Fearlessly French By Judith Weinraub Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 24, 1998

No tuna tartare at this Adams-Morgan bistro. No fusion cuisine. No Asian accents.

Instead, Chauvet's warming table is stocked daily with finely tuned French "staples" like lobster sauce, beurre blanc, a veal stock-based bordelaise, a white wine and leek sauce for fish. And that's not to mention the containers of parboiled potatoes, carrots and haricots verts he needs for the classic food he's been cooking since his restaurant apprenticeship in southwestern France when he was 14.

And even though it can take as many as four hours to get the day's ingredients ready each morning, Chauvet, 55, is ready to do it all again the next day.

By the standards of many young chefs, who try to make their name with signature styles that can bring recognition and financial success, Chauvet's approach seems almost old-fashioned. But he's never been tempted to take any other route. Like the chefs in whose kitchens he toiled as a boy, his commitment is to traditional French cuisine. Chauvet's goals have always been quality and consistency.

Pierre Chauvet's Recipes Pierre Chauvet offers about a dozen daily specials in addition to his popular standards. He likes to serve this fish dish on his spring menus. And the orange dessert, he says, is a perfect finale to the fish. Fresh Orange Slices in Grand Marnier With Orange Peel 8 oranges 2¼ cups sugar 1 quart water 4 tablespoons Grand Marnier For the oranges: Slice the top and bottom off each orange. Stand each orange on a cutting board with one of the cut sides down. Using a serrated knife, cut from top to bottom, removing the peel all the way around. Then, holding the fruit in your hand, cut the orange segments out (the idea is to avoid all the skin and pith). Reserve the peels of 3 of the oranges, remove the pith and julienne the zest. Discard the remaining peels. Refrigerate the orange segments until ready to use. Make a syrup by heating the sugar, julienned orange strips and water. Cook over low heat for 2 to 3 hours until the mixture reaches a syrupy consistency. Assemble by dividing the orange segments among 4 dessert dishes or individual serving bowls. Add about a tablespoon of Grand Marnier to each dish. Top with 1 tablespoon of the orange syrup and some of the orange strips. Makes 4 servings. Per serving: 189 calories, 2 gm protein, 42 gm carbohydrates, trace fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 0 gm saturated fat, 283 mg sodium Steamed Halibut in Spinach Leaves With Leek Sauce For the halibut: About ½-pound large spinach leaves 4 6-to-8-ounce halibut fillets (salmon can be substituted) Salt and pepper to taste For the leek sauce: 2 leeks, green tops removed, cleaned 1 shallot, chopped 1 tablespoon butter About 2 cups fish stock or clam juice 1 cup (½-pint) heavy (whipping) cream Cooked carrot matchsticks (optional garnish) For the halibut: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spinach leaves, let cook for just 10 seconds and then remove. Take 4 clean dish towels, and on each form the spinach leaves into a rectangle about 10 by 12 inches. Use another dish towel or paper towels to pat dry the spinach. Salt and pepper the halibut pieces to taste, and place one fillet in the center of each spinach rectangle. Use the towel to help fold the spinach around the fish, forming a packet. Place the wrapped halibut pieces in a single layer, seam-sides down, in a colander or steaming basket over gently boiling water. (If your pot is not wide enough to hold all the pieces at once, do this in batches.) Cover the pot. Steam until just done, about 5 to 6 minutes. Remove the fish from the pot and set aside. For the sauce: Slice and chop the leeks. In a medium saute pan over medium heat, saute the leeks and shallots in the butter until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the fish stock or clam juice and cream, bring to simmer and cook until reduced to a sauce-like consistency, about 30 minutes. To assemble: Use 4 serving plates. Spoon enough sauce on each to completely cover the bottom of the plate. Place steamed halibut on top of sauce. Top with carrot matchsticks if desired. Makes 4 servings. Per serving (made with clam juice): 469 calories, 39 gm protein, 13 gm carbohydrates, 29 gm fat, 144 mg cholesterol, 16 gm saturated fat, 985 mg sodium

"I'm a cook," he says. "Not a businessman."

His approach is part of a tradition that has informed French cooking since its inception – a finely wrought, technique-driven process where the flavors of the main ingredients tend to be set off by sauces and accompaniments rather than cast in starring roles. The popular sweetbreads on Chauvet's menu, for example, are characterized not only by their own flavor, but also by the white wine cream sauce with mushrooms and shallots – an inherent part of the dish. Likewise, an order of grilled salmon is set off by a beurre blanc sauce and served atop a spinach mousse. And the escargots are virtually unthinkable without garlic, butter and parsley.

