The Joy of Steam

Previously I steamed when I had to. The odd beetroot, a chicken or duck prior to roasting and a bit of fish would be committed to a wire rack suspended across a wok with a steel bowl inverted over the top, a procedure that just about did the job, but I needed something more. I have always been excited by the process. Thirty years ago I went to a restaurant in Paris (Le Dodin Bouffant, long since gone) and loved the food: as I used to in those days, I bought the chef’s cookbook, despite its laborious title, Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine à la Vapeur. The chef, Jacques Manière, aimed to prove not only that steaming was the new healthy cuisine of the future, but also – not entirely successfully – that there was nothing in the kitchen that could not be achieved by steam.