Dec 16, 2014 - Julia Child’s Potato Dauphinois Gratin (Potato Bake) ...Potato, cream and cheese – how can you go wrong?Potato dauphinois is also known as potato au gratin or potato bake.
If you like buttery potatoes with lots of caramelized onions, then this is your dish. This dish goes well with anything.
Benoît Violier outside his Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville. He died hours before the gastronomic bible Michelin was due to unveil its 2016 edition. Photograph: Marcel Gillieron/AFP/Getty
The giants of French gastronomy have paid tribute to the French-Swiss chef Benoît Violier, who was found dead at his home on Sunday.
He died of shotgun injuries in what was believed to be a suicide.
Violier, 44, ran the Restaurant de l’Hotel de Ville in Crissier, near Lausanne, which was named the best in the world in December by La Liste. In 2013 he was named chef of the year by the influential Gault et Millau guide, second only to the Michelin guide among gourmets. He was due to attend the unveiling of the new Michelin guide in Paris on Monday.
Marc Veyrat, a three-star chef, said he was “destroyed” by news of Violier’s death. “The planet has been orphaned by this exceptional chef,” Veyrat wrote on Twitter.
Pierre Gagnaire, also a three-star Michelin chef, who was named by his peers the “biggest star chef in the world” and who has restaurants in Paris, Tokyo, Dubai, Moscow and Berlin as well as Sketch in London, added: “Terribly sad news for an extremely talented chef.”
Paul Bocuse, named “chef of the century” by Gault et Millau and the Culinary Institute of America, said: “A grand chef, a grand man, a gigantic talent.”
Fredy Girardet, a friend of Violier and his wife Brigitte, and another three-star titan of Swiss haute cuisine, who had previously run the Crissier restaurant, said he was “completely stunned”. He told the Tribune de Genève: “I can see no motive for such an act. He was a brilliant young man, with enormous talent and an impressive work potential. He gave the impression of being perfect. This news is so sad.”
Violier’s death came hours before the gastronomic bible Michelin, the oldest European hotel and restaurant guide whose star rating can make or break a restaurant, was due to unveil its 2016 edition.
While a Michelin star can bring glory, the pressure to maintain the rating is intense. A maximum of three are awarded.
In 2003, the competitive world of French cuisine was shocked by the suicide of the three-star chef Bernard Loiseau, 52, who had been distraught about criticism of his restaurant La Côte d’Or in Burgundy, and rumours that he would lose his third star.
Veyrat closed one his restaurants, the highly rated Auberge de l’Eridan in Annecy, which had been awarded three stars since 1995, “for health reasons”.
Violier had succeeded chef Philippe Rochat at the Crissier, who died in July 2015 after falling ill while out cycling.
In an interview with Swiss TV RTS in December 2014, Violier said the stress of haute cuisine was necessary to maintain standards.
“It’s my life. I go to sleep with cooking, I wake up to cooking,” he said. Last year he was hit by the death of his father as well as his “mentor” Philippe Rochat, whom he regarded as a “second father”.
The café at Petersham Nurseries in London received a Michelin star in 2011, but the founder and chef Skye Gyngell tried to have it removed after customers turned up expecting formal dining.
In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
•This article was amended on 1 February 2016. In an earlier version of this story we referred to “Swedish daily Blick”. Blick is of course Swiss. The reference is no longer in the updated version of the article.
Aug 22, 2002 - This is probably Nash's best known poem, and for good reason. Not only.... Thanks very much for sharing this unique poem by Ogden Nash.
PS
PS :What's the difference between an alpaca and a llama?
Alpacas are MUCH harder to to rhyme and:
llamas have long banana-shaped ears while alpacas have shorter spear-shaped ears. there really are a lot of differences between llamas and alpacas. The llama is roughly twice the size of the alpaca. Most alpacas weigh between 100 and 175 lbs when fully grown.Mar 18, 2013
Sep 25, 2015 - At first glance, alpacas may look a lot like their camelid cousin the llama, but there are a variety of differences between these two South American animals. Their ears: Alpaca ears have short spear-shaped ears while llamas have much longer, banana-shaped ears.
ZapposZappos CEO Tony Hsieh and one of his pet alpacas stand in front of Zappos' downtown Las Vegas headquarters.
About 12 years ago, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh created a set of principles for the multibillion-dollar online shoe and apparel retailer that included "Create fun and a little weirdness."
He's truly led by example, and that's one of the reasons why he lives in a 240-square-foot trailerwith a couple of alpacas despite having a net worth of "at least $780 million," according to Wealth-X.
When Amazon bought Zappos for $1.2 billion in 2009, Hsieh made Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explicitly agree to let him continue his management and cultural experiments, as long as he continued to deliver financially.
Both parties have held up their side of the bargain, and one of Hsieh's unusual pursuits has been rebuilding Zappos' Las Vegas neighborhood through the independent entity the Downtown Project (DTP), wh
