51�Թ�

Besides, my real heroes weren’t American but French: Paul Bocuse, the visionary of Lyon; the formidably articulate Joël Robuchon; the Troisgros brothers, renowned for their salmon with sorrel sauce; Michel Guérard, the inventor of cuisine minceur, a low-calorie version of nouvelle cuisine.

“Cuisine minceur” means “spa food” in French, a term coined by chef Michel Guérard in the 1970s to refer to a lighter style of cooking, which is laid out in this now-out-of-print book.

Heavy lifting, but then suddenly on-the-nose and droll when applied to, say, cuisine minceur, which Jim wrote was “the moral equivalent of the foxtrot.”

There is also cuisine minceur, the cooking of slimness.

"On a tour of the U.S.," she says, "no one wanted to talk about anything but cuisine minceur."