内容摘要：Anne D’Innocenzio scrolls through a family album inside her kitchen, surrounded by mementos from her childhood home, including a working blender from the 1960s and an old food scale from the 1940s, Monday Feb. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Anne D’Innocenzio scrolls through a family album inside her kitchen, surrounded by mementos from her childhood home, including a working blender from the 1960s and an old food scale from the 1940s, Monday Feb. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Director Martin Bourboulon says the choice for the role was obvious once Voisin walked into the audition room.“When you find the right actor for the right part, 80% of the job is done,” he says. “We were very impressed with his youthful attitude but also his rock ‘n’ roll attitude. He is absolutely Carême in real life — very attractive for everyone, a young man who is maybe sometimes a bit insouciant, or careless. “

Perhaps not surprisingly, the show plays up the sex factor. The first scene sets the tone with Carême and his lover, Henriette, in a food-tasting session that morphs immediately into sex, but then duty calls: Napoleon’s soldiers are coming for dinner.Bourboulon says that first scene was very intentional, establishing in a few minutes the three main themes of the series: food, sex and politics. Did we mention sex?Of course, he wasn’t an accomplished chef, so Voisin was given intensive lessons.

“I spent two months in the kitchen to learn the customs of the great French tradition,” the actor says. He focused on learning how to realistically convey what Carême did best: invent dishes of wild whimsy, especially flamboyant dessert creations like a huge pyramid, or the “croquembouche” tower — a cascade of cream puffs. Carême is also known for inventing the vol-au-vent, an airy French pastry shell.But even so, this master pastry maker can’t even chop an onion correctly when he arrives for work at his first big kitchen job. The job of teaching him falls to the talented sous-chef in Talleyrand’s kitchen, Agathe (Alice Da Luz).

Da Luz trained alongside Voisin on the kitchen brigade at the Ferrandi culinary school in Paris — and vastly improved her skill set. “We really learned the choreography of a kitchen, we really learned technique,” she says. “And today I can boast that I cut onions at a crazy speed.”

The actors had a dream workspace: The production spent six weeks building a huge, airy kitchen where they work for Talleyrand — unlike the cramped, smoky kitchens that would be more historically accurate.She suggests making a tasty

to accompany your pull-apart bread.“Just mix some grated lemon zest and chopped herbs into softened butter, freeze, and take it out when you’re ready to serve,” she says.

Norton also sees bread fusions: loaves stuffed with creamy cooked chicken, or roasted vegetables. Plump fluffy loaves brimming with melty gruyere. Soft French bread full of an oniony spinach-feta mixture. And for game day, maybe chili-stuffed bread balls, or a pan of spicy Buffalo chicken flavored bread bites.And he notes a revival of bread bowls. Restaurants and home cooks are filling hollowed-out, crusty round vessels with hot stews and chowders. The pairing of bread and soup is eternal.