The real revelation comes on the last day of my visit. Ripert does something he'd vowed not to do this week. He prepares a dish from the restaurant—a croque-monsieur, the traditional grilled ham and cheese sandwich. It's a straightforward, elegant dish that he created in 1997 in honor of his father's mother, Émilienne, shortly after she died, and has served in homage to her ever since. In this version, he replaces the ham with smoked salmon and adds lemon zest and chives. So why make a croque-monsieur here, today, in Sag Harbor, given his desire to leave behind, as he said, the chef that he had become? He doesn't answer immediately. Wary of talking about his beliefs, Ripert is worried he'll sound like a flake. He meditates daily. He reads Buddhist and Christian literature, and lights candles continually. "Flames," he says to me, "break through the darkness, help to connect you with the spirits."
If you are a cook, and such beliefs are a part of who you are, they must inform your cooking or you are not truly cooking. I'm not sure that Ripert quite realizes it yet, but this oddball book idea—to combine the art he loves with the work he loves—is really the beginning of a journey for him. It is an exploration of who he is and who he will be. It is a book about his soul as a cook.
Dicing an apple for a dish he calls salade Monique, after his mother, he ¬finally explains why he had to make the croque-monsieur. "Cooking is spiritual," he says. "We have a tendency to forget that." When you cook—that is, when you really cook—you're paying attention to season and place, to God-given ingredients that are close and fresh. When you are a cook, you pay attention to the past. You remember your mother. You thank the chefs who taught you. When you are a cook, you welcome ghosts, and you honor them. He smiles. "My grandmother's spirit," he adds simply, "was in the house with us that night."
CHEF'S SECRET
From Eric Ripert: In the kitchen it takes discipline and knowledge to develop instinct. The hand and the mind have to work together.
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