colourful and grey as it is even today. It would also be naïve to try to preserve life forms and value systems from childhood in a present in which the demands and the pace of life of a highly developed society have changed. But the flashback was important because it explains a great deal, including my love of the seasons, the untamed desire to treat products lovingly, or the conviction that the secret of my zest for life is hidden in scents and aromas. (...)»