Story and photography by: Paul Best, Financial Review
It was in the most unlikely of places – a cafe on Victoria’s surf coast he describes as “in the middle of nowhere” – that the Algerian-born chef Pierre Khodja had his madeleine moment: that powerful flash of memory we get when we taste or smell food that evokes the past.
The reference, of course, is from Marcel Proust’s epic Remembrance of Things Past, when a petite madeleine cake dipped in the narrator’s tea triggers a flood of childhood memories. As it happens, Khodja was tasting a madeleine too, with his coffee.
“It took me back to Paris,” sighs the Melbourne-based chef. When he asked who had made the cake, it came as no surprise that the chef was French.
Khodja is retelling the anecdote not just because of the importance food memories play in provoking deeply emotional – and often involuntary – responses. He is explaining the profound influence they have in bringing an authenticity to the dishes he cooks in his latest restaurant, Camus, in suburban Northcote.
“That’s exactly how I cook, with lots of spices, but very subtly.”
In particular, he draws on the palate memory of his childhood growing up in Algiers, largely spent with his late mother either in the kitchen or at the market. He especially recalls the spices – true cinnamon (rather than cassia), cardamom, star anise, coriander and cumin among others – most of which he imports to recreate the same flavours.
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