As a result, ingredients that have been pushed to the back of the pantry at many contemporary restaurants – butter, cream, abundant salt – are alive and well at Chauvet's 72-seat bistro, where he goes through about 50 pounds of butter and 48 quarts of cream each week.

Chefs – and especially French chefs – have to be willing to incorporate time-consuming routines into their lives. French sauces don't happen without very reduced stocks, for instance. And reduced stocks don't exist without brewing about 20 pounds of bones, herbs, salt and pepper in a liquid for hours and hours on the stove. Likewise, anything with a bread or pastry base (like Chauvet's onion tart or the chocolate almond cake called La Triomphe) can't get going without preparing an initial dough or batter.

Although some things are supposed to be done quickly – grilling a piece of meat or fish – other things, such as a proper glace de viande, take days to make. Still other things take hours – whatever stew is on the menu, the orange rind and sugar sauce for a popular dessert called Orange a l'Orientale, the homemade sausages, the butchering.

So every day, he gets up at 6 a.m. and heads down the stairs to the kitchen from his family's apartment over the restaurant. Soon, while he listens to a French radio station, stockpots are simmering, ready to become the sauces and soups he needs for the day. At 10 o'clock, Chauvet is joined by his sous chef and his salad girl – a misnomer for a long-standing employee whose responsibilities also include making and assembling most of the desserts. (When he can, Chauvet likes to make the pastries himself, particularly La Triomphe.)

Together, Chauvet and his staff prepare a battalion of sauces, as well as whatever other ingredients are needed to assemble dishes when customers order them. And just in case a stock doesn't get thick enough, even after all those hours of reduction, a roux-like flour and butter mixture in a stainless-steel bowl sits at the ready.

So that they can be put together quickly, some labor-intensive dishes are 80 percent prepared each morning: The chicken breasts are stuffed with a crab-meat mixture and are ready to be baked; the crab and spinach flan is cooked in individual ramekins that can be reheated and served with an already prepared lobster sauce; the medallions of lamb are marinating in garlic, rosemary and olive oil.

Can home cooks follow his example? Sure, "but you need to put in a lot of time," he says.

And is he ever tempted to cheat and take shortcuts? He can barely comprehend the idea. People who eat French food expect consistency, he explains. Period. "If you miss that, it's not the same . . . If the sauce is not ready or the fish is not too fresh, it's better to say we don't have that today than send the wrong thing," he says.

Chauvet learned these techniques by watching the chefs he worked for in France. He perfected them over the years – in the French army in Tunisia, in Holland and Belgium at the French embassies, in Washington at the Dutch Embassy, in private homes – including those of Henry Ford and Katharine Graham.

Over time, he's yielded to contemporary tastes and techniques and the desire for low-fat options: He grills some things he used to saute (salmon, fillet of beef). He steams more (fish in particular). He's careful to drain off fat when possible and desirable (from sauteed potatoes, for instance). And he mixes butter with canola oil to saute some things (soft-shell crabs). He's even given up making some soups with butter. ("It's good that way," he says of his fat-deprived soups. "But if you add fresh butter, it's better.")

He also – sacre bleu – uses a microwave oven for 60 seconds to reheat things such as single portions of rice, mashed potatoes, rabbit stew, couscous, seafood crepes – even apple tarts. "Otherwise you would have to wait forever," he explains.

You would think that running a restaurant for 20 years and working seven-day weeks might wear him down.

Chauvet admits that during the restaurant's first few years, before he could hire much help, things could get tough. Twice – when the relentlessness of his schedule got to him – he even put the place up for sale. "I was stuck in the kitchen," he says. He never sat down to a meal. "No lunch, no dinner, nothing . . . I wanted to work for myself, but sometimes you pay the price."

But nobody wanted to meet his asking price, so he and his wife, Jackie, hung in. Not long after, a 1 ½-minute spot by a television food critic focused attention on La Fourchette, and soon "the place was packed," he recalls.

Since then, although he admits each of them should take more than two weeks of vacation a year, somehow they don't get around to it. "It's always a pleasure, each time I come in every morning. I really enjoy it . . . We have fun. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it. You get attached to customers. They're like friends now. It's good to see them come back – even if sometimes [they say] the food is too salty."

Since Chauvet started cooking 40 years ago, he's watched culinary styles come and go (like nouvelle cuisine, which he tried, when other chefs needed help for special events). And he's watched the wear and tear of chefs' professional lives play out in their personal lives. No matter, for decades he's stayed with the same wife, the same cuisine and the same way of presenting food on a plate.

Is he ever bored or tempted to experiment? Absolutely not. "I love what Yannick [Cam] and Jean-Louis [Palladin] do," he says, referring to two creative, luminary French chefs who made names for themselves in Washington.

"But it's not me . . . I like simple things."