OP: Souvenirs: Stories & Recipes from My Life

Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City, 2012. Hardcover. Near Fine. First printing.

Souvenirs (2012) is Alsatian chef Huber Keller’s (1954– ) third cookbook and the one which most incorporates the different phases and spheres of his life into the recipes.

In the section called “family treasures,” for example, Keller draws dishes both from his childhood home kitchen and his family pastry business with things as simple as his grandmother’s “light” mayonnaise or “laundry day stew” to the more elegant and refined rabbit in mustard sauce or kugelhopfs.

The second chapter plucks inspiration from those three-Michelin-starred chefs, like Paul Haberlin and Paul Bocuse, under whom Keller worked throughout his career and who gave him the tools to earn his own stars: marinated squab en crépineetes with juniper and red wine sauce and the stunning Fleur de Lys roasted lamb chops with Merlot-vanilla sauce.

Other portions show Keller’s stylistic evolution throughout his career, going from an apprentice recreating the dishes of his mentors to a chef confident and competent enough to adapt and invent on his own. And the final two chapters incorporate the food Keller and his family enjoy at home—all as sophisticated as one might expect from a chef of his caliber.

While memoir is a meaningful element of the book, the emphasis, by and large, is on the recipes.

Our copy is a Near Fine first printing, inclusive of the dust jacket.