Mesturet Anecdotes: Horsemeat Steak Memories

 

On the advice of our family doctor, my mother had me eat horsemeat steaks twice a week. I loved them and ate them prepared every possible way, raw or cooked, until I was sixteen years old. I started work at a high-end Paris restaurant when I was seventeen (in 1975). The head chef there had made his reputation on a certain number of traditional dishes including Grilled horsemeat steak with lemon parsley butter and homemade Pont Neuf potatoes. (Nowadays, we call the latter “French fries”.)

 

For many long months, my job was to peel large potatoes and cut them into French fries with one centimeter by one centimeter sides. Obviously, mistakes were not allowed. Then, when the lunch or dinner service arrived, I had the deep fryer on one side of me and on the other was the grill where I had to cook around eighty or ninety horsemeat steaks every mealtime. Between each steak, the grill had to be scrubbed energetically and hard with a metal brush. Under the tyrannical eye of the sous-chef and the head chef. More than once, I got my fingers and the metal brush mixed up… I had so many blisters on my fingers I could have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Thank God it didn’t kill me but only made me stronger. But it forever put me off horsemeat steaks. Much to the annoyance of my dear mother.