Bruno, Chief of Police, is Back!

Great book news. After years of waiting, the cookbook based on the mysteries by Martin Walker is finally coming to bookstores -- in English! The German edition has been available since 2014. If you are a fan of Walkers sixteen detective novels, you already know of the fantastic meals prepared by the policeman Benoît Courrèges, called Bruno by the people of the small (fictitious) town of Saint-Denis.

Bruno's Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from a French Country Kitchen
by Martin Walker and Julia Watson. To be published in November, 2023.

A few days ago, the latest tale of Bruno, Chief of Police, detective novel -- A Chateau Under Siege: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel -- was published. Of course I've already purchased and read it. As always, Bruno is resourceful, brave, loyal to France, clever about finding out what's really going on with a lot of very suspicious happenings, and basically smarter and more likable than the French international security team with whom he must cooperate to deter a dangerous gang of international assassins from their evil plans.

Bruno tirelessly performs heroic surveillance tasks to protect the local residents and to preserve the honor of France, though at times the plot was a bit exaggerated in the author's reliance on finding foreign agents plotting mayhem, and being thwarted. 

I'll skip any further plot summary or spoilers about this suspenseful novel full of dedicated men and women defending their country. In simple terms: while Bruno was dealing with the national security crisis, he had time to prepare several remarkable meals from the wonderful local produce of the region. Here are a couple of typical descriptions of Bruno in the kitchen and at the remarkable artisan food market in the town. First, he cooks for a few friends at the home of his friend the baron:

"To his surprise the kitchen was empty. Automatically he took a knife from the drawer, gutted and cleaned the fish, reached for the brush to spread on walnut oil, squeezed and sliced lemons, grated garlic, sprinkled salt and a little pepper. ... He put the dressed fish onto a platter, took it out and handed it to the silent baron." (A Chateau Under Siege, p. 183)

In St. Denis, Bruno goes to market: 

"The market was in full swing. The stalls were almost overflowing with strawberries, peaches, apricots, squash, cucumbers and different kinds of lettuce. Stéphane’s cheese stall could hardly be seen for the customers swarming around it, and the family from the Lac Noir farm was running back and forth to their refrigerated van to bring new supplies of duck breasts, legs, whole ducks and fresh foie gras. There were crowds around each of the stalls for wines—from the town vineyard, from the Montravel and Saussignac, the Pécharmant and Bordeaux. The children of the winemakers were kept busy rinsing out the glasses for free tastings, while the artisan brewers talked of their pride in their beers. 

"There were rivals for every trade, for the little round goat cheeses, fresh, demi-sec and aged; for the Basque sausage makers from the Pyrenees; for the stalls with fresh oysters and mussels, shipped from the coast at dawn that morning. They competed for space with live chickens and a host of breads—rye, black, with bits of bacon baked inside, sourdough and with olives. There were homemade butters, yogurts and every version of fruit jam under the sun. There were queues at the Vietnamese stall with its hot nem, at the Mauritian stall with its curries and an even longer line at the Guadeloupe stall with its empanadas and spices. A man with a huge vertical rotisserie was roasting chickens, quail and pigeons while great vats of pommes de terre sarladaises bubbling below sent wafts of garlic to blend tantalizingly with the scents of roasting fowls." (pp. 200-201). 

Bruno steps up to provide dinner for a group of very rich visitors in an unfamiliar kitchen because the cook has been injured:

"Bruno saw there was a bottle of very good cognac beside them. He grabbed it and went into the kitchen, took the chicken breasts and the crème fraîche from the fridge and checked that there was Dijon mustard, chicken stock and sherry vinegar in the pantry. He took a basket, went back to the potager for artichokes, peaches and tarragon, took them into the kitchen, removed his jacket and washed his hands. There were a dozen chicken breasts in the large pack from Leclerc supermarket. He shrugged. It could have been worse. He found a decent knife, cut the breasts into three and then peeled and finely chopped three fat shallots. ... 

"Bruno rummaged in the cupboards for a large roasting pan and then for a large stainless-steel bowl. He melted a hundred grams of butter in a pan, stirred it into twice that amount of olive oil and poured the blend of fat over the chicken chunks that he’d placed in the large bowl. He stripped the leaves from half the tarragon and put them to one side. He washed his hands again and then manually massaged the oil and butter mixture thoroughly into all the chicken pieces. He put the well-greased chicken into the roasting pan, with the remaining tarragon twigs tucked in between and around them. He wiped his hands clean of the fat. 

"He put the chopped shallots into a large frying pan, added olive oil and sautéed them gently on low heat, stirring steadily until they were transparent. Then he added half a liter of chicken stock, a wineglass full of cognac and half a glass of sherry vinegar. He added salt and pepper, used a wooden spoon to blend it all together and then turned up the heat until the mixture began to simmer. He lowered the heat, let the ingredients simmer gently for about five minutes, and then put the pan to one side. Thirty minutes before serving the dish, he would add two-thirds of the liter pot of crème fraîche to this sauce, put it over the chicken, cover the pan and roast it for thirty minutes at 180 degrees centigrade." (pp. 226-228)

I'm looking forward to Martin Walker's cookbook, co-authored with his wife Julia Watson. I trust that it will provide detailed instructions for how to make the wonderful dishes from all sixteen Bruno novels. Obviously, I lack access to a market where I can find excellent duck breasts, freshly made foie gras, live oysters, newly-dug truffles, and all the other types of produce that play such a big role in Bruno's vast successes. I am sure that at least the cookbook will be fun to read and to enable me to imagine having such opportunities. 

Review © 2023 mae sander