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>> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: There was a time French cuisine was dominated by la cuisine animal.

But now vegetables are playing a central role in some of the most respected kitchens of Paris.

For chefs Ludo Lefebvre, Alain Passard, and Inaki Aizpitarte, vegetables provide unlimited creative potential, a chance to cook with what is in season that month, that day, that moment.

>> BOURDAIN: This is la cuisine végétale.

Enter the Mind of a Chef.

>> LEFEBVRE: Cooking is not just a recipe, it's instinct.

Don't need to use caviar.

Fried chicken is cool, too.

Mama will be proud of me.

(sniffs) (birds chirping) ♪ ♪ >> LEFEBVRE: In English, we don't have a word to explain terroir.

It is all about the quality of the soil.

Terroir dictates the quality of our ingredients.

Especially vegetable.

In France, we have this amazing variety of vegetable.

California has the best produce in America.

So, yeah, vegetable, it's really a focus in my kitchen.

It help.

It help for a chef to have a good terroir.

In the late '90s, Alain Passard decided to stop to cook meat.

Why?

Because he was saying he don't find any inspiration in meat anymore.

It was also the same time when we have all this problem with the mad cow.

After he decided to focus on vegetable, Mr. Passard buy farm all around Paris to cultivate his own vegetable.

The Bois-Giroult is one of the gardens, located one-hour drive from Paris, in Normandy.

(gasps) Le Bois-Giroult, it's huge, you know?

You have a lot of vegetables, fruit, herbs.

Every day he gathers some vegetables for his restaurant, Arpege.

Mr. Passard is a god of vegetable.

The smell, the color, the flavor of the vegetable, it's just so powerful.

When you have that in front of you, you get inspiration.

You want to cook.

>> LEFEBVRE: Like when you cook meat, it's where all the flavor.

Same process.

>> LEFEBVRE: Mr. Passard really inspired me to focus more on vegetable.

And here in California, we have amazing, amazing produce.

One of my favorite ingredients in California is avocado.

Avocado are good all year.

And a lot of different variety of avocado.

The texture, the shape.

Some are more fatty, some are less fatty.

Some are big, some are small.

So, for me, I really need to do an avocado dish at Trois Mec.

I take inspiration from a lot of food I eat in LA-- Korean food, or Chinese, or sushi.

When I think about avocado, I'm thinking about sushi restaurant.

The California roll-- it's avocado with fake crab.

So I decided to work with my own version with a French touch.

The concept is really very simple like sushi.

Rice, and fish, but is not fish-- is avocado.

And after I put a little bit of vinaigrette and salted cod cream.

What I like about California is citrus.

And he we have a lot of amazing citrus.

So I'm doing lime vinaigrette.

Lime juice.

Honey.

I use orange blossom honey, or Acacia honey.

So the rest is like a classic vinaigrette-- is one, two, three.

What I mean is... what I mean is olive oil, vinegar, and I forgot something.

Olive oil, vinegar... whatever.

Lime vinaigrette is one, lime juice, two, honey, three, olive oil.

It goes like this.

We're going to slowly add our olive oil.

So that will you smell California.

It's pretty...

I mean, you can smell.

This dish for me is very California, I know.

Especially the avocado and the lime together.

So we have our vinaigrette done now.

Beautiful, yellow, a little thick.

I have some classic sushi rice.

The rice is cooked.

And I'm going to just add some rice vinegar, sweet rice vinegar, okay?

Look, I'm not an expert on sushi rices, okay?

I mean, I discovered sushi rice, of course, here in California.

I try to do my sushi rice like the Japanese, but, you know, it takes a lot of practice to do a perfect sushi rice.

I don't know if I would serve that to a good Japanese chef, but it's pretty good, you know?

The guests like it.

So you see the grains become a little bit more soft.

We salt some fresh cod overnight.

Then after, we'll cook it in cream.

The cream is infused with garlic and thyme and rosemary.

I put the salted cream in the siphon gun with CO2.

Some salted cod cream to give a little bit more texture to the dish.

Almost like a chantilly.

I'll take my sushi rice.

The rice is still a little bit warm.

And the salted cod chantilly is cold.

We're going to take an avocado.

I mean, really, guys, California's avocado, amazing.

I'm going to slice some avocado.

So it's exactly like sushi.

When you eat sushi, it's really about the rice, but also the way you cut the fish.

So it's the same concept.

You know, imagine it's a piece of fish.

Voila.

I mean, this is one of our very famous dish known in Trois Mec.

It's avocado sushi with salted cod cream and a lime vinaigrette.

Mr. Passard really created this new wave of cooking vegetables.

You know, after that, a lot of chefs decided to do like Mr. Passard.

A lot.

Inaki Aizpitarte... he would be mad the way I pronounce his name now, Inaki.

But Inaki is the chef from Le Chateaubriand.

He cooks amazing, fresh food.

You know, he just follows the season.

Summer, have tomato, cucumber, melon.

I can put these things together on the plate.

The season tells me it's okay.

That's exactly the feelings of Mr. Passard.

Inaki is like my brother.

I love that guy, man.

I love that guy.

Inaki is a chef who comes from nowhere.

He doesn't have a three-star Michelin training like me.

He was a landscaper, and he was playing music in a punk band.

One day decided he didn't want to do that, he learned how to cook, and he opened Le Chateaubriand with amazing food.

At one time it was the number one restaurant in France.

I mean, the guy's a genius.

So light, so good.

Genius.

>> LEFEBVRE: My favorite vegetable?

I know it sounds boring, guys, but it's potato.

I just love potato.

So perfect mashed potatoes.

One kilo of potato, one kilo of butter.

I want that before I die.

When we opened Trois Mec, the focus of the restaurant was more based on vegetable.

And I really want to create a dish about potato.

But what you can do with the potato, something a little different?

When you think about that, that's not easy.

I take a little piece of paper, write "potato", and have put all the things I like with potato.

I like butter.

I like cream.

I like salt.

White pepper.

Bacon.

Onion.

Leeks.

Cheese.

And smokiness.

So you know I play a lot with this flavor.

Exactly like a painter when he plays with the color.

He mixes the color together and tries to get his perfect colors the way he want for this painting.

So it's something.

In this I decided to keep the cheese, the butter, onion.

And when I think about all this all going on together, it makes me think about the potato aligot.

Like this mashed potato, it's very elastic.

Amazing, amazing flavor.

So that's where the potato pulp starts.

♪ ♪ So here we will use this little fingerling potato.

En Francais, we call that ratte.

A ratte is a potato we use a lot for mashing.

Cook this potato in salt and water with the skin.

And really be gentle.

Like, I almost don't want the water to boil.

But if the water boils, the skin's going to crack, and the water's going to enter.

And the potato is not going to be the same texture.

So yes, it's just boiling potato, but it's very technical.

When I created this dish, I decided to focus on the texture of the potato to find a different way to do potato aligot.

When I do mashed potatoes, I always put my potato in the potato ricer, and after I mix it.

So I say, "You know what?

"I'm going to do the same way, but I'm going to leave the pulp the way it is."

I don't want to mix it.

Voila.

Now, remember I say I keep the onion flavor.

So here I did a very, very classic onion soubise.

What is onion soubise?

Is sliced onions, and cooked slowly in cream and butter.

It's like a puree.

We're going to put a little bit on the dish.

Then after, I'm going to put my potato in the potato ricer.

Press the potato on the top of the soubise.

Most of the time when you have mashed potatoes, they will become a little bit elastic.

You know, here you have more texture.

It's almost like grain potato.

It's very different, you know?

We'll put a little bit of brown butter all around.

The key of this dish is we need to build the perfect bite, seasoning each bite of the dish.

Then after, brown butter powder.

Mmm, more butter.

When you put the brown butter, it's hot, and go on the bottom.

While this butter it really sticks here, sticks here, sticks here, everywhere.

Then after, I want to add smokiness onto the dish.

Because I love the memory of a potato in the fire.

Like, you know when you wrap it in aluminum foil, and you put it in the wood?

I love this flavor.

So now I have my smoked bonito.

Okay.

Salers cheese is a cheese from France.

It has a real unique flavor.

It's a very floral flavor.

And you taste some fennel.

I mean, it's very... the mountain flavor is actually where the aligot potato is from, the recipe.

So voila.

Potato pulp.

This dish was on the menu the first day we opened the restaurant.

It's simple, but interesting.

That was the focus of the restaurant at that time, you know?

It was not, like, to have a dish with a potato and a lot of things on the side, a lot of accompaniment.

And after, you don't know what you eat, you know?

I did a lot of mistakes like this when I was young-- tried to be creative, but sometimes too creative.

And it was not making, really, sense, you know?

I think that's a mistake that people do sometimes, especially when young.

You know, you cook for yourself.

And sometimes you forget what the job of the chef is to cook for people.

(birds chirping) Mr. Passard really did something very, very unique, exciting all these young people to be proud about their vegetable.

He gives a lot of inspiration to a lot of chefs all around the world.

But also farmer, to cultivate our terroir, our soil, like so many years ago.

I really want the new generation to understand that it's really precious.

Don't lose this tradition about vegetable.

(sniffs